When I opened my eyes, I was still lying on the couch, with a blanket tightly tucked around me and a pillow tucked under my head. My first thought after the haze of sleep lifted and I was aware of my surroundings was how embarrassing it would be to face him like this, in my disheveled state, after I had crawled into the couch with him last night. I crawled into the couch with him! At the moment when I had made that decision, in the darkness of night and the intimacy that it brought, the idea hadn't sounded just as embarrassing as it did now, in bright daylight. I did not like how needy the action had made me appear. It's not like I can't recall the feelings behind the action, the growing tug that I had felt towards him until I had finally given up and just walked over to the couch. But it didn't make the fact that I gave in to the feeling any less embarrassing.

So it was with a weary mind that I opened my eyes to face Edward. Except, he wasn't there. I had obviously already realized that he wasn't on the couch any longer, but I expected him to be on the bed. He wasn't there either. So I sat up on the couch and looked around the room to locate him, but he was nowhere in sight. I then swung my legs down to the floor and started to get up, and that's when I noticed the white lily on the coffee table next to the couch. It was a single large white lily, with petals that were almost the size of my palms, with a long green stem. Around the middle of the stem, there was a piece of paper that was rolled around the stem and tied together with a string. I tugged on the end of the string and it came open, to release the paper.

Your breakfast and I are waiting for you downstairs. Come down when you are ready.

- Edward

I bit my lip and tried to stop myself from smiling too widely. Then without further delay I quickly got myself ready and went downstairs. Once I reached the tiny lobby area downstairs, the receptionist came towards me almost running.

'Mr Cullen is waiting for you in the restaurant,' she said very quickly.

'Oh, ok. Thanks,' I smiled at her.

I made my way to the hotel restaurant and once I reached there, I stood frozen in my spot for a few seconds. Edward Cullen was sitting on a table at the far away corner of the restaurant, in a white button down shirt and jeans. He was sipping a cup of coffee and reading a newspaper with a lot of concentration. He had on a pair of reading glasses, which made him look years older than his real age. But it also made him look very mature, and there was an air of authority around him. This image of him stood in stark contrast with the man lying on the hospital bed and the vulnerable man who had been with me last night. My chest tightened at the thought that he had let me see that side of him that other people weren't allowed to see.

I had been standing there for a few moments before Edward looked up. His eyes widened for a second, then he quickly put down his newspaper and stood up. I took a deep breath and walked to the table. When I reached there, he gauged me with a careful expression and looked as if he was trying to read my mood. There was another lily lying on the table in front of him.

'Hi', I started.

'Hi'. Apparently that eased his mind a bit as he walked behind me and pulled out my chair, 'Here'.

'Thank you,' I mumbled as I sat down. He walked back to his seat and nodded to the waiter.

'What do you want for breakfast?' The waiter came up before he had finished his sentence.

'Toast and eggs and tea, please,' I told the waiter.

' Yes ma'am', the waiter turned on his hills and walked away.

I looked back at Edward, who was still looking at me with concern. I knew what that was, he was trying to see if I was still in the same mood as last night when I was in his arms, or if I had shifted to freak-out Bella mode. I couldn't blame the guy. My mood swings must have been giving him quite the whiplash. I decided to make things easier for him by referring to last night, so he knew I was ok with it.

'Did you sleep well?' His eyes went wide for a second at what I said, then he recovered with a little twinkle in his eyes.

'For a while, yes', a smile was threatening to break out across his face. I tried to think of why he found this amusing…then my face blanched.

'Oh, please please…don't tell me! No, no, no!' My face scrunched in humiliation and he was now concerned at my temporary breakdown.

'Bella, what? What's wrong?'

'Did I talk?' His face relaxed as he understood my reason for the outbreak. He didn't answer me.

'What did I say?' my voice was stern. I wasn't kidding about this and I certainly didn't care for the look of amusement he was wearing.

He shrugged.

I looked down for a second to calm down, trying to remember what I had dreamed about. But I drew a complete blank, which means I could have said anything without having the slightest clue. I hated this. Somehow this tipped the balance of power in his direction and I didn't care for it. How can I know what I am dealing with if I don't even know what crazy confessions I made to him in my slumber. When I looked back up at him my tone was very serious.

'They don't mean anything, you know. Things I say in my sleep. It's all just crazy talk. I don't mean any of it.'

He looked at me for a few more seconds, his amusement long gone. Now he was trying to read my mind to judge the truth in my words. I really did mean it. I couldn't be held responsible for the ramblings of my subconscious when I was in dreamland.

