1Disclaimer: Twilight is property of Stephenie Meyer.

A/N: Guess who's back? Back again? Rainy's back, tell a friend! Guess who's back, guess who's back... :P Thank you all for the reviews, the adds, and all the wonderful words! Thank you for understanding my time off, too! I'm all moved in now, and started my new job and everything... Life goes on! And so does this story...

BellaPOV:

I entertained the idea of running. I thought about it the rest of that night, after we kissed. So much that hadn't been said between us was embedded in that solitary display of affection. It terrified me, yes, but it also intrigued me.

There was no way I couldn't call her after the thunder in my ears that night from the sound of my heart in my throat, running away from the fire in the pit of my being. Alice had poured gasoline all over me and tossed a lit match onto me that night.

And God help me, I was addicted after the first taste. I didn't know what to do. So I called the only person in the world that would understand where I was coming from, the only person I felt could tell me what these emotions racing through me were about. The only person who knew the more intimate side of Bella Swan.

I called Leah.

"...What do you want?" she said in a monotone when she answered her cell phone, and I let out a sigh of relief. I was scared she wouldn't pick up. It had been nearly four months since I'd spoken to her at all.

"Leah, I need your help," I said, trying to keep my voice even, and not show my utter desperation. Of course, she knew I was desperate. I would never have dialed her number had I not been so.

She scoffed into my ear. "Hardly, Bella. There's nothing I can do for you, anymore."

"You could do this," I argued, my face turning red at the "anymore". "It would take all of fifteen minutes to explain it, and then you can tell me what the fuck is going on with me, and I'll even give you the pleasure of hanging up on me."

"Tempting," she said sarcastically, and I rolled my eyes at how difficult she could be when she was hurt. I knew I deserved the cold shoulder, the way I left her, but GOD what does she want from me? Our parents were married now, for Christ's sake!

"Please, Leah? I'm... I'm scared."

There was silence on the other end of the cellular call, and I bit my lip, refraining from asking if she were still connected. I didn't think I could handle it if she weren't. A deep, weary sigh told me she hadn't hung up on me, yet, and a second flood of relief washed over me since she had answered. "Why are you scared, Bella?" she asked quietly, not without the edge in her voice.

"I met someone," I said in a near whisper, feeling my heart begin to pound at the thought of Alice.

"You've met a few 'someones' lately, Bella. You have to be more specific," Leah said boredly, though I heard an undercurrent in her tone that I couldn't quite place. It was almost as if her voice wavered just a bit, but I couldn't be sure.

"Alice Cullen... she's accomplished, independent, strong, a wonderful mother, she's beautiful... She makes me feel funny, you know? Inside. And it's not just because I want to have sex with her. Just hearing her laugh makes me feel satisfied."

Leah was quiet again, and I winced, because sometimes I got the feeling that Leah had cared about me more than she ever let on, despite my pleas for her to come out with me, years before Sue married my father. I could only hope my admissions now were not hurting one of my lifelong best friends. "How does this Alice girl feel about you?" she asked after what seemed like a millennium.

I sighed, running a hand through my hair, tugging a bit just to feel the pull, to make sure I was really conscious and was not locked in a dream where Alice Cullen had kissed me mere hours ago. "We went out on a... well, we hung out, because our date plans were ruined by my stupid, chauvinistic boss... anyway, she kissed me tonight. I felt like it was my first kiss, all over again."

"Well, I hope you didn't slobber all over her face like you did mine," Leah commented unnecessarily, and I went crimson.

"We were ten! I'd only seen it done on TV!"

"Calm down, doofus, I'm kidding. So... sparks flew, hmm?"

I took a deep breath and silently chastised myself for rising to her bait. "Yes. Sparks, if that's what you call the source of the conflagration of my entire heart, and the handicap of my now useless brain."

"Your brain had uses?"

"Leah! I need advice, not insults!"

