A/N: Hello, my patient ducks. I'm getting my house ready to sell, so life has been a bit bizarre lately. Thanks for hanging on.

"Hey, don't wake up. I have you."

Bella hummed. Her brain was floating. She was floating through some kind of pleasant haze. Warmth surrounded her. She curled toward it, snuggling closer.

This was a good dream. She'd fallen asleep in her textbook; she just knew it. She'd wake up with a highlighter streak on her cheek from where it had bled off the page. Drool might be involved.

The warmth pushed her gently away, and she whimpered. The haze swirled.

"Shhh. Don't wake up. Shhh. Shhh."

There was something soft against her back, but she wanted the warmth. She reached for it, tangling her fingers in cloth. Her eyelids fluttered, and she stared.

Green eyes. Disheveled bedhead. Those lips she loved to kiss. Smiling sleepily, she cupped a hand behind his head, threading her fingers through his silky hair. She brushed her lips against his, a barely there kiss that was more breath than substance. "C'mere." She tugged on his hand.

The warmth enveloped her then, and she relaxed back into a deep, dreamless sleep.

~0~

Bella woke, really woke, slowly. The haze lingered, but she had vague memories. Memories that were validated when she opened her eyes to find Edward in her bed.

The more awake she became, the more problems Bella found with this scenario. First and foremost was that she had a bed, and a bedroom, in Edward's house. Hadn't she promised herself when she moved here that it wouldn't happen? All of the Cullens had been so good to her; she didn't want to take more advantage than she already was.

It had kind of just happened. With school, Bella naturally had less time to work on houses. As such, she'd run out of time on one house with no prospects for another empty house on the horizon. In all honesty, she'd chosen Edward's house over his mother's because she was afraid his parents would figure out where she was going every time she spent the night with him.

That should have been her first warning. She was addicted to him; to the relief she felt when she was in his arms. She was addicted to the way his touch, his kiss, could shrink everything down to him, her, them. All the weight of the world tumbled off her shoulders as they tumbled into each other. What was that if not a high she chased?

Addicts were always good with excuses. Finals were fast approaching. She didn't have the time to figure out her housing situation. She did her fair share of the housework and made him dinner. Of course, he made her dinner twice as often, but she'd been distracted studying. That wasn't a bad thing, right?

Though, that may have been even more confusing. It had been a week since they'd had sex. Two mornings ago, she'd kissed him goodbye when he left for work—damn, he looked so good in his suit—without a second thought. Now, here he was, tucked beside her in bed after he'd carried her to her room when she passed out studying.

He looked so sweet, one hand tucked under his cheek, the other resting on her waist. Warmth filled her chest, and she reached out to smooth his hair.

She'd flirted with addiction before, chasing that high, that relief from the ache of existence. There were days in her past, when she teetered on the edge of going too far—her hand on the bottle before she'd even had time to have a bad day. Her finger hovering over the send button, ready to call a guy she knew would give her something good. Something that dissolved on her tongue or, well...whatever she needed to do to feel good for a few hours.

Edward made her feel good.

Discomfort churned in Bella's gut. An itch started to burn under her skin.

Bella hung on to one thing only in the train wreck of her life. She always pulled out before she hit rock bottom. Before she fell over the edge into something irrevocable, she ran.

That was the itch. The itch to run before she destroyed something; before she couldn't be put back together again. Adrenaline surged, and she had to stop herself from shoving away from Edward.

No. She couldn't wake him up. It was rude, but he'd also be hurt.

That gave her pause. She rolled carefully away from him, out of bed, and crouched on the floor. Her eyes swept over the room, mentally packing. Only what she needed. But even as she mapped out where all her most valuable possessions were, she felt bad.

The idea this would hurt Edward made her throat close. Yet another sign she'd taken her need too far. She'd had friends before, but not like him. She'd had people who helped her get in trouble. Who, if she'd told them she needed to break a bad habit before it broke her, would only have told her to loosen up. Edward was a true friend. If only she could separate her addiction to him, to the high of sex with him, from the beautiful man who was her friend.

Bella climbed to her feet, her eyes focused on Edward's sleeping form. He looked so sweet in his sleep. He was sweet. Sweet and kind. It would be nice to climb back in bed. Maybe she could wake him with her mouth on…

No. Enough. She'd done enough damage to both of them.

Just start moving and don't stop until temptation is far, far away.