He was now playing with his fork on the table. His face looked a little sad. I felt a twinge of guilt at causing that look on his face. I sighed and noticed the movement of his fingers on the fork. He had beautiful fingers. Perfect, slim and long. I could see the touch of professional manicures. Then I looked up at the rest of him and felt another twinge of guilt. This gorgeous man, who was kind and thoughtful, had taken me out to dinner, let me stay in his bed, held me when I wanted him to, and now sat in front of me at breakfast. There was so much beauty in his whole being, and the perfection of it was marred by the sad look in his face. Which I had caused. What did he see in me? Why was he letting me do this to him?

I sighed and looked at the white lily, identical to the one I had found upstairs, lying on the table between us. I smiled as I saw yet another note wrapped around its stem.

'Is that for me too?' He looked up at me and I nodded towards the flower. He smiled, but he was still sad and the corners of his eyes didn't wrinkle like they did when he smiled with all his heart.

'Yes, of course it's for you,' he reached for the flower and gave it to me. I fingered the petals and felt how soft they were.

'How did you know I like lilies?' I was a little concerned to be honest. It was a bit freaky that he had picked up my favorite flowers.

'I didn't! You like them?' Now his face was alight and the smile reached beyond his eyes, to the back of his head. I couldn't help but giggle a little. 'Yes, they are actually my favorite.'

'They are mine too.'

I raised an eyebrow…seriously, what are the chances? A look of determination flashed in his eyes and then he began.

'Well, they have been since this morning…I tried to pick out a flower that reminded me of you and this was the one that caught my eyes. It reminded me of the day we met. That moment when I first saw you, you weren't even looking at anyone, just completely lost in your pager. But the air around you Bella…there was so much purity in you that it was pouring out and illuminating the air around you. I didn't have to get to know you to know who you were…you were the purest person I have ever met.'

I was stunned by his little rant. It was way too early in the morning to hear the nicest things anyone has ever said to me. And I hadn't even had my tea yet!

'Edward, how can you know that? You don't know me. You don't know the things that I have done before. For all you know, I could be an ex-con who mended her ways and went to medical school and now steals drugs from the hospital.'

He smirked.

'Are you an ex-con with a drug problem Bella?'

'No, but that's not the point.'

'That's exactly the point. You are not. You are pure. You just haven't had people around you who appreciate it, and so you take it for granted.'

I huffed in frustration. He wasn't going about it logically. He was just guessing at my character and building me up into something that he wanted.

'I'm not just making random assumptions Bella. After my initial shock of meeting you wore out, I spent the rest of the time at that hospital finding out things about you. Bella, you are the person who switches shifts with people even if it's inconvenient because you want to make life easier for other people, which shows that you are ridiculously compassionate. You check on patients after hours just to make sure their pain medication is optimal, which shows that you are dedicated. You eat lunch with the nurses, which shows that you aren't arrogant. You play with the children at pediatrics after hours to keep them occupied. One of them came looking for you the other day, which is why I went to play music for them. Do you want me to go on?'

I shook my head from side to side.

'Not that all these things matter, but they just confirmed my initial feeling about you. Bella, don't you see? There's so much goodness in you that you aren't even aware of it. Because it's so intrinsic to your nature, you don't even see what the big deal is.'

'I don't see what the big deal is. Edward, I'm not the only person who does all those things.'

'No you are not. But like I said, that's not the point. I fell in love with you and then found out those things, not the other way around. Those things are just helping me win this argument.'

'And the argument is about how good I am?'

'Yes'

'Would you forfeit if I just wore a halo?'

He smiled and shook his head. The waiter brought my food and I dug in, realizing how hungry I had been.

'You are worlds apart from anyone else that I have in my life.' He watched me thoughtfully as he said this.

'Oh?' I said as I bit into my toast.

'The music industry…it's a dirty place. Drugs, money, sex, fame. That's what everyone is concerned with. I have been a spectator to how people waste their lives away chasing after empty things and eventually settle into a life of misery. I haven't had a reason to step outside and meet someone who doesn't belong to that world before. Getting sick on during this trip was the best thing that could have happened to me. It threw me into another world…your world. And I only now realize that it is indeed possible to step out from the ugliness and find purity elsewhere. That's what I'm trying to do Bella.'

I nodded. 'A spectator? Does that mean you are not one of the people that want those things?' I peeked at him from the top of my tea cup.

