Springtime Dreams

by EvieBaby

Vampire Bella has finally found the courage to share with Edward all the fantasies she had about him when she was human. The vulnerability is both exhilarating and emotionally dangerous, especially if Edward isn't ready for Bella's darkest desires. Or his own. (Lemons, angst, and fluff. BPOV companion fic to Ferns.)

7. Nightmare Rainscape

**Disclaimer: The characters and situations of the Twilight Saga depicted in this story are the legal property of Stephenie Meyer, Summit Entertainment, and Little, Brown & Company, and have been used without permission. No copyright infringement is intended, and no profit is being made.

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Chapter 7: Nightmare Rainscape

[on a Post-it note, placed over the first paragraph]

Edward, my love, don't read this one alone. When you get here, come find me.

[then, scribbled in Bella's messy cursive beside a doodle of a lopsided, droopy flower at the top of the page, these lines from Jane Eyre:]

I have a strange feeling with regard to you. As if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly knotted to a similar string in you. And if you were to leave I'm afraid that cord of communion would snap. And I have a notion that I'd take to bleeding inwardly.

—

Bloodletting

"Bella, I…I'm so sorry. I didn't mean that," his words came in a rush.

I know I must have heard them, because I am remembering them now, but in the moment I did not fully register them. I didn't fully register anything. I was separate from myself, watching from the outside with a ringing numbness between my ears drowning out my thoughts.

But then, one idea was able to form.

All I could comprehend was my nakedness—and not in the good way. I looked so vulnerable to me, defenseless. My exposed body was both evidence and condemnation of the sexual wantonness my husband had just repudiated. I didn't want to be naked anymore.

Edward reached for me, but I shrank away.

"Bella—"

My body pulled in on itself as I tried to hide as much of my skin as possible from his eyes. "I want my clothes."

He took off at once, running the direction we had come, back to the pier. Water kicked up behind him and splashed my knees.

Alone on my rock, I shivered even though I wasn't cold. The numbness faded and a cramp inside my chest throbbed with progressive sharpness in its wake.

Every fear I'd ever had about sex with Edward was founded. I was too much—too horny, too needy. The scale of my sexual appetite was unreasonable, and therefore a burden. Edward was humoring me out of love and obligation, while resenting and judging me. The Edward of my honeymoon, who had looked upon my seductions with exasperation and contempt…he wasn't a bad dream, or a misremembered distortion. He was real and he was, apparently, long-suffering.

I choked on sharp salty air, hyperventilating even though I didn't need to breathe. I clutched my knees tighter, not realizing that my fingernails were digging into my flesh, breaking past the skin.

The first coherent, non-catastrophizing conclusion I was able to reach was regret, not for my own sake but for his. What I just put up with, he'd said. Because you never stop. I thought of all the times in the past few weeks that he had displayed some level of reluctance before making love to me. I thought of our conversation before we came to these rocks, his clear revulsion at my request for "rough" sex. But he had done it anyway. Because he loved me and couldn't bear to refuse me anything I wanted. And how had I thanked him? By pushing him harder, by asking for more. Asking for something I had known in my heart of hearts was beyond his boundaries.

The feeling that I was unworthy of Edward was an old one from my human days, but the iteration of it that was overwhelming me now was new. This was the first time I felt like an outright bad person.

I was unforgivably selfish, and that realization made me aware of how pathetic and wounded I must look. Edward couldn't return to find me like this. It would prompt him to apologize and take the blame on himself when this was my fault. I was the one who had failed to live up to the vows of our partnership.

My hands released my knees and my feet dropped off the rock and into the water. I rose to stand unsteadily and hobbled my way to the beach. There, I tried to arrange my body in a way that didn't broadcast the purpling bruises inside my heart. It didn't work, because when he returned, he handed me my clothing with tortured eyes. He was panicked.

I tried to relieve him of the weight he was taking upon himself. "I'm sorry, Edward. I've been pushing your boundaries a lot, and especially tonight. We've had a lot of big conversations lately, and even when they got tense, we found a way through. I was so excited to be seeing other sides of you, to be showing you parts of myself that I had never really found the courage to let out, that…I lost sight of things maybe. Some stuff should just be private. I should have backed off. I could see how uncomfortable you were, but I kept going. I'm sorry."

At my words, Edward collapsed to his knees beside where I sat. He bent toward me as if I were pulling him. The degree of remorse in his eyes was unsettling. I had to look away. "Bella, it was me. I screwed up. I lost my temper, and I lashed out at you. I didn't mean anything I yelled at you. Any of it."

Clearly, I couldn't hide my hurt. Of course he was desperate to take it all back—he couldn't bear to see me in pain.

Desperate for a way out of this interaction, I turned away and slipped my dress over my head. I could hear him pulling his clothes on as well, but I didn't look. I was chagrined at how little I had to put on. At least I had the oversized blue cardigan. I tucked my body away in the garment like it was a blanket, hid as much of my skin as possible and kept myself cocooned as we walked along the beach back to Port Angeles. He reached toward me for my hand at one point, but I pretended not to see. I couldn't bear for him to touch me right now, to try to comfort me.

The shame I was feeling was so heavy it made my movements sluggish. I had told myself, as I dressed for my night out, that I was dressing for him. It was obvious to me now that I had dressed for no one but myself. I had worn this dress because I liked the way the sweetheart neckline always drew Edward's eyes to my breasts. The cardigan had initially served no other purpose than to hide my obviously braless nipples from everyone but him. My lack of underwear was a gesture of greedy hopefulness—that he would touch me, grope me, finger me…that I would end up pressed against a brick wall in a back alley on the way to the theater because he just couldn't wait…. How self-centered I had been. In my own head and not thinking of him at all.

I didn't want to get in the Volvo with him. I wanted to walk home instead, but I knew he'd never stand for it and I didn't want to worry him further.

"Bella?"

It took a second for me to realize he was speaking to me. I blinked, the interior of our car coming into focus, and looked over at him.

"I love you."

He said it with desperation that broke my heart. Did he think I could ever doubt him after everything he had done for me?

"I love you," I said it back, reassuring him.

"Are we okay?" God, he looked frightened.

The instinct to ease his pain was immediate and powerful. Reflexively, I reached out and placed my hand over his, nodding.

He kept his hand on the gear shift as we made the drive home to Forks, and I left my hand on his. We didn't speak over the thirty or so minutes it took, and something happened to me during that time.

I began certain that I was the one in the wrong, the sole problem. It was a natural way of thinking for me when it came to conflict, particularly when it came to Edward. But the trouble was that, I…I hurt too much. The wound his words had left was too deep. Inside, I felt like I was hemorrhaging and, no matter how many times I tried to tell myself it wasn't that bad, I couldn't stop the bleeding.

The car felt smaller and smaller as we drove. I felt trapped. If he had asked me on the beach if I was angry, I could have told him no with perfect sincerity, but when the Cullen garage came into view, I wasn't so sure anymore. I couldn't believe how badly I wanted to get away from him.

So, when he killed the engine, I said, "I need a little space." I tried to smile, like it was normal and no big deal.

He flinched, but his voice was kind. "Of course."

When we entered our cottage, I feigned normalcy as best I could with Rose when I thanked her for babysitting for us. I think she sensed something was off, but she didn't say anything.

After she left, I remained in Renesmee's room. It was a bit of a drastic move. Partly, I need the comfort of unconditional love in my damaged state, and I found it by holding my daughter. But mostly, it was a defensive move. This was the one room in the house where I was sure Edward wouldn't try to talk to me before I was ready.

It was 5:13 a.m. when I settled in and Nessie didn't usually wake until nine or ten. She slept unusually long hours for a child, but Carlisle wasn't concerned; he thought it was likely related to how quickly she was growing. Tonight, it gave me time. She snuggled against me as I stroked her hair, and I resolved that I would try to be ready to face Edward by the time she woke.

I wasn't. Lying there in the dark room, my mind raced and jumbled and got nowhere. Shame, pain, and anger fought each other for prominence inside me, round and round. It was exhausting. I wished I could sleep just to have a break.

By the time Renesmee stirred awake, I was back to hating myself. I wasn't sure of much, but I did know that whatever had happened and whosever fault it was, my sexuality was the poison that had instigated it all. For the billionth time, I cursed my lust for Edward, tried to wish it away. Wanting him the way I did had never brought anything but stress and strain on both of us.

Edward helped our daughter get ready for the day and I excused myself to take a shower. All night, I had regretted not taking a moment to change clothes and rinse the seawater out of my hair. I thought it would be a relief to wash Edward's scent off of my skin, but it wasn't. My heart hurt.

Standing in the dissipating steam after my shower, I studied my body in the mirror, unsettled by how normal it looked. There was nothing to indicate the woman looking back at me was broken inside. It felt wrong in an uncanny way, as though I had been expecting stigmata of some kind—my agony and self-disgust expressing itself on my skin.

But my human body, with all its legibility, was gone forever. I had a vampire body now, and for the first time I felt how dead it was. No matter what I went through or how I was suffering, I would always look just like this…coolly perfect, serenely unaffected. It brought to mind all those times Edward had described his body as "unnatural" or "monstrous."

