AN:- ok, my brand new readers have inspired me to update so soon! So here's chapter seven! I dunno how much again I have for this story but I hope it finishes and feels complete when it does. As I'm writing this AN I have no idea what's going to happen in this chapter so if there's any violence, be warned, if there's any angst, well, suck it up 'cause this entire story is based on angst. Enjoy! Peace, love and orange juice [well, screwdrivers if you've been having a rough week - tequila if you feeling like passing out]

Edward Cullen

January 2009

I'd been in here for three weeks she had said and every step of the way, my father, even with his minor injuries - that fuck was thorough - insisted on tending to me and it had been no shock that he'd sedated me so constantly. I hadn't been in a coma and I wasn't sure if he knew that I knew that he'd been fucking with my IV. It was hard to miss the familiar feel of morphine slugging itself through my veins. He should've known better by now. Bella hadn't left me, always snuggled up against my side even though it was making my injuries take even more time to heal but she wouldn't have been moved. Charlie tried to move her and it was a horrendous affair. She went ballistic, scraping and kicking against him, looking at my sympathetic face with blurred up eyes. Only when she started screaming did I make to move. I had sit up, despite the tearing in my back, and began lifting my legs out of the bed, panting and sweating with effort.

"No!" she had screamed, pulling against her father, "No, Charlie! Put me the fuck down! No! Edward!" Carlisle, seeing what I was doing, had pushed me unceremoniously back into the bed. Bella had slid down her father's legs and unto the floor. "If I leave I won't see him again," she had sobbed, hiccupping and coughing, "He'll leave me and he can't. He promised 'cause he said he loved me and he has to stay." With deep heart-broken eyes, she had regarded her father, looking nothing short of pathetic. My lungs had felt smaller. "he has to stay with me because I love him too." Had my heart hope for a moment in the wrong direction? "family doesn't leave family. He can't leave me and I won't leave him." Oh Bella, give me reason not to hope that way. They had given into her but I hadn't missed the look of smug knowing and satisfaction on Carlisle's face. Oh fuck, he knew her…He knew it was her…

Bella stirred gently next to me, sighing before snuggling deeper into me. My eyelids had felt a little heavy watching her dozing and I was just about to drift into what I presumed was a comfortable sleep when I felt a sharp sensation on my shoulder, like little teeth and sure enough, Bella was sleep-gnawing on my shoulder through my gown. She would leave a mark but she looked like she was having a nice dream. I chuckled and watched her gnaw until she stopped and mumbled, "Dad, more pizza. Edward and I are hungry." She was funny. She picked up her gnawing and when it seemed like it was normal to be gnawed on, I closed my eyes and dreamt of Bella for the first time…

"Edward," she whispered, sitting cross legged on my bed in the dress she had worn for the Winter Formal - so that's what it was called. Her hair had been relieved of the flowers and her make-up was cleaned from her face but the glimmer of the residue lit up her face and neck in small specks of light. The white rose corsage I had pinned onto my lapel at the dance sat on her left shoulder like it had been there all along. "Come." She held out her arms to me, open wide and beckoning and I stumbled over to the bed and fell down into them. My jacket and tie was gone and my shirt was in a disarray of open buttons and pushed up sleeves. The softness of her dress on my cheek made me sigh. She pulled me tighter to her breasts, cradling my head like my mother had and rocking me back and forth. "I know."

Shocked, I pulled away from her and sat straight like a pin. Know? What was she talking about? Did she know about my father…

"I know everything," she whispered, holding her arms open again for me. Her dress was bloodied and I recoiled in fear then, raising my hand to shield myself, I saw that it was I who had bloodied her with every scar coming to life on my skin. "I know everything and it's ok." Hesitantly, I curled back into her embrace. I buried my face in her chest, smearing her lovely dress with more blood from my cheeks and lips. Then, on my bleeding skull, she peppered kisses, even more across my forehead, wet and sticky, red and soft, Bella and only Bella. We rocked back and forth, a little faster, a little slower, back and forth, side to side, languidly rhythmic, carelessly staccato. Courage build inside my slowly, slithering up my throat and wetting my tongue, dry before with nerves. My hands, on the small of her back, rubbed carefully up and down the length of her back, shoulders to waist, moving out to her sides. I never touched her breasts of her ass with them but I stopped at her hips and held on for dear life. My lips puckered, touching her heart through the dress - through everything - then, opening and closing my mouth, they climbed her chest to her skin. She sighed at the feeling of my top lip brushing the skin above the neckline of the dress. They continued, never hungry or rough, just soft and persistent. I made it up the column of her throat, under her chin, up her chin. My face drew away from hers before I could touch her lips but she, with a love so uncommon and so ours brightening her eyes and colouring her cheeks, pulled me back in and kissed me soundly on my lips.

She kissed me…

There was no fire, no flames or explosions. There was no tongue or teeth, no wanton need or insatiable passion. No, there was none of that. Our lips opened and closed together, once or twice, her lip would fall between mine. My hands stayed on her hips, and like I had said, I held on for dear life for fear of fading out of this and her hands cradling my cheeks in her palms. Beautiful fingers that felt like a safe harbour and strawberry lips that didn't want me to exist alone anymore, long sweeping eyelashes that kissed my eyelids and cheekbones with a different tilt of her head, her heartbeat thumping in tenor to the bass of mine and playing a soft lulling tune, she was everywhere. Her left hand slipped down to my chest. She parted my shirt and laid her palm flat against my beating heart.

"It's beating like my drum," I said against her mouth and swallowed her breath, "Beating steady and strong, uninhibited and determined, like my drum. Enamoured and proud, like my drum." My hand, reluctantly, pressed her hand down. "For you."

"I love you," she murmurs and I made to reply but she claimed my lips again. Her other hand curled around my neck and held me prisoner to her affections. "Blood and scars…everything." She didn't pull me back. She let her eyes sweep over my face. "Everything."

"Everything," I repeat, trying it out. It tasted like her. It tasted like us. It tasted like life…

I awoke with a gasp of shock, my heart hammering away heavily in my chest. She was still sleeping. Bella's jeans had dirty spots on the knees like she'd been kneeling in dirt and there was a hole in the sleeve of her long-sleeved jersey at the elbow. She looked all kinds of awful but her cheeks were the same colour that they had been in my dream.

"Hey, Bella," I said in a whisper, smiling with a quick quirk of the corner of my lip and knowing she was out for the count, "tell me what love is." Shaking my head at myself, I tore my eyes away from her and sighed heavily, sinking my head back into the pillow. The seconds clicked off on the cheap clock in the corner. The minutes were counted in the cracks littered on the wall. The hour passed like a drag through hell before, so soft I could barely hear it, Bella spoke in a groggy voice, more asleep than awake. Time stood still when the clock refused to stop for me to realize that it did.

"You."

AN:- okay, that was shocking for even me. But now, here at the end of this short chapter - sorry about that, by the way. It's because there as no flash backs - I realize that I want to take a few chapters to build on what Edward's feeling for Bella so he'll be in the hospital for two, three for the most, chapters. Leave me some love.