'I was. When I first got into it. Sometime after Mom died. Dad tried to keep me company as much as possible, but he is a very busy man. Eventually he asked me if I wanted to work with my music to keep me busy outside of school and it sounded like a good idea to me at the same. Anything to keep my mind occupied and not need to be lonely. But I was too young Bella, to see through the glitz and the glamour into the reality behind it all. So in the beginning, I was also one of those people. I did all those things. But eventually, as I kept growing up, I found myself again and now I just like being able to share my music with other people. However, since it's the only world I have known since I was so young, everyone I know comes from there.'

My heart clenched at the thought of a young Edward caught up in those horrible things. I suddenly had an urge to reach out to him and hide him from the rest of the world, to protect him from anything that would cause him harm.

'Are you happy with your life now?' I don't know why but I needed to know that he was happy.

'I will answer you if you will answer the same question for me first.'

I thought about it. 'I can't complain. I have a job that I like. People who care for me.' I shrugged.

'That's not the answer to that question. Are you happy Bella?'

I shrugged again.

'I have the same answer. Job that I like, people who care, can't complain. But happiness is hard to define.'

'But in your pictures…you look happy.' I thought about all those bright smiles I had seen him wear in the pictures on the internet.

'Those are poses Bella. I am trained to put on faces regardless of how I am really feeling.' His face was thoughtful.

We were quiet for a few moments as I processed this. How was a famous musician and one of the richest people on this planet feeling the same way about his life as I was feeling about mine? And how on earth did we find each other? I finally broke the silence.

'Edward, thank you for telling me all those things about yourself.'

'You're welcome. I told you that all you need to do is ask. I will tell you anything you want to know.'

'I do want to know one more thing.'

'What's that?' He leaned forward on the table.

'How exactly am I going to go to work?'

He chuckled and leaned back on his chair. 'Everything's been taken care of Bella. You can go back upstairs and shower if you want. As soon as you are ready to go and I will take you to work.'

'What about the paparazzi?'

'Oh, my people took care of them. They won't be disturbing us here anymore.'

'Does 'taking care' entail taking them to a ditch and putting a bullet in them or something?'

He laughed out loud. 'No, but that does sound very appealing. They just made a deal with them. I will make an appearance at a club that they will be camped outside and they can get some much more scandalous pictures then.'

'Oh, Ok.'

Edward stayed downstairs, to give me some space I guess, while I went back to the room. Once there, I found a selection of jeans in various styles and sizes, and a large rack full of different kinds of tops. There were undergarments in a bag, a couple of boxes with shoes. Everything was designer.

I didn't know if I should be mad at the extravagance of it all or feel touched by the gesture. I decided to make that decision later.

I picked the least expensive looking things I could find, not that it was easy since there were no price tags on anything. I went into the shower and was once again overwhelmed by the selection of different kinds of shampoos and soaps and lotions. I rolled my eyes at the ridiculousness of it all and skipped past the fancy shmancy fragrances and picked a jasmine shampoo and soap.

Once I was done at the shower I changed and was blow drying my hair when there was a knock on the door. I came out of the bathroom at the same time as I yelled 'It's open.'

Edward walked in through the door and burst out laughing as soon as he saw me. I was suddenly very self aware and quickly checked to see if there were any articles of clothing missing. I glared at him to make him spill what was causing him to laugh like an idiot.

'Bella, if you like my outfit so much you could just have told me. That would be another way to compliment me.' His eyes glittered with mirth.

'What?' I was still confused.

'We match.'

Damn! I hadn't even thought about that. I had just tried to pick out the simplest looking things, and they happened to be a white shirt and jeans. I looked down at myself then at him, then smirked.

'What can I say, I just had so much to choose from that I got confused so I decided to draw on some inspiration to help me decide.' I raised an eyebrow.

He shrugged and kept smiling.

'Stop smiling Edward. This is ridiculous,' I said pointing to the piles of clothes on the bed and the racks before continuing. ' I could just have borrowed one of your shirts or something. When did you even have time to get all this stuff anyway?'

He stopped smiling and his expression changed into one I didn't recognize. 'I didn't. I asked Soren to pick these up last night after we came back. And I actually like your alternative. I wish I had thought of that.'

I chose to ignore the last part of that comment. 'That poor guy. Doesn't he ever get tired of running around getting things for me?'

'No, believe me, he doesn't. He likes you.' He smiled. I gave him a look.

'He thinks you're good for me.'

'Oh.'

Edward dropped me off at the hospital after that. I thanked Soren on the way and he actually didn't seem to mind running off at Edward's ridiculous whims.

Edward gave me the lily that had been on the breakfast table and promised to pick me up after work before he dropped me off. He also said I wasn't to open the note on the lily until later that night.

