A/N: Read back previous chap to get into it. I thank you all for reading and reviewing. I love your reactions. New chaps from here on out.

Previously...

"Bella!"

Edward doesn't look back at the shout. His focus is ahead. This girl is in his hands, and it's his responsibility now, no one else's.

He grunts. He hooks an arm, faces her to the sky, and pulls her from her chest. One, two, three strokes through the water and he's not even close to shore. He fights, rips through the bubbling surface that blinds him.

One loud grunt, one heaving lift, and the shore is beneath them both. He begins to find her breath.

"Come on," he says to her. Her ribs cave with his weight, her cheeks bulge with his air. Blue lips are frozen shut, and so are her amber eyes.

"Bella," says the boy. He runs up and lands on his knees.

Edward is in a trance. Every maneuver is precise. He jerks a hand to stop the boy's advance. Wait it seems to say. He dives in for another round; ribs, lips, and a "Come on, girl. Come on."

And he wonders why in the world a child who has everything she needs would need to do this to herself. He kneels above her and waits. "Breathe," he murmurs.

At his command, she does.

Bella opens her eyes and sputters. The first person she sees is precisely the one she's been looking for.

Jameson melts over her in an embrace as the stranger pulls away. He tugs Bella over his lap as they both watch Edward rush away, head down, sopping wet, fists tight, and desperate to make it out of sight.

…

Chapter 22 - Her Solace

"Where have you been?" She's fire. Burning. Her lips pale; eyes are raging. "I walked and walked, and you weren't here!" she shouts.

Edward is silent. His brows furrowed. He shakes his head confused. He watches her crumble before him. He picked up all his things, one by one after scooping her dead out of the lake. Then he rushed back to his tent and re-lived every moment. Adrenaline in his muscles remained for hours, days.

He worried.

He fret.

What if the boy followed him?

Now this problem. Two days have passed since he ran from the shore, and when dawn broke, it brought her here. Like a ghost, like the Lady in the Woods from those winter nights, she stood by the boulders and smoldered.

"Where did you go?" she shouts some more. Her fists claw at the air. "I needed you. I … couldn't find you."

"I'm here," he pushes through his lips.

"You were gone! I couldn't remember. Every day, all summer, I looked for you. I walked for hours to look for you. You left me!"

"I've been right here!" he shouts. It is loud. It echoes far and beyond the trees.

He breaks her hysterics. Veins protrude from his neck as she watches his anger. Her breath catches, and now she's crying. She grips the sweater around her heart, and she's sure it'll give in any second.

"I tried," she stammers. "And I couldn't remember." Her hands fall at her sides. Her chin trembles. "My mother died … and you know who I wanted to tell first? You. Of course, you. I was so sure you'd know exactly what to say to make it feel okay." She shakes her head. "It's been so long I … I didn't know how to find you again." She waves her arms around the camp.

He knows. Shrubs change, they grow. The woods look different after a time. It's been two years. He didn't mean to count, but he did anyway. Over twenty-four whole months without her here.

He's wrong. She's not a child. Like shrubs, she's changed, too. Her cheeks aren't as round or soft. Her hair, a different shade, frames her darkened, aged eyes that have seen hurt. Waves of locks touch stronger shoulders. The curve of her hips defined as she comes closer.

Then closer.

Her head leans against his chest. Edward's lips can almost rest just above her head; she tucks perfectly into him. Her scent like nothing in these woods. He feels her arms curl around him. His remain frozen on either side of him.

It feels like an eternity, like his pulse spikes and he's underwater trying to get to her again. His heart is a drum, like the moment he turns a lock on a house and runs.

Bella is desperate inside. Her grip tightens, and she curls her toes to reach up. One kiss on his neck. The second presses over the speckles of his chin.

His eyes seal shut. "I don't make anything okay. I don't make … anything." He points. He's angry. How could she put that burden on him? She was passing by. That's all this was. Then, she was gone, and he accepted that.

She stands back, letting go. She sniffs up her cries. More comes flowing down. She was living in a fantasy. This image in her head. His calm nature was the perfect formula for her desperation. But he didn't exist. He wasn't there. Jen, Lauren, and Jameson were. They paid their respects, and she saw the casket go down. All the while, this man was her solace.

"It was just in my mind," she whispers. "All of it." she nods to herself. She pinches her lips with fingertips and thinks hard on what this really means.

