Edward POV

A rare glimpse of sun streamed through the open curtains of our bedroom, and I sensed that Bella had woken by the slightest change in her breathing. She stirred faintly in my arms, then rolled over to face me and draped an arm over my shoulder.

"Good morning, beautiful," I said.

She grinned without even opening her eyes, and I swear I felt butterflies in my stomach. I was the luckiest man in the world.

She finally opened her eyes and looked into mine.

"Good morning," she said.

I leaned in to kiss her, but she pulled away and covered her mouth with her hand.

"Morning breath," she warned.

"Bella, you do know your hand can't stop my keen sense of smell, right?" I teased.

I deflected the pillow aimed at my head effortlessly and watched her run into the bathroom to brush her teeth.

"I LOVE YOUR MORNING BREATH!" I shouted after her.

Dude, ew.

I could hear Emmett mentally judging me down the hall, but I didn't care.

Moments later, Bella came back. She looked breathtaking in just the simple pair of boxer shorts and an old Newton's t-shirt. I smiled, remembering a distant time when I had wondered if I needed to be jealous of Mike Newton.

"Minty fresh," Bella grinned and hopped back into bed beside me.

"So that means I can do this, then?" I asked.

She rolled onto her back and I leaned in for a gentle kiss.

"Always," she breathed.

We laid in silence for a while, each of us tracing patterns on the other's skin. I brushed my hand up her arm, across her cheek, down the bridge of her nose. She rubbed her feet against mine and smoothed her hand across my bare abdomen. My body wanted hers, but I was content to just be there beside her.

Bella placed her palm against my cheek where the sun's rays reflected through the window.

"You're even prettier than my engagement ring, you know that?" she smiled and kissed my cheek where she had touched it. The light reflected from my own face back onto hers; a thousand tiny refracted lights danced across her forehead.

"I guess it's a good thing I'm secure with my masculinity, huh?" I said.

"Come on, Edward. You know you're gorgeous. Every girl that lays eyes on you practically drools."

I didn't care about any of them. Everyone else seemed so dull and plain since Bella came into my life.

"I only see one girl."

Bella's cheeks turned pink, and it was intoxicating seeing the effect I could still have on her, the way the blood rushed to her cheeks with the slightest compliment. Deep down, I still craved it. I knew that desire would never fully go away, but the love I had for Bella was stronger than anything I'd ever experienced—including the call of her blood.

She surprised me by sitting up and bringing her body over mine, straddling my hips as I lay back on the pillow. It was hard for anyone to surprise me, and moments like these were no less than thrilling. My hands gripped her waist involuntarily.

She leaned down and kissed me, and her hair was everywhere, tickling my cheeks and neck. I parted my mouth and felt her warm tongue brush against mine. It was a rare moment of heaven.

We broke the kiss and she sat up. We hadn't taken things any further since the honeymoon, and we couldn't now, either.

"I wish we could be together," she sighed.

"Darling, we are together. Always."

"You know what I mean."

I did. Painfully so, sometimes. But I would wait an eternity for Bella. I already had, and it had been worth every minute just to find her.

"You're worth the wait," I told her. "Bella, this—" I gestured between us and let my hands run down her thighs. "—this is more than I ever hoped for. This is perfection. I don't need anything else."

She ground her hips into mine and I gasped. She giggled at the unexpected sound.

"Are you sure?" she asked. The look on her face wasn't insecure. She wasn't worried; she was teasing me.

I had her flipped over and gently pinned to the bed before she could react.

"That's cheating," she smiled and pretended to shove against my chest in protest. "Do it again."

"Of course I want you. All of you," I gently slid my hand up her shirt and she moaned. I knew I needed to stop now, if not for our sake, for the rest of the household.

I pulled my hand back out and brushed her hair from her face instead.

"But this is enough for me, just being with you is more than enough."

I kissed her forehead, and she smiled, but there was something sad about it. It seemed as though something I had said triggered something in her.

"Edward, there is something more that I want," she started.

I pulled myself back and helped her sit up.

"What is it, sweetheart?" I asked.

"I talked to Esme last night," she began.

I knew Esme was going to talk to her, and the rest of us had gone out hunting to give them some privacy. I didn't want to pry, but I was glad Bella felt comfortable bringing it up.

"She's wonderful, you know?" she added.

"Yes, she really is," I agreed.

Esme was the heart of our family. I dreaded to think how many more lives I would have taken or how many more crimes I would have committed if it weren't for Esme's guidance and unconditional love.

I sat back against the pillows and pulled Bella close, her back against my chest, my legs on either side of her tiny frame.