I made breakfast for Renesmee. Edward hovered expectantly while trying his best to look like he wasn't.

Feeling cornered, I blurted, "I don't think I'm ready."

He said, "Okay." But I could tell it wasn't, he wasn't. He was going through as much emotional upheaval as I was.

Guilt swarmed me. My poor Edward…he had tried so hard to be a good husband. But it hadn't been enough for me. I had pushed and pushed, demanded more and more. Until he snapped.

And now I couldn't even talk to him. "I'm sorry," I whispered, my eyes on the cutting board in front of me.

Of course, Edward was lovely about it. He placed a comforting hand on my wrist and said, "Don't be sorry, Bella. I'm the one who was out of line. I'm the one who was…" he paused, "mean. Take whatever time you need."

He walked away after that, but I was caught off balance, staring at the chunks of ripe mango leaking juices everywhere but not really seeing them.

Mean, he said. Had he been mean? I had interpreted his words as frustration, blurted by a man at the end of his rope with nothing left to give, and maybe that was still true. But mean implied intentionality.

Mean meant that he had hurt me on purpose.

—

[scrawled in the top corner margins, a French proverb]

En amour, il y a toujours celui qui donne les baisers et celui qui tend la joue.

—

Did I Break?

There was irony in here somewhere, both in what I did next and what followed after. It was the kind of story a cynic might tell to show that God, or Fate, or the Universe had a sick sense of humor. I didn't believe in any of that stuff, but it still felt like a cosmic joke at my expense.

After a morning of stewing in hatred for my body, everything it wants and all the ways its hungers had driven me to ruin my happiness with Edward, I dragged myself to the hospital. Over the past several months I had thought idly about seeking out Carlisle and having a conversation about vampire biology. I had considered asking him about my memory loss so many times. Once or twice, I had entertained the idea of asking about some of the physiological responses I had read about in my BDSM book—without elaborating on the context, of course. Yet, this is what it took for me to actually seek him out.

He was with a patient when I arrived, but the receptionist paged him and he sent a message that he would see me afterward, so I was shown into his office. It looked very much like his office at home: paintings and books rather than diplomas and brochures. The chairs across from his desk looked like antiques to my eyes, and I lowered myself into one. The cushion was softer than it looked and, without consciously choosing to do so, I curled up as I waited, taking my shoes off before I brought my feet up.

Perhaps I had gotten too comfortable—when Carlisle walked in twenty minutes later, I felt self-conscious about my socked feet on the furniture, but he waved off my awkward apology and encouraged me to sit just as I was.

My smile was feeble but grateful. Having my legs pulled close was more comforting than I realized.

"How can I help you, Bella?"

His kindness was as potent as ever. I felt safe, like I could tell or ask him anything, even though I didn't want to. My goal here was to retain whatever privacy I could, even if, of course, privacy was impossible.

"I know you can't really keep what we are about to discuss from Edward," I began.

Carlisle's eyes widened ever so slightly.

"So, I want to establish right off that I am not asking you to. It's inevitable that he will find out eventually and I wouldn't want you to stress over trying to remember not to think about our conversation around him."

"That is considerate, Bella," he said graciously. "But I have kept confidences from Edward before."

Shaking my head, I assured him. "It's unnecessary in this case. He's aware that what I am about to bring up is a problem."

Slowly, he nodded. "All right, then. What is on your mind, Bella?"

I drew in a bracing breath and got right to the point. "In your experience studying vampire physiology, is there any way to lower a vampire's sex drive?"

He didn't react outwardly in any obvious way. Still, I was almost certain that I had shocked him. My fingers tightened on the denim covering my knees and I reminded myself that this was expected. I breathed in and out and kept my gaze steady.

"No," he said after he recovered, his voice gentle.

My heart dropped. Well, I had known it was a long shot. "What about things that cause a drop in sex drive for humans? Do any of them seem promising as far as having the same effect on a vampire?"

He considered that, and it was like I could see the gears in his head switch from a fatherly mode to doctor. "Not ethically."

"Meaning?"

"Bodily mutilation, psychological trauma, clinical depression—things in the vein," he elaborated, and my flicker of hope was dashed. "Our internal chemistry is very stubborn compared to that of humans, Bella. Their bodies never stop changing and aging. Countless variables are interacting with one another inside of them at any given time, and so many things can throw off their internal equilibrium. But our bodies are rigid. All of our internal processes are directed toward stasis. It isn't just that we don't age or grow—neural pathways and physiological responses, especially well-worn or habitual ones, are frozen as well. We are who we were when we were changed, and it seems to take a massive upheaval to modify that. A simple drug or treatment wouldn't have any effect whatsoever. It would take something seismic, and then the new pathways would likely become just as permanent as the previous ones. That's what happens when we find our mates, for example."

My dismay was growing and expanding as he spoke. I was beginning to understand the full futility of my errand. I remembered voicing just this concern to Edward in the biology classroom a few weeks ago: What if I was just so focused on how much I wanted to still want you and how much I didn't want to want blood that it…stuck? And now, I'm just like this, forever.

"So…if—if, before I turned, I had a certain physiological response to Edward's presence that was repeated over and over, my transformation would have locked that in?"

Carlisle paused, mild surprise on his features, and for a moment I wondered if he had assumed that Edward's sex drive was the one at issue. "To my understanding, yes."

I chewed my lip. Staring at the floor, I lost myself in thought for a moment. "Would that go for the feelings around it, too? Like, if I had been, say, starving before I turned, would my turning not only leave my hunger response easy to trigger, but also keep the feelings of desperation and urgency surrounding that hunger from going away?"

"It's possible," he conceded, but I could see he was less confident of that. With limited scientific evidence, he didn't want to speak definitively. He was uncertain, but I knew.

I nodded. "Well," I murmured, "thank you for your help anyway."

On the way home, I made peace with the fact that I still needed space from Edward to sort through all my feelings, so I avoided him that evening and told myself that I would be ready to talk tomorrow. But tomorrow became two days, three days, and then a whole week. I tried to be pleasant, at least, but I was alternately numb and angry, so my track record was uneven. Sometimes I smiled and laughed, and others I would bite his head off at the smallest irritation. I could see Edward pause and brace himself for the unknown every time he needed to talk to me. I felt guilty for doing that to him and I apologized, but I didn't know how I was going to react to things anymore either. My emotions were all over the place in the most exhausting way and I felt out of touch with them.

Alice took my side, but that didn't make me feel better. I didn't want there to be sides. She and Rose both tried to talk with me about what happened, but I couldn't articulate what I was feeling or what had gone so wrong.

One thing that did come into focus was anger toward Edward. I hated myself, but I was furious with him. Why had he humored me for so long? Let resentment build and build? Why had he waited to tell me how he really felt until after I had ruined our marriage? I had never been so mad at him before, and it was uncomfortable. I loathed feeling like this and I wanted it to go away.

"Edward, is it all right if we talk?"

I approached him one night after a trip to the city and gifted him some vinyl I thought he might like. I told him one of the vintage bookstores had a section for music, but it was a lie. Missing him, pining even, I had sought out a specialty record store and purchased my peace offering. I didn't know if I was ready to talk or move on; I just knew that being apart from him was unbearable and I couldn't do it anymore.

I led him to our room. It was an automatic choice, because it was where we always went to talk privately, but I hadn't considered what it would be like to be trapped in a space with that bed—our bed, where we'd had the most glorious sex all night before everything had fallen apart.

My stomach turned as I eyed the messy bedding that smelled like both of us. You're romanticizing something that was never real, I scolded myself. Edward was unhappy the whole time.

"We're here for privacy," I said, looking away. "Not for that."

Edward nodded. My eye caught the shaky movement of his hands, the tenseness in the bands of muscle in his neck. I registered that he had an air of desperate, restless angst about him that knocked the wind out of me.

Suddenly unsure, terrified of hurting him, I sat and gestured that he should, too. Neither of us sat on the bed; I was on the cedar chest at the foot of it, and he was in a chair in the corner a few feet away.

He waited for me to begin.

I didn't know where the best place to start was, but I figured reassuring him that he didn't need to keep apologizing for his words in Port Angeles was as good a place as any. "Edward, I have spent a lot of time this week thinking about what happened. I want you to know that I accept your apology and I forgive you. I'm not angry." Drawing a shaky breath, I continued, clarifying that it wasn't what he said that was the issue, but the fact that he had hidden his true feelings. "If there is anything I am still pissed about, it's that you were unhappy or maybe just…unenthusiastic about some of the things we were doing, but you never told me. You didn't use the safe word or even just say that you didn't want to."

"It's not like that," he denied.

The mercurial temper I had developed over the past week flared. "Then what's it like, Edward?" Had I snapped at him? It felt like I had and I bit my tongue, ashamed.

"Bella…." he trailed off, and I could see that he didn't want to talk about this—he didn't want to explain.

Anger and hurt inside me jumped from a simmer to a billowing boil. After all the pain hiding this from me had caused us both, our estrangement…. How could he still want to keep his secrets?

