I'll throw another content warning out here for this chapter, for brief references to some of the same things mentioned in earlier chapters.

Chapter 11

There was no furniture in the empty living room, so Edward gestured in the direction of the stone fireplace. Bella was still looking at him with a worried expression, like she was afraid she had said too much. For just a second, he was afraid she was about to try to bolt on him again, and his fingers twitched with the urge to stop her. But the moment passed, and he breathed a sigh of relief when she walked deeper into the room instead of running for the door.

She sat down very gingerly on the edge of the hearth — and still winced when she landed. It was subtle, but he was laser focused on her every reaction, so he caught it. It confirmed his fears that Bella was hiding more than just her nightmares. He had the terrified feeling he was about to find out what.

She had sat down toward the far right edge of the fireplace, but he was done overcompensating and unwittingly bolstering her insecurities. He sat toward the middle, still with a foot or so of space between them, but he didn't try to hang off the opposite end from her, either.

He had expected to have to prompt her, but she gripped the edges of the stone beside her hips, and launched right back in, her eyes huge and locked on him.

"I didn't figure out he wasn't you until right before he attacked me. I did believe he was you, at first. I'm so sorry, Edward. I know I should have known. Every time he touched me or kissed me, I knew it didn't feel right. But he looked just like you. He sounded just like you. I wanted it to be you so much."

He was initially so preoccupied with the rage-inducing revelation that Albert had touched her and kissed her, more than once, not to mention her heartbreaking admission that she had desperately wished for his presence, that he almost missed the most important facet of what she was saying...until it slammed into him like a ton of bricks.

This was not Bella confiding in him, as he had initially believed.

No. It was her confessing. Pleading for his understanding and forgiveness, for some imagined fault of her own.

And that was more wrong than he could bear.

"Listen to me," he interjected firmly. "None of this is your fault. You couldn't have possibly known. He's a predator, Bella, and a con man. A murderer. He deceived all of us, myself included. You don't have to apologize for anything, least of all to me."

She looked away from him then, her face crumpling. "You wouldn't say that if you knew what happened," she whispered. "If you knew what I did."

"Wouldn't I?" he said seriously, without so much as blinking. "Try me."

Her head shook adamantly, her face still turned away, her expression terrified. "No. I can't. You wouldn't want me anymore."

Something very uneasy curled in his gut at that, but he suppressed his urge to interrogate her. He hesitated only for a moment before he reached for her closest hand. Watching her closely, he took her hand gently but securely into his own, effectively bringing her surprised gaze to him. He waited for her to make eye contact as he pulled her hand slightly back in his direction, placing their linked fingers right between them on the hearth and resting them there.

"There is absolutely nothing you could tell me that would ever make that happen," he assured her then, slowly and with great sincerity. "Nothing."

She didn't believe him. He knew it when she shook her head and dropped her gaze to stare at their entwined hands, then quickly went on with her story.

"He didn't hurt me at all until I realized he wasn't you."

So it seemed they were done with the subject of what horrible offense she believed she'd committed that could make him stop loving her, at least for the moment. He had every intention of eventually getting to the bottom of it, down to the last detail, for a few reasons: not only to be sure she was properly taken care of, and not only to prove his unconditional devotion to her and regain her trust, but also to be sure that Albert suffered enough when he finally got his hands on him; to be sure that every last hurt done to Bella was fully recompensed.

She seemed more comfortable with her gaze averted, but at least she didn't try to remove her hand from his grasp. If anything, she held on, and Edward was grateful. He desperately needed the physical contact with her, especially considering the topic. He needed that calming reminder that it was in the past — that she was safe, right there beside him.

"Even after I escaped the cabin and ran away," she continued, "he still pretended he was you when he found me. I know now that I should have played along. I should have just kept my mouth shut, but I didn't. I just kept pushing. I accused him of killing that girl. I told him I knew he wasn't you. I told him you'd kill him. I was so, so stupid."

"You were unbelievably brave," Edward corrected as steadily as he could, but couldn't entirely hide the tremor in his voice. This was the first he had heard about a cabin or a girl, and the unknown had his guts twisted up in knots. The thought of Bella making an escape attempt, running from and then taunting a sadistic vampire...he ruthlessly suppressed the terror that caused him. "You were strong and brave, and I am so incredibly proud of you."

"It made him furious," Bella continued, but her eyes were back on him now, wildly searching for his every reaction as she grew more agitated. "He wanted to make me believe he was you. He threw me down on the ground. He held me down and — and took away my clothes. He made me look at him and say your name over and over while he...he touched me."

Her tone changed, desperate and pleading. "I had no choice, Edward. He squeezed my throat. He wouldn't let me breathe when I didn't do what he said. He would have killed me if I hadn't."

His teeth ground so hard they were in danger of cracking, but he kept his anger in check. It wasn't directed at Bella. Never at Bella. So he just listened, nodding encouragingly, and kept his fury to himself.

"Yes, he certainly would have," he agreed when she was done. "You did what you had to do to stay alive, love. And I'm glad you did. The rest we can deal with together, okay?"

She shuddered. "He called me that too," she offered, almost as an afterthought, her eyes not quite focusing on him. She was reliving it. "Love. He sounded just like you."

Edward clenched his teeth again and added ripping out Albert's tongue to his wish list — near the very top. Right behind squeezing his goddamn throat shut until even his vampire lungs burned for oxygen.

Maybe he would make him say his name when he did it. It'd be the last word the vile creature ever uttered before he slowly lost his tongue, then his dick — one inch at a time — and then his fingers, one by one. And death would still be a long, long damn time coming.

"You mentioned a cabin," Edward diverted carefully, compartmentalizing his wrath before Bella could see it and misconstrue his anger. "A cabin and a girl. Will you tell me about that?"

