"I need your grace to remind me, to find my own. If I lay here, if I just lay here. Would you lie with me and just forget the world?"
-"Chasing Cars", Snow Patrol

...

Chapter 3:

I woke up to the all too familiar sound of rain hitting against my windowpane. A pleasant heat was radiating down my back, which was pressed against Mike's warm and bare chest. Our legs tangled together into an intricate web of limbs, and I flattened my always-chilly feet against his muscular calves. His arms rested securely around my waist, holding me to his body's unbreakable grip. My head rested comfortably on his chest while his nose was buried into the nape of my neck, a favorite sport of his. The sheets had fallen away from our sleeping forms, and I shivered as the cool air streamed out from the overhead vent, and assaulted my exposed skin. My head felt like a small crowd of construction workers was pounding repeatedly against my temples with their steal hammers. I dared not to open my eyes, knowing even the smallest crack of light coming from the window would cause a brutal sting.

I groaned and tried my best to move away from Mike without waking him. A nearly impossible task that was doomed from the start. I could barely tell where his skin ended and mine began. Adding my graceless movements to the mix, despite my efforts, roused him.

"Morning," he smiled at me, as I rested my head back onto his chest, temporary giving up on my futile mission to get out of bed. He pulled the blankets back over us in one fluid movement. I would have rolled my eyes at how every move he made was as smooth as marble, but the hammers were still pounding. Cuddling back up to me, Mike began to brush his hand through my thick and unruly hair, working out the knots from my tresses. The way we pushed against one another created a tingling of heat that worked its way up my back and down my legs, but I was too hungover to compel myself to get us into any compromising situations.

"How's your head?" He spoke softly beside my ear, kissing the spot just underneath it.

I gasped when his fingers unknowingly found the tender spot I forgot was on the back of my head. He brushed over it lightly, his brows pulling together in a look that I recognized and saw often. He had told me many times before that my pain was his pain, but in reality all he could do was make that face and try to wish away all my aches and bruises. It was his usual concern when it came to the instability that was my health.

"It would be better if there wasn't a hangover to top if off," I sighed, focusing only on the feeling of his fingers that had started to gently rub my temples.

He sighed, grabbing my chin so he could tilt my face back to look at him.

"Well, I won't lecture you on the stupidity of what you did last night, you have both Carlisle and Charlie to do that." I groan just thinking about the confrontations that would inevitably come from my father, or worse yet, Carlisle, once the news of my wild night got out. And it would get out. The Cullen's are not a family of secret keepers. They like your business to be everyone's business.

He kissed me on the forehead and untangled his limbs from mine. "I'll go fetch you some aspirin."

I pressed my head into the lingering warmth of his pillow and breathed in his remarkable scent that still lingered there. Armani and silk, was something I would not mind waking up to every morning. It eased my pounding head, even if only slightly; I quickly buried myself into the sheets, wishing I could live in them forever, but Mike was back before sleep could take me away, and I reluctantly pulled myself up in order to swallow the two small, red pills he handed me. The water I used to wash them down felt nice on my dry and sour tasting mouth.

Swallowing the pills I looked over at the clock, whose red flashing numbers told me it was nearly afternoon. I began to chuckle as realization struck me.

"What's so funny?" Mike asked, sitting down so he could rub my back as I held the cold glass against my flush face, shivering at the contact. I turned to my fiancé, smiling weakly at the irony that presented itself.

"For the first time in two years I slept the entire night without some kind of prescription." I chuckled again and downed the rest of water, placing the empty glass next to my alarm clock. I ran my fingers over the glass-covered numbers, leaving a smudge of water from the cold condensation that clung to the glass. I watched as one large drop gathered and dripped onto my side table while the rest quickly evaporated and disappeared like nothing had ever happened. I wish last night would evaporate, or better yet, the whole day.

"Maybe you should become an alcoholic, it sure does knock you on your ass." He pulled my body back to his, snuggling us back down into the mattress, and banishing the thought of condensation and evaporation from my mind.