Then the words broke out of him. "Do you remember what you said about how, in the past, I conflated things that were a hard limit for me and things that I thought were out of the question because I was worried about ruining our relationship or hurting you? How I had a hard time separating the two?"

I nodded, unsure of where he was heading with this. He leaned toward me.

"I think maybe it was like that, but in the other direction," he said, hands gesturing shakily to illustrate his point. "You're no longer human, we're married—there's no danger or impropriety. I'm not supposed to tell you no anymore. I'm supposed to make you happy, to put you first, always. Until you brought up biting, nothing you asked me for felt over the line. Not the what, not the how, not even the amount. I never told you no because, in the moment, I never wanted to. Even when you asked for something I wouldn't have chosen, it was enough that you wanted it."

It was his demeanor that grabbed me and deflated my emotions. I wasn't sure whether I found his explanation convincing, but I did know that his naked distress was so upsetting that every last bit of anger inside me died. Not the way it had off and on over the past several days, only to flare up when he and I least expected. This felt final. My fury at Edward was gone, so completely gone that I felt the hollowness it left behind.

Now there was just the pain—the gaping wound at the center of me that wept tears and blood and wailed all day in grief. I could see in Edward's eyes that he had one to match.

For the first time since our date in Port Angeles, I didn't feel alone. Things inside me were calm enough to think, to act. We had to figure this out. Edward and I could not continue on as we had before. The way I saw it, the only way through was honesty. The prospect might have made me nervous before, but there was nothing to fear now. What could Edward do or say at this point that would leave a mark at all? He had already confirmed every fear I'd ever had about our marriage. My heart was already broken—I couldn't imagine hurting more in this moment than I already was, so it was a pragmatic time to be brave.

"Edward," I began, gathering my breath and my resolve. I couldn't let him paper over the failure of our marriage bed. "I saw your reluctance sometimes. I just took your agreement afterward at face-value, and maybe I shouldn't have. It's okay that you didn't want to do some things. We shouldn't build our sex life around catering to me. That's ridiculous."

He was shaking his head before I finished. "Bella, for me, sex is all about you. Only you," he insisted. "Remember, before you came along, sex held so little interest for me that I might have continued my existence forever without it. Sure, I enjoy pleasure and there are acts that I find appealing in an abstract sort of way, but, for me, sex isn't about how good it feels. It's about how much I love you."

If…if that was the truth, the whole truth, it accounted for a lot. It felt like a lot to carry, to be responsible for. "But underneath, you were building resentment," I protested feebly.

"No!" The word burst out of his throat in a way that startled me. His eyes widened at his own vehemence, and then he was scrambling to explain. "I mean…resentment is a harsh word. I would say that maybe I feel…pressure? Pressure to meet your needs and make the sacrifices you made to be with me worth the price, but that is only because of how precious you are to me."

Ah. Okay—this was sounding more familiar, more likely.

In one motion, he pushed off from his cushioned chair and onto his knees. He shuffled forward and dropped his head into my lap, like a supplicant.

He begged, and there was nothing I could do.

"Bella, please believe me. I don't resent you or anything we have done together. I've never wanted to take back something I said so badly."

Chest tight, I reached out and stroked his hair. I gave in. I would stop pushing for an explanation, for honesty. Nothing was worth putting him through this.

At my touch, Edward gasped with relief. He angled his torso to push my knees apart and clutched me to him, face buried in my stomach. His legible agony was heartbreaking—how had I missed that he had reached this point?

I cradled his face in my hand. "Oh, Edward."

His head turned and I felt his lips. He kissed my wrist, then my palm. He doted on every one of my fingers. It was sweet, until it was something else. His kisses became hungry, even feverish. They climbed up my arm while his grip around my waist tightened.

Something about the experience felt off to me, but I was sure what it was until he reached my neck. As he kissed my throat, I was concretely aware of mundane details I had never noticed before, like the smacking noises his lips made against my skin, or the awkward crouch he was in to reach my neck from his position on the carpet. Such things usually wouldn't register, because my body reacted to Edward kissing my neck as though it was being tased with pleasure.

But…not this time. I felt vicarious relief through him, for the ease of his suffering. I felt affection, and tenderness. Yet, inside my veins, where the mad lust inside me lived, nothing. No heat or wet in my panties, no bursts of bliss under my skin where his lips pressed. He kissed my chest, and my breasts didn't respond—something unprecedented.

Edward hadn't noticed yet. He had assumed my enthusiasm, and given our history, why wouldn't he? He angled me backward and lifted me against him as he rose, climbing up the cedar chest and crawling us backward onto the bed. His lips found mine and, God, he was passionate. I clung to him, comforted by his weight. My shirt disappeared with tearing sounds. He lowered his hips between my legs and he was shockingly hard.

Sex. Of course he wanted to fix this with sex. He knew that was my favorite way of feeling close to him. He couldn't guess how unappealing the idea was to me at the moment. He was desperate. There was madness in his eyes. He'd do anything to win me back.

Unbidden, the memory presented itself of how he had made himself hard for me in that cove, as we stood naked in waist-deep water. He could do it at will, and he would. To please me.

My stomach clenched into a tight, tight knot. No, no, no, no, no….

He reached for my bra—I intercepted.

"Edward."

Immediately, he froze. His eyes found mine. I don't know what he saw there but it seemed to unnerve him.

My skin was itching all over with discomfort and humiliation. "Edward, I'm sorry, but I'm not ready."

"Oh." He sounded like the wind had been knocked from him. He lifted himself off of me at once. "Forgive me, that was unacceptable. You were clear when we came in. I don't know what came over me."

Edward's voice had taken on that stiff, formal quality it did when he was embarrassed.

"No, Edward. It's okay. I understand why you want to, and I wish that I…." Comforting him was a knee-jerk response, but I was becoming just as disconcerted as he was. Inside…I felt utterly inert, as though sex wasn't just something I didn't want now, but something I couldn't fathom having ever wanted.

I hadn't known it was possible to feel more alienated from myself than I already was.

Pathetically, my shoulders pulsed upward. "I don't know what's wrong with my body."

That was an understatement that contained multitudes.

Edward wrapped his arms around me and pressed a kiss to my eyebrow. "Nothing, Bella. Nothing is wrong. We just made up. Take whatever time you need."

His hug was more comforting than his words were. I leaned into him, seeking his strength. He was conscientious to a fault and I had never appreciated that quality more. My body's lack of response to him was still troubling me, but I made the decision to push it down. Now was not the time. I was emotionally exhausted and Edward was holding me. The miracle of that after the week the two of us had gone through wasn't lost on me—I would not take this moment for granted.

Placing my hand on his skin near the collar of his shirt, I concentrated and sent him a thought as appreciation. I love you.

He didn't react. I was jittery and needed to relax. It probably hadn't gone through. I made an effort to loosen the tension in my shoulders, to let go of the nervous energy in my chest, and I tried again. Still nothing.

So, I said it out loud. "I love you, Edward." I must not be focused enough.

"I love you." His voice saying those words was a balm.

Aware of how topless I happened to be at the moment, I searched for my shirt and found it hanging off the edge of the bed, barely clinging to the bedspread, in pieces.

"Sorry." Edward said it like he had spilled coffee on a favorite book or forgotten my birthday. It made me laugh for the first time in what felt like forever.

I lifted two of the mutilated scraps and raised a brow at him. "So that's what that feels like," I joked, referencing all the times I had torn his clothing off his body without a second thought.

He chuckled and unbuttoned his shirt for me. "Here. Take mine. That way you won't have to walk across the house to the closet in your bra."

This husband of mine…. He was comically gallant.

"Take it," he insisted.

So I pulled it on and buttoned it, wrapping myself in his scent. The knot in my stomach loosened.

"Thank you," I told him sincerely and kissed his lips. More relaxed, focused, and determined than I had been all night, I tried again to drop my shield for him.

Nothing.

Truly troubled now, I pulled away, feeling shame that I couldn't seem to connect with him—not my body, and not my mind. I scooted to the edge of the bed and stood.

When I reached the door, I realized that Edward had not moved.

"Are you coming?" I asked.

His eyes darted away. "I, uh, need a minute."

I wasn't sure what he meant by that until one of his hands nervously tried to block my view of his lap. Oh Jesus, he was still hard. Like, rock hard—hard enough that I would be shocked if he wasn't leaking precum.

"Oh," I mumbled awkwardly. "I'll…give you some privacy then."

I had slipped out the door and into the hall, shutting it securely behind me, before it occurred to me that I never would have done that before our fight in Port Angeles. You'd have had to kill me to make me leave a room where Edward was jerking off, yet I had acted without thought.

And…I didn't want to go back in.

My hands started to tremble and I clenched them together to stop the shaking. What was wrong with me?

Seriously—this was getting scary. Why didn't I want him? Watching Edward masturbate was one of my oldest fantasies, so entrenched it was borderline a fetish. I pictured it, tried to add detail and nuance. My body was unmoved. Unresponsive.

My breathing became haggard as my panic rose. I tensed when I heard him stand up in the room and stride toward the door.

He paused when he saw me in the hall. I don't think he expected me to be standing there.

"Is everything all right?" he asked.

