A Snowfall Kind of Love

Summary: There's one thing on my grown-up Christmas list, and while it includes a number of specifics in varying degrees of dirtiness, it really all boils to the one thing I've wanted for a year and a half: a do-gooder with unruly hair and a Mister Rogers sweater, and a lifetime of nights that would land me squarely on the naughty list.

A/N: I am posting chapters 10 and 11 at the same time, so if you're opening this one first, please make sure you didn't miss chapter 10. Happy Boxing Day. xo

December 25

(Christmas Day)

"Sneaking out so early?"

I gasp, spinning to find Edward standing on the bottom step in the foyer, his hair in disarray. He's wearing green plaid pajama pants and a gray waffle-weave thermal shirt, and the love for him that once made me feel giddy with anticipation is now a lead weight of sadness in my chest. He's the wish that will never come true, and I don't know if it's Christmas or if it's just exhaustion, but in this moment, it's one of the saddest realizations I've ever had. He's watching me warily, his green eyes nearly a perfect match for the garland around the banister and the soft-looking pants he's wearing, and once again, it's a look I can't decipher.

"Yeah. I have a giant ham to get in the oven, so…"

He nods. "Right. Of course."

"Please thank your parents for letting me stay."

Edward takes a step off the lowest stair, his socked feet landing on the stone floor. "Bella—"

"And for dinner," I add, slipping my hands into my gloves.

"Wait," he says, and his voice is just anxious enough to slow my flight. I pause, one gloved hand on the gleaming brass doorknob. When I meet his eye, he reaches up to scratch his jaw. "I don't…I'm not sure when I'll see you again."

And oh, it hurts. "Oh. Right. Yeah, maybe not…for a while." But even that's optimistic.

"I wish…" Both of his arms come up, and his hands clasp the back of his neck. In my peripheral vision, I see the hem of his shirt lift; it takes everything in me not to look at that flash of skin, that tiny peek of what I'll never have. His jaw clenches, and his forehead creases, and he seems to be battling with whatever it is that sits on his tongue, waiting to be freed.

"You wish what?" I ask, the tiniest flicker of hope igniting. I know now that I won't get what I was wishing for. I've seen the Christmas tree, and there's no box the right shape to hold what I wanted more than anything. But still. I could still get something.

He shakes his head, arms falling to his sides as he takes another step forward. He's silent for so long that I don't think he's going to say anything until he reaches out and settles a hand on my shoulder, squeezing gently before letting it slide down my arm to my elbow, where he pauses before moving even lower and grasping my wrist gently in the circle of his hand. His warm fingers find the tiny gap between the cuff of my coat sleeve and the top of my glove, and I can feel the heat of him through the cotton of my shirt. "I wish…I could keep you."

He's so earnest, and suddenly, I see him. The little boy I've heard about but never knew, the teenager who wanted things he couldn't have, the lonely kid with no family and no home. They're all there in his eyes.

"I wish you would keep me, too." If he notices the slight change in words, he doesn't acknowledge it; instead, he lets go of my wrist and nods once.

"Merry Christmas, Bella."

"Merry Christmas, Edward." My voice is nothing more than a whisper, the sound of snow falling on bare leaves, and I can feel my nose start to run, my eyes start to water. It has never occurred to me until this moment, how the side effects of sadness are the same as the side effects of cold.

I wait for more, but that's it – there's nothing more to say. Nothing but goodbye.

And by the time I'm in my car, for the first time ever, I'm impervious to the cold. I don't feel the ache in my fingers or the sting in my cheeks. They're all eclipsed by the sharp slice of pain through my chest.

I try not to imagine the tears slipping over my cheeks freezing on their way down, tiny little trails of silver ice slowly making their way toward my heart.

The spread on Alice's and my dining room table is nothing in comparison with Esme Cullen's, but it's lovely all the same. Ham, scalloped potatoes, carrots. Alice's green bean casserole. Rosalie's garlic-roasted Brussels sprouts. The corn pudding that Emmett confessed he had to call his mom in Oregon to help him make. The bread rolls that Jasper cheerfully admitted he picked up at the grocery store on his way over.

The table is covered in a deep green tablecloth, and the tabletop itself looks festive, despite its somewhat mismatched china and completely mismatched chairs – and one stool – clustered around it. Alice is wearing a red sparkly headband with a crooked, glittery Santa hat attached to it and is carefully setting all the serving plates on the table while Jasper refills drinks and I try to get the wireless speaker to cooperate with the iPod that holds my Christmas playlist.

Once we're all seated, I gesture to the food. "Okay, folks. Dig in."