"Okay, okay... It sounds like you really like this girl. And I think you should see what happens with her. Don't run. You always run when it gets too tough. And don't stay drunk, because you do that, too. Stay sober, level, and keep your head as clear as you can. How did you meet her?"

I bit my lip, smiling at how she was speaking to me like a human being again. "I tutor her son. He's my only guitar student as of the moment."

"How long have you known her?"

I blushed at this question, because this was the true kicker. I'd not known her long at all. "Oh, you know... maybe a week," I said airily, and I heard Leah gasp on the other end.

"A week? Bella, what the hell is wrong with you? You're freaking out like this over a girl you barely know?" she screeched at me, and I winced, pulling my phone away from my ear as I pulled back the sheet on my bed to settle down for the night.

"You don't understand, Leah," I said softly, lying down on my back and putting an arm behind my head. "There's a connection there that I have never felt before. I feel like she knows me just by looking me in the eyes. It's so intense with her, and so much like a fairy tale..."

"Fairy tales don't exist in real life," she snapped at me, and I sighed. I'd really hurt her. But if she hadn't been so fucking stubborn and just admitted how she felt... maybe things would have been different, regardless of her mother and my father. I would have never moved to Seattle. I would have never met Alice.

"This one does," I shot back, angry at her for the judgement I could hear in her voice. Enough of The Leah Show. "Look, maybe I made a mistake calling you, and I'm sorry to bother you."

"Bella..." Her voice softened, but was still wrought with accusations and judement.

I shook my head. She had no right. None. "Leah... you are one bitter, selfish bitch when you want to be. But you know me better than I know myself, and I needed that tonight. But fuck it, since you can't even swallow your temper long enough to help me out."

"Why? Why should I help you go fall in love with someone else when all I think about is what might have been? Why does the advisor position fall to me, when I've spent my entire life being in love with you? Why do I have to listen to you tell me about how perfect she is? Fuck that, Bella Swan, I can't be that for you. I love you too much." Now she tells me. Well, it's too late for her to sing that song to me.

And then she took me up on my deal and disconnected her call, leaving me staring at my blank phone face for five minutes straight before a text came through from someone else.

Can't sleep... can't stop thinking about you.

"Alice," I breathed, just seeing her words on the screen lifting the heavy weight that Leah had placed on my chest. A smile graced my lips as I texted her back. Still awake, too... I can't believe you kissed me.

Believe it. And believe that it's going to happen more often now. You're a really good kisser, Bella. Her response made me pause in all thought, and I read it three times before I even tried to reply.

I bit back my smile. She was so direct, and had no shame, so it seemed. It's still my turn, so I say we meet up at the bistro around the corner from my place at noon for Sunday brunch... if you can, I mean. I know it's short notice.

Her reply took a little longer than the last, and I sweating slightly, lying in my bed and looking at the ceiling. See you then. ;) she said back, and I gave a large sigh of relief.

Deciding that sleep was now the most important step between now and then, I plugged my phone to its charger and pulled the sheet up on my shoulder as I rolled over on my side and curled up. Before my eyes could close, however, I heard a thump from my living room, and a resulting grunt. My blood ran frigid. There's someone in my apartment.

My bedroom door was shut, but it was not locked, and I caught my breath enough to where I could ease myself up into a sitting position, listening hard for any more indications of the intruder's whereabouts in my tiny apartment. So far all I could hear was the sound of my heart panicking, and I reached over for my phone to dial 911.

"All lines are busy, please hold for the next available operator," a recording said to me in a chipper tone, and I swore under my breath, ending the call and dialing the first number that came to mind. I called Alice.

"Hello?" She was still wide awake, thank God.

"Alice, someone is in my apartment and 911 is busy," I said in a fast whisper, and she gasped on the other end of the line. "I'm in my room, and the door is shut, but I am scared to try and lock it."

"I'm calling Emmett, he's at La Lune Bleu so he can get there pretty fast. I'll be right behind him. Can you please try to lock your door?"