"I would, you know I love a good glass of wine, but these morning after headaches are a real bitch." I loved the feeling of his chest rising and falling as we both laughed.

Mike pulled the comforter up and over our heads, encasing us in artificial darkness. He trailed kisses up my neck and along my jawline.

"You know I think there's more to the equation than just copious amounts of whiskey." I breathed against his neck, pulling on the strands of hair at his neck.

"Actually it was scotch," my words came out as a breathy whisper, feeling the need to leave the room around us, the city, the world. I wanted nothing to exist but this bed and us.

"Okay, scotch and what else would put you back into such a deep sleep, my lady?" He joked, resting his forehead against my own, while one of his hands slipped up and under my oversized t-shirt.

"Well the way I see it, sleep is a two part problem." He hummed in agreement. "Alcohol insures the drowsiness, but the real key is the warm arms that keep you from floating away while you're under." I whispered, trailing a finger down his cheek.

He brought his lips back to mine. We wasted away the afternoon underneath the covers.

~ ooOoo ~

By the time I checked my phone at three thirty, I had five missed calls from Rosalie, and a staggering fifteen from Alice. I had a feeling it would have been a lot more had my mailbox allowed more than twenty voice messages at a time.

I assumed the worse when I climbed into Mike's car to go pick up my shower presents, but was still too shaken by yesterday's events to pick up the phone and call someone. So instead, a thousand scenarios and situations ran through my head. Was something wrong with Rosalie and the baby? Did Jasper forget to take his medication again? Had Alice finally heard some good news from the doctors?

All twenty voicemails I listen to as I brushed my teeth and Mike took a shower were as vague as the last. A jittery sounding Alice and a nonchalant sounding Rosalie had nothing more to say than to call them as soon as I got their messages.

I let out a long sigh of annoyance and anxiety as I finally dialed Alice's number. I could not help the nervous ticks I developed as I listened to the line as it rang once…twice…a third time, my leg bounced up and down rapidly and my nails clicked repeatedly against the middle console in a rapid, repetitive motion. Mike grabbed my hand trying to offer me some reassurance and to eliminate one of the annoying noises I was creating.

On what must have been the five hundredth ring, a breathless Alice finally picked up.

"Bella!" she screeched. "Where are you?" Her question was laced with worry and frustration.

"Mike and I are just getting ready to leave for your parents house. Why, what's wrong?"

"Oh…nothing. Listen, why don't you just take it easy today and send Mike out by himself." Her suggestion caught me off guard.

"It's really no trouble Alice. I could use some air anyways." I looked out the window, watching the rainfall.

"Really Bella, I insist that you stay home. Relax, just send your doting fiancé to mom's and he will be back with dozens of presents for you to open in no time." I frowned, not quite understanding what was happening.

In my life, I had never been able to tell a good lie. My face would tighten up in an all-telling grin or grimace, my eyes looking anywhere but at my accuser. I was an open book. Mike insisted it was both my greatest virtue and my most crippling vice. That being said, the lie I was about to tell Alice was only convincing because she was not there to witness the scowl that overtook my face.

"You know I could use a day of pajamas and Sex and the City." Mike squeezed my hand and I turn to look at him, his face had taken on a quizzical look. "I'll send Mike to get all the presents." I spoke into the phone while shaking my head back and forth to signal a 'no' to my confused fiancé.

"Sounds perfect, and I'm glad you made it home okay last night." Alice's voice sounded suddenly much more relieved upon hearing I would not be making an appearance at the Cullen household. I was confused, but moreover I felt the slight sting of rejection.

Either way, one of my best friends did not want to see me or perhaps she did not want me to see something, or someone. Green eyes flickered across my mind like the flame of a candle. In flashes, the evening's events played back through my head like an old black and white movie. I could still feel his tight grip encasing my wrists, cutting off my circulation.

"Yeah Alice, I'm fine, I just need some aspirin and a afternoon of R and R." Now I was the one who sounded distant and vague.