"Wait!" Alice exclaims as she lifts her wine glass toward the ceiling, ever the master of occasion. "A toast!" I smile, following her lead and raising my glass. "To Bella, for this kickass dinner. To Jasper, for his kickass ass. To Rosalie, for making my best friend such a great job offer that I'm not going to lose her to Boston." As if offended by the very though, her nose wrinkles in distaste. "And to Emmett, who is my second-favorite male on the planet."

"Hear, hear," Jasper says, hoisting his glass toward the ceiling before bringing it to his lips.

My heart warms with affection as I look around at my family, the family I've made, and I realize the truth of it: I may not have gotten my Christmas wish, but I sure as hell got a miracle. Not everyone is lucky enough to find a family when her own falls apart, but I have. My mind floats to Edward's boys – Riley and Mike and Jake and Seth and all of the others who have come and gone in the short time I was there and even before – and I hope they learn the same thing: that in life, despite the family we're born into, we get to build our own clans, if we're brave enough to seek them out.

I let myself think of Charlie just for a second, just long enough to love him before it's eclipsed by missing him.

"Bell?" Alice is studying me, and it isn't until she says my name that I realize I haven't taken a sip.

"Sorry. Sorry, I just…wanted to thank you guys. For coming. This is…really great. It's the best Christmas I've had in years."

"And you haven't even had my corn pudding yet," Emmett jokes, and I toss him a grateful glance. He knows enough about Charlie and Christmas and my mom to recognize the weight of the truth I've just alluded to. To understand the words I didn't say. He squeezes my knee beneath the table, but his hand vanishes quickly, no weight or meaning or anything suggestive beyond the gesture of quiet support.

"Well, scoop me some, then," I say, taking a small sip from my glass before returning it to the table. And with that, dinner commences, plates being passed and scoops of food being served. Compliments float up with the aroma of the food, and I let myself relax into the simple joy of being. I watch Rosalie ease into the company of my friends, and I wonder for a moment if it's always the lost people who find other lost people. Then I remember Esme and Carlisle, a couple who had so much, bringing home a lost boy all those years ago, and it occurs to me that there must be a thousand different ways to feel lost. To feel wanting. My mind catches and lingers on the thought of Edward, but I push it away, determined not to let it dampen this moment, so warm with candlelight and firelight and friendship.

I watch Jasper steal a bite of ham off Alice's plate – "What are you doing, there's an entire platter right there" – and then shrug and chuckle, clearly motivated by nothing more than getting a rise out of her. I watch Emmett and Rosalie making polite conversation, noticing the way Rosalie's watchful gaze darts to his face every so often, so quickly and fleetingly that I wouldn't have noticed had I not been watching, and Emmett's slight blush when she effusively compliments the corn pudding. The thin thread of possibility stretches between them like a single strand of tinsel, glittering with potential in the candlelight and the soft silver glow of the season, but I look away, granting them the privacy of the moment. I feel oddly warmed by the thought, that perhaps Emmett and I had a purpose beyond us – that despite the times I tried to talk myself into loving him, maybe I wasn't meant to, after all. Maybe I was meant to bring him here to this day, this moment, this girl.

Or maybe not, and it'll be one more flicker of possibility that never comes to flame.

Telling myself to stop analyzing and just live it, I work my way back into the conversation, back into the moment.

By the time plates are mostly empty, dotted only with random scraps of evidence of the feast, everyone leaning back in their chairs as if to give their full stomachs room to expand, the conversation is flowing as if we've all been friends – family – for years. Any aloofness Rosalie may have held upon her arrival has been melted by the warmth of the room – its people, its food, its flames – and she and Alice are laughing at Jasper's expense. He shrugs, ever good-natured, and Emmett's smile is indulgent and teasing, the consummate big brother. Quietly, I rise to clear some plates to make room for dessert, and Emmett follows me.

"Let me help," he murmurs, and despite my protest, he's stacking empty dishes in his hands and grabbing platters half-full of leftovers. He follows me into the kitchen, placing the stack of china gently on the countertop next to the sink.

"Thanks," I say, grabbing a potholder from beside the stove to open the over door, pulling out the apple pie I'd put inside to keep it warm. Setting it on the cooling rack, I turn to find Emmett standing directly before me, eyes watching me carefully. My first instinct is to step back, but with the oven behind me, there's nowhere to go.

But the look in his eyes isn't suggestive or confrontational or anything more than curious. His hands are in his pockets, the sleeves of his brown sweater pushed partway up his forearms.

"I, um. This is. Okay." He blows out a breath. "We're never going to happen, right?"

