Thanks to my team for everything. Today is the first day of school with students so if you don't get your update tomorrow, it's because I'm still hiding in the corner in a little ball. Kidding, kidding. It's going to be great.

My eyes are so heavy I can barely open them.

They make my eyelashes flutter against my cheeks before they lose the battle and fall closed again.

I've lost all sense of time, and I just can't seem to be bothered by it.

By any of it.

I can tell it's still night because of the temperature around us, and with my eyes still closed, I fumble blindly in search of the blankets Edward and I have made a tangle of. Once I find them, I pull them up and over our bodies, only really becoming warm again when Edward slips an arm around my waist, pulling me closer against him without a word between us.

It makes me smile in the dark, unaware of what time it is or how long we've been asleep.

Between the holiday with Esme and my night here with Edward, I had no choice but to listen to my body and sleep. I had always slept with one eye open with my husband, fearing every breath from his mouth as he had slept peacefully next to me.

But tonight, a heaviness had fallen over my bones, Edward's fingertips gliding peaceful patterns over my back, and I was asleep before I even realized I was tired. I slept dreamlessly, even too exhausted for my subconscious, and hadn't moved until right now.

Trying not to wake him, I settle myself on my back, Edward's arm still lazily across my stomach as I force my eyelids to open.

My struggle to open my eyes is worth it when I see him.

Edward lies next to me on his stomach, half of his face lost in my pillows as, he too, remains succumbed to our holiday weekend. His hair, wild from both his own musings and my tweaks throughout the night, can't decide which direction to go in, so it points in a thousand different ways, and I love every single one of them.

His eyes, unlike mine at the moment, remain closed, and I wonder if he's dreaming, and if so, what about. His eyelashes, the long and curled kind that make women around the world weak in the knees, gently brush against his cheeks and cast him in a rare, boyish charm that makes me grin in the darkness.

…Because there's nothing boyish about the man sleeping next to me.

Though covered because he's sleeping on his stomach, I close my eyes and remember the feeling of his broad chest beneath mine, my fingertips coming to life as they think about the lines they traced onto his skin just hours before.

Maybe hours. It could be minutes; I'm really not sure.

There are a few things I'm certain of, and one of them is that time means nothing when it comes to Edward and me.

I was with my husband for years and felt nothing compared to how I do right now with Edward, a man I've known for almost two months.

Sex is more than sharing orgasms and enjoying the view.

Sex is the intimacy I feel rocking through me now, how the thought of his gentleness and thoughtfulness has tears glistening in my eyes.

Edward doesn't listen so that he can talk next in conversation — he listens because he knows I need to be heard.

I've been denied a voice — a thought — for so long, my husband drowning the very pleasure of the dawning of a new day each morning I woke up in our bed in Rhode Island. I hadn't been valued, hadn't been thought of at all, until now.

When my husband wasn't showing me with his hands just how angry I made him, I would dream he was, and it turned me into a shell of the woman I was supposed to be.

But I am that woman now.

I'm a woman who wakes up thankful for another day. I'm a woman who can stick up for herself — and kick some fucking ass while I'm at it. I'm a woman who has learned to trust again, not just a man, but his mother, too.

I'm a woman who deserves all the great things in life, including nights like these with a man who may just be the light I've always needed.

But for now, as I smile through the unshed tears in my eyes, I sigh in complete contentment.

And really, and truthfully, sleep soundly.

See you tomorrow!