A/N: Chapter 7! Time to make things a little less ... cold.


I swallow hard, trying to down any venom left in my mouth. But it's still pooling, and I'm still thirsty. I look at Bella but she seems fine. I look at Nessie, but she's smiling happily as she sets up the table. I don't understand why this is so hard for me.

I hate this, I hate this, I hate this, I hate this, I hate this, I hate this, I hate this... I think I'm going to do it, I can't hold back the burning anymore I need to ...

"Edward! What are you doing here?" Bella asks, surprised. I turn to see her kissing him on the cheek.

"Daddy?" Nessie whips her head around to stare at the man hugging Bella from behind the table. She gives him a small smile, but her brow is still furrowed.

"Hi angel," he says. "Just came to support Forks Elementary School." Edward turns to me, giving me a knowing look.

"Hey Edward," I say to him. I feel like he knows what I was -- oh dammnit, I forgot about that. Urgh.

Edward can read minds, and he just heard what I was thinking, and oh dammnit, dammnit, dammnit all the way to hell.

"Daddy," Renesmee says, "Help us or buy a brownie."

"How much, sweet pea?"

"Fifty cenths."

He digs into his pocket and pulls out a dollar bill. "Keep the change darling, I'm not hungry for brownies."

She takes his cash with a quick swipe of her hands, and dunks the bill into the tin box.

A decent amount of customers stop by, many of them teenage girls coming to pass looks at Edward. I look at Bella, whose chewing on her lip rather hardly, and Renesmee, who doesn't seem to notice anything, and then Edward, who I know is mentally laughing. He could at least be nice and not flirt back. Of course, he's racking in like 5 bucks per customer. I doubt we'll sell more than Marissa Stevens, but we'll certainly make more.

"Teenage girls these days," Bella mutters. "You'd think they'd have some manners."

"Shh," Edward says, who bites back a smile.

I looked at Edward and Bella converse, sharing their own secret smiles and glances at each other, and how Renesmee was the product of all of this. I watched how Edward's eyes softened when he watched his daughter, his baby girl, announce to each customer, "Support Forks Elementary School! Buy a brownie!" and run back to the little tin box to stash the cash. And I saw it was good. This was pure, this was God in his most human form.

And I began to realize that God existed in very different shapes.