Bella blinked, looking surprised. "Oh," she breathed. "You wouldn't know about that. I keep forgetting that."

She didn't have to say why. He already knew why.

There had been an Edward there. Just not him.

It confirmed the suspicion he'd been developing the whole time she poured out her story about Albert making her call him Edward.

Thanks to that son of a bitch's psychological torture, some part of Bella's subconscious still had the two of them very mixed up. Which was likely the point of that entire story, which she'd only poured out in response to his question about her knowing she was safe with him.

She wasn't entirely sure of that fact, at least not all of her. And she knew it. Her nightmares were only further confirmation of that.

As if he didn't already have enough reasons to yearn for Albert's slow and lingering death.

"The cabin was where we went after he took me out of my yard," she was trying to explain. "I'm sorry, but I don't know exactly where it is. It's close to where Jacob found me. I only knew we had to run a long way to get there. He claimed it was yours. Or...or his, I guess?"

And there it was. Further confirmation.

"His," Edward settled the issue quietly, already bracing for the worst. The topic of the cabin had her the most on edge he'd seen her yet — and that was putting him on edge. He concentrated on keeping his touch gentle, not reacting and crushing her hand in his, no matter what horrific thing she told him next. "What happened there, Bella?"

The fingers of her free hand abandoned the edge of the fireplace to clench nervously in her lap. She stared at them intently.

"Um...at first, we just talked. I asked why you left, and you told me."

"Him," he corrected again, keeping his tone calm only with great effort. Even worse than her mixing him up with Albert was that she was obviously stalling now, and that scared the hell out of him. "You asked him — and whatever he told you was a lie. I was never there. I was on a plane home from Brazil at that point, desperate to find you."

Bella closed her eyes, shaking her head. "Right. Of course. I know that."

"What happened in the cabin, sweetheart?" he asked again, very tenderly, while his internal monster ferociously growled the question he was really asking:

Did that fucker do *anything* to you there. Because so help me God, if he hurt you more than once and I'm just finding out about it now...

He could barely think it. He belonged right where he was, close to Bella, and letting his brothers track down Albert for him was unquestionably the right move. They would let him know when they found him, and they would hold him until he could get there — that much went without saying. They both understood what he needed to do.

But if Bella told him what he was afraid she was about to say — if Albert had raped her in that cabin, even before what he already knew happened to her later in the woods — he would be willing to tear the entire damn world apart that same night, if that was what it took to exact quick vengeance. It should scare him just how far he would be willing to go, the type of violence he would be capable of.

Bella's answer didn't go in the direction he feared. But the new information was still gut-wrenching.

"We were just there for a while. That was where I started to figure out that something was really wrong. I could see it belonged to a woman, a human woman. There was old food in the refrigerator, and dishes that had been washed. I knew she had a dog. There was dog hair on the couches. Everything personal was gone, but I found a monogrammed cup in the kitchen, and a prescription bottle in the bathroom. The house belonged to a girl named Lacey Matthews."

He saw where this was going now, and his guts clenched. Albert had killed Lacey Matthews and then abducted Bella away to a dead woman's cabin — yet another victim indirectly linked back to Edward himself.

Please, he thought...just please don't let Bella have found the body.

"So that's the girl you mentioned," he questioned carefully, "the one you accused him of killing?"

Bella's gaze dropped guiltily. "Yes, but not right then," she said. "At first I thought..." She stopped abruptly, her teeth digging so hard into her lip that it made him wince in sympathy.

He was uncannily certain that whatever she had just thought better of telling him was going to gut him.

And he was equally certain that she needed to say it.

"You thought what, Bella? Whatever it is, you can tell me. I already told you: nothing that happened is your fault."

She shifted slightly away from him, as though subconsciously distancing herself from whatever she was about to say. He let her but kept their hands linked, not willing to let her completely close him out.

"I thought...I wondered if maybe that was where you had been living for all those months. I thought maybe you had found someone else. Someone prettier, or who smelled even better to you. That you had just lost interest in me and moved in with...with her."

He hadn't realized how very deep Bella's insecurities ran, for that to be her first theory. Fueled by insecurity or not, her lack of faith in his love bothered him, whether he'd have ever called her on it or not. That came down to his own failings, as far as he was concerned, not hers — and he was going to rectify that situation. Whatever it took to make her feel secure in his feelings, moving forward, he would do it.

But she still wasn't done.

"Then at some point, I realized you must have killed her."

He flinched — hard. She hadn't even realized her slip-up. You. Instead of him.

"I thought maybe that was the only reason you came back to me, because you lost control and killed her. I was afraid I was next."

She was watching him closely as the terrible words kept spilling out one after another, and he saw it for what it was:

At least subconsciously, she was testing him — seeing how deep his commitment was to his claim that she had done nothing wrong. So he schooled his reaction, just in time for her to deliver the lethal blow.

"I even started to wonder if this was something you did all the time, some kind of sick game. I thought maybe your family was even in on it, that they covered for you; that I was just the last in a long line of...play toys."

If she had looked nervous before, she looked downright terrified now — and yet strangely resigned — completely convinced that he was about to yell at her, leave her...

That he was going to prove every doubt about him true, every fear she had gone through that night at the cabin.

She was waiting for it.

He took a measured breath. "And then what happened?" he asked calmly. "Did you tell him your suspicions?" He slightly emphasized the word 'him', just enough to draw the distinction; not enough to be a rebuke.

But Bella's eyes flooded with tears, her lip trembling. He could feel her fingers shaking in his grasp.

"Stop it," she whispered. "Stop acting so calm. Stop being so nice to me. I don't deserve it."

Just as he had suspected.

"I told you earlier," he said evenly. "There is literally nothing you can say to me that will convince me you were in the wrong in any way. You did the one and only thing I would have asked of you, Bella: you survived."