"Yes."

My answer was thoroughly unconvincing and I was sure that he was going to call me on it, but he didn't. He nodded and stepped around me to walk to our closet.

Dread gripped me as I followed. He was pulling on a shirt, moving with purpose. Where was he going?

"Edward?" It was all I could manage, but I hoped it conveyed what I really meant. Don't leave me.

He came to me and cupped my face in his hands. I gripped greedy handfuls of his new shirt. He kissed me, lovingly.

"I'm okay, Bella," he lied. "We're okay," he lied again. "I just…I need to go for a run right now. I'll be back in a few hours."

"All right," I whispered, lying too. "Do what you need to do." I concentrated, strained, wanted more than anything for him to hear my thoughts, my plea. Please, please, don't leave me.

Edward dropped a kiss on my nose. "I love you, Bella." He said it like he was saying goodbye, and then he was gone.

I stood, unmoving, in that spot for an hour. When I stirred, it was to sink to the floor and curl up in a ball. He left me—it was the thing to do.

I felt dissociated from my body. Empty, separate, anesthetized—worse even than when I had sat naked and lonely on that rock. Yet, there was still more to the wrongness, the brokenness of me tonight. I couldn't share thoughts with Edward, no matter how hard I concentrated, no matter how badly I wanted it, no matter how loudly I screamed internally.

Neither my body nor my mind could feel a connection with him. I was severed from him.

All the ironies of the cruel universe rained down on me. Just days ago, I had gone to Carlisle hoping that there was something, anything, I could do to reduce my sex drive, to relieve Edward of the burden of feeding my appetite. And here I was tonight, frigid. Come to think of it, I hadn't felt sexual desire once since Port Angeles. Perhaps I had already been broken when I went to the hospital. What was it Carlisle had said? Trauma? Depression? Well, that sounded about right. He said it would take something "seismic" to change me, and that something that big may well change me forever. Permanently.

With my arms tucked close to my body, I could feel acutely how my heart wasn't moving. No beat, no pulse. I thought of the serene corpse girl in the foggy bathroom mirror.

I was worse than broken. I was dead.

—

[pasted on a page in full color, a printout of John William Waterhouse's painting titled "Psyche Opening the Golden Box"; below the image, scrawled in Bella's handwriting:]

"And by and by shee opened the boxe where she could perceive no beauty nor any thing else, save onely an infernall and deadly sleepe, which immediatly invaded all her members as soone as the boxe was uncovered, in such sort that she fell downe upon the ground, and lay there as a sleeping corps."

—

The Prince is Never Going to Come

"Bells?"

Jacob found me there on the floor sometime before sunrise.

He crouched over my body in his jeans and leather jacket, smelling like the woods. Something metallic was jangling in his right hand. "Bella, what's wrong?"

The expression of frantic concern on his face was such a familiar, exact etching from an earlier time, an earlier Bella, that it jolted me into movement.

"Nothing," I mumbled as I sat up and ran my fingers through my hair to push it away from my face. The cuffs of Edward's shirt were too long and in the way, but I didn't push them out of the way. "I was just taking a minute," I deflected.

He cocked a brow at me and called bullshit. "Really? You expect me to buy that? You look like—"

"What?" I snapped, cutting him off and daring him to continue. I should have remembered that Jake didn't care about tact.

His gaze was hard and his voice was certain—after all, better than anyone, he knew that Bella on sight. He wasn't going to let me off the hook. "You know exactly what you look like."

My jaw tightened and I rose to my feet. "Drop it, Jake." I dusted my palms on my jeans. "I'm fine, see?"

He rolled his eyes and straightened up to tower over me. "Sure, sure."

God, he was aggravating. But being irritated with him was nice—it gave me something to feel, something to focus on. It was comforting, a reminder that I wasn't literally dead.

"Why are you here?"

His right hand jangled my motorcycle keys at me. "All souped up," he said, tossing them my way.

I caught them automatically. "Oh. Thanks."

Having Jake do my regular tune ups for the bike rather than Rosalie had caused some minor tension in the Cullen household, but it didn't seem right to have any mechanic work on it but him.

"Also," he announced, leading me out of the closet and toward the kitchen, "my dad and Charlie send fish."

Now that he had drawn my attention, I could certainly smell it, and when we rounded the corner, I could see the bag he had dropped on my counter on the way in. Peering inside, I briefly took stock.

I groaned, not sure if this new haul would even fit in my already overflowing freezer. Jake's lips twitched toward a smile, like he knew what I was thinking. Nessie already had enough fish to live on nothing else for months, but Charlie didn't know he was sending food for one person rather than three and Billy couldn't correct him.

Opening my freezer drawer, I had to rearrange the contents to make the new batch fit. Jake stepped forward and helped me cram it all in.

"Thanks."

"Sure."

"You could have knocked," I grumbled.

His shrewd look was back. "I did. And then waited a good five minutes. Knocked again, nothing. Lights were on—I could hear two sets of lungs breathing and one heartbeat, but no movement." He shrugged. "I was worried."

"Oh," I said, dully. "Sorry."

Jacob opened his mouth, seemed to reconsider his words, and finally landed on, "Can I do anything?"

My lips twisted sardonically. "Like what? Kill him?"

His brows rose and I think he was actually surprised. "If that's what you want."

"No," I said quickly.

He grinned. "You sure? I could just kick his ass. Put the fear of God in him. Have the pack scent mark his fancy car." His leg raised demonstratively.

My face scrunched up in disgust. "What is wrong with you? No!"

Jake laughed and it was a deep chuckle that made the whole room feel warmer.

"Seriously, I thought you were over all that."

"I am!" he said defensively. "You were the one who went there. I didn't mean anything to do with him at all. I meant you. You need someone to talk to? Take things off your plate for a while? Blow off steam with? Shit like that."

My mouth snapped shut. Oh. All of that sounded nice actually. Except the talking.

Rather than answer directly, I held up my keys.

He nodded. "I rode yours here. Let me get mine and I'll meet you by the highway. We could probably get in a few hours before the sun becomes a problem for you."

"I'll reach out to Esme to babysit."

"Sounds good." He paused at the door and looked back at me. I got the feeling he was choosing his words carefully again. "Just so I know how bad this is going to be…did he leave?"

Blinding pain pierced through my torso out of nowhere, all the more striking for how numb I had been only moments ago. I tried not to show a reaction on my face, but I am not sure how successful I was, and few people could read me as well as Jacob.

Still, he was the last person in the world I wanted to talk to about this. Old fears of Edward leaving me for my own good had been clawing their way up out of my murky unconscious all night, but I would not speak the name of that particular boogeyman.

"Just for a run," I said with confidence I didn't feel. "He'll be back in a few hours."

The ride up the coast was nice. I didn't mind the cold rain because it struck a kind of congruence with how I was feeling on the inside. Jacob didn't say anything or expect me to talk, and I was grateful for it. We got back mid-morning when the sun began to break through the rain clouds.

As I returned to my little cottage, I moved at a brisk, eager pace—desperate to see Edward's face. But then, outside my door, I stopped. All my hope slumped and went limp, leaving me listless. I didn't sense or hear him. He wasn't back.

That was fine, I told myself. He hadn't specified any distance or time. I shouldn't make assumptions or overreact.

Entering my silent, empty home, I dripped rain water on the kitchen floor for several minutes before I could make myself move. I beat back my creeping doubts, pushed them deep down and locked them away. I decided I wouldn't fall to pieces, not yet; if he wasn't back by nightfall, all bets were off. For now, I would occupy my time.

First, I showered, and as I tossed Edward's button-down into the hamper with the rest of the outfit I had worn out for my motorcycle ride, I felt a twinge. So, when I dressed in our closet, I went to the side with Edward's clothes and grabbed another in a stormy gray color. I rolled up the sleeves a few turns and knotted it at my waist so that Alice wouldn't hassle me about looking sloppy when I went to the big house to pick up Renesmee from her schooling with Rose, but I was resolved that nothing she could say would convince me not to wear it. I knew it was a silly, flimsy gesture, but I felt better having something of his against my skin.

When I finished, it was almost noon. Edward still wasn't home and Renesmee was in lessons, so I busied myself with housework. Edward had a way of cleaning that left a space looking like a museum or show room in his wake; my style more shifted the clutter around and cleaned under it—dusting, wiping things down, vacuuming. Edward teased me that it wasn't really cleaning, but I disagreed, preferring my spaces to feel lived-in. Untidy, sure, but still sanitary.

That was one of the reasons why I cringed when I got to our bedroom. So much for sanitary. Our bedding had been sitting in a dirty jumble since the last night we had spent together. It smelled like us, like sex. The scent was both grief-inducing and stomach-churning. Normally, we changed our bedding daily (a necessity given how much sex we usually had) and our linen cupboard was stocked with several sets of the same style to make that easier, but this chore had fallen by the wayside since our fight. It wasn't all that surprising really—neither of us had come into this room. I stripped the bed and washed every last piece of linen in scalding hot water.

I had to take a minute to calm down after I loaded everything into the washing machine because Edward's scent had hit me in a way that seemed particularly strong, but I knew that must just be me processing through a distorted filter—I was too sensitive to any hint or sign of him, that's all.

