All things Twilight belong to Stephenie Meyer, everything else is mine.

Thank you Midnight Cougar for beta'ing!

Enjoy!

Chapter 5

EPOV

I laid awake in my bed going over the course of the past few days. I'd slipped, let it out, my feelings for her, my want for her. It hadn't gotten out of hand, but that day I was moments from taking her on that hospital bed, everything be damned. My need to feel her, the blood pounding in her veins below my fingertips, her heart racing. A desperation to feel life within her, knowing she was still there with more than just my eyes, but with my body.

Eyes can be deceiving, your mind playing tricks, but her body pressed against mine, lips caressing mine…she was real then.

I'd almost lost my mind when I got the call from the hospital saying there'd been an accident at the school pool. I was certain it was another attempt to kill herself, like six months prior, at Christmas, when I found her in the hall with a knife in her hand cutting at her arm. She'd been depressed beyond usual, her first holiday without them. Nothing I did helped her.

I felt my heart being pulled from my chest when I found her, her pain once again filling the space and contaminating everything. A black cloud surrounding her, unseeing eyes.

Tears were falling down her cheeks as I watched the knife skim across her skin. I freaked out, pulling the blade from her grasp, placing my hand over the new wound to stop the bleeding. Her empty eyes stared at me. "I don't feel anything," she whispered to me before passing out.

The doctors said none of the cuts were very deep, just enough to bleed everywhere, and it would have stopped before too long. She'd cut herself eighteen times before I found her, the cuts so close her arm was covered in blood, dripping onto the floor below.

They kept her for two weeks; suicide watch. She told the doctors she was just trying to feel something, anything, not kill herself. Just wanted to feel again. She didn't even remember any of it. She didn't remember much these days, except the pain and loss.

That wasn't true… In the last few weeks I could see her waking up from the walking coma she'd been in.

And when I touched her…when I kissed her, she gravitated closer, her eyes a little bit clearer, brighter. It was encouragement, which was a bad thing. In those moments she was getting better, and she wanted me as well.

I'd been fighting it since the reading of the will. The unknown string that grabbed hold, tethering my heart to hers, braiding itself together, binding me to her from the moment I walked into that office.

It both killed and excited me that Charlie and Renee had left her in my care. I met Charlie and Renee Swan my second year out of law school. They needed some contracts drawn up for their company. It was a medium sized accounting firm with about seventy employees, and they made good money.

The world went numb when I received the call that Charlie and Renee had been in a car accident. They were good friends of mine, had a young daughter. We were supposed to go to dinner together that weekend; we'd planned a double date.

The funeral was surreal, I didn't even remember it. The whole thing brought back traumatic memories of my own. I had to leave halfway through, unable to take it. I couldn't even check on their daughter, to see how she was doing.

A week later I was summoned to another lawyer's office for the reading of Charlie and Renee's joint will. It seemed odd for them to add me, but I went. There was someone already in the space, waiting. I hadn't seen Bella in almost three years, but I'd seen a few pictures. The girl sitting, staring at the floor, looking like her world was gone, was beautiful in her agony. She'd grown, matured, and in no way resembled a little girl. Her eyes were dead, her heart broken, making my own ache with hers.

I wanted to snatch her away, take her in my arms, and hide her away from the world and the reminders of her pain. The perverse side of me wanted to whisk her away to my bed and make her mine. She'd never be alone then. She'd have me. I'd make her smile again. I could heal her. I'd be her family.

My body was drawn to her, my own busted and broken heart belonged to her. My mind was at war, our age gap pulling against what every fiber of my being knew; that she was mine, she was meant for me.

Why was I so drawn to her? Was it because I saw a bit of myself in her? Because I knew her pain? I knew I needed to leave as soon as possible after the reading, just to get away from her so I wouldn't do anything rash.

That was when the sky fell. Their will stated that I would be Bella's guardian until she was eighteen. She was only sixteen fucking years old. She'd be seventeen soon, her birthday in a few short months, just after the start of her Junior year. I'd have her in my care for over a year.

I was a sick motherfucker.

That could be the only explanation.

A young girl who just lost her parents and I was thinking about making her mine?

Her eyes opened, focusing for the first time and she looked over to me. A pain flared in my chest like I'd been punched. I could feel her pain and my want colliding. The need to take her in my arms and protect her from the world was so strong if I'd been standing I would have fallen to my knees.

She'd been staying with another family friend, who helped me collect her things and get her in my car.

She was like a doll; moveable with unseeing eyes. You could talk to her, but ninety percent of the time she didn't answer.

The first weeks weren't easy.

I had been in a relationship for six months when Bella came to live with me. Lauren was a nice girl, but with the strange feelings stirring for Bella, I knew it wasn't going to last. I tried to make it work, we were good together, but it just didn't in the end.

Lauren couldn't take my attention being on any woman other than her. She didn't understand Bella and what was going on with her. No one could but me.

I did everything I could to make the transition easier on Bella, even setting up her bedroom just like her old one. That plan backfired a bit.

Her screams woke me in the middle of the night. Heart wrenching, all-consuming agony spilled from her tiny form. I rushed to her every time, wrapping my arms around her. Trying to give her any comfort I could, trying to keep her in one piece. She was shattering.

Every time I felt guilty for thinking about how perfect she fit in my arms. She was crying her eyes out and I was happy to comfort her.

I'd pretty much figured out that was why Charlie and Renee put me as her guardian. We were close friends, but they had closer. They knew I was the only one who would understand what Bella would go through if the unbelievable happened.

The only difference was that when my parents died I was twelve, and I had family that took me in. Bella had no family. No one…but me.

For months I watched her walk around like a zombie. Talking to her didn't help and the only time I was able to reach her was when she was breaking down in my arms. The sad thing was she didn't remember any of it. All of my soothing words and actions couldn't penetrate the darkness of her mind.

I had to take time off in the summer, when she was at her worst, to take care of her, she couldn't be left alone. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the doctors called it. She went through the motions of living, but her eyes still held the dead void I'd seen at the lawyer's office. I just couldn't penetrate it.

After four months, just before Christmas, right before she cut herself, I slapped her.

I didn't mean to, and I felt like shit afterwards, but I just couldn't take it anymore. She never even acknowledged my existence in her life. In the end it was a blessing and a curse. The slap woke her from her slumber, but in return I now had a raging bitch to contend with…when she was awake. I knew it was just her lashing out in pain and confusion. It consumed her.

There were two forms she held; the bitch and the sleepwalker, as I referred to them.

I loved the day when I walked into my office and had to explain that my ward threw a near psychotic fit and ended up giving me a black eye.

Social Services wanted to take her away and place her in a mental institution. Never going to fucking happen.

I knew what was wrong with her, and I also knew it would take time to fix her.

The sound of the handle on my door turning grabbed my attention and I stared at it as it creaked open. Never in a year had she come to me, and there she was, standing in the doorway in her little tank top and shorts. She said nothing, but padded across the hardwood floors. Her face was void as she lifted the covers and lay down next to me, but her eyes were bright. Not the dullness that had been the standard.

She curled into my side, her head resting on my naked chest and I lowered my arm from behind my neck to wrap around her, pulling her closer. Every part of me relaxed, warmth spreading through me, my fingers trailing up and down her arm, and I leaned down to kiss the top of her head.

Everything was silent and I began to finally drift to sleep, when one word escaped her lips and into the air.

"Home," she sighed and snuggled deeper.

I smiled and drifted off to sleep, feeling whole for the first time in almost twenty years.