A/N: Okay. I had enough clamoring anons that I feel the need to clarify this. After all, we get a little carried away and lose perspective when we're talking about E/B. Just remember that E/B are not together. As far as Charlie and Jacob are concerned, they got pregnant on a one night stand and that is the extent of their relationship. Edward is Charlie's age-a fact that would help neither Charlie nor Jacob think that Edward had any reason to care about Bella deeper than the responsibility he feels for having gotten her pregnant.

Bella made bets with herself as to which of them would come up after her. She wished Emily was there, and almost called her. In the end, though, she simply sat on her floor with her back against the bed and waited.

"Come in," Bella called when the inevitable knock came.

It was Jacob. Bella was mildly surprised to find she was disappointed. The person she really wanted there with her was Edward. Then again, part of her was relieved too.

A side-effect of therapy was an inability to be be blissfully unaware. Bella was long in the habit of deconstructing her own moods, especially when something triggered her. She knew why it was happening now, and it wasn't something she wanted to share with any of the men in the house.

At the same time, she knew some kind of explanation was important. Jacob had already proven he was willing to listen, and he wasn't brushing off the gravity of how Bella had reacted. She was calmer now that they weren't all clamoring around her. This she could deal with.

Jacob came to sit beside her, sitting similarly with his back against the bed, but he left plenty of space between them. Bella didn't speak right away, and she didn't look at him. Just because she was open to talking didn't mean this was going to be easy.

Her friend huffed before he spoke in a rush. "I'm not trying to be an asshole. It's just that I'm trying to decide how to act here. We were cool for two years, and everything has been fine the few weeks you've been home before he showed up. What happened? Was I doing something different with you?"

"No," she said, and that was the truth.

He hadn't done anything with her he wouldn't have done with his two best friends from the reservation-Quil and Embry. In fact, with them, he was even more physical in that way guy friends sometimes could be. Bella couldn't count the number of times she'd seen them grab each other-to wrestle, to put each other in headlocks and the like.

Bella could feel his eyes on her, but she didn't look up. "I'm really not trying to see you as a victim here," he said. "I mean, I'm not going to lie. I think it's pretty creepy that guy is the same age as our dads, but I know he's not the same kind of creep as that asshole."

Now she did raise her head to look at him. "He's not a creep at all."

Jacob look dubious, but he nodded. "Okay. I believe you, but if I read you right, the 'situation' you were talking about downstairs has to do with him, right?"

Here it comes. Bella swallowed thickly. "Yeah."

"So if you're not scared of him…"

"Come on, Jake. This isn't difficult to figure out. We're going to have a baby. Even though we're not together, my subconscious associates that with some kind of relationship." Bella wrapped her arms tighter around herself, staring forward again. It was a partial truth, anyway. "The only thing I've been taught about relationships is that it makes people jealous of stupid things like another guy being near me at all." She purposefully scooted over, closing the distance between them.

He glanced at her but rested his arm lightly over her shoulders. They sat in companionable silence for a minute, Bella soaking up the warmth that was characteristic of Jake. After Mike, after she came home from the shelter she'd taken refuge at long enough to get her head on straight, she spent a lot of time on the reservation with Jake and his friends. Forks had been a hostile landscape for her even then.

Maybe it always would be.

"Bells?" Jake asked after a minute.

"What?"

She could feel the rise and fall of his chest had gotten sharper; just a little more labored. "I made things a lot harder for you back then, didn't I?"

Bella's body seized with the memories his question brought back. She used to go to such lengths to maintain her friendship with Jake and not let Mike find out. When he did, though…

"It wasn't your fault," she said, her voice shaky. "You were a kid."

"So were you."

"Well, it wasn't my fault either." She took a steadying breath, because this he did need to know, just in case. They hadn't really talked about the things that happened with Mike and Jacob's part in them. At the time, it was what Bella needed-to feel normal again, to forget for a little while. Now, though, things needed to be said. "Yeah, Jake. You made things harder. Whenever he found us together, it was always going to be bad for me, but you pushed his buttons on purpose. You taunted him, and it was obvious he couldn't lash out at you. Who do you think he lashed out at?"