I feel mildly guilty for the wave of relief that washes over me at the realization that he hasn't cornered me in the kitchen to try to kiss me again. "No," I admit, realizing that I still have an oven mitt on one hand. I should take it off, but it's warm, and I toy with the edge of it instead. "I'm sorry."

He shakes his head. "I kind of knew. I just…I really liked you, is all." It's in the past tense, and my relief grows.

"I know. I really liked you too." And I did. I liked Emmett a lot. He's kind and sweet and honest and trustworthy and a million other things that I love in people.

"I know it sounds like a cheap cliché, but I'd really like to be friends, still. To stay friends."

"I would, too," I say quickly, fiercely. I'm going to need all the friends I can get, after all, in this new makeshift family of mine. "I really would, Em."

He cocks his head to one side, the gesture so eerily reminiscent of another man that it hits me like a punch. "That's all we ever were, isn't it?" He could so easily be angry here, but he isn't. He's just…matter-of-fact.

"Yeah, I guess so. I'm sorry." I wonder, not for the first time, if I'd have been able to fall in love with him had it not been for Edward.

"Don't be. I'm honored to be your friend." He pops his knuckles. "I guess…I had sort of hoped it would grow into more. We…made sense."

And there it is. The evidence that he felt it, too. We should have fallen in love. We were perfect for each other in a lot of ways. My relief grows, filling some of the space freed up in my heart by my receding guilt. "Yeah, we did."

He considers me for a minute before his small smile takes a decidedly roguish tilt. "So…we're friends?"

"Absolutely."

"Great. In that case…your social services friend is hot."

I laugh, relief and affection and happiness making something in my chest feel lighter. "Yes, she is."

He's still grinning, but it softens at the edges. "Thanks for having me for dinner."

"Of course, Emmett." And then I lay down my cards. "Thanks for the gifts. I'm sorry you went to all that trouble."

A small crease appears between his eyebrows, and his smile dims in confusion. "Gifts?"

"The…mittens and the chocolates and the tickets and everything."

His frown deepens. "Bells, I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

For the first time since this conversation started, I feel like I'm blindly stumbling through a whiteout snowstorm. "All the…presents. The Twelve Days of Christmas presents. On my doorstep."

Emmett just shakes his head. "Nope. Sorry."

"It wasn't you?"

Another head-shake. "Wasn't me."

My head is spinning, and I'm opening my mouth to ask him another question I haven't quite determined yet when Alice's head appears around the kitchen doorjamb. "Pie?" It's a cover: she's checking on me, giving me an out if I need one, interrupting in case Emmett is campaigning again. I give her a small head-shake, assurance that everything's fine.

"Pie," I say around the knot in my throat. "Right."

"Can I help?" she asks, stepping all of the way into the kitchen. Emmett takes advantage of the reprieve and disappears back into the living room. Alice's voice dips. "Everything okay?"

"It wasn't him," I say, my mind still racing.

"What wasn't him?"

"The gifts. They weren't from Emmett."

She looks as confused as I feel. "Then who…"

I don't know. I refuse to let my heart hope again, but I honestly don't know what else to think. A guy from my program? But I'm not that close to any of them; certainly not close enough for anyone to know that I needed new gloves or how much I loved coconut-filled chocolates. "I don't know," I say aloud, just as Rosalie appears in the doorway.

"Can I help?"

"Sure," I say, handing her dessert plates as Alice retreats to the fridge, grabbing ice cream and whipped cream, even as her eyes stay trained on my face. I give her a single head-shake, determined to focus on the matter at hand instead of getting lost, once again, in obsessing about Edward. Still, the tiny hope that I thought I'd surrendered, if not entirely gracefully, has burst back to fullness.

We resettle at the table, enjoying dessert and more drinks, then coffee, and it isn't until Rosalie glances at her watch and exclaims in surprise that we realize the late hour. With the explanation that she has to work the following day, followed by a joking suggestion that I escape while I still can, she slips into her coat. Alice, Jasper, and I pretend to be otherwise engaged in conversation as Emmett offers to walk her out, and we force ourselves not to act surprised when he decides to leave shortly thereafter.

"Ugh," Alice says, eyeing the table, which still holds the debris of dessert. "I don't have the energy for that tonight."

"It'll still be there in the morning," I agree, swiping my wine glass and following Alice and Jasper to the living room. We collapse onto the furniture and Jasper grabs the remote as Alice and I dissect the evening.

"I really like Rosalie," she says, taking a sip from her own wine glass. "And it has almost nothing to do with the fact that she offered you a job."

"I really like her too," I say, lazily spinning my own glass and watching as the light from the fireplace and the Christmas tree catch and shimmer in its facets.

"Emmett sure seemed to like her," Jasper says, the consummate little brother, but he glances at me to make sure there's no negative reaction on my part.