She looked desperate. "But you should be mad at me! I just told you that I believed the worst of you! I thought you were a monster! I believed your family were murdering monsters — Carlisle and Esme, Edward! I betrayed you. You should never want to see me again!"

She tried to yank her hand away angrily. He held on, bringing her shocked eyes to his. She hadn't expected that, and it gave him a momentary advantage — one he made the most of.

"You saw the evil in him and recognized it for what it was," he said firmly. "That was what you were reacting to. Not me, and not my family." He brought her hand up to his mouth, touched her knuckles to his lips softly. "I'm not going to let you do this to yourself. I'm not going to let you push me away just to punish yourself, when you've done nothing wrong. You can push all you want, Bella, but I'm not going anywhere. I refuse to blame you for anything that happened, no matter what it is."

She was grasping his hand tightly again, instead of trying to pull away, even as she shook her head in denial. Tears started to spill down her cheeks. "But you don't know everything. You don't know what I did!"

This again. He was starting to develop a few terrifying ideas about that, actually. There were still a lot of unaccounted for hours in Bella's story. He hadn't missed the dichotomy in her descriptions, either. She had said she knew it felt wrong when Albert touched and kissed her. Those were very different words from what she had said about him making her say his name. She had described that incident as "when he hurt her." Two distinctly separate events.

She had also said he didn't hurt her until she figured out he was a fraud, implying that the touching and kissing came before that point.

Had Bella willingly done something physical with Albert, while she believed him to be Edward? Had she possibly even given her virginity to him? Was that part of why she seemed so upset about the cabin, aside from the unflattering conclusions she'd drawn about him later that night? It would explain why she believed Edward wouldn't want her anymore if he knew. It might also explain her physical pain and why she refused to admit it to anyone, and that was chilling.

As painful as that possibility was, he made up his mind, right then and there, that he wouldn't let it matter either way. He meant what he had told her: none of it would be her fault.

He could also see he wasn't going to get the answer that night. Bella was on the brink. It was time to give her an out, to take her out of the spotlight for the night. He wouldn't push her for any more, not while she was so overwrought, determined to paint herself in the worst possible light. It wouldn't be healing; it would just be destructive.

He was the one who should be confessing, anyway. Not her.

His indiscretion, after all, was far greater than hers could ever be, even if he was right about what she wanted to hide from him. He hadn't yet been fully honest with her about the origin of her attacker, and he was a hypocrite if he waited another moment.

"You don't know what I did," he countered. "It's only fair that I tell you now, so that you can decide whether you are able to forgive me. I hope that you can — because I'm more certain than ever that I can't live without you. But either way, I'll certainly never forgive myself."

That caught her attention, at least. "What are you talking about?" She sounded frightened, as well she should.

He released her hand after a gentle squeeze, and then clasped his own palms together between his spread knees, looking down at them. To touch her while discussing the darkest shame of his existence — he didn't want to defile her that way. He wanted to hold her as far separate from his darkness as possible.

"I told you once, about the period of time I rebelled against Carlisle and went out on my own. I told you the type of men I killed."

"Yes." Her heart beat faster. He heard it. Almost as if some part of her already knew.

He looked up, looked her in the eye. He owed her that much, at least. "The vampire who attacked you was merely one of those men, once. A predator, certainly, but mortal. Limited. And then I came across him one night, decades ago."

It felt like all of the air had been sucked out of the room, as she stared into his eyes, trying to comprehend something so horrible.

But her first reaction was not the one he expected.

"You told me you didn't know who he is," she said, horrified, referring to their conversation in the bathroom the night she'd run from him. The shocked betrayal in her eyes frightened him. She was looking at him like she didn't even know who he was.

Her fears and doubts that she'd gone through about him during her abduction were not quite a thing of the past yet, he understood with sudden clarity. Some part of Bella was very much still stuck in that nightmare cabin, trying to figure out if she was with friend or foe; mate or monster. His abandonment of her had shaken her trust in him to the core, regardless of his reasons. And only time and a great deal of patient effort on his part was going to fix that.

"I only learned of his identity today, from Alice," Edward pled, his eyes imploring. "When you asked me, I didn't know. I swear to you, I didn't. I'm guilty of many things, Bella, but I haven't lied to you about any of this. I wouldn't. Especially not when answers are the only thing you've asked of me."

She accepted that, to his relief, the betrayed look leaving her. But then he saw the moment she began to process the worst of it.

"So when he told me that you tried to kill him once already..." she said. Her voice was trembling as she made the connection. "Oh, Edward, no..."

"I created him, Bella," he confessed hoarsely, his tortured eyes locked with her wide ones. "I thought he was dead, and I was wrong. I must have left him with just enough blood and venom to start the change. He only came after you to get his revenge against me. Everything that happened to you...it's all because of me."

Her face disappeared into her hands, but he couldn't bring himself to touch her. He wasn't sure he still had the right.

"I have no idea how he and Victoria found one another," he continued quietly. "All I know is that they both want to hurt you to get at me. And they already have once. I have to live with that for the rest of my existence, no matter what happens now. So you see, Bella, how could I blame you for anything you may have done under duress or deception? Not when this is all my fault from the very beginning."

When her hands stayed over her face, hiding her from him for far too long, his eyes closed in resignation.

"I will fully understand if you want nothing more to do with me," he offered, the words raking across his raw heart like sandpaper. "It's no more than I deserve."

Her quiet whisper hit him like a jolt.

"What's his name?"

His agony-filled eyes came up to meet hers, just as she uncovered her face. Her teary gaze locked on him, intensely waiting for the answer to her question. He didn't want that godforsaken name anywhere near her. But he would deny her nothing.