When I picked up Renesmee around 2:30 p.m., I tried not to show anyone how panicked I was that Edward still wasn't back, though Alice looked worried in a way that ratcheted-up my anxiety.

I resolved to take my daughter to the beach for some bonding time—the cloudy skies were back and she was going through a phase of being really into shells. It would be a way to spend the time and keep me from just sitting at the window for God-knows-how-long waiting for him. I even wrote Edward a note before Nessie and I left, forcing some optimism that he would be home before sunset.

And then, thank heaven, he was. It shouldn't have felt like a miracle, but it did. He looked worn and morose, but he was home. I could endure anything so long as he stayed.

I watched him chat with our daughter while he made her dinner and my heart felt uncomfortably full. The anger that had felt so vital and volatile only days ago was still gone, extinguished completely, just as I had imagined the night before. Instead, the sight of him flooded me with guilt for how I had treated him—not just the snapping at him, but the coldness, the distance. Clearly, he hadn't fared any better than I had in our estrangement.

After we put Renesmee to bed, I took his hand in mine. His eyes flickered up to my face with genuine surprise that hurt my soul. I led him to the loveseat in our parlor where we used to read together before bed. Wordlessly, I retrieved my book and made to lay my head in his lap. He let me. After a few minutes, I felt his fingers in my hair. He caressed in comforting strokes and I listened to his breathing. I could tell he was paying as much attention to me as he was his book. Inside my silent torso, my flesh vibrated, making my breath uneven—whether with relief or anguish I couldn't say.

I wanted to clutch at him, claw him open, crawl inside and burrow deep where breaking my grip would be an impossible task. Then, he'd never be able to leave me again. Instead, my fingers trembled as they traced the denim seam near my face as it curved with his knee.

The night stretched and lengthened because I willed it, savoring each second as it came. Edward was here with me. He came home to me. If I could have made the night last forever, I would have.

In the morning, I sat in leggings and one of his cable-knit sweaters on an outdoor wicker chair, watching him pick fresh strawberries with Renesmee in our garden. She smashed a ripe one into his cheek and her peals of laughter rang out in morning mist. He growled at her playfully, scooped her flailing body up and swung her around. My throat felt tight as I watched them play. It struck me that I had been given a fresh start, a second chance. I wouldn't waste it.

It had been too long since I had put Edward first—clearly, given how burdened he had felt by my sexuality. Over the next several days, I stopped every time I got discouraged or felt unsure and asked myself if there was something kind I could do for him. I bought fresh bouquets of freesia and lavender and kept them in vases around the cottage because I knew they were his favorite scent. I encouraged him to put on records in the evening and asked him what I hoped were thoughtful questions about the artists and compositions. I tidied my side of the closet and made a point of putting my shoes away every day rather than leaving them scattered across the floor for him to trip over.

I wasn't sure how much of an impact any of it made. He declined to go hunting with me when I offered, and his eyes grew sunken and dark. He shook his head when I brought up going for a drive together in his Vanquish. He got up and left the room when I suggested he have a night out with his brothers.

It was all going wrong. He was pulling away. He joined me on the loveseat for our nightly reading date, but didn't otherwise want to spend time with me. Only Renesmee seemed able to make him smile. By the middle of the second week, an idea chilled through me—maybe I wasn't the only one who had anger to work through? Maybe he was mad at me…?

If he was, I couldn't exactly blame him. I hadn't been the best wife to him.

I resolved to give him space, let him come to me when he was ready, and stopped constantly asking to spend time with him.

One morning, while tidying my writing desk, I found my once-cherished list of "Things Edward Likes in Bed." I sank into the chair, blinked at the lines on the page, and just…hurt from the inside out.

I had been so proud of myself, had grown so confident. God, I'd been a fool.

As my eyes roamed over the bullet points and my asides, I wish it could have been clean-cut—as in, that the list still rang true, or that it all felt misconstrued. But of course, nothing could be that easy. Some of it, deep down, I was still rock-solidly sure of…but so much of it left me in doubt.

I picked up a red, felt-tipped pen and began slashing at the list, crossing things out, making new notes as I wracked my brain and tried to listen to my gut.

Things Edward Likes In Bed:

- hearing me babble about how much I love him (the more nonsensical the better) Probably real—Edward loves it when you gush about your feelings for him outside of the bedroom, so why wouldn't he feel the same in the thick of it?
- the noises I make when I come Also probably real—he loves making you happy
- kissing ["during coitus" crossed out], with or without tongue Duh, Bella. He likes kissing—it has nothing to do with sex
- ["kissing my neck (maybe even more than my mouth—but don't draw attention to how much he does it, or he gets weird)" crossed out] Even if that were true, you will never fucking bring it up again!
- ["see-through nightgowns (for best results: no underwear)" crossed out] Of course this worked! What a cheap shot. It wasn't about him—it was about overriding his better judgment. What was it Alice said that one time? Blue? He likes you in blue
- ["me naked in a prostrate position—on my back, legs open, hands above my head, like I'm helpless" crossed out] No, you like this
- me on top, with him sitting or lying down, but only when I am facing him (I enjoy being fucked from behind just as much, but he seems to strongly prefer positions where his lips can reach mine easily) If there is anything he does like, it's making love—not fucking
- playing with my nipples? (inconclusive; does he like doing this for his own enjoyment, or does he just like how much I like it?)

My hand moved to cross that one out as more of me projecting, but stopped. I thought of when we cuddled post-coitus, the way he touched and kissed my breasts for hours without ever getting tired or bored. I smiled faintly. Yes, that one could stay.

- playing with my nipples["? (inconclusive; does he like doing this for his own enjoyment, or does he just like how much I like it?)" crossed out] True

Biting my lip, I stared at the next item.

- my "tight, hot pussy" (for best results, i.e. getting him to actually groan/growl the words "tight, hot pussy": clench him when he's doing that slow, deep thrusting thing he does)

I couldn't see my way around anything but a True there. I hadn't put those words into his mouth, and the first time he had grunted them through clenched teeth they had shocked me.

- the scent of my arousal True. Why else would he bring it up?
- car sex, especially after a fast drive True—this is the one kind of sex he has initiated more than you

This was pointless and confusing. I felt unsteady, unmoored. I didn't think this was getting me anywhere. On the one hand, I would think back to the moments that had inspired me to write down each of these line items. His passion had shone through as something genuine and pure. And on the other, I would remember the unbridled disgust and fatigue as he shouted how much he didn't enjoy sex with me. It was an irreconcilable contradiction. Both could not be true simultaneously.

So it must be conditional. There were things he enjoyed and things he did not. Some of our sex was real, and loving, and mutual…and some of it was a chore he performed because he had to. He had promised to love me and honor me at the marriage altar and in his all-or-nothing brain, apparently that meant never telling me no in the bedroom.

The next item exemplified that tension perfectly.

- my sexual fantasies, apparently—especially details about me touching myself while thinking of him Maybe sometimes, but other times no…obviously, fulfilling many of them felt like an obligation to him

But it was the last thing on the list that gave me something of a lightbulb moment.

- fellatio (in spite of the naughtiness, or because of it?)

Maybe…for him, the perception of naughtiness was too sincere to merely be sexy. Maybe he actually felt bad or dirty afterward. I liked having my boundaries in bed pushed and tested, but maybe for Edward that wasn't the case. If so, enjoying the forbidden act once he started wouldn't make him feel better—it would make it all worse.

Had I been liberating him, or just making him feel bad about himself?

What I just put up with….

Yeah, I knew the answer. What an ugly thing I had done to my husband.

I ripped the list from the notebook and wadded it into a ball. Rising, I strode to the kitchen stove, turned on the gas burner and dropped the list into the flame.

—

[clipped from a magazine printing of the short story and glued to the page, this excerpt of "The Well" by W. W. Jacobs:]

She stooped for a stone and dropped it down.

"Fancy being where that is now," she said, peering into the blackness; "fancy going round and round like a mouse in a pail, clutching at the slimy sides, with the water filling your mouth, and looking up to the little patch of sky above."

—

And Maybe Sleeping Beauty's Dead

After that, I may have spiraled a bit. It was as though I was back in those awful weeks of pregnancy where no good or reparative outcomes seemed possible. The hole I had dug myself was too deep, the damage too severe. It wasn't just that sex seemed ruined for both of us. I tried my best to consider his emotions first, to be loving and happy for him, but it was impossible not to be discouraged by his withdrawal. He retreated into himself, his eyes far off even when we were talking. He disappeared for hours at a time, going God knew where, and I was lonely.

There were no options: I couldn't leave, I couldn't die, and I couldn't fix it. I was stuck and this was my life now. I admit it was a corrosive mindset to get myself into. Despair, plain and simple. In retrospect, I can see that it was defeatist and catastrophizing, but it had also felt so true at the time.

Alice began as my lifeline, someone to spend time with—even if it was in department stores. But after a couple of weeks, something changed. She turned stiff, then frosty. And then, one night, she exploded on me.