"She said a lot of things that I needed to hear," Bella started. "A lot of things I think I've known for a while, deep down, but just couldn't face."

She picked my hands up and held them in hers.

"This is really hard for me to say, Edward. I think…I think I know what I want, I just…I don't know how to have it. I can't. It's not possible."

"Bella, love, we've already beaten the odds of the impossible, more than once. If there's anything in the world that can be done to make you happy, I'll find a way to do it," I assured her.

She was silent for a moment. It couldn't have been more than a few seconds, but it felt like a lifetime stretched out before us. A lifetime I was no longer sure about.

"I'm not ready to give up being a mother," she whispered. She turned to meet my eyes and added, "A human mother."

I felt the hurt on her face reflected deep in the pit of my stomach. I knew how hard it was for her to admit this to herself and to me.

"Then Bella, there is no doubt in my mind that you will be the best human mother the world has ever seen. I love you," I told her.

I didn't want to think about life without Bella. The idea of spending eternity without her, or of watching her grow old while I stayed seventeen was one I couldn't fathom, but nothing would be worse than watching her spend an eternity as broken and sad as she had been over the past few months. Without question, her happiness was worth this price. I had made mistakes, but I could get this right. I felt a strange sense of relief along with the rush of sadness that Bella had finally figured out what she wanted.

"I will stand by your side for as long as you want, sweetheart. From as close or as far as you want," I added.

"Edward, I can't. I mean, just figuring out what I want doesn't mean I can have it. Anybody can wake up and decide they want a Ferrari, but realizing you want something doesn't magically make it possible, you know?"

Her frustration was clear.

"I'll admit, it might be easier to give you a Ferrari, but just because something isn't easy doesn't make it wrong or impossible, Bella. Sometimes the right thing is the hardest thing."

"I just…I realize now that I can't give up that part of me, but I also can't give up this, us." She squeezed my hand at the word "this."

"It's okay, Bella. I understand. Please don't feel obligated to stick to an eternity that isn't what you want. It won't change the way I feel about you," I told her.

"Obligated? You think that's what I feel towards you, Edward? Obligation?" she stammered.

"No, of course not. I just meant it's okay if you've changed your mind about some things," I explained. "I know you had a plan for what you wanted, Bella, but so much has happened since then. I understand if you realized you want something different out of life. Someone different."

"Sometimes I wish you could read my mind. I LOVE you, you ass. I'm not going anywhere, ever. I just…I want both. Yes, I want to be a mother…but I also want you. It's selfish and unrealistic and I want it more than anything. And I want you to stop thinking I'm some flighty human that's going to just stop loving you and run away."

I had never felt so relieved by an insult in my entire existence.

"Then we'll find a way," I told her. "We'll find a way."

Alice POV

I was driving home from a grocery run for Bella when I saw it. I hit 90 on the open highway and dared any cop to show up. When I got home, I burst through the front door so fast the hinges cracked, and I couldn't be bothered to stop and assess the damage. I was on a mission. An Edward-sized mission.

I flew past a confused-looking Bella who was eating cereal on the sofa in the living room and ran straight into the study where Edward was using the computer. I lunged for him with my right hand, but he ducked at the last second, just like I knew he would. Which made it all the more satisfying when my left hand shot out faster than I could think about what I was doing and made contact with his left ear. I yanked, hard, and he jumped up and out of the chair.

"We need to talk," I demanded.

I knew he could've stopped me if he wanted to, but he let me yank him by the ear all the way into the backyard before I let go.

"Do you want to explain to me why I just saw a series of Bella's funeral, Bella holding a Chinese baby, and Bella having sex with Jacob Black? What kind of messed up plans are going through your head, and how hard do I have to yank to get them out of there?" I hissed.

"Calm down," said Edward. "It's not…Bella and I had a really good talk this morning."

"Oh I can't wait to hear this."

I couldn't imagine their talk containing ANY of the images I'd seen. Edward needed to stop meddling and let Bella make her own decisions for once.

"Trust me, I know. And she is. That's what we talked about," he said. "Bella wants a baby. She told me."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"So you're trying to figure out…"

"Yeah."

"Edward, none of those end well. You don't need my powers or yours to know that."

"Yeah."

"You know the most logical way that she can have a baby, right? You understand what that would mean?" I asked

"I'm not stupid, Alice. I know that she should leave me. She should move on and find a human and go live a normal human life. I tried to tell her that, too. She called me an 'ass'."

I may have snorted at that.

"You ARE an ass," I agreed.