"Albert." God, how he hated the sound of it on his tongue — almost as much as he loathed the idea of her hearing it. He couldn't stop the instinctual way his teeth bared before he repeated it. He barely repressed the snarl. "Albert Rowe."

"Albert," she repeated, and hearing it cross her lips was even worse. She nodded slowly. "That makes it easier, I think. Knowing what to call him."

Something aside from Edward. She didn't say it. She didn't have to.

"What does he really look like?" she pressed, and saw his horrified hesitation. "Please. I need to know."

He'd rather take an extended jolt from Jane than have that face in Bella's mind. But he reached in his pocket anyway, and handed over the folded-up paper Alice had given him earlier. The sketch she'd drawn. He still hadn't opened it himself, having seen it clearly in Alice's mind. And he didn't look at Bella as she did, either.

He was already expecting it when she gasped in recognition. "Edward!"

"I know," he cut her off, his throat tight, his eyes still averted. He couldn't bear to look. Bella's silent mind was a blessing, at the moment. "Alice told me. She saw you in a vision a few months ago, trying to find our meadow, talking to him there. I only learned of that today, too."

She was still studying the sketch, and he hated it. His fingers itched to snatch it out of her hand, light a fire in that fireplace and burn it.

Finally, he felt compelled to break the silence. He couldn't just sit there and watch her look at it.

"I'm glad the wolves were there to save you that day, Bella. And I'm more sorry than I can say that I wasn't. But no matter how you may feel about me now, I need you to promise me you won't do something like that again, that you won't go off alone again until we can find him. You're not safe alone. Especially not there, in our meadow."

He decided to stop being a coward, look her in the eye. "And I need you to know that I am more sorry for all of this than I could ever tell you." He barely got through that.

Her hand reaching out and covering his made his heart flip over in his chest.

"It's not your fault, you know," she said simply.

He grimaced, in agony. "How can you say that?"

Her voice strengthened. "Because you can't have it both ways. If you insist that nothing involving him is my fault, not even my own actions...then it can't be your fault, either. His actions are only his, either way. He's the one who hurt people. Not you."

Edward's heart lurched in his chest at that, but he stubbornly shook his head. "It's not that simple. All those women, Bella. I can't imagine how many he's killed in the last 80 years. Their blood is all on my hands, and the worst part is that I can scarcely bring myself to care. Because all I can think of is you — of stopping him from touching you again; of punishing him for hurting you."

"But you do care about them," she rebutted. "I can see it. Right here."

The feeling of her soft hand on his temple, her fingers brushing close to his abruptly closed eyelids, was very nearly his undoing. His free hand moved to grip the stone fireplace under him, squeezing so hard that pieces of the rock chipped off under his fingers, grinding into a fine powder. His eyes slowly opened, his face leaning into her touch.

"I won't let him get near you again," he grated. "I swear to you, Bella. No matter what I have to do, I'll fix my mistake. I'll put an end to him. I'll make you safe."

"I know," she whispered, and winced slightly as she turned her body to face him on the stone hearth.

And that was the point where he couldn't take it anymore. The protective rush that had swelled up in him when she touched him suddenly manifested itself in a need to take action.

"You're hurt, aren't you?" he asked abruptly, roughly. "Tell me the truth."

She gasped, just a little, negating her next words entirely. "What do you mean?" She pulled her hand back from his face.

His eyes bored into her. This was not the time or the way he'd intended to broach this topic, but he couldn't hold it back any longer. Especially considering his suspicions regarding what she felt so guilty about.

"You know exactly what I mean. You're in pain. You've refused to see a doctor. It doesn't matter to me how it happened Bella — I swear to you, it doesn't. You don't even have to tell me. But you have to let Carlisle bring in the doctor he told you about."

Her heartbeat was so fast, it seemed to confirm his worst fears, as did her flushing face. "It's not necessary. I'm fine."

He grit his teeth, tried not to raise his voice — and mostly succeeded. "You're not fine. And I can't stand the thought of you suffering because you're trying to protect me from something. Please don't do that to me. I can't bear it. It's my job to protect you, not the other way around."

His impassioned plea seemed to have startled her, but when she gave in, he couldn't bring himself to regret it.

"Okay," she agreed finally, reluctantly, not quite meeting his eyes. "Okay. But only if I can know for sure Charlie won't find out anything. I'm not answering any questions. And you can't be there, either. I don't want you to...listen."

Watch. She meant watch, through his own eyes or anyone else's. That was what she meant and they both knew it.

"You have my word," he murmured quietly. It felt like he couldn't even breathe. She was in pain. She was injured, internally, and thanks to his own insecurities and misinterpretations, he had let her suffer for days without manning up and forcing this discussion. He had known all along, deep down, he was the only one she would listen to. And he had done nothing, paralyzed with fear and guilt.

"And you don't have to worry about Charlie," he managed to keep it together enough to assure her. "My father was telling you the truth. You're 18 now. You're an adult in the eyes of the law. No doctor can call your parent without your permission. If you'll let me, Bella, I'll have Carlisle arrange it for first thing tomorrow morning."

And Carlisle would be arranging that there would be neither a rape kit nor an accompanying police report, either, although Edward didn't want to worry her by bringing that up if she hadn't already thought of it herself. With there being no one that the justice system could prosecute, there was simply no reason to put her through that. Edward would be meting out justice himself, personally. And then some.

"Okay," Bella accepted, not meeting his eyes. She couldn't quite repress the small shiver that ran through her. "Um...thank you."

She didn't really sound like she meant that last part, and there was no good reply to it, either. You're welcome would imply he had done something to be thanked for, when all he had really done was finally take steps to mitigate the damage he'd allowed to be done to her.

He couldn't quite look at her either. "Thank you for agreeing to go," was the reply he came up with.