"Okay, I'll leave you to it. Get some rest and I'll see you tomorrow sometime. Love you." Her chipper voice made me sick and I almost considered asking Mike to pull over, but I swallowed the feeling and managed a goodbye.

I sat in silence listening to the sound of raindrops hitting the roof of the car, trying to wrap my head around the conversation I just had. I barely had a moment to let my brain wander before Mike cleared his throat and I became all too aware to the fact that I was not alone in the car.

"What was that about?" Mike's hair flapped in the breeze that spilled from the air conditioner. His scent surrounded me and I took a deep comforting breath.

"Alice," I frowned, "she's trying to keep me from going to the house."

He stared at me in silence for a moment before squeezing my hand in his again, "Do you want me to turn around?"

"No," I answered hesitantly, but I was sure of my decision.

Mike chuckled, "I'm sure it's nothing dear."

I sighed, "That's what frightens me."

In the last few years every event, situation, or piece of news that the Cullen's claimed to be 'nothing' always escalated to monumental tragedy and depression. There was Edward and I, then Jasper, then Alice, then Rosalie. It was a never-ending cycle of 'nothing' that always turned into 'something'.

Mike shook his head, rubbing his thumb over the back of my hand and continued down I-26. He pressed a button on the steering wheel of his fancy BMW, another generous graduation present from his parents. The White Stripes began to play softly in the background. It was just one of the dozen songs off our new pre-wedding mix tape. This of course was courtesy of Alice and her creative genes.

Let's get married
in a big cathedral by a priest
cause if I'm the man you love the most
you can say 'I do' at least

I squeezed my fiancé's hand in mine and took a deep breath. There was still one ray of sun I could constantly see through all this fog, and he will always keep me from floating away.

Six days.

~ ooOoo ~

Just as I suspected, when we pulled up to the house, two very familiar cars crowded the driveway, along with one suspicious silver Volvo.

"Where's the party?" Mike questioned as he pulled up behind Rosalie and Emmett's new family approved SUV.

I was surprised at the pain that shot through my chest. My face flushed and I could feel the tears gathering at the corner of my eyes. It was an irrational and dramatic overreaction to the situation at hand. Realizing this however, did not make me feel better.

So that left the question, what was Alice keeping from me?

I quickly grabbed onto Mike's elbow as he turned the car off and was about to open the driver's side door. When he turned to question my motives, wearing the same confused look etched on his face, but it softened almost as soon as he spotted the wetness in my eyes.

Placing his large, warm hand on my face and asked, "What is really going on Bella?"

I sighed placing my own hand over the one cradling my cheek.

I had managed to avoid the topic of my shower, my ex-fiancé's unannounced appearance, my subsequent collapse, or the incident outside of the bar. Mike was not even aware that Edward Cullen was back in town. It was not a topic I wanted to bring up, especially so close to our impending nuptials.

Mike was well aware of Edward and the fact that we dated all throughout high school and spent a rather short time engaged to each other before I went to college. However, I had left some of the more gruesome details to get a little fuzzy. Mike was under the impression that our split was a mutual decision based on friendly conversation over the facts that we were too young and both wanted to go our separate ways. My original intention was to keep him from the darkness that still radiated through me everyday, created by a past that kept me seeing a therapist for years. He was good, and handsome, and I was sure I was in love with him. I did not want Edward's darkness to dim Mike's beaming light.

Thinking back to the time we had the 'ex' discussion, I thought Edward was just a blemish from my past that I would never have to see again if I tried hard enough. Why scare away the amazing man I had sitting across from me because of a boy who scared me away?

It was just a month into dating and he was making me dinner at his apartment for the first time. It was a chic complex with a pool and gated entrance that his parents were helping him pay for, considering his work study job at the library wouldn't even cover the electric bill. Nevertheless, he wanted so bad to be independent of his parent's money he was willing to put his fifteen hours in a week to make next to nothing.