Call me crazy, but it felt like a bright day at Forks even though the clouds were still hiding the sun. From the moment I stepped foot inside the hospital, people seemed to be in better moods than on most days. I smiled at everyone whose eyes I caught and people gave me smiles in return. I took a deep breath and tried to stop smiling before stepping into the surgical ward but the stupid corners of my mouth had their own plans.

I was a little weary about facing my colleagues. Word spread fast around here and even though I had tried to be careful, I couldn't be totally certain that they didn't know that I had spent the night with Edward Cullen. Obviously, not in that way. But spent the night nonetheless.

When I went past the nurses' station, some of them gave me a few glances but made no comments. That I expected since he had picked me up outside the hospital yesterday and there was just no way they didn't know that. I sighed in relief as I made my way into the doctors' station. I checked the schedule in the hall to see that Sarah was the intern in the ward today, which was also a relief since she wasn't much of a gossip. When I entered the doctors' station and went to turn on my computer I gasped.

There was a single white lily sitting on my keyboard. Identical to the one I had hidden away in my locker just a few minutes ago. I looked around frantically to see if Edward was standing nearby somewhere, but no such luck. I walked out to the corridor and he wasn't there either. I wondered for a while when he had gotten the flower here without having the staff notice but then decided it best not to burden myself with it since the guy was capable of some crazy things, apparently. I retrieved the little note stuck to the stem of the flower:

What shall I do with all the days and hours
That must be counted ere I see thy face?
How shall I charm the interval that lowers
Between this time and that sweet time of grace?

He is kidding me, right? Poetry? Really? I cringed at the corniness of it at the same time as I smiled at the fact that it was kind of sweet. Wait, what? Sweet? I was turning into such a girl! I had no idea I had it in me. I quickly hid the flower behind an anatomy book and stuck the note in my pocket.

We went through rounds without anyone saying anything about Edward and I was relieved. I gave all the ordinations and walked to the nurses' station to retrieve some charts and there it was: another white lily sitting on the table. There were no nurses around at that moment, so I quickly grabbed it and ran into the doctors' station where I hid the second flower in the same place as the first one. The note was again a poem about missing someone you loved:

Ye flowers that drop, forsaken by the spring,
Ye birds that, left by summer, cease to sing,
Ye trees that fade, when Autumn heats remove,
Say, is not absence death to those who love?

Were all people in the music business this dramatic? I mean, seriously, I was just with him a few hours ago. I decided then and there that I would give him a very hard time that night about the melodramatic poems and Edward Cullen would forever run the other way at the mention of romantic poetry.

At lunch, I went to the cafeteria and got my salad and soda before making my way to my usual table. And sure enough, there was a white lily on the table. Where the hell were the flowers coming from? I looked around me again to see who could have left it there, since I know for a fact that the table was empty when I had walked into the cafeteria. The stem held another poem:

Ever absent, ever near;
Still I see thee, still I hear;
Yet I cannot reach thee, dear!

Luckily, there were no more flowers all afternoon. There may as well have been some since I lived in constant fear of them turning up at every step. At the end of the afternoon, I was eager to get out of work as soon as my day was over. But one of the patients got critical and I had to stay in a couple of extra hours. I realized what an idiot I had been by not taking Edward's number this morning, and I didn't want to go through his hospital journals to dig up information for personal use, since that was all kinds of wrong. I just decided that I would apologize to him when I saw him. Also, he could probably use whichever means he was using to get the flowers to me to find out why I was late. When I was finally done and went to my locker to change, there was an extra white lily in addition to the one I had left there this morning. The note said:

I am tired, Beloved,
of chafing my heart against
the want of you;
of squeezing it into little inkdrops,
And posting it.

p.s. if you are reading this then your workday was long over and you have kept me waiting regardless of all the reminders all day about how much I would miss you.

I chuckled at the thought that he anticipated this. And suddenly, I couldn't wait to get to him. He knew what he was doing all day. He kept those flowers and the poems coming because he wanted to make sure I didn't lose my connection to him and get lost in myself again. And it had worked. I had been anxious about people finding out about the flowers all day and in the process my mind had been completely consumed by Edward. The smell of the white lilies was heavy in my head and I smiled to myself as I realized that from now on I would always associate them with Edward. I got dressed quickly and sprinted outside to meet the annoyingly romantic man who I had apparently been missing all day to give him a piece of my mind.

A/N: Sorry for the delay in update. I had a total writer's block on this one and started working on a different story meanwhile (check it out if you like my writing, called Source of Serendipity), which worked, since it totally opened up my block for this one. Updates to be expected regularly now, in exchange for reviews. Reviews inspire me and make me write faster 'cause they make me wanna please you kids.