And with that conversation, every ounce of awkwardness from the moment she walked into the cottage earlier was back. He could feel it in the air, tense and thick. It was too quiet, too silent, both of them sitting lost in their own tense thoughts, like they were separated by miles rather than feet and inches.

He wanted to hear the rest of her story, desperately. He knew better than to ask. She was exhausted, emotionally wrung out. And truthfully, so was he. He couldn't take any more figurative kicks to the gut that night.

"It's late," he finally murmured, some attempt at being a gentleman, despite how very much he didn't want her to leave. "You need rest. We should get you back."

She stiffened. "Are you going to stay here?"

His eyes swept across the empty living room. "No. Not if, by some miracle, you still want me with you after what I told you tonight. I'll be wherever you are." He reached for her hand tentatively, his fingers lacing through hers after a moment, when he realized she was still okay with the contact. "Nothing ever changed for me, Bella. It still hasn't. I was only working on this house with the hope that you'd one day be here with me. As long as I'm with you somewhere, this place doesn't matter. Nothing else does."

Bella followed the earlier path of his eyes, looking around the living room. He had no idea she was about to completely blow him away when she tentatively looked back at him.

"I could work on it with you," she offered shyly. "If you'd like some help?"

The relieved exhalation that shot out of his chest was accompanied by the exhilarating feeling of having been handed a second chance. Bella knew the worst, and she still wanted to be near him. She wanted to spend time with him.

She wanted to work on their house with him.

Another surge of protectiveness hit him with dizzying force. He might not be worthy of her. But he was going to start working toward becoming worthy, right that very moment.

"Yes," he answered, not even trying to fight the hope that welled up in him, the smile that threatened to take over his face. "God, yes. I can't imagine anything I would like more."

There was cautious hope in her eyes too. "When? Can we start right now?"

He sighed. She was dead on her feet. "Tomorrow morning," he promised, hoping the spell wouldn't be broken by then. "After you see a doctor." He let go of her hand and stood up. She did the same, standing close beside him. "But for now, we need to get you back up to the main house before Jacob wakes up."

There was an unwelcome thought. Jacob. He'd rather their house not smell like wet dog if the mutt came charging in to find her. He was already never going to get the stench out of his room.

He had simply assumed he would carry her, and he held out his hand invitingly, intending to carefully place her on his back. But Bella was fidgeting awkwardly, all of a sudden, looking uncomfortable. She might not want to ride on his back, he realized, especially if she was in pain. He'd seen in Rosalie's memory that she had carried her bridal style. There was likely a reason for that, one that Rosalie would have surely understood. But Bella might not be comfortable with that kind of closeness yet, either, coming from him.

Things were better, after their talk. They weren't perfect. Not by a long shot. He lowered his hand.

"Do you want me to call Rosalie to come and get you?" he asked gently. "Or Esme. Alice just got back, too. It's not a problem. Any of them would be happy to do it."

"Could we walk?" she asked instead, and he briefly hesitated. He wanted to move her from point A to point B as rapidly as possible, to minimize the chance of anyone sneaking up on them in the woods, no matter how unlikely that might be with his abilities.

But what he wanted even more was to give her anything she asked of him.

"Of course. I'll text the others, let them know we're coming," he told her, already doing just that. They would understand what he meant, even if Bella didn't.

Guard the path, from out of sight. Make sure he got her home safely. Protect Bella at all costs.

And when that was arranged and he could hear that his family were near instantly in place, he offered her his arm as they started down the trail. And she only hesitated for the briefest of seconds before she took it, inching ever closer to his side as they walked.

Bella, as Edward might have expected, was not particularly skilled at home renovations. Unsurprising, considering her level of physical coordination. If there was a stray tool within 50 feet, she could manage to trip over it. If there was an unattended paint tray, her feet were drawn to it like a moth to a flame.

He could have done it a million times faster by himself.

And he couldn't have cared less. She was there, with him, and more importantly, she wanted to be. She could tear the damn place down board by board and expect him to reassemble it, and he still wouldn't have complained.

He did make a mental note to hide the ladders, however. The thought of accident-prone Bella on one of those was terrifying. She had been through enough, for one day.

Carlisle had made good on his offers of discreet medical care. He had many friends at the hospital — good ones. One of them, a very kind, older female gynecologist, had done a house call on Bella the very next morning.

True to his word, Edward stayed out of the doctor's head. He even left the house and went out of earshot, although he drew the line at going out of his mental range, just in case any danger presented itself. He'd simply fixed his focus on Carlisle's thoughts, instead, who was in his own study, safely out of the room.

Carlisle had heard Bella's and the doctor's conversation, of course. It wasn't as though there was any way to avoid it, as Carlisle also drew the line at compromising Bella's safety by leaving the house unprotected, especially without Edward there. He, along with Esme, Alice, and Rosalie, stayed in the house.

That meant Edward also knew what had been said in the room. Bella hadn't uttered a word about how it happened, but they all now knew that she had a small amount of vaginal tearing — nothing that would even require stitches, thankfully. Some ointment and an oral antibiotic, just in case, and she would heal. No permanent damage done, at least physically.

Overall, not as bad as it could have easily been. He'd already known she'd been digitally penetrated — Jacob had seen enough to know that. And Edward also knew enough of Albert to know he would have wanted to leave her with a reminder, something to keep her mind on him until he went after her again. It was almost certainly intentional, and that was sickening. But Bella's relatively minor injuries implied the fingering had been the worst of it, and for that he was eminently grateful.

Still, more than one tree met its violent end at his hands when the word "tearing" came out of the doctor's mouth and filtered through Carlisle's thoughts.

He had truly expected Bella to have changed her mind about working on their house with him, in the light of day, and after having time to reflect on the fact that he truly was responsible for what happened. Especially after her visit with the doctor.