When she couldn't find him, after months and months of trying, she knew she was done with life. She had already lost someone precious to her. Bella wanted to bury herself in that lake.

That was the plan.

Edward takes a breath. He stares at her, feeling her warmth still, and completely shaken. This is why he's here, to get away from this. He doesn't want this; people and strong feelings. The absurdity of trying to find a connection. For what? To lose it? Struggle through it? Die for it? Ruin a sacred place he calls home over it? No. He worked too hard, shed weight, tears, and hope over it.

"You didn't feel a thing for me, did you?" she asks. Her teeth gnaw at her lips sheepishly, devastated, embarrassed.

He looks away. The ground slips from beneath him.

Faintly, he shakes his head. "I'm built not to. It's how I am."

She nods, but inside she's in pieces.

She takes one step back. "Well, I'm leaving, for college. I'm already late. Everyone's a year ahead." She shrugs. This is best, she thinks.

She doesn't know he thinks that also.

He turns his back. He finds that book and takes it to her.

She looks at it. Frederick Drimmer's Very Special People bright red and yellow on the cover—straight out of her bedside table he took from her room. She lifts a hand. "Keep it. It's your favorite."

His brows knit in question. She shrugs. "You'd always pick it over any."

He thumbs the spine gingerly and looks away.

She leaves now or she never will. The trees whirl at her wake with the sudden wind that picks up and picks at his heart.

He watches her go and watches many months go by. He tries not to count them. He tries to close his eyes tight and not remember the night she left, the same night that brought back the inexplicable Lady of the Woods.

It wasn't winter yet. She was too early. She came back the night Bella left, like clockwork, to torture him further.

Her silhouette stood at the break of the tent, that weight of her presence so heavy, it paralyzed him where he laid. He grew angry. Not tonight. Not ever. His heart still ached from that day. Still running through the words said; lips against his neck, the embrace, but mostly the daunting expectations.

She came farther in. She didn't stay where she usually stands, as she beckons for him to leave with her. She stepped in, then into his bed, and he let her. They delved deep into the abyss of warm quilts. In the morning, she was gone.

A dream. He was sure. Those come easy these days. Terrible ones. No sleep. No peace.

Winter couldn't come soon enough. When it did, it was brutal. Silence came early. Snow fell early. He accepted the cold, white relentlessness. He wanted to be buried in it, so the memories of that night wouldn't suffocate him. He kept still for hours on end to keep everything from spinning, like they did behind his eyelids time and again.

Now he tries to avoid that cabin, the one with the dreaded swing. He disarms all the others around it but keeps that one out of reach.

Until Spring, when lilacs bloom again.

The blossoms line the path he walks. They brush up against his legs when he crouches down to watch.

Everything in his being leads him straight to this place, the door. He unlocks it.

Bella, as he learned is her name—inaudibly forming his lips around the syllables every day—hasn't come around the cabin yet. But her father has, who happens to be out of sight.

Swan is still etched at the front of the door. He pushes through it with the key and finds that wall with the frames. The wall that tells him stories about people living lives under structure and law. How they show happiness and milestones in stilled moments despite being pinned to societal influences and rules. He goes straight to it. It takes a moment to find her. Anything, anything new the father might've brought.

But there are no new yearly goals or new Christmas cards. The same graduation and prom photos hang where he last saw them, dust coating at the edges. Everything is the same but for something new.

A dark paper, border in white, is tucked over a frame's glass unceremoniously, unplanned. While Bella's picture of her and the boy from the lake is framed, the paper is pinned over it. It's an addition that wasn't given its own frame.

There are blurs in black and in white; a diamond-shape capture fills the black edges. At a glance, the blurs look ominous, but when Edward lets his eyes adjust, he sees a face. A small one. A pointed nose, puffed up lips, and black smudges for eyes. The tiniest webbed hands spring up, and fingers form perfectly around them.

Edward doesn't know much about what's medically new these days, but he remembers enough to know an image of a fetus hasn't changed. Not for many years, he guesses. He might even recall his sister's when his mother brought it home in her purse. He fretted, all his brothers fretted. The new addition to the family would soon come.

Here, in the Swan's family cabin, pictures like these are celebrated, set out to admire the inevitability. Her father proudly pinned up Bella's unborn baby. Her name finely printed at the edges.

Nothing on the wall of stories has changed, except for this monumental one.

...