Bella found her duffel easily. She moved around the room making decisions, throwing the obvious things in the bag and frowning . When had she accumulated so many knick-knacks? She wanted to keep them all too. They'd been gifts. Coffee cups and figurines—little things that made the Cullen family think of her.

At the sight of them, Bella's breath left her in huff. The idea she needed out of this house, away from the temptation of losing herself to her addiction to Edward, seemed obvious one second before. Her gaze darted to the closed closet door and the smart pant suit that hung there. Rosalie had bought it for her when Esme had taken her to lunch with a man who ran an electrical services company. She'd need a company to give her apprenticeship experience.

She ran a restless hand through her hair, her brows furrowed. In her haste to correct this mistake she'd been making, she'd almost forgotten the complications. For one thing, she worked with Edward's mother frequently. Hurting Edward could quite possibly destroy the life Bella was building brick by bloody brick.

Bella let her duffel slide off her shoulder to the floor. She sank down with it, staring at the pantsuit as she drew her legs up to her chest and rested her head on her knees.

Losing her livelihood wouldn't be the worst thing. She had the money from the sale of her house tucked away for the time being. She'd survive that. But the Cullens were her friends. Emmett took her out to lunch when he thought she'd been working too hard. Alice sent her good luck messages and funny pictures throughout the day to make her smile.

"Bella."

She jumped, startled by the sound of his scratchy voice in the quiet of the night. Her shoulders went stiff and her breath got stuck behind the lump that rose in her throat. She heard Edward swallow hard, but his voice was quiet and even when he spoke again. "Are you going somewhere?"

Without turning back to look at him, she answered in a surprisingly steady tone. "I don't know." Then, she laughed.

"What's funny?"

With a sigh, Bella turned around. She sunk down on the floor cross-legged and ran a hand through her hair. "I don't know if I'm going anywhere in more ways than one."

Edward's lip twitched. He pulled his legs up on the bed, wrapping his arms around them and considering her. "You want to talk about it?"

Again, she laughed. "I really do."

Because this was her life. Edward was the best friend she'd ever had. Maybe the only real friend she'd ever had. He had a way of explaining some of the chaos in her own mind. She'd never had anyone to talk to about that kind of thing—the weird and random emotions; the way she craved a beautiful oblivion when it felt like her soul was just too heavy for her body to contain.

So, yeah. She wanted to talk to Edward about how she needed to run away from him, because she didn't have enough willpower to resist her cravings.

"So, what did I do that you felt like you had to pack right now?" Edward asked when she didn't continue. He smiled at her, though she could see the cautiousness in his eyes. "Did I kick you in my sleep again?"

He'd done it once. He'd been thrashing in the midst of a horrible nightmare, and his flailing foot connected with her thigh.

Christ, like a true addict, she had the shakes. She wrung her hands, fighting the rising anxiety. Why couldn't she fix her life like she could fix other things? She knew how to work hard, how to get her hands dirty, how to put elbow grease into it. Why couldn't she just set everything right with her hands?

"I woke up and I wanted to kiss you," Bella blurted. In the absence of anything rational, Bella preferred the simple truth. She'd panicked, and her first thought had been to flee.

"So the choices were either kiss me or run off to...wherever you were going?" Edward asked.

"I was talking myself out of it. I think I should get some credit for that." She got to her feet, too restless to be still. "I'm just trapped. Before, when I was doing something I didn't want to be doing, it was just a matter of getting off my ass and getting out. Away. Because here wasn't working.

"But now? You've all put so much damn work into me, into my life. I'm all wrapped up in your family."

Edward nodded carefully. "To be clear, I'm the thing you don't want to be doing."

She scoffed. "That's the problem. The things I want to be doing to you are endless and unbelievably filthy."

He shivered, his eyes going dark. "And that's a problem?"

Bella crossed her arms over her chest. "I'm using you. I'm using you to mitigate my moods. I'm using your body and now, when I'm not using your body, I'm just using the"—she flapped her hands helplessly—"peace you give out to calm my head down enough to study."

He quirked an eyebrow. "I'm peaceful?"

"School is… I mean, I'm like the Han Solo of handy work, okay? I can do everything if you let me get my hands on it. But it's like fixing the Millennium Falcon. This one goes here. That one goes there. And, I don't know. Somewhere along the line my concentration got shot to shit. All these terms go in one ear and out the other, and I have trouble translating my whatever-works way of doing things with official moves.

"But when you're here… It's hard to describe. I feel like I can breathe. Like I can actually read a single sentence only once rather than a million times." She shook her head, remembering the frustration that welled in her every time her mind wandered.

