A/N: If you're in my Facebook group, you know I've been struggling with my mental health, which isn't conducive to writing. So if you're reading one of my other fics and waiting for an update, I'm trying to feed my mojo. Right now, I'm writing whatever will speak to me.

But I just finished the first of three final classes for my degree. By Monday, I'll have no school left! How exciting is that? College graduate me. Hopefully, it will also free up a little brain-space.

Anyway. Onward!

"I'm not coming back to Seattle today."

On the other end of the phone, Edward could practically see his mother blinking. She'd begged him to let her go with him, but he'd refused. "Edward, just this morning you couldn't stand the thought of being there."

"It was terrible." His throat closed at the memory. He'd never be able to explain how walking down the hallways of Forks High felt like he was walking through a river of blood. "I have no idea how I'm going to sit through the ceremony."

"You know you don't have to." His mother's voice was soothing and understanding as always. "Is it… Are you having some kind of reaction, sweetheart? Is that why you can't drive back?

Edward had to smile. A reaction. As though he'd taken a new medicine and it had made him break out in hives. But it was as adequate a description as any. His mother had been present for many of his most severe flashbacks and worst moments. She'd been terrified of that possibility—that he'd have a disabling panic attack setting foot in the school and no one would be there to help him. "It's not that, Mom. Um." He closed his eyes, debating briefly if he wanted to get into this with his mother. "Do you remember Bella Swan?"

"Little Bitty?" It was Emmett who spoke then. His mother must have put him on speaker. "I remember her."

"Yeah. Hey, Em? You used to take girls out in Forks. What the hell did you do here?"

There was a pause on the other line, and Edward could have kicked himself. He could tell his brother was holding back laughter when he spoke. "You want to run that by me again? You're taking a girl out? No, wait. You're taking Bitty out? Like on a date?"

Yeah, that had definitely been a mistake. "It's not a date. Not really. I just asked if I could see her again tonight, that's all."

There was silence on the other line save for a soft chortling Edward identified as his father. Great, so everyone was there. He huffed. "You guys are wonderful. I'll call you later."

"No. Honey, wait." Esme sounded too amused to ease Edward's irritation. "I'm sorry. This just isn't what we expected when you went down there alone. Why don't you back up and tell us what happened?"

So, Edward told the story. He glossed over the parts he'd rather not think about. His time in the school before Bella arrived was a muddy mess of emotions he hadn't sorted out yet. His memories, good and bad, tangled up with an overwhelming sense of injustice. High school. At the time, it had felt so big. Now, as an adult, he knew just how little his high school experience was. There was a whole world out there his friends couldn't even imagine.

He talked about Bella scaring the hell out of him—when the chairs clattered, the loud noise had sent him into a brief panic. Something was happening again in that room. Something devastating. He'd seen her body on the floor and for three awful seconds as he ran to her, he'd thought it was happening all over again.

But then he'd seen that the girl—woman—was fine, just dazed. There was no blood. The screaming was all in his head. There was depth in her pretty brown eyes. Not like Mike's eyes, which had been blank and lifeless in death.

His parents, especially, were concerned with Bella. They'd spoken of her often right after it happened, wondering what had become of her. She'd always been polite to them. A good girl, and her father's joy. Charlie, they'd said, had wondered if he was doing right by his often too-quiet little girl. Edward was evasive when he talked about what she'd been up to these past ten years. She'd been so blunt with him, but that didn't mean she wanted him shouting her troubles to anyone who would listen.

"I don't think life's treated her very well," he said instead. "It's not a date. Not really. Neither of us is into that kind of thing. I just wanted to spend more time with her. I couldn't let lunch be it."

"I think that's understandable," Esme said.

"Hey, does she still look like a boy?" Emmett asked. Someone, maybe his wife, smacked his arm. "Ow. Hey, what? She did. She was all skinny and gangly, even as a teenager."

"She was thirteen," Edward said, vaguely annoyed for some reason. "She's…"

It wasn't as though he hadn't noticed Bella had grown into a stunning woman. He had eyes, and he was a red-blooded, heterosexual male. He liked the shape of her ass. He liked the curve of her body. He liked the shape of her lips and the challenge in her eyes. But none of that was the point.

"She's grown up, that's all," he finished lamely.

"Uh huh. Well, I don't know what to tell you, man. Forks was never a dating hot spot. That's why so many kids did drugs."

"Emmett," their mother said, scandalized. "Did you do drugs?"

"Ah, don't open a box you can't deal with, Mom. And don't think your golden child was an innocent snowflake either." He paused. "Don't look at me like that. We both ended up okay."

