Warning: This story will contain graphic depictions of violence, mature language, abuse and lemons in later chapters.

Prologue

- God's Garden -

Issa couldn't remember a time when she felt warm.

It was so cold here, and so very far away from home. She missed her Mama, and she missed her soft fuzzy slippers. Her toes were cold and turning red at the tips, the soles of her feet beginning to numb against the freezing cement.

She sat on the steps, sheltered from the torrential rain, and listened as another crash ricocheted against the door. She could hear screaming behind it, and squeezed her palms against her ears to drown out the bad words she'd been pretending not to hear.

Daddy wasn't a bad man, he was just a sick man. That's what Granny Grace always used to tell Issa when she hid from his weekly phone calls. It hadn't helped though, whenever Issa had bucked up the courage to mumble a quiet "Hi Daddy" into the receiver and she heard his slurred words coo at her from the other end, she would burrow into her Mama's lap and Renee ended up having to do most of the talking on her behalf.

Issa didn't know why her Daddy got so mad. Whenever Granny Grace called them nowadays, Daddy would get real quiet while Issa said hello, and after a few moments he would take the corded phone away from Issa and start yelling, calling Granny Grace all sorts of mean names.

So now when she called, Issa tried her absolute hardest to talk fast before Daddy heard her, so she could pretend just for a little while her world wasn't upside down and she was back where she belonged, hiding in her Mama's lap.

Another bang vibrated the door, and she guessed that Daddy had kicked over the small wooden table that held the key bowl. She felt her chest tense and she stood, her white nightgown embroidered with teddy bears occasionally catching the splatter of rainfall as she inched farther away.

Issa had cried the first few times she had heard Daddy yelling, and begged him to stop. But after a few months of this, Issa's eyes stopped watering, and she just started running. In the beginning he would notice, come out and apologize with big red wet eyes and ask "please baby, just come back inside." But that too had stopped.

Now she would run somewhere quiet and safe, waiting till the danger was gone and his scary yelling quieted. She'd wait sometimes hours for him to calm down, and wondered if he even remembered she existed when he never came to find her.

Mama had died two years ago, when Issa was only six. She had been the best Mama in the whole wide world, and she missed her terribly. She had lived with Momma and Granny Grace her whole life up until she died, and only once had visited her Daddy in Forks, Washington.

It was so different from home. North Carolina had been hot and sunny, where now she couldn't remember the last time she had seen the sun.

The rain continued to batter the small street she now lived on, and the evening was slipping into dusk, the sky a turbulent gray.

But as Daddy screamed, she walked off the cement stairs, and stood in her grassy front lawn, letting the water envelop her in unrelenting sheets.

Issa closed her eyes and tilted her small pale little face up towards the sky, her nightgown sticking to her skin, and her arms beginning to pebble up goosebumps.

A flash of lightning and rumble of thunder shook the sky but she held still.

In Carolina when it had rained, Mama always told her that God just needed water for his garden, and once he was done, all the flowers would start to grow.

She raised her arms above her head, pretending now that her Mama was helping God water his garden, and willed herself to grow roots, and bloom like a daisy.

"I'm a flower, Mama." She whispered into the sky.

For a moment in the rain, she thought she could smell her Mama's scent in the air. A warm combination of cloves and perfumed cotton.

And she smiled.

A/N: This story has been in my heart and mind for quite some time, I hope you love my Bella and Paul as much as I do. I always credit those that inspire me, see the three I reference below.

"Be Like Water" By Taoist Elf

"The Devil You Know" by Unseelie Sidhe (Please for the love of God Unseelie, finish that masterpiece.)

The Choice by Nicholas Sparks

Stephanie Meyer is the sole owner of the Twilight Franchise, and she owns all related characters you may see here. This is merely a fanfiction of her work.