We had just finished dinner when the storm that had been brewing for the last hour climaxed into something fierce. The power suddenly flickered off, leaving us in the black of night. After scurrying around to find some matches and several dusty and neglected candles we were left to snuggling under a blanket and play twenty questions. An idea of my own that I would come to curse myself for suggesting in a few short minutes.

"Okay, what is your favorite childhood memory?" I asked, tilting my face up to look at his handsome features, looking sharp and defined in the shadows of the room and the flashes of lighting that illuminated the sky every few minutes.

He pondered my question for a moment "hmm"ing and "umm"ing.

"Okay, when I was eleven or twelve, we went to our beach house for a week over in North Carolina. It was just awesome that we got to take a vacation as a family for once. Both of my parents were really hard workers you know, but that left little bonding time." He looked down at me with a small, sad looking smile. I could see the sad little boy who still lingered behind this man's face. I gripped onto his hand as he continued.

"Anyway, so one day my dad and I were in the ocean just trying to catch a few waves on some bogie boards, but it was pretty dead. So, we came closer to shore and started to look for sea shells." He started to chuckle. "And out of no where my uptight, lawyer father breaks out the worst Australian accent I've ever heard and starts narrating our discoveries like he's Steve Erwin or something."

I could not help the smile that broke out on my face once I saw him light up from telling such a story. The grin that overtook his mouth was devastatingly gorgeous and quite contagious.

"We both went on like that until we were pruned, water logged, and our boards were weighed down with seashells. It was the best day I've ever had with my dad, and one of the few that didn't involve a lecture about my life's plan." He finished.

I sighed watching him grab his scotch off the coffee table in front of us. I would have done anything to put that toothy grin back on his face, and that was something that sacred me a little. I knew I was falling hard and fast. We remained silent for a while after that, just listening to the storm. He ran his fingers through my hair and I played with his free hand. I watched intently as I intertwined our fingers, only to untangle them, and starting the process all over.

"My turn," his voice nearly a whisper against my ear. I could not hold back the shiver that tingled down my body in the most delightful way. "Tell me about the others…".

I scrunched my brows together, not understanding what he was asking. However, before I could inquire if he would clarify, he spoke again.

"I know I shouldn't ask, but I can't help but wonder who the lucky fellows were who got to hold your hands and stare into your beautiful brown eyes before I came along." I felt him shrug as he rambled on.

Oh.

My mouth opened and closed several times as I tried to come up with something. A mirage of images clouded my brain. Green eyes, guitar strings, a large white house, and a diamond ring surrounded by a room of cardboard boxes. I pulled away from Mike's warm embrace so I could face him and stare into his crystal blue eyes that clouded with concern and regret. His cheeks started to flush an adorable shade of pink.

"I don't mean to sound…shit Bella…I'm sorry!" He was already rubbing the back of his neck harshly, a sure sign he was stressed and at a loss for words.

I quickly grab his hands, calloused from long hours of manual labor working for a local construction company on the weekends.

"You really want to know?" I could not meet his gaze and instead let my eyes follow the intertwining of our fingers again.

"Only if you want to. I can't believe I ever asked that, I'm so stupid." He pulled his hands from mine so as to pull my chin up to look at him. "I don't care about your past or who was in it. I only care about your future and if I get to be a part of it." He was babbling again. I took a deep breath and leaned in to give him a kiss that quickly turned slow and passionate but ended too soon.

Taking hold of his hands once more I began, "My mom and dad were always really good friends with the town doctor and his wife, the Cullen's. They had three kids; their youngest was a girl my age. Alice" I smiled thinking about the fun I once had running around Esme and Carlisle's backyard, Alice towing me in hand.

"We were best friends from the womb, at least that's what our mothers used to say, but we both went our separate ways around the time we started high school. I spent all my time at their house, especially after my parents got divorced. Esme and Carlisle are like my second parents in a way…" I trailed off, staring blankly out the water-streaked window.

"Anyways, they had a son a year older than us…Ed…Edward." I barely chocked out his name. I hadn't realized how hard I was gripping at Mike's hands until he squeezed mine back just as hard to see if I was okay. I did my best to loosen my grip.