"Okay, so we can safely cross drugs off the list," Edward said dryly. Inwardly, he wondered about Bella and drugs. Not an addict, she'd said, but that didn't mean she hadn't been involved with them. "What else did you do with your girlfriends?"

"What did you do with your girlfriend?"

Edward's heart panged, and he stared down at his hands. The rush of guilt he felt was probably stupid. High school relationships rarely lasted. If Angela had lived, they probably wouldn't have survived a long distance relationship. Still, especially being back in Forks with memories of her sweet smile at every turn, it felt wrong to be talking about seeing another woman.

"Sorry," Emmett said, catching on.

"It's fine. And I only had the one girlfriend. We didn't really date. It was just a lot of hanging out." And making out. Talking about what their future would be out of Forks with their noses brushing and lips touching every once in awhile. Nothing he could really do with Bella.

Emmett snorted. "You think I did anything different? It's just that we hung out when parents and pesky little brothers weren't home. You know what I mean?"

"Are you trying to give your mother a heart attack? Ignorance is bliss, son," Carlisle said in the background, sounding amused.

"Bygones, Mom. I made it out of my teens without overdosing or alcohol poisoning or a surprise baby. It's fine." He chuckled. "Really, Edward. If it was summer, I might have some other suggestions for you. But unless you're going to hit up a bar, your choice is one of the restaurants, in which case you have a curfew."

Edward drummed his fingertips on the steering wheel, considering. He definitely wasn't going to take Bella to a bar without knowing what vices she wanted to stay away from. "I guess I'll have to get creative. Anyway. I'll call you tomorrow."

"Good luck, bro!" Emmett called before Edward could disconnect.

~0~

It was strange pulling up to the Swan house. Even in the darkness, the house was familiar. When he looked to his passenger seat, he was almost shocked not to see Leah there, stalling for a few minutes while they finished cackling their fool heads off about whatever it was they were talking about. Before he'd had a car, he'd annoyed his parents. They'd pull up to drop Leah off, and he and Leah would be in the backseat, heads bent together, snickering at something or another.

Edward had plenty of friends these days, but none like Leah. Really, none like any of the people he'd lost a decade ago.

Shaking that off as best he could, Edward got out of the car. He shivered. The cold was the kind that bit into every inch of his skin and slipped beneath his jacket. He readjusted his gloves as he headed up the walk.

"Hey," Bella said in greeting. She pulled the door open and darted back inside. "Come in," she called over her shoulder. "Sorry. I got distracted. Give me a second, okay?"

Edward closed the door, looking around. A chill went down his spine. The house was almost exactly like he remembered it. Same furnishings. The chief's biggest catch on the wall, along with a few pieces of Quileute art.

Bella had taken all the pictures of the family down. Recently, too. Their shadows were still visible on the wall going up the stairs. As sad as it made him, Edward was also relieved. He'd driven to this house with no small amount of trepidation. He could already hear their voices in his head. He didn't really want to see Leah and Seth on the walls here like they had been in the school. He didn't want to see the Chief standing proudly by his family. He didn't want to see Sue smiling and happy. He didn't want to see little Bella, shy and out of place, but still part of this mottled family.

The house was the same, and yet it was different. Like the school, too quiet.

"You were right," Edward said quietly as he stepped into the living room where Bella had disappeared.

She didn't look up right away. She was seated cross legged in front of the coffee table. There were parts spread out all around her, and she had her phone opened to an internet page. "What was I right about?"

"There are ghosts here."

She raised her eyes to meet his, and smiled a sad smile. "Too creepy for you?"

"No," Edward said, not quite telling the truth. He sat down in the chief's chair. Her eyes followed him as he did it, but she didn't stop him. "But it would be, I think, if I had to be here alone. How do you do it?"

She snorted softly, returning her eyes to her work. "You can do a lot of things if you don't have much of a choice." She shrugged. "I mean, I guess I do have a choice, right? In that way people say they always have a choice? Technically, I have more now than I've had since I turned eighteen and inherited a nice chunk from my dad's life insurance policy. Sue signed this house over to me. She owned it free and clear, and now I do. I could sell it, and use the money to be somewhere else, but then what?

"A house in Forks isn't worth what a house other places is. And I'd still have no job. No real provable skills. No plan." She smirked, her tone turning wry. "I did that for a long time. Just keep moving. Keep moving until you find somewhere that feels like home." She shook her head. "Didn't work out so well for me, so I'm trying staying still for a minute."

Sighing, she looked around and shivered. "Sometimes I think I should be strong enough to keep going. Be one of those stories, you know? Pick a big city and figure out how to stay there?"