She was painting my toenails, chattering about the pluses and minuses of sequin tops, and then she stiffened, drew back from me and gritted her teeth. "You can't leave him, Bella. Stop thinking about it."

I blinked. She looked so fierce. There was a dangerous glint in her eyes that I had never before seen directed at me.

To be honest, I was nothing short of horrified. Complacent in the knowledge that my thoughts were mine alone, secret from the world and Edward, I was used to letting my imagination run wherever it wanted. Lately, I had been thinking longingly of how easy my life had been with my mother before coming to Forks, how nice it would be to have homework to worry about and an erratic checkbook to balance rather than…all of this. How easily I had slept in Phoenix. My life then had been so simple emotionally.

I had only been thinking wistfully. Sure I looked up the cost of a plane ticket once, but it was with full knowledge that running home to my mother was out of the question—for a whole host of reasons. I couldn't actually do it, and I didn't actually want to. Even for a second.

Or so I thought. If Alice had seen it, there must have been a possible future, however unlikely, that I would go through with it. That seemed absurd to me on its face. Interacting with my mother in person would expose her to danger in a way that would be unconscionable. I had a young daughter who needed me. And Edward…no, I couldn't hurt him or be apart from him.

"I'm not!" I denied. "I wouldn't."

"Then stop," she snapped. "You promised him—remember the day with the white dress? You can't leave the first time things get hard."

My eyes narrowed. "You realize you're getting mad at me for thought crimes, right? Thinking about something and actually doing it are very different things."

She screwed the cap on the bottle of polish so tightly we both heard the glass crack. She glowered like it was my fault. "So you are thinking about it?"

"About how nice it would be to curl up in my old bed and be a kid again? Sure. About divorcing Edward? God no. Of course not."

"Well, too bad," Alice said with an impatient cast to her lips. "You're not a kid. You're an adult, so act like it—you made a mess: clean it up."

I rose from the fluffy cushion where I had been seated in her elaborate closet, fire blazing in my eyes. The fact that this was coming from her, of all people, was enraging. "It's none of your business, Alice. If you don't like how things turned out, maybe you should stop giving advice people didn't ask for."

Her tiny face scrunched. "What?"

"You told me to!" I burst out. "You said I should tell him everything! That couples needed to do that in long-term sexual relationships. Well, I did. And look where we are now!"

Her eyes flared wide, then turned steely. "I also said that you should trust your instincts about how he would react to things and use your best judgment. What happened there?"

Her words hit me hard and all the fight went out of me. "You're right," I whispered. "I ruined my marriage, broke Edward's heart and mine. Happy?"

And then I walked out—of her closet and her bedroom, not even pausing to pick up my shoes. My bare feet padded down the hall until I realized I was walking nowhere and stopped.

At the end of the hall, I could see the door to Edward's old room, taunting me. Frozen in indecision, a shiver of lonely grief crawled through me.

"Bella?"

It was Rosalie, poking her head out her bedroom door, probably confused as to why I had just stopped there. Her mouth opened to speak further, but she stopped. Her eyes were evaluating me. I'm not sure what she found or how she interpreted it, but the unexpected result was that she ushered me into her room.

On a soft sofa in front of a giant television, Rose had built a nest of throw blankets and pillows. There was a soft glow of light from the paused television, and somehow I ended up covered in one of those blankets with my head on Rosalie's shoulder watching One Tree Hill.

Slowly I was drawn out of my blankness and numbness into the escapism of what was going on in the show. It was a relief to shut my own emotions off, like a weight was lifted from my chest.

Three episodes in, Emmett turned up, bursting into the room with all of his boisterousness. He tried to cajole Rose into coming out on a hunt with him, but her jaw set stubbornly.

"This is what I'm doing."

He tried a puppy dog plea. "But I wanted to spend time with you."

It was the type of display I never would have been able to resist from Edward, but Rosalie was unfazed. "Then sit." Her eyes motioned to the free spot beside her.

Emmett grumbled, but sat. For about twenty minutes, he complained about Rose's choice of show until she snapped at him, but during the third episode the nature of his comments shifted. Suddenly, instead of broad hints about all the sports we could be watching, it was, "Wait—what sex tape?" and "Who the hell is Keith and why is he dead?"

I didn't know the answers to those questions either, but I guess I was less invested than he was becoming.

Unlike his complaining, Rose answered these questions patiently, but they eventually got so numerous that she got up and switched the DVDs. "Here," she said. "We'll start from the beginning."

Emmett rolled his eyes and tried to say that was unnecessary, but I could see that he was on the edge of his seat.

This ended up being a nice way to spend the day, and Rose invited me back to continue the following day, and the one after. I was grateful. Emmett was so easy to be around and I appreciated how Rose didn't expect me to talk. She wasn't even mad that the wet nail polish on my toes had gotten on one of her throw blankets. It gave me something relatively mindless to do for a few hours every day.

Edward and I still met for reading dates at night, but I didn't know how he was spending much of his time during the day and I didn't ask. I don't know whether he noticed that I was wearing his clothes almost every day or not, but he didn't comment on it. He did let me curl up to him on our loveseat from 10 p.m. to 10 a.m. and, for now, that had to be enough.

As the weeks since our date in Port Angeles dragged on, I wasn't sure whether it was a blessing or a bad sign that my body still wasn't back to normal. It was unnerving for my desires to remain unmoved in his arms, and maybe it would have been easier to feel like myself if, just once, I could have felt a twinge of lust.

At any rate, I didn't think Edward would mind. He had originally conceptualized our relationship as permanently chaste. He gave my safety as the reason, but I had long come to believe that a contributing factor was that sex just hadn't been much of a drive or priority for him. Our marriage had brought his sexuality out into the open more, made it visible for me and himself in ways that it never had before, but my lusts had still dwarfed his. Besides, discovering his sexuality had been an unpleasant, even traumatic experience for him it seemed. He would probably be relieved if the remainder of our eternal marriage was sexless.

Maybe he would feel better if I told him I didn't want sex anymore? Maybe he would talk to me again.

That's where my thoughts were at least, until he started to make tentative advances. First, he just asked one night if I wanted to leave our books and go to our bedroom. Reflexive panic seized me and I shook my head. He appeared unconcerned and merely went back to his book.

Three nights later, he kissed my wrist. My breath caught because it was so unexpected. His sweet soft kisses traveled up to the crook of my elbow. It was, well, a move. One of my old favorites, with a sterling success rate. Yet, while I was thrilled he was touching me, while the brush of his lips was lovely and comforting, my desires remained unmoved.

Was this an olive branch? Was he trying to make me feel better or woo me back the best way he knew how? Or was this an actual expression of something he wanted? I wasn't sure what to say.

In the end, it wound up not mattering. He could see in my eyes that I was not responding the way I used to. So, he pressed his lips once to the back of my hand, gave me a sad smile, and went back to his book.

But I couldn't read. My chest hurt. I missed him and I hated how far away he felt even though we were sitting side by side.

I felt even worse the following day when I decided to catch up on some cleaning. When I opened our bedroom door to run a vacuum over the carpet, his scent smacked me across the face. Our bedroom, our bed, reeked of him. Though neatly arranged, on the duvet there was a clear and distinct indentation of his body.

I guess that answered where he had been disappearing off to.

It was disquieting to discover his hideaway had been here in our own home. And this room of all rooms…we only ever did one thing in here.

Had he chosen the room because it was private and I was unlikely to disturb him? Or, did he miss…? I felt a glimmer of hope that he did. After all, there were millions of places he could go if all he wanted was to be alone. But he chose here. My dead heart fluttered, but elation was followed by guilt. If he did want sex, and I wasn't receptive…? I knew exactly how bad that felt, and I would never want such an experience for him.

To be honest, if he had been wanting me and missing me sexually, the implications…I couldn't process them all in one sitting. They threw into question everything I had been thinking since our fight. What if I had been wrong about everything?

No, I remembered the genuine disgust on his face, there was no way it was everything—but some of it, certainly.

I waited for him on tenterhooks.

An hour later when I heard him return home, I tensed. Considering the evidence, I was expecting that he might come here first, but it still sent a thrill through me when he did. His eyes widened when he saw me, darting to the bed, to the record player, and back to me.

I tried to put him at ease with a smile and an open tone. "We should talk."

He still looked like he wanted to back out of the room and run. "We don't have to, Bella. I just come in here to listen to music sometimes. It doesn't mean anything."

His vehemence unnerved me—he was too defensive, as though he had been doing something wrong. I couldn't let him leave. "Please. There's something that I need to say."

Edward sighed in surrender and fully entered the room. I took his hand and pulled him to sit beside me.

In the time I had been stewing in my thoughts, I had already decided how I would begin. I would be honest—and I would reassure him that if I had hurt him, if he had felt rejected, none of that was on purpose. "I've been meaning to explain something, because I don't want you to get the wrong idea." I swallowed. "The morning after we fought, I was feeling horrible and ashamed of my body and…how much it wants."

Edward stiffened. I gripped his hand tighter.