I swallowed hard at the thought of getting out of bed, terrified I would make a noise and alert the intruder to my presence. "...I can try." I slowly set one foot on the floor and went to stand erect, placing the other foot slowly down beside it. I could hear Alice talking to Emmett on another phone, and I took a cautious step forward to reach out to my door knob, and had just turned the lock vertical when I heard a man's laughter from my living room. My breath hitched.

"What? What is it? Emmett's on the way, and so am I," Alice said to me in a hushed whisper, and I could hear the sound of a door closing on her end, and keys jingling.

"It's a man," I whispered so low I wasn't sure if she could hear me. "He just laughed."

"Laughed?"

I snuck over to the far side of my room, eyeballing my window, but it was locked. It led out to a fire escape, but so did the window I presumed he entered through. The two windows shared the same scaffold... he knew I was in here. He had to know. If I were going to break into someone's home, I would check all windows. And as I assumed this guy was a career criminal, he would know that fact better than I. But why didn't he come in here? Why didn't he try to silence me? I started shaking, the shock wearing down into hysterics, and as my breathing picked up into panting, Alice shushed me from my phone.

"Bella, you have to be really quiet for me, okay? I know you're scared, but help is on the way. Emmett will be there in less than ten minutes, and he's calling for back-up. Everything's going to be okay, I promise." I closed my eyes and swallowed hard, listening to her voice, thinking that if he came in here, that this was probably the last time I would hear it. Tears came up in my eyes, and I held back the sob that was building in my chest. It was so soon. We'd only had our first kiss that very night. If he came through my locked door... she'd never know how much she affects me. She'd never know that she makes me feel like a little kid inside, all over again. She'd never know that I was ready to try with her, that I wanted to fall in love with her.

I heard the floor creak outside my door, and my heart started pounding even harder in my chest, and the thought crossed my mind that even if he didn't come through my door, I would die of cardiac arrest huddled in my floor. Then what I heard made my heart stop completely.

"...Bella?" he said from the other side of my door. "I know you're in there, and I know you can hear me... I can hear you breathing."

He knew my fucking name!

"We met last week, but uh... I don't know if you would remember me..." He said these words tauntingly, teasingly, mockingly. "We hit it off quite nicely, and I can't wait to pick up where we left off..." I heard a scrape against the door, and he chuckled darkly. "Don't mind that... I'm just imagining caressing you with my favorite toy. So beautiful, Bella..." Another scrape that made my body quake even harder. I had an idea of what was in his hand, but I tried not to think it. They're coming, it's gonna be okay...

"You move just as fast as I do, it seems. Making out in public with that girl from the club last week. She's a cute one, too. I can just imagine what you want to do to her..."

I felt my stomach lurch, and I swallowed the bile that rose.

"Alice, right?"

My heart thudded to a halt again, and I heard Alice gasp, telling me she was hearing at least part of this. No. Not Alice. You son of a bitch!

"I have a gift for you, and I'm going to leave it outside the door. I'm a romantic, see, and I like to court my ladies before we... heh, you know. Goodbye for now, my beautiful."

"Bella, don't speak, don't move! I'm only three blocks away and I'm flying like a bat out of hell!" Alice hissed in my ear in a low whisper. "Emmett should be there by now!"

My muscles had tightened themselves so that I was stiff and ready to pop, and my tremors wouldn't stop, my heart was still about to explode, and sweat rivulets running through my eyes were making it hard for me to keep them open. I couldn't remember a time that I felt like I was about to die, but I never imagined that it would feel like this.

A loud banging from the living room made me jump, and I cried out in pain as the taut muscles were forced to stretch with the movement, and dropped the phone by accident when it happened. My hand snapped over my mouth and I realized with a shock that it wasn't only sweat in my eyes, and I was not only panting, but sobbing as I watched my door, expecting him to come crashing through it, his "toy" glinting in the moonlight streaming through my window. I heard Alice calling my name from my abandoned phone, but I couldn't pick it up because I also heard another voice from the outside of my door.