"Yeah," Edward said with a laugh. "I know that problem. I lived in New York City for a while. I went to school out there, and I had a shitty one bedroom apartment I shared with six people."

Bella's eyebrows arched in surprise. "Six?"

"Yeah. One of those set ups where one of my roommates slept on an inflatable bed in the kitchen. We had to step over him and his girlfriend or boyfriend of the moment to get to the coffee."

They both laughed. She had a nice laugh.

"Yeah, I think I topped out at four roommates, but then again, I've never tried to live anywhere that was as high rent as I hear New York City is." She quirked her lips.

"Ah." Edward shrugged. "It was really my own fault. I could have lived in the dorms, but I was nineteen. I'd taken a penny-ante job, and I guess I was trying to prove my independence. It didn't last long. The next semester, I moved back to campus housing."

Bella nodded. "What's your degree in?"

"Business."

Bella nodded again, more slowly this time. "Uh huh." She pressed her lips together, concentrating on what she was doing for a moment. "A business major in school in New York City."

"Yes."

She glanced at him. "That was what Leah wanted to do."

The way she looked at him, Edward got a weird sense as though she were seeing straight down to his soul. Like he wasn't fooling her, though he hadn't really been trying to fool anyone. He swallowed the lump that had risen to his throat. "Yeah."

She looked back to the table, concentrating again. "Hey, it's more than I could accomplish. I barely graduated from high school last year." She took a quick look at him from underneath long eyelashes.

Edward wasn't shocked at that point. His heart twisted. She was smart; he knew that. Chief Swan never did shut up about this or that honor his little girl used to get. Leah could be derisive about it, but she was also really proud.

"My kid sister got her essay in a magazine," she'd told him once, grinning. "Pretty cool, right?"

How far had this girl fallen that she hadn't even graduated high school on time?

"Where'd you learn to do all this?" Edward asked, tilting his chin at the laptop she'd been working on. "I have to admit, when my laptop is broken, I take it to the Geek Squad."

"I graduated from the school of YouTube at Google University." She smiled. "It was necessity. When things would break around the house, when I lived with my mother, I mean, it would take her forever to get things fixed. And sometimes it was about money and crappy landlords. You know, if I didn't want to freeze to death before I could afford a repair person or the landlord got off his ass. That kind of thing."

She pointed at the laptop spread in pieces across the coffee table. "This is about survival pure and simple. Without my laptop, I lose my connection to the outside world."

It was a joke, but it also wasn't. Her smile was too wan for her comment to be completely facetious. She shrugged and started to put the laptop back together again. "Anyway. I think I really started to pick apart machines because they can be understood. Humans? I still don't know if I get humans."

"Yeah," Edward said, mouth suddenly gone dry. "Me either."

He'd spent so much of the last decade of his life wondering why, searching for answers he could never have. When had the majority of his class decided Eric was the "weird" kid. Had he really been that weird? Had he always been a sociopath or had they all had a hand in making him what he became?

"Ugh. I'm sorry." Bella shook her head. "This is heavy stuff. See, this is another reason why I don't date. I have no concept of socially acceptable conversation."

He snorted. "Bella, I picked you up in the same room my friends and your family were gunned down. It's not exactly the best place to meet for lighthearted."

She was quiet at that, and Edward was stunned. Had he really said that out loud? He never talked about the shooting so bluntly. Always, he and his family tiptoed around exactly what had happened. They talked about loss, but not murder. Not blood. Not gore. Not violence.

"Sorry," he said.

She shook her head and pushed herself up so she was sitting on the couch. "It's not a date anyway, right? Because neither of us do that."

"Right. No rules."

"Good. I suck at rules." She smiled. "So, what do you have planned?"

He rubbed the back of his neck. "Ah, well. About that… You see, Forks is boring as hell…"

Her smiled widened. "Yeah. No shit."

"I was wondering if you would take it the wrong way if I invited you to my hotel room. We could take out Sully's and get a crappy pay-per-view movie."

"Well, I can already tell you it's going to be the most fun I've had in Forks all year."

~0~

Some hours later, they were sitting on the floor, their backs against Edward's bed. Their burgers were eaten, blackberry shakes drunk, the credits were rolling on Batman Vs. Superman, and Bella was laughing.

He really did like her laugh.

"No, no, no. Worst Lois Lane ever. Seriously. She pissed me off so much," Bella said.

"Gee, I couldn't tell from the way you yelled at her every time she got thrown off a building."

"Or walked into the middle of an obvious set-up. Or… you know what, no. Whatever. It's not her fault. It's piss-poor writing."