"I asked Carlisle if there was any way I could make myself want less, but he said no. I hadn't really thought there was, but it was worth a try—if it would make us more compatible, you know. But then, after we made up and you started kissing me…it was the weirdest thing. It's not that I didn't feel anything. I just didn't feel what I usually feel." I couldn't read his face, but I pushed through anyway. "You know, horny. I wanted to, but it wasn't there. But I thought it would come back. I keep thinking, tomorrow. Tomorrow I will want to have sex again. And then tomorrow comes, and I still don't."

I faltered at telling him my suspicions that perhaps a fundamental shift had happened inside of me, one that had altered my sex drive permanently. I wasn't ready to voice those fears out loud, and I was still clinging to futile hope that they were erroneous.

Edward kissed my scalp. Of course he comforted me. "It's all right, Bella. We have forever, so there's no rush." I gave myself up to him, allowing him to pull me into his arms. God, it felt nice.

"I just didn't want you to think I was punishing you. That I was dragging this on out of spite or to prove some kind of point," I explained softly.

"I know you better than that, Bella," he reassured me, then pressed a tender kiss to my lips. "I'm sorry you're hurting."

He was so wonderful, it felt like a knife twisting. My emotions whipped and whirled, and suddenly it seemed like the cruelest thing in the world that I didn't, couldn't want him. Yet, I had to know—for certain—was he grieving our dead sexlife too?

It took all my courage to ask, "Do you miss it? Being with me that way? Is that why you come here?"

He answered without hesitation. "Yes."

The guilt that answer inflicted was a gut-punch, but I was shocked at the tidal wave of relief that overwhelmed it. He wanted me, sexually. Still. Even after everything, he wanted me and I could have cried.

"Thank you," I whispered.

"Why?"

"I was so scared that you didn't. That you were okay with the way things are now."

He held me tighter.

"Edward?"

"Yes?"

"I miss it, too."

—

[taking up an entire page of the journal, transcribed in blue ink in Bella's handwriting:]

The Voice
by Thomas Hardy

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!

Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?

Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.

[then, beneath the poem:]

Found a book open to this poem in the parlor of our cottage. Was Edward reading this? The pages smell like him. Was he thinking of me as he did? It would be silly to hang hopes on this, only for it to have nothing to do with me, but I can't ask. I need to believe, because…I miss him, too.

—

Lost and Found in the Woods

Time technically moved forward, but for me it seemed every day was the same as the one before. Edward and I were affectionate, but the distance between us was palpable. Alice and I weren't speaking. I continued watching One Tree Hill with Rose and Emmett, restored a Victorian sofa with Esme, and went on motorcycle rides with Jake.

The images my daughter started sharing with me were sad and tinged with fear. She didn't know what was wrong, but had picked up on how unhappy Edward and I were. The mood amongst the Cullens turned dark with concern. Alice almost never left her room anymore, and according to Jasper, barely got out of bed. I started avoiding the big house whenever possible because I felt so guilty. Here this lovely family had welcomed me as one of their own, and yet it was beginning to seem as though my initiation had been a mistake. I had proved as disruptive to their lives and happy family dynamics after my transformation as I had before.

Though I had never been much of an outdoor person, I found solace on long hikes through the rainy woods. The solitude was liberating. If I ran into anyone out there, it was members of the Pack, not fellow Cullens. Spending an afternoon cliff-jumping with Embry and Quil was a welcome distraction, and discussions about patrol routes with Sam were more interesting than they had any right to be. It was during one such talk that we passed through the place where he had found me a few years ago, curled up on a bed of dirt and leaves, after Edward left me.

"Right there—under that tree. Not sure how you got all the way up here. There's no path and the growth would have been waist high on you in places. Still," he shrugged, "there you were."

Indeed.

That became my new favorite spot. Maybe favorite is the wrong word. My spot of habit—there, that's better. I'm not sure why other than it seemed fitting, or perhaps it made me feel close to human Bella. I was hopelessly lost in the search for myself these days, feeling like the human girl I used to be was someone I used to know in a past life, and the vampire Bella I had become had fractured and split away from whatever was left. I felt more like a hollow shell than a proper being. When I came to this wet, green place where human Bella had collapsed in grief, it was strangely anchoring. I remembered her more clearly. She haunted the pocket of grass with me.

The day everything changed, I called Edward's family together and made an impassioned plea, but I hadn't really expected much to come of it as far as our relationship. Really, I had just been hoping they would be able to help him. I couldn't bring him out of the spiral, but maybe they could.

Thank God for Emmett. He got Edward cleaned up and took him for a hunt. I hadn't expected that afterward Edward would come looking for me. But he did.

I was sitting under the tree where human Bella had curled up, cradled by giant, curved roots, watching the rain pelt leaves around me, when I heard Edward's phone ding in the mist.

"Edward?" I called out, startled.

A beat, then I heard hurried footsteps sloshing through the mud and the slick grass. Then, he emerged from between the trees, out of the watercolor landscape of green and gray. He looked tired and wet, but well-fed for the first time in weeks. His eyes were bright, alert, and eager. Like he was hungry for the sight of me.

A warm glow lit in my chest.

"Hi," he murmured.

He looked so much better than he had this morning that I felt light with relief. "Hi. I thought I recognized that ring-tone."

"Emmett and I went hunting."

"I see that. I'm glad."

Hands in his pockets, he took in our surroundings. "Am I intruding?"

I shook my head immediately and scooted to make room for him. Please stay. Don't leave me again.

Of course, he didn't hear my thoughts even though they rang loudly in my head. I was still broken, after all. I considered saying them out loud, but I didn't know for sure whether or not we were alone.

"Is Emmett around?" I probed after he sat beside me, close enough that our thighs were touching.

"No, he went home."

Then Edward lifted one of my hands into his and proceeded to take my breath away. He lavished attention on my skin the way he used to in the earliest days of our relationship, beginning the night after we went to the meadow for the first time. Lingering, delicate caresses that traced their way in circles, round and around—sending my blood into a frenzy of lust but never escalating on his end. His fingertips trailed lovingly over and between my knuckles, the grooves and lines that crossed my palm. His attention was rapt.

It was as though he was being careful with me again. Treating me as fragile and human. He pressed his lips to the scar on the heel of my hand, and I melted.

Whatever I had been gearing up to say was lost in the flood of love that cascaded through me.

I blurted, "Edward, I miss you. I miss us."

He smiled at me sadly. "I miss you, too."

There was so much sincerity in his words, his expression, that resolve hardened in me. My horniness was still conspicuously absent, my body still dead, but a stronger need, one rooted in my heartbreak was looming large inside me. I didn't have much interest in the pleasure of sex at the moment, but the comfort of sex was something else entirely. I was desperate to feel that level of extreme intimacy with my husband once more. So, I snapped. I didn't care anymore if my body didn't want sex. My heart needed it.

"I want to try," I announced.

His brows drew together in confusion. "Try?"

I swallowed. "To have sex."

His lips parted and I could see the concern in his eyes. "Are you ready for that?"

That's the real question, isn't it? I thought, bitterly.

My voice was shaky when I tried to answer. "I don't know. I still don't feel h—like myself. But I want to try anyway."

There was a spark in his eyes that surprised me, sent my venom pulsing in my limbs. The sounds of the rain and wind faded as I lost awareness of everything in the world but him. He…he looked…. God, was he horny?

"I'll go slow." He promised haltingly. "I'll be gentle."

There was a tension in his grip around my wrist that made me think that gentle might be hard for him.

But that was crazy. This was Edward—my controlled Edward. It took a lot to bring out the animal in him, and I hadn't done anything!

His disgust and exhaustion flashed through my mind again like an intrusive thought. What I just put up with…. I went from soaring emotionally, to recoiling.

My voice trembled, yet I pushed forward. I needed to know. "But, do you want to?"

"Have sex with you?"

His blunt frankness jolted me, but I nodded. "I need to know that you want to. That you're not just…."

His lips took on a grim cast. His hand lifted mine and dropped into his lap.

I gasped. Under his cold, wet jeans, he was hard. Hard like marble, like ice. Like he used to feel to human Bella. He groaned at my touch and his grip tightening around my wrist. His hips pulsed upward, infinitesimally humping my hand.

"Bella," he rasped through gritted teeth, "I am going out of my mind from how badly I want you. It's all I can think about."

It was as though the heavens had opened up and he had called down a lightning bolt to hit me specifically. Electric mania overloaded all the nerves under my skin. He seized me onto his lap and locked me into the circle of his arms.

"Bella," his voice was gravelly as he confessed, "I'm such a mess."

Fevered, animalistic kisses attacked my neck. Rough hands grasped and greedily groped my body. He squeezed my throat, my breasts—clawed my shoulders and my nape. His erection pressed into my ass from below, rocking into me like he couldn't help himself.

"Don't misunderstand me." His labored breath puffed against my ear. "I respect that you weren't ready. I would wait forever if you asked me to, but I don't want you to worry that it would be easy for me, because it wouldn't be. And I know that you weren't trying to teach me a lesson, but God did I learn one. I need sex, Bella. I need it with you, all the time. I go to pieces without it. Right now, I feel like I could keep you in our bed for a week straight and still not be satisfied."