Edward had a weird, pinched look on his face. He rose and stepped toward her, approaching as though he thought she was going to dart away from him. He stopped when he was a couple of feet in front of her, his eyes intent on hers. "Why is that a bad thing?"

Bella glared, but she couldn't find the right words. "I… I mean, it's obvious. I shouldn't be using you like you're medication for my fucked up head."

"You're not doing anything any normal person doesn't do."

She scoffed. "Come off it."

He tilted his head, not letting her drop his gaze. "I'm not trying to make excuses for you or blow sunshine up your ass. I think it's been so long since you've had anything normal that you don't recognize it."

"It's not normal not to be able to handle your own life without self-medicating."

He said the next word with a laugh. "I'm not actually a drug, Bella."

"But I'm using you like one."

He shook his head. An inexplicably tender expression came on his face and his eyes swept over her. He raised a hand and brushed the backs of his knuckles down her cheek before he looked her in the eyes again. "People have sex to blow off steam all the time. To relieve stress. To have a little fun.

"And as for studying, people learn differently, too. Maybe you don't learn well reading things in books or listening to a lecture. I'll bet if they were to teach class in a house where you could have your hands on the wires or whatever, you'd learn a lot quicker. But for now, maybe it's simply that you study better with someone else in the room than you do alone." He cupped her cheek in full and smiled. "All of it is normal. It's not you running. It's not you messing up. It's just you."

"Fuck," Bella muttered under her breath. Her heart was pounding so hard, affected by his words and his nearness.

She'd never really considered the idea there was nothing wrong with her.

Edward brushed her hair back away from her face so gently. "I'm not a doctor. I'm not a psychiatrist. But if you want my opinion, I doubt you have any kind of mental health problem." He drew a finger down her side from her shoulder, following the line of her arm. "You are a perfectly normal woman who's had a hard life." His lip twitched as he threaded his fingers through hers. "And I'm a mentally ill man who's had an easy life."

"Easy? You call your life easy?"

"Some fucked up kid shot me and murdered all of my friends." His voice got rough, scratchy at the end, and he had to breathe in through his nose before he could continue. "But my life isn't hard, Bella. Not the way yours is. I've always had enough money. Enough money to pay for the best care, both physically and mentally. Enough money to go to school. Never in my life have I even had to think about whether or not I could keep a roof over my head. I got far in the business arena young because I had connections. Most of all, I've never been without my family, without unconditional support."

Bella looked down and away from him, her jaw clenched because if it wasn't, her lower lip would begin to tremble. Her eyes stung. Edward traced the line of her chin with the tip of a finger.

"You break my heart sometimes, baby," he whispered. "I wish you'd cut yourself a little slack. You've kept your head above water for ten years with no support. Hell, with weights tied around your ankles. You've never given up, given in. Not to actual drugs. Not to Forks. Not to school, no matter how hard it's been. You're standing on your own two feet, though I know it doesn't feel like it. You work. You're moving forward. Just let us help you." He shuffled forward that last step and pressed his forehead to hers, closing his eyes. "Let me help you."

For a minute, Bella couldn't speak. Her throat was too tight. Her eyes watered and her heart thundered. She still hadn't wrapped her mind around the idea he'd presented.

There wasn't anything wrong with her.

She allowed herself to try to accept that idea. She was a normal woman who indulged in a few semi-unhealthy coping mechanisms. Who didn't?

Taking a deep breath, she let her eyes flick back to his. "Let you help me, huh?" Her voice came out raw, but she grinned at him. Wrapping her arms around him, she walked her fingers up his spine and pushed up onto the balls of her feet so she could whisper near his ear. "Giving me some good, deep dicking? Is that how you help me?"

He groaned and shuddered. His mouth found hers in an instant, and he kissed her with urgency. "Stress relief is important." He palmed her ass, bringing her roughly against him. "Can I interest you in a practical demonstration of the health benefits of the orgasm?"

She giggled against his lips. "Only if you insist."

He walked her backward a few steps and pressed her down onto the bed, scrambling over her. When they were nose to nose, he pulled back, breaking their kisses and looking into her eyes with an expression she didn't understand but left her breathless. "Bella…"

She ran her fingers through his hair. "What is it?"

For long moments, moments sizzling with energy and some strange tempest in his eyes, he only stared at her. "Nothing," he murmured, kissing her again. "Nothing at all."

A/N: BOOP.