"Of course he was the gorgeous older brother of my best friend, so naturally in my mind he was off limits. Not that I thought he would be interested in a little girl with braces and a chest as flat as a board.

"But just around the time Alice and I had our falling out, Edward and I began to really connect and form our own friendship. We happen to have a few classes together. We talked, and talking eventually lead to cautious flirting, and in a few months with one grand gesture later, I was dating Edward Cullen."

I sighed, "He was older and a musician, the most nonconformist person I'd ever met. We went to art galleries and underground band concerts instead of dinner and a movie. He had this weird classical alternative rock band with some name I thought was stupid."

I could not go on. I was doing my best to keep from convulsing, my whole body was going to shut down just from talking about this tainted part of my past, and I was finally learning to leave behind. Mike noticed my apprehension quickly and began to rub my arms up and down with the palms of his hands. This soothed me and my heart did its best to go back to its normal rhythm.

How was I going to tell him about the incident, if I could not even bring myself to admit that I was engaged before I met him?

I looked up into my boyfriend's eyes. Every time he looked at me I felt as if I was the only girl in the world, like I was a princess and he was my prince. It was a feeling right out of a fairytale or a romantic comedy. We had only been dating for a month and I already felt his love when he was around.

It that moment, as he stroke my arms and the lightening flooded the room for a brief second, illuminating his eyes to look like a clear blue ocean being hit by the sun, that I knew I had to keep him from the dark and twisty story of my past. I could not lie. I was never good at it, but that did not mean that I could not leave parts of the truth from making the final cut of my story. The editor's addition, if you will.

"What happened between the two of you?" Mike asked, cautiously asking me to continue.

One more deep breath and I rushed through the rest of the story that I hope would ease Mike's conscious.

"We dated all throughout high school. He graduated, and I was working on my senior year with an opportunity at a free ride to Yale. Edward had stayed in town. Carlisle gave him a year to test his toes in the water of the music world, but if he didn't have a deal by the end of the summer he was going to school." I left out the part included him planning on me to play a large part in the great career he thought he was destined to pursue and in turn giving up my own education.

"I finished that year with honors, graduating valedictorian of my class." I left out the fact that he hated me going to school without him. The fact that he was a selfish and jealous bastard who kept me from all my friends, took precious time away from my family, and even tried to pry me from my studies.

"That night he dropped down on one knee and proposed." I said quietly. I stared off into space remembering the diamond ring he presented to me in his bedroom that night.

"You were engaged? " Mike asked, tugging on my hand so he could get my attention.

I could not meet his penetrating gaze, fearing what I might find in his eyes, and instead just nodded before continuing on, afraid I may lose my nerves if I paused for too long of a time.

"Yeah. We planned a quick wedding and decided that we would spend a year traveling Europe, establishing Edward's career." Wrong. I did not want a short engagement. I wanted to go to college for four years, maybe grad school too. I wanted a degree, a stable job, and a decent apartment before we even thought about getting married. But that wasn't what he wanted.

"The summer was going by too fast and I was starting to realize that I didn't want to give up my education for a year. I got my scholarship letter from Yale in July and finally worked up the courage to tell him I wasn't ready." This was true. "He…he wasn't happy, he tried to convince me to…to stay, but I had made up my mind. I left for Connecticut a week later." All true. I was starting to wish that my editor's addition were all that had actually happened. Unfortunately, I still had the scars to remind me of reality.

"I never saw him again. He was my one and only relationship before you."

I hesitantly raised my eyes to meet his.

"Okay," he smiled at me and pulled me back into his embrace so he could start running his fingers through my hair and placed his other hand in my own, we were exactly as we had been before his question.

"Your turn," he whispered in my ear and placed a light kiss on my cheek.

The air hung quietly around us before I finally spoke.

"Edward is here," I whispered, but it came out sounding like a scream in the silent car. Even the rain had stopped its pitter-patter.