"I thought so, too," I tell him, grinning. "I think a woman who could serve him his balls on a platter would be a really good thing for your brother."

"Couldn't agree more," he replies, smiling wryly as he finds a football game, which Alice and I immediately protest.

Finally, when he lands on It's a Wonderful Life, we fade into relative silence as the final hours of Christmas wind down. Just as little Zuzu is explaining how angels get their wings, there's a knock on the door, and my heart starts to pound, a one-two beat. An echo of a two-syllable name I refuse to lend concrete thought to, but my body betrays me with that one-two rhythm.

"I'll get it," Alice says drowsily, beginning to untangle herself from the knot she and Jasper make on the sofa, but I rise from the loveseat, unencumbered.

"It's okay, I got it. Stay there."

When I open my front door, there, standing on my porch in a dove-gray suit with his shoulders hunched in deference to the cold, is Edward. Pinned to the lapel of his suit coat where a flower should be is a red gift bow. As the door swings open, he looks up, his eyes the deep green of pine.

"Hi," he says, a million insecurities in one little word. My eyes dance between the deep green of his eyes and the glittering red of that gift bow. The same red gift bow that was on a box of chocolates and a pair of ballet tickets and a drum of popcorn and a pair of gloves.

"The partridge in the pear tree," I breathe, hugging my fisherman's sweater tighter around my body as I feel waves of heat slipping past me and out into the frigid winter night. He's still watching me carefully, his breath puffing out in visible clouds, and the tips of his ears and nose are pink from the cold. "It was you," I say, more for verbal confirmation than anything else. I thought I'd known, I'd hoped, I'd doubted, and here, at the end of it all, here he is. Here we are.

He nods, and I wait him out; finally, he speaks. "It was me." A small frown tugs his brows together. "It is me." His lips purse slightly and I know as I watch his lovely face that he's chewing on the soft flesh inside his cheek. "The partridge." He pauses. "A bum gift?"

I remember his characterization of the gifts in the song and I shake my head.

"Definitely not."

He shifts his weight, dress shoes scuffing on the cold concrete of my porch stoop. "You know, the guy in that song really had what I think was a borderline unhealthy fascination with birds. By the end of it, that poor woman would have had twenty-three different fowl in her home." I realize, as he babbles, that he's nervous. He's the little boy with a poorly-wrapped present in his hands, hoping that whomever he's giving it to can look past its imperfections to see the beauty of what's inside. And at the same moment, conversely, he's the man dressing up the outside in hopes that it will hide the parts inside that he worries might not be good enough.

The faint sparkles in the bow fixed to his lapel shimmer in the yellow glow from my porch light, and I love him so desperately I feel like my insides are melting despite the frigid cold. "I hope she had the number for animal control."

He gazes at me for a minute before reaching into the inside pocket of his coat and pulling out a small red envelope, my name penned on the front in gold calligraphy. "What's this?" I ask, running a finger over the shimmery ink.

"It's…your Christmas card."

When I slip my finger beneath the flap of the envelope and pull out the small piece of cream-colored cardstock, the line of words printed in bold black ink in Edward's familiar, hasty scrawl makes my breath catch in my throat.

Because it's Christmas (and at Christmas you tell the truth), to me, you are perfect.

I look up, and the beautiful man standing on my porch is blurry through my tears. "You owe me a pear tree."

His shoulders relax, and the too-rare grin I adore spreads across his face. "I'll plant you an orchard of pear trees."

I step across my threshold, out into the cold winter air that, for once, I don't even feel. "You…stopped. After nine."

"Eight," he corrects, and I wish I could tell if the flush in his cheeks was from the cold.

"Eight?"

"The hot chocolate. Milk." His lips quirk. "For the maids."

And there it is. Confirmation. The cup that matched the wrapping paper. But still. After that: nothing. "The hot chocolate," I echo. "But then…?"

His eyes bore into mine. "I thought…I was overstepping. At the dinner, with Emmett…I thought you and he were…something. And I felt like maybe it was wrong. To be your boss and want that." He pauses, then adds softly, "To want you."

"It's not," I tell him, terrified by the tiniest possibility that even though he's standing here, on my porch, gift-wrapped and gorgeous, that there might still be a chance I don't get to keep him. "It's not wrong."

He shakes his head slightly. "You deserve the best things in life, Bella."

"That's why I want you."

I wonder if it felt the same way for him, when he said it aloud: liberating and terrifying, all at once. Like diving off a cliff with no parachute. When he doesn't answer, I step forward, reaching up to gently, softly, whisper a touch against the smooth skin of his cheek.