"Bella? It's Emmett! Are you okay? He's not here!"

I stared at the door disbelievingly. Could he change his voice? Was it really Emmett on the other side?

"Shit! Bella!" Another smashing noise, and I screamed, balling up against the wall, closing my eyes in terror.

"It's okay, shh, it's just me. See, I won't even touch you..." His voice softened, and I braved a chance to open my eyes, and I saw Emmett there, with his kind expression.

I sobbed in earnest now, unable to hold it back anymore than I had, relaxing into a shaking mess on the floor, and he knelt beside me, but still did not touch me.

"Are you okay? Are you hurt?"

I shook my head, because I knew he meant physically.

"They didn't get in here, then?"

I shook my head again. But then again, he didn't really try.

"I need you to calm down for me... they're gone, and you're safe now."

"Bella!"

I heard her voice as she appeared in my room, and I cried a whole new river of tears just at the sight of her. I really was safe. If she was here, I was safe. She was here. I threw myself into her chest when she knelt beside Emmett, and she held me tightly, rocking me gently as I shook in her arms. She didn't care I was ruining her silk pajama top, she let me bawl with my face cradled in the crook of her neck. "I've got you, it's okay..." I let her soothing tone wash over me, and my heart started to slow, and breathing became just a little easier. "That's it. It's okay, Bella. You're fine... we're here, and he's not."

I heard Emmett move away from us, making a noise near my bedroom door, and I looked up, remembering he'd left something there. Alice smoothed my hair from my soaked cheeks, and cradled me as she continued to rock me, then she pressed her face into my hair and placed a kiss to the top of my head. I saw Emmett pull a pair of gloves out of his pocket and pull them on, then bend down, carefully picking something up from the floor just through the doorway. When he stood, he held a long-stemmed red rose in his gloved fingers, looking at it with his brow furrowed and his eyes squinted. He turned to look at me, and I swallowed hard, closing my eyes against the sight of it, feeling sick to my stomach again. ...I like to court my ladies before we...

I gave a violent shudder at the memory, and Emmett cleared his throat. "Can you explain this?" he asked me, and I took a deep breath to try and speak.

"He..." My voice came out thick, and I took a pause to cough and clear my throat before I continued. "He came to the door. He spoke to me." I felt fresh tears build up in my eyes, and I blinked them back, knowing I had to explain to Emmett, and knowing I had to be calm to tell him the story. "He knew my name, and I think it was the guy from the club. James. He said we met last week, that we had hit it off, and he couldn't wait to..." I swallowed a sob, and took a breath. "Continue where we left off." Alice's grip on me tightened, and I heard her make noise almost like a growl, and when I looked up at her, her face seemed to had carved into a permanent scowl; she was still resembled a perfect porcelain doll.

I stopped speaking when I looked at Alice, who met my eyes with cold blue eyes of steely anger, and I wondered how much of his monologue she had heard, because I knew she had heard him say her name. "Bella?" Emmett's voice broke into our connection, and I looked back at him, a blush rising in my cheeks.

"Um... there were some scrapes on my door, and my imagination says it was a knife, because he told me not to mind the noise, that it was him thinking about... caressing..." I forced the word out with a small gag, "me with his favorite... toy. And he had been watching me all night, because he mentioned... seeing something that happened earlier." I couldn't bring myself to tell Alice's big, burly brother that this guy had seen me kissing his little sister.

"Can you remember his exact words?"

Shit. "He said, 'You move just as fast as I do, it seems... making out in public with that girl from the club last week. She's a cute one, too. I can just imagine what you want to do to her.'" I blushed heavily, but Emmett didn't flinch at the information, instead he just nodded, looking back down at the rose.

"Is that all?" he asked.

I shook my head. "He knows her name. He said, 'Alice, right?'..." I looked up at Alice as I said this and she closed her eyes for a second, but the expression hadn't changed when they re-opened. She still looked... almost dangerous.