He was some kind of Dr. Frankenstein, calling down the lightning on me again and again. I shivered and shook…and came back from the dead.

"I miss your mouth on my body," he growled, "and the way your hand touches my cock like it's something precious. I miss you tearing my clothes off and having your way with me on the kitchen floor. The way you blow me in my car. I miss the feel of your hard nipples on my tongue. The way your hands clench my skin every time I enter you. Your moans and screams. The way you babble how much you love me whenever I'm inside you, and beg me to stay after we're done. I miss your pussy, the way it tastes and the way it pulses against my tongue. The way it stretches open for me and grips me like a greedy fist every time I have to pull back to thrust again. I miss the way it feels to fuck you when you are already full of my seed. God Bella, I miss your pussy so damn much."

Holy Jesus, the pictures he was painting. These coarse, crude words were rushing out of him like a dam had burst. This wasn't a performance, something to make me feel better—this was too vulgar to be anything but sincere. Edward would never talk this way if he was even remotely in control of himself.

I felt my nipples tighten in my wet bra. I felt hot need pool between my legs. In a breathless whoosh, all the pieces of me snapped back together. Everything I felt for him that I'd come to fear was lost forever was right here, back in its proper place. In that moment, in his arms, I became whole and healed.

I could have sobbed with joy. I was myself again.

And I wanted him. I wanted him to make love to me right here in the grass and mud as much as I had ever wanted it.

Edward echoed my need. "Bella, I want to make love to you, right here. I want to get both of us out of these wet clothes and watch the raindrops run down your breasts. I'll eat your pussy, however long it takes until you're ready for me, and then I will make love to you so good. I'll make you come over and over. I'll cherish you for hours."

Oh, goddamn that sounded heavenly.

Next…he deliberately, with pressure and intent that sent a thrill through my belly, scraped his teeth against my neck.

"And then, Bella, I want to bite you. Mark you as forever mine."

He settled his teeth into place, like my throat was his meal, and pressed down. Hard. The only reason I know he didn't break the skin was that no pain followed. My nails dug into his arms, clutching him close as my poor, empty pussy clamped down desperately on nothing and my clitoris went into seizures of ecstasy.

For a second I thought I was coming, it felt so good. And that was wild because as hair-trigger-activated as my orgasms could be when Edward was the one administering them, I still had never reached climax spontaneously, without so much as the barest touch between my legs. But it couldn't have been that, not exactly. An orgasm would have given some release, even just a little—this pushed my lust higher, sharper than it had ever been.

I could exist like this forever, in Edward's arms with his teeth pressing into my neck…if not for the alarm bells that killed my buzz when his words registered.

He was offering me a Mating Bite as an olive branch, as a component of make-up sex, and…no.

I pushed at his shoulders, though my limbs felt weak from trembling. "Whoa, okay. Fern!" I squirmed on his lap, trying to find an opening to wriggle away. "Fern!"

Edward snapped back and released me at once. I crawled away and jumped to my feet. The next thing I knew, I was pacing, babbling our safe word over and over. "Jesus, Edward! What the hell?"

He was wide-eyed, shocked at his own behavior. "I…I thought…."

"You can't one-eighty on something that big without talking it through with me before trying it," I snapped. It terrified me that I had almost let him do this, that I had wanted to, when I had only just gotten my glimmer of hope of getting him back. "For God's sake, you almost gave me a heart attack!" I drew up short when I took in his expression, his body language. "Edward? Are you okay?"

I realized what I was saying, how I was saying it, and how it all might come across to him. I was horrified.

There was something about his posture, the way he curled in on himself—the shame, the self-loathing, the hurt in his eyes—that struck me as familiar. For a split second, I was confused because I knew I had never seen him like this, but then realization dawned. He looked like me—the way I had looked in Port Angeles after he had shouted those ugly things at me.

God, what had I done?

I hurried forward and fell to my knees. He let me take his hands in mine and I floundered for words, trying to explain why I had rejected his offer. "Look, it's sweet that you reconsidered and you want to do that for me, but the one thing we agreed on last time we talked about this is that it's a big deal. We should talk about it, a lot, before we do anything. And if we do end up going ahead and exchanging bites, it definitely won't be here. Just…no. Never."

Edward blinked and surveyed the scene around us. "What's wrong with here?"

Oh, damn. That's right—he didn't know. How could he? "Edward, this is where Sam Uley found me, curled up on the ground and catatonic, the night you broke up with me."

His lips parted in horror.

"Exercising the bad juju with some sex is one thing, but I'd rather not have my vampire marriage here," I explained gently.

"We should go," Edward said abruptly.

"We should?"

He withdrew from me. "Yes."

Fresh despair choked at me. How could our tiny flame of hope have burned out already? I hated seeing him in pain.

"Edward," I said with all my love, "when I used the safe word, that wasn't a rejection."

His expression changed, and it threw me, because it was clear that wasn't where his thoughts had been at all. It gave me pause because it indicated that perhaps I had been misunderstanding him.

"I know," he reassured. "It's not that—it was me. I went over the line, like you said. I should have talked it over with you first." He paused. "And maybe it was different than I thought it would be. I didn't know it would feel like that, to put my teeth on your neck and press down." He broke eye-contact and pulled away. "I can't talk about this right now."

"O-okay," I stammered. "We don't have to."

He rose to his feet, brushed his hands on his jeans, and eyed his still-rampant erection with unbridled revulsion. "Please excuse me for a moment."

Edward didn't wait for me to respond. He walked past me and stalked into the woods. A few seconds later, faintly, I heard his zipper lower. Then a grunt that was half-disgust and half-sob. It made my heart hurt.

I rose to my feet, my head whirring with thoughts. A possibility was occurring to me, one I had never considered before, so it was taking a second to come together.

If…if Edward lusted after me the way he said he did in that outburst of how much he had missed sex, and he had certainly seemed sincere, but he also felt so repulsed by his own bodily desires as to do…what he was doing…well, what if Edward's aversions to sex were directed inward more than outward? What if those hangups about blow jobs and masturbation were just the tip of the iceberg?

Up till that moment, I had thought the bulk of Edward's judgmental distaste toward my fantasies and insatiable appetite had been directed at me, and I still think sometimes it is, but what if the lion's share of it was shame and self-hatred? It wasn't that Edward thought less of me for wanting rough sex, so much as he thought less of himself for wanting it, too?

The evidence lined up. I am not sure if I'd simply done so much introspection lately that I was able to get out of my own way, put aside anxiety that I was lacking or unworthy, and let the moment of clarity come to me.

When he emerged from the forest, hands in jacket pockets and shoulders slumped, I knew I was right. My sexuality wasn't the problem, or at least, not the main one. His was—or rather, the way he felt about his was. He was suffering.

I made a promise to myself, then and there, that I would find a way to help him.

---

Author's Note: Ending on a more hopeful note this time. Things are starting to turn around. Thank you for your patience waiting for this chapter and your endurance in getting this far. This is easily the longest chapter so far—not just for this project or Ferns, but of anything I have written ever. I officially passed my 1 year mark of writing for the Twilight fandom this last week, and I want to thank all of you for making that year so rewarding and fun. Cheers!

Sorry for the weird formatting when Bella was revising her list. I didn't realize until I was going to post that FFN doesn't allow strikethrough text. I hope it didn't end up being too confusing.

Regarding Bella's journal - first, the proverb, "En amour, il y a toujours celui qui donne les baisers et celui qui tend la joue," translates to English as, "In love, there is always the one who gives the kisses and the one who extends the cheek." The two most common interpretations of this are 1) there is always one who gives and one who takes, or 2) there is always one who wants/loves more than the other. There is some uncertainty over the authenticity of this proverb and whether or not its origins are actually French, or if this was merely something the English said the French say until some of them actually started saying it.

Much is made of the parallels between Bella and Edward's story and that of Persephone and Hades, but I think there are also some fun resonances with the story of Cupid and Psyche, so I played with that here. The painting referenced can be viewed by searching "Psyche Opening the Golden Box" by John William Waterhouse. It depicts the moment when Psyche peers inside a box she has been told not to open and she falls into a death-like trance. I also had Bella include that part of the story as written by the Roman writer Apuleius in his manuscript, The Golden Ass. This quote is from the first translation into English, completed by William Adlington in 1566. That is why the spelling…is the way it is. The story has a happy ending, though—Psyche's husband Cupid is able to awaken her, like Sleeping Beauty.

Speaking of which, the quote, "The prince is never going to come. Everyone knows that; and maybe sleeping beauty's dead," is from The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice. I split it up and used it for two of my entry headings this chapter. RIP, Anne. Love you, always.

As for the Jane Eyre quote, the excerpt from the short story "The Well" by W. W. Jacobs, and the melancholic love poem by Thomas Hardy, call them Bella's version of the breakup album. Edward wallowed in music; I thought Bella might turn to her bookshelf.

If you would like updates and extras on my stories, I have now created a Facebook page for just that (link in bio). Currently, I am posting progress updates on Springtime Dreams and extras about Bella's research/reading list for her journal. There will also be teasers cropping up about my next big Twific project. If that appeals to you, come join :)