But when he returned to the house, very tentatively walking in the door, he quickly found her in the kitchen. She was finishing up her breakfast and wearing one of his old t-shirts and a pair of her shorts, her hair pulled up in a ponytail, wanting to know if they could get started. She seemed almost desperate for them to leave and get started — and again insisted on walking to the cottage.

He kept up a steady, nervous stream of chatter on the walk, about what things they might work on that day. Even if she had wanted to volunteer any information, which seemed unlikely, she wouldn't have got a word in edgewise. He didn't want to know any more, at the moment. His control only extended so far. But she seemed just as content to listen to him talk.

There was an ungodly amount of small holes in the walls that needed repairing before they could even paint all the rooms, so he first showed her how to repair those. Had he ever imagined himself buying and fixing up a house with Bella, teaching her what to do, he'd have imagined it with his arms wrapped around her, spending at least as much time touching as teaching.

He didn't do that, of course. He stood at a respectful distance to her side, careful not to move too fast or even make any sudden motions toward her.

But that adorable look of concentration on her face when she started spackling was going to be the damn death of him.

This was exactly what they needed, he realized at some point. He and Bella had been apart for so long, that while not quite strangers, there was still a certain distance, despite their still-strong mate bond. But when they were working on their house — as he secretly thought of it — the conversation flowed freely, even cheerfully. Not about anything important, because they both seemed to be putting any more of that off until they'd recovered from the last time.

But there, in that cottage with plenty to do and talk about, they could just be there, together. And for now, that was enough.

They quickly set up a daily routine, one that his family was only all too happy to support: breakfast for Bella, work on the cottage until Esme dropped off lunch, stay until dinner, then go back to the main house and work on Bella's schoolwork while she ate. Alice picked up her assignments for her every day. Then Bella would shower and go to bed. By unspoken agreement, neither of them brought up what had happened anymore.

If not for the nighttime, which still saw Bella's rest interrupted by horrific nightmares every time she closed her eyes — making Edward feel almost like he went back to square one on a nightly basis — things would have been perfect.

For one thing, Carlisle had managed to free them of Jacob the very next morning after Bella first came to Edward in the cottage, before the doctor even arrived. All it had taken was a diplomatic phone call to Sam Uley, suggesting that Jacob's talents might be put to better use defending Quileute lands, as the Cullens were perfectly competent to defend one human, very non-Quileute girl on their own property.

Sam had been only too happy to order Jacob home.

Happy was certainly not the word to describe how Jacob felt, but he had no choice but to obey his alpha. So he went, promising — or threatening — to be back at every opportunity to be sure they hadn't harmed Bella.

He thought Edward was responsible for getting him booted, if the foul volley of absolutely obscene profanity his mind spewed in Edward's direction as he was leaving was any indication.

Edward may have been innocent on that count, but he approved heartily, with a smirk on his face — all while Jacob mentally insulted everything from his personal scent to his parental heritage. That raised his eyebrow. From what he'd already picked up from Jacob's mind about pack family drama, the dog should be more concerned about his and his packmates' legitimacy than Edward's. The terms 'brothers' and 'mutts' were both more accurate than he'd have guessed.

Bella was standing right beside him on the porch when Jacob phased and took off into the woods, or Edward might have made those observations out loud. In ungentlemanly language.

It became even more amusing when Jacob discovered that it was actually Carlisle responsible for having him evicted, not Edward, just as soon as he was in wolf form and wolf telepathy kicked in.

Carlisle hadn't discussed that decision with Edward beforehand, which usually would have irritated him where Bella was concerned. But honestly, Edward wouldn't have cared if the devil himself was behind getting rid of Jacob. Jacob wasn't there to keep putting his "concerned" hands on Bella and offer her back rubs every time she whimpered, and that was a definite improvement.

Jacob's absence, combined with his own improved relationship with Bella, also meant that Edward had "moved back" into his own room. Not that he slept there, of course, because he didn't sleep. But he had managed to coax Bella into taking the futon — after instructing Alice to thoroughly replace the bedclothes and fumigate it the first day they spent at the cottage. In turn, he was happy to sprawl out on his couch that was pleasantly saturated with her scent, keeping an eye on her when she slept. Just having his room be "his" again, while also having Bella in it and under his care, did wonders for his confidence.

Yes, she had a certain number of nightmares. Every night, in fact. Yes, those nightmares still gutted him when "Edward, stop" came out of her mouth at least as frequently as "Edward, help." But by the third night, after they'd spent three days working together in the little cottage, when he knelt beside the futon and talked softly to her until she awakened, she didn't startle anymore when she awoke and saw his face. He still didn't dare touch her afterward, but things were slowly becoming less tense.

Every morning, Esme and Alice would appear in his doorway with a tray packed with more breakfast foods than Bella could eat in a week, and she would blush and insist it wasn't necessary. Esme, who secretly loved having a child she could actually take care of in some way, stayed and pretty much beamed the entire time Bella ate as much as she could.

She's so thin, Edward, his mother thought almost every morning, with some variations.

I don't think the poor child has eaten a full meal ever since you left.

She's going to be okay now that you're back. You'll take care of her. We all will.

Bella's face looked a little panicked, every morning, about all of that food, but Edward was in total agreement with Esme. Whether it made Bella panic or not, a home-cooked feast was one crisis he wasn't going to either save her from or die trying.

After breakfast, he would step out to let Bella change out of her pajamas. That was the worst part of his day. Having her out of his sight for even those few moments made him unbelievably anxious.

But then she would eagerly appear in the kitchen, ready for the two of them to get back to work. That was one of his favorite parts of the day. Because without even asking, she had taken to just going through the drawers in his bedroom like she owned the place, finding t-shirts of his to wear over her shorts, since Alice had only packed Bella's nicer clothes, nothing she could work in.