"You shaved," I whisper, and he nods.

"I wanted you to be able to see me."

And I do. For perhaps the first time, I see him – really see him. The man he is. The boy he was. The man he wants to be. That special place where the three converge and he's just wholly, wonderfully, imperfectly Edward. "Your cheek is cold."

He grins. "Yeah. There's a reason people don't scale Kilimanjaro in evening wear."

"Sissies."

It's funny – this is what we always do. We banter. We parry. We dance around it. But it's incredible, the difference when neither of us is trying to hide something.

I see it. The love in his eyes. I sort of expected it to change, the way he looked at me. I thought it would be different. It's only now, gazing up at him in beneath a full Christmas moon, in the half-circle of yellow light spilling from my porch lights, that I realize that it's not different. He's been looking at me this way all along. Except this time, he isn't looking away.

The thought is blasted away by the feel of his cold fingertips on my cheek. His eyes are searching, waiting. He's still in there, that careful, reserved, stand-up guy who always tries so hard to do the right thing. But he's here. We're here. He's not my supervisor anymore; I'm not his intern. He's a boy in the snow with a red bow on his lapel asking a question, and I'm a girl standing shoeless on freezing cold concrete, saying yes.

"I meant what I said before, though," he says, uncertainty creeping back into his eyes and voice. "I'm not very good at sharing my life."

"Edward, in case you haven't noticed, you've been sharing your life with me for the past year and a half. The only difference is, now, when you leave Grove at the end of the day, you'll have something warm waiting in bed for you."

At the thought, his eyes darken, and everything tumbles over itself inside me, all of the feeling I have for him: respect, love, friendship, lust, admiration, yearning. The hope I can see in his eyes is new, and I feel a thrill at the thought that I'm responsible for it.

"Waiting in bed, huh?" And nothing, no polar wind, no lake effect snow, no Chicago winter could ever come close to extinguishing the heat that licks through me at the look in his eyes.

"If that's what does it for you," I say, struggling to hang on to the banter we're so good at.

"You're what does it for me, Bella," he murmurs, and my mind flashes to a shopping mall window and red lingerie. I'm going to need to go shopping. Boxing Day gifts are a thing, right?

Slower than the lazy descent of the snowflakes around us, he dips his head. I rise to my toes to meet him, and when his soft, warm lips touch mine, I feel like I'm back inside that snow globe, as if someone's shaking the world, sending snow swirling around us like a chaotic storm even as Edward and I stand steady and surefooted.

As he pulls back and looks down at me, questioning, giving me another chance to back away, to turn him down, I'm overcome with a joy I haven't felt since I was a girl in Forks, dragging a giant Christmas stocking down the stairs and settling beside a tree weighed down with homemade decorations, drinking cocoa in my pajamas beside the first man who never let me down.

The memory of Charlie and Barbie Dream Houses and BMX bikes and red secondhand Volkswagens merges with the scene before me – a bright-eyed, soft-hearted man standing in the snow with his heart in his eyes – and I can't quite believe it, that once again, my Christmas wish came true.

"What changed your mind?"

My own joy is mirrored in his eyes, and this, this is my Christmas gift: the happiness on his face that I've never seen before. The realization that it's possible that the joy he brings me, I give back to him. "You left. This morning. You left, and I had to say goodbye to you. And I realized the minute you drove away in that rickety little car of yours how much I didn't want to. And…" He trails off, then shrugs. "I lied. Last night, when you asked me…I lied. I would want to know. And…you said you would want to know, too. If someone loved you like that. I was being a coward because I thought…we could just be friends, and it would be enough. I just…hadn't really thought about not seeing you every day. Or talking to you every day. And I knew that even if I told you and kissed you and then had to walk away…it would be worth the risk."

And he's so brave. From the little kid whose dad ruined Santa on Christmas Eve night to the teenager who survived on the streets in the cold to the young man who let Esme and Carlisle take him in to the grown man who created a safe place for boys like him to escape the cold streets…and now, here, to the man in front of me with a bow pinned to his lapel and his love plain on his face. He's so…everything.

I slip my hand into his, feeling his cold fingers, his cold palm. I wonder how long he was standing out here before he knocked on my door. How long he was waiting in the cold before working up the courage. "Come on," I say, giving it a squeeze. Offering him my warmth. "Come meet my family."

Who really needs a gift

When love is meant to give

I can still recall, carry with me always,

Every Christmas dream.

They live in you and me

Let all your memories

Hold you close

No matter where you are,

You're not alone,

Because the ones you love are never far

If Christmas is in your heart.

(Christina Perri, "Something About December")

A/N: Epilogue to come. Warmest wishes to all of you. xo