At this information, Emmett's face also pulled down into a scowl, and his hands tightened around the rose in his grasp. "That motherfucker..." he muttered, shaking his head, trying to clear it to continue his interview with me.

"CULLEN!" All three of us jumped at the sound of another voice, but then Emmett's eyes flashed in recognition, and he shouted back.

"In the bedroom!"

A uniformed officer appeared, taking in the scene before him, and Emmett looked back at me after raising a hand to the other officer. "Anything else?" he asked me.

I pointed to the rose. "He said since he was a romantic, he courted his ladies, and that was a gift for me."

Emmett shook his head, and the other cop looked at him questioningly. "We've got a head-case on our hands," he told the guy, who just looked more confused.

"Alice." She looked up at Emmett when called her name, and he made a motion with his hand at me. "Take Bella with you and go my house and stay with Rosalie and C.J. I'll have Huggins here follow you there. I'm going to the station to put this in evidence and file a report. I'm going to find this fucking freak. James. I'm going to get him."

Alice nodded and looked down at me as Emmett and Huggins left the room. "Can you stand up?" Her soft tone surprised me, because it didn't match the look still cast in her navy blue eyes.

I nodded and pushed myself off of her, using my hands to push myself to my feet. I sat down on the edge of my bed and buried my face in my hands at the head rush I got, and Alice sat beside me, rubbing my back between my shoulder blades. "You're going to be fine, Bella," she said, and I turned my head to look at her.

"He knows your name, Alice... It's not me I'm worried about. He's brought you into this." I took another deep breath to steady myself, and Alice shook her head.

"I'm not worried about that. You don't know we Cullens very well, yet." She gave me a reassuring smile, and I couldn't help but to give her a small smile back. "You're lucky to have us on your side, too," she added with a laugh.

I sighed and leaned into her, and she wrapped an arm around my shoulders, giving me a small squeeze. "Come on, let's get you cleaned up, and then we'll get out of here. We need to get some rest, both of us."

I allowed her to help me to my feet, and then to my bathroom, where I washed my face and grabbed my toothbrush. I grabbed a pair of jeans and a t-shirt to wear for the next day, and Emmett escorted us down to Alice's car, looking all around us with his gun holster on his hip unfastened and his hand at the ready. Huggins pulled out behind us in Seattle City cruiser when we drove off down the street, and I leaned my head back against the headrest in Alice's BMW.

"Are you okay?" she asked me a few minutes later, and I looked over at her to see her glance at me nervously from the driver's seat.

"I'm okay," I replied, trying to give her a smile that came out more like a grimace, and she reached over and laced her fingers through mine. It made me feel fifty percent better.

When we pulled up to a nice-sized house with a small fountain in front, Alice parked on the side of the fountain closest to the front door. She put a finger to her lips as she unlocked the door with a key from her key ring, and we stepped into a dark and quiet house. She punched in a security code and she shut and locked the door behind us, and the alarm system beeped once as the screen flashed "Ready."

She led me by the hand through the darkness, and then she took my things from my hands. "I'll set this over here... okay, come here." I followed the sound of her voice, and heard the crunch of leather as she sat down on what I assumed was the couch. I couldn't see a thing.

She took my hand again and led me to sit beside her, and then she led my head down in her lap. "Lie down... you need to sleep."

"So do you," I yawned as I stretched out on the rest of what seemed to be an endless sofa.

"I will. But not until you're asleep. Now shush, and close your eyes," she said quietly, beginning to run her fingers through my hair. I couldn't argue with that. No one had played with my hair like this since I was little and Renee used to do it to put me to sleep.

I did as I was told and closed my eyes with a deep sigh, concentrating on the sound of Alice's breathing in the dark, and the feel of her tiny fingers against my scalp, lulling me further and further into a sublime relaxation. She was here with me, and for now, both of us were safe.

A/N: ...Thoughts? Feelings? The button's right down there. Thank you all again.