He really didn't care that his t-shirt population was quickly dwindling, the paint-splatter casualties increasing daily because Bella was a terrifying menace with a paintbrush. He just enjoyed seeing her appear in his clothes like it was the most natural thing on earth, looking so eager to get back to work on what she still referred to as "his house".

If she noticed that even the slightest opinion she offered about paint colors, fixtures, lighting, or any other aspect of "his house" was met with all too eager agreement and him quickly ordering whatever was needed to implement it — or even him immediately painting back over a color she didn't seem to particularly care for — she didn't bring it up. And if she wasn't bringing it up, he wasn't about to point it out, either.

But he had taken to bringing his laptop with him to the cottage for just that purpose, setting Bella up with it to pick out whatever she thought "he" needed when there wasn't anything else she could physically work on without creating havoc or risking breaking her neck. He was going to need furniture and decorations, after all, and he pled complete incompetence and helplessness for that daunting task.

As it turned out, Bella didn't object to either shopping or spending his money when it was to help him. He had nearly forgotten the all-important fact that with Bella, loopholes were everything.

Alice, unlike Bella, picked up on his Bella-bias quickly. And when she stopped by to drop off some more supplies, including a requested new paint color, she pointed that out to him at length — mostly because it was her color choice that Bella had vetoed for the master bedroom, opting instead for what Alice considered a "drab, outdated color." Just so long as she considered it drab and outdated quietly, as in quietly enough that Bella couldn't hear it, he was content to let his sister vent.

It wasn't Alice's bedroom he hoped that room would one day be, after all. It was Bella's. He finally had to very quietly point out that if Alice wanted to play interior decorator, she could get Jasper to build her a little cottage in the woods. In Bella's house, what Bella wanted took precedence — whether Bella had figured out that it was her house yet or not.

Alice stuck her tongue out at him without any real malice. Then she sent him a retaliatory mental image of him inexplicably rumpled and smeared all over in that same 'drab' paint color, something she found very amusing. He'd have loved to see the rest of the vision that had prompted that, because unlike Bella, he hadn't spilled a drop on his clothes yet and was at a loss for how he would apparently be so clumsy in the near future as to end up so smeared in paint. But his sister mentally clammed up, with a smug look on her face.

That was one thing about the future — Alice couldn't hide it from him forever. He'd find out eventually. Probably when he ended up a lovely and decidedly not-drab shade of pale gray.

But he was looking forward to it, he was pretty sure.

Bella may have been oblivious to the fact that he had very covertly put her 100% in charge of pretty much everything, but she did notice one thing.

It happened around lunch on the fifth day, the day after she finally ran out of tiny holes in the walls to slowly fix — the task she had clearly enjoyed most and had expressed disappointment when it was complete. When she finally looked up from Edward's laptop and 'helping' him pick flooring that would match the paint colors 'he' had picked out, as she had been doing all morning, she definitely noticed that some holes she had "missed" repairing had appeared overnight.

Well, she noticed them when he finally gave up and pointed them out, that is, and asked if she would like to work on them...

He was watching her closely, so he saw it when she bit her lip and practically melted, her eyes looking a little misty. He knew he was busted but was still holding onto hope that she might let him get away with it. Please just don't cry, he silently begged her. I didn't mean to make you cry.

And almost like she had heard him, she changed course, her eyes narrowing suspiciously as she turned on him. "Edward Cullen...did you poke holes in the wall of your house?"

Yes. No. Definitely yes. Maybe. It depends.

Technically, he'd poked holes in the wall of their house. Bella might not appreciate his semantics.

"Poke holes in the wall?" he tried instead. He had on his best innocent look, the one that actually worked on Esme sometimes, when he and one of his brothers had broken something while wrestling in the house, and he thought they should take the fall for it, rather than him, just because he was pretty sure he was Esme's favorite child and he could get away with it. But Bella wasn't buying his act in the slightest.

"Why did you poke holes in the walls?"

Mostly, it was because he didn't want this to end — Bella, there with him, completely relaxed and enjoying herself. He could almost forget sometimes about what had happened to her and the role he played in it. The time they spent together felt a little bit like falling in love all over again, although he'd never stopped adoring her. But maybe she was falling back in love with him. And that was an idea he found that he liked very much.

He knew it couldn't last forever. He had Alice keeping track of the repair work Charlie Swan had fast-tracked on the Swan home. He knew he had maybe two more weeks, possibly less, before Charlie would want his daughter home. And then this perfect arrangement would come to an end, the one that let them temporarily forget about the very real problems they were eventually going to have to face.

Problems like how he was going to adequately protect her at school, both physically and emotionally. That was on hold, temporarily, thanks to Carlisle's foresight in artfully writing and then faxing a doctor's excuse for her for two whole weeks, leaving the school with no reason to contact Charlie. (Bella, apparently, had mono — or as the immature children at school referred to it, 'kissing disease'. If Bella's long list of male admirers drew any conclusions from the fact that he reappeared in school on the same day Bella returned from suffering such an affliction...then yeah, he was fine with that.)

There were more serious problems too.

Problems like Albert. Victoria.

Problems like finding out the rest of what happened to her, which Bella didn't seem eager to discuss again any time soon and he was afraid to risk bursting their blissful bubble by bringing up.

Problems like the fact that Bella clearly expected to continue her friendship with Jacob Black once she went home, and after giving it careful consideration, he had exactly zero intention of allowing it.

Little stuff like that.

All of that was heavier than he wanted to go, not in their idyllic little cottage paradise. Not yet. For the time being, he just wanted to drag out their time fixing up what he hoped would one day be their home, for as long as he could manage to drag it out.