"Plus what they did to the Lex Luthor storyline is criminal." Edward shook his head.

"No, I really couldn't care less that they changed the Lex Luthor storyline. I give zero fucks about storyline changes. Plus, I really like that Eisenberg kid for some reason," Bella said.

"There's nothing wrong with the actor. He was fine. It's like you said. The writing."

"I liked his part."

Edward quirked an eyebrow. "I'll bet you did. Which one specifically."

"Ha." Bella grinned at him. It was a lazy, sleepy grin.

They lapsed into silence, their gaze lingering. They were sitting practically shoulder to shoulder. She was so close, he swore he could feel the heat of her body. Or was it just the heat in the room? They'd turned the heater on high when they got in. Maybe too high, Edward thought. He was certainly very warm.

Not just warm. Electric.

And his gaze kept wandering down to her lips. And she was looking at his.

Her lips moved. "You didn't meet me today, you know."

Edward blinked and looked back up at her eyes again. "What?"

"You said earlier that we met in the cafeteria. We didn't." She licked her lips, drawing his attention there again. "Do you remember when we met?"

"Um. No. I think, for me, you were just always around. Your dad married Leah's mom when you were what? Six?"

"And I didn't come to live with them until I was seven. But I met you before that."

"Did you?"

"Yeah. There was this picture in one of my dad's albums. I was close to one, so my mom hadn't left with me yet. It must have been like the one single sunny day Forks had that summer. The folks—mine and yours—had a BBQ. They had a play pen out there for me." Her lips quirked up. "And in the picture, you—five-year-old misfit—had climbed into the playpen and stolen my pacifier. So I was crying and you were sitting there with a pacifier in your mouth pretending you were a baby, too." She giggled.

"Wow. No wonder you had a crush on me."

"Yeah, twelve years later."

"I must have left an impression."

Bella snickered, then she sighed. "You know what sucks?"

"Besides me at five? Sucking on a dirty pacifier."

She grinned. "Yeah, besides that." She yawned and sighed again. "It's going to suck going back to an empty house."

The thought made him sad.

And her face was so close.

Edward cupped her cheek and ran his thumb over her lips, following the motion for a moment before he looked up into her eyes. "Then don't go," he murmured.

Bella stared back at him, her face a mask, and Edward almost pulled away. Before he could, though, she tilted her head up. His body reacted almost without his permission. He kissed her before he could think about what he was doing.

The sweetness from the shakes still lingered on her lips. He draped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer. She cupped her hand around the back of his neck, her fingers playing at the tips of his hair.

What a surreal day. It had begun with such horror. He'd walked into that school alone, reliving the worst day of his life—all the pain and guilt. And yet he'd left with this woman by his side, and here she was in his arms. She was beautiful and real and alive and hurting as much as he was, if not moreso. Whatever this was about—that it felt like she recognized a piece of him no one else had ever been able to understand or if it was just that they were both still alive despite everything they'd lost—it felt right. It felt good.

He didn't want to think about the why's and whether or not this was a good idea. All he knew was he wasn't in the mood to let her go. Not yet. In fact, he only wanted her closer.

Apparently on the same page, Bella shifted so she was straddling him. She began to wiggle and writhe, moving herself over him as their kisses went from sweet to fervent and deep. He moaned into her mouth, and she whimpered in response, the sounds vibrating between them.

Neither of them was looking to savor. They stood, and she sat on the bed, him standing in front of her, head tilted down because he didn't want to stop kissing her yet. They parted only long enough to slip their shirts up and over their heads. She scooted back, and he climbed over her.

"I'm on the pill," she said when they were face to face, both panting. "And I've been tested. I was lucky, but I'm clean. I'll understand if you don't believe me."

Edward kissed a line across her collarbone. "I believe you."

"If you say we don't need anything, I trust you."

It was the most they spoke the whole time. It was as though their bodies had things to say to each other that their mouths couldn't find words for. He kissed her gently, sweetly as she took hold of his shaft and guided him to her. They rocked together, kissing. Her hands trailed over his back, cupped his ass, slid back up and into his hair. She tilted her head back, crying out wordlessly, and he muffled a groan against her neck.

When his thrusts became urgent, she locked her legs around his back, tilting her hips up to meet his. And when they were sated, he pulled her into his arms, and pulled the covers over them.

There in that hotel bed, for those few minutes as they stole soft, sleepy kisses, Edward felt a peace he couldn't explain; a peace he never would have expected to find in this town so full of ghosts.

A/N: So. That happened.

How we doing out there, kiddos?