36

I wake up because I'm too warm. The covers are tangled, cocooning me so I can barely move, and I have a death grip on Bella, our skin damp with sweat where we touch.

The sun's up despite the early hour, and when I lift my head to look at her, I see she's already wide awake.

"Hey." My voice is gruff.

"Hi."

She doesn't look at me, and I can hear the detachment in her voice. It's enough to burst my bubble of denial and I tumble to the ground, hitting my ass on every rock in my life; Bree, Lucy, Em, and now possibly Bella. I come to rest in a puddle of worry, sitting there until I can't stand it any longer.

"Are you okay?" The panic that has balled up tightly inside me, shoots tendrils out, winding around my voice and strangling it a little. I swallow, trying to get rid of the ones that creep up my throat to choke me.

She says nothing. I unwind myself from her and push up so I'm resting on my arm, looking down on her.

"You came to me," I remind her. "Don't do this now, it isn't fair."

She turns her head slowly and her sad brown eyes come to rest on me.

"I'm trying to work out what happens now, and I can't come up with a single positive way out of this," she whispers. "I don't even know what you want."

She begins to turn her head away again, and I reach out, bringing her gently back to look at me.

"I want Lucy, and I want you," I tell her. "That's all."

"That's all? There's no way." Her eyes fill with tears. "They won't let us be together, you know that as well as I do. Em…" She shakes her head, pausing as she wipes at her eyes. "You can't choose me over him, he's your brother, Edward. Your family."

Anger jabs sharply at me at the mention of his name.

"I'd choose you every time," I tell her. "Everything that's brought us here has been because of him. It's not all our fault."

Bella sits up, holding the duvet to her chest. My eyes roam down, absorbing the way her mussed-up hair drifts down her back in waves, her waist dips in and her hips flare gently and perfectly out. Her creamy skin looks luminescent in the soft morning light, shadows following her contours, and I can't resist touching her, running my fingers down her back.

Shivering, she looks back at me over her shoulder. I freeze, committing the image to memory. This - the way she looks right now- takes my breath away.

I don't say the words that come to me in that moment, pushing them down and trying to smother them.

"What?" she asks. I swallow before I can manage to speak.

"Nothing," I murmur. "You just look…" I sigh. She's turned my brain to mush. Reaching forward, I take hold of her and pull her back down to me, half expecting her to resist.

She yields completely and nestles in, holding onto me too. To want and be wanted like this is foreign and intoxicating.

"How long do you think we have like this?" she asks.

"Not long enough." I hold her tighter for a moment.

"I keep thinking I'll wake up soon."

"You wish."

She pulls her head back so she can see me.

"You think?" she asks. I raise my eyebrows in question and she shakes her head. I get where she's coming from, but I wish I could protect her.

"A part of me is glad this happened," I confess. "Not the hurt, I hate that, but the part that lets us be together." I run my index finger down her neck, over her collarbone and pause on her breast, tracing patterns on the skin above her heart. "It nearly killed me to let you leave with Alice and Jas. I'm not sure I could've stayed away from you after last night."

She's looking down at my finger, moving across her skin. I lift it, crooking it beneath her chin so she has to look at me. "I can't go back now." I tell her. "I need to stay on this side of the line we crossed."

"You have so much to lose," she says, her face pained.

"Whatever happens with Lucy is inevitable now, no matter what. Bree has that photograph; what's done is done. As far as everything else goes, I think you're worth it."

She grimaces.

"What if I'm not? You'll wind up hating me."

"I could never hate you," I tell her, running my thumb across her bottom lip and watching her eyelids flicker for a fraction of a second.

She opens her mouth a little wider and breathes in deeply, filling her lungs and making her chest swell. Reaching up she winds her fingers in my hair and pulls my face closer to hers.

"Promise me," she says, looking between my lips and my eyes.

"I promise."

~RH~