So instead of admitting that yes, those new holes in the walls were 100% his doing, he took a different path.

Surreptitiously, he dipped his fingers into the roller tray of paint he had resting on the ladder next to him, got a good coating of paint on three of his fingertips, and then flicked it at her.

It splattered right onto her shirt — his shirt, actually. One of the few he had left that hadn't already fallen victim to Bella's 'skills' at painting.

Bella gasped, her eyes going wide. "What are you doing?"

He did it again. "Just saving you the trouble," he teased, deadpan. "You'd have ruined it within the hour anyway."

Wide eyes went away, narrowing even farther this time. "You're trying to change the subject!" she accused.

Yep. He was planning on succeeding, too.

He flicked a little more paint in her direction, and her expression changed, a challenge gleaming in her eyes as they roved the room, looking for a 'weapon' she could use to get her revenge.

This was war now, apparently, and he was thrilled. So that was how he was going to end up covered in paint — by pretending like he couldn't easily get out of the way fast enough to keep her from catching him and doing her worst.

She dashed over and grabbed a paint brush from the tray on the floor behind her, impressively managing not to knock the whole tray over on the floor. He'd have to remedy that. Any gigantic mess they made just meant more hours spent in that cottage together, cleaning it up and fixing the damage. He'd just spent half the morning trying to convince her to order him some new flooring for the living room anyway, which she'd only resisted because she thought maybe they could save the old and save him some money.

She wanted the new floor, though. He'd seen how longingly she looked at the deep cherry hardwood she'd found online, how she kept going back to it, her face falling at the price. As though he'd have cared either way. But replacing the flooring himself, especially with Bella's questionable help, would take them a lot longer than repairing the old. So he came down solidly in favor of the new.

If he played his cards right, maybe he could get her to splatter some paint on the walls, too, so they'd have to repaint those as well...

She stalked toward him, with the brush held out in front of her. It was gratifying to see a few heavy drips of pale gray already dotting the floor before she even got close, which she immediately stepped in and unknowingly ground into the grain. That settled that. Bella would get her new floor, and he would get to spend time with her putting it in. Win-win. If she didn't give in and order it for him, he'd do it himself as she slept that night.

He picked up his paint tray off the ladder and held it protectively under his arm, taking it with him as he backed away. He couldn't have kept the grin off his face at that point if he tried. Just for good measure, he dipped his fingers back in and flicked paint toward her again.

She yelped, jumping back and away, and sure enough, some paint flew off her brush and hit the wall. Two points Edward, per his admittedly unique scoring algorithm.

He didn't really resist very hard when she lunged after him, stabbing ridiculously at him with the brush like it was a fencing foil. He was laughing too hard. After her first victory of smearing him in gray, Bella was laughing too, but her aggression level remained unchecked despite her breathless giggles — she wasn't stopping until he had it all over him.

Bella had a competitive streak in her, he noted. When he changed her one day, he might be in very real trouble.

He'd risk it.

He let her continue until he had decidedly more gray on him than he'd yet managed to get on her, because he didn't want to push his luck.

Then he grabbed the handle of the paintbrush and started pushing it back in her direction, with her still holding onto it. She tried turning her back on him, which left him with one arm around her — because he wasn't letting go of that brush — and before he knew it, his paint tray was safely on the ground and they were "struggling" over possession of the brush, with both of his arms around her in a loose embrace, her back up against his chest, both of them giggling.

He didn't yank the brush out of her hand, no matter how ridiculously easy it would have been. But he did make sure she ended up with paint smeared on her chin and the tip of her nose. He had his pride, after all.

He sensed the overall delight in Esme's thoughts before he truly registered her presence, realized that she was standing in the doorway watching them, grinning and glowing with pure motherly satisfaction.

Delight actually didn't cover it. Esme was so happy she looked like she might actually burst.

Out of curiosity, he looked at the scene through Esme's eyes and was amazed by what he saw. The two of them looked happy, carefree and completely in love, giggling like teenagers. Which, in the most strictly technical sense, he supposed was what they both were, at least in body.

It actually threw him enough that he let go.

It was over anyway as soon as Bella saw Esme — or more likely, smelled the gourmet cheeseburger and fries Esme was holding on a covered platter for her. She jumped away guiltily, at first, traitorously shoving the paintbrush into Edward's hand and leaving it with him, like she had been caught doing something wrong. She was worse than Emmett.

As though Esme would have objected even had she walked in on Bella pinning him down with his face in the paint tray. He had to work not to roll his eyes. Esme would have probably helped her hold him down. He had been wrong earlier: he wasn't the favorite child anymore. Bella was.

Bella's embarrassment quickly fled and her eyes lit up when the cover came off that tray and she saw lunch.

Ruthless revenge and property destruction made her hungry, apparently. One more thing for Esme to glow about, because she was definitely determined to get some meat on Bella's bones. He watched with almost as much satisfaction as Esme when Bella plopped down on the fireplace — without the slightest sign of pain, five days past seeing the doctor — and tucked into that burger, her chin and nose still smeared with gray paint.

In fact, he enjoyed it so much that he didn't even register until she was polishing off the last few bites that he had just had his arms around Bella, without thinking twice about it, and she hadn't once flinched away or been frightened of him.

Something welled up in his heart. He wasn't completely familiar with it anymore, but it felt an awful lot like happiness.

That same night, in his room, after a nightmare that was devastatingly heavy on the 'Edward, no', his first thought was that he was about to pay for that clear lapse of judgment on his part. What had made him think he could so carelessly touch her, he castigated himself.

But when Bella's desperate, panicked eyes finally opened and landed on him, registering his presence kneeling by her bed, she stared at him for a split second before something happened that he didn't see coming.

She threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around him and burying her face in his neck, still shaking and shuddering.

TO BE CONTINUED...