"She wants both, Alice. She wants to stay with me AND have a baby, and I don't know how to give that life to her. I don't know how it would be possible," he admitted.

"Right. And where is she going to get this baby? It can't be yours, biologically. You know how well that turned out. It would have to be human. And where is she going to raise it? I know we've all come a long way in controlling our urges around Bella, but a baby is a wild card. They're absolutely defenseless. Kids are clumsy, Edward. They run into tables and play with knives and bleed all over the place. How's that supposed to work?" I asked.

I thought about Jasper at Bella's birthday party and the chaos that had ensued over a little paper cut. We could never raise a human baby in a vampire household.

"Maybe she could, I don't know, move in with Charlie and stay human until it's an adult and then become one of us—if she still wants that, of course. I told her I can wait for her, and I meant it."

"I know eighteen years is nothing to us, Edward, but do you really think Bella would be willing to leave and let herself age for eighteen years without you?"

Edward just looked at me with this lost puppy look on his face. A lost, determined, stubborn, idiot puppy.

"I don't know," said Edward. "I don't know what to do here."

"I'll help you on one condition," I told him.

"What's that?" he asked.

"We do this the right way. No more planning or scheming behind Bella's back. We talk through all the options—all the crazy, messed up, batshit insane never-going-to-work options—WITH her, and let her decide," I said.

The guilt I carried from the last time I meddled in Bella and Edward's affairs was still almost too much. I didn't know how Edward lived with it.

Edward closed his eyes and nodded.

"Deal," he said.

Bella POV

We spent weeks talking about every weird scenario and possibility everyone could think of. The whole family got in on it. We'd covered everything from adoption and in-vitro fertilization to turning myself now and getting a robot baby in a hundred years once they were invented. Jasper had brought up how much technology had advanced even in the time since he'd been human and started talking about A.I. and cyborgs and how at the rate things were moving, we'd probably have some kind of bloodless human-robot hybrids sooner or later anyway. And then there was Emmett's award-winning suggestion of "Why don't we get a puppy and see how that goes first?" Edward had given him a rather hard smack to the back of his head for that one.

Rose gave me a baby name book for Christmas a few days later with a note tucked inside.

Please excuse my idiot husband; I married him for his looks. You're going to be a great mother.

Each suggestion seemed more ridiculous than the last, and every scenario we discussed had the same conclusion: there was no way to raise a human baby in a vampire household. It was simply too dangerous. I was beginning to accept that maybe Edward's suggestion made the most sense. Maybe the only way would be to move in with Charlie and wait to become a vampire until the child turned eighteen. But every time I thought about it, I cringed. I was nineteen. Even if I magically had a baby tomorrow, I'd be 37 by the time I could turn. And Edward? He swore he would still love me at any age no matter what, but how could I possibly be a 37 year old permanently married to someone who looked like a teenager? I'd have to pose as his mother in public. I'd be older than everyone else in the house, including Carlisle and Esme. And worse, by the time I turned, I'd have a child that looked older than my husband.

And what would I tell Charlie? If I moved in with him, how could I explain that I loved Edward and wanted to stay married to him, but we just couldn't live together? I would have to cut off contact between the two of them anyway before Charlie noticed Edward wasn't aging. Or even if I lied and told Charlie we split up, how was I supposed to sneak around and still see Edward? And wouldn't Charlie always wonder why I was single and not looking for a relationship? It might have been the "safest" option, but everything else about it felt creepy and wrong. I didn't want my entire life to be a secret and a lie.

Then one day, Carlisle brought up a point that brought all of my reservations to a screeching halt and replaced them with genuine fear.

"The Volturi promised to check on her," he reminded us. "They might let some time slip past without thinking much of it because they have been around for centuries. It might take a few months or years even, but they always follow through. We can't underestimate them just because they've been silent."

My jaw might as well have hit the floor. With everything that had happened, I had forgotten to worry about the Volturi. The Voluturi, who were expecting to find a childless, seventeen-year-old vampire version of me when they returned.

"We can't protect you if you're living with Charlie. Or anywhere else, for that matter," Carlisle pointed out.

He was right. Charlie had already been put in danger just because I knew about the existence of vampires. We were lucky nothing had happened, but how could I even think about trying to protect a human baby with just me and Charlie? None of us would survive.

I started losing hope, not just for my future baby, but for me. I wouldn't survive a visit from the Volturi without being turned, and trying to raise a baby as a vampire myself was so crazy that it hadn't entered even the stupidest ideas. I couldn't raise a baby after being turned. Could I?