Jacob's breath stuttered. "I knew he was a jerk, but I didn't think about what that meant. I thought if he was treating you really bad, you would have left. Or I would have known."

"You get really good at hiding it," Bella said, the words timorous.

Even though she knew entirely too much about the survival mode victims of abusers went into, it was still hard to accept. Why had it taken her so long to leave?

Bella shook the thought off, and gave Jake another squeeze. "Anyway. We should go check on Edward." She tried to infuse some lightness into her tone. "I don't want to leave him alone with Dad for too long."

Jake pulled back, his brows furrowed as he looked at her. "He left."

"What? Why? Where did he go?"

"Back to his hotel, I guess." Jacob shrugged. "I don't know. I really don't care about him."

Bella got to her feet, replaying her words in the kitchen. She could imagine how it sounded to him-that her residual fear was centered around him and not Jacob. "I need to talk to him. Do you think you can give me a ride to the hotel?"

Jacob didn't move right away. He was giving her a strange look. "You like him. Like a friend like him. Like more than just the random guy who knocked you up like him."

"He's a good guy, Jake. He has his baggage, but god, look at me. It's not like I'm a ray of pure sunshine in anyone's life.

"I know. It's just hard to process sometimes. You're different than you were when you were home. I mean, besides the fact you came home with another person in you." He tried to smile.

Bella ruffled his hair. "Ah, Jakey. I didn't figure everything out just because I left Mike. I'm kind of playing everything by ear." She put a hand to her belly, her cheeks heating with a self-conscious blush. "Maybe a little too by ear, but there are worse things, right?"

"Worse things than you being a mom? Yeah, Bells. There are a lot worse things than that. This kid's really lucky to have you."

Tears stung Bella's eyes. So far, no one had treated this baby like it could be a good thing. It was a situation to be dealt with-like being hit by a train, Edward had said. No one had told her she was going to be a good mother. "You think so?"

"Yeah. I'm not worried about the kid, because it's got you." He gave her a side hug. "And you have me. I don't know what you need me for, but if you do, I'm here for you."

Bella smiled, blinking rapidly to keep from crying. "Thanks, Jake. I needed to hear that."

~0~

Sometimes the whole being self-aware and doing the mature thing was a pain in the ass.

Bella wrung her hands as she stood outside of Edward's hotel room, waiting for him to answer the door. When it came open, and he saw her standing there, he smiled. Her tummy gave a ridiculous little flutter, and she smiled back.

"Hey," he said, stepping to the side so she could come in.

"You left," she said, her voice accusing. She frowned at herself. That was not what she'd intended to say. "I mean. Hi." She sat down on 'her' bed.

He sat down opposite her. "Sorry. I thought I was making you uncomfortable."

She made an exasperated noise and fixed him with a glare that had no real ire behind it. "I told you; you don't make me uncomfortable."

"Bella, you were crawling out of your skin with both me and Jacob there. It was pretty clear it was my presence you were reacting to."

"No. It was you and Jake my stupid subconscious was reacting to." Bella twisted a strand of hair around her finger. "You know I don't mean to be a basket case."

"You're not a basket case."

"My point is, I didn't want you to leave." Her throat closed off a bit. This was so much more difficult to say to Edward than it had been to Jacob. Then again, what she'd told Jacob made sense, right? Start there, Swan. "It's not you. It's just that I've only felt this way about one other person, and it's the Pavlov's dog effect. My subconscious doesn't know any better than to expect things to happen the same way they did before."

Edward's expression was pained. "Bella. Please explain that. What do you mean you've only felt this way about one other person? If I make you feel anything like Mike did-"

"Oh god. Oh no. No." Bella leapt to her feet, scrambling for the right words. She sat down next to Edward. "That's not what I meant. I mean, you know... stupid or not, I loved Mike. Or I thought I did. That's what I...um…"

Bella cut herself off, flummoxed now. She got to her feel again, pacing a few steps back and forth in the same small space. "This isn't coming out right at all."

She started when he reached out and took her hand, pulling her to a stop. "Bella, are you trying to say you love me?"

"No!" She huffed. "Yes? Maybe? God, I don't know."

He tugged her hand and she sat down, not looking at him. "And you say I'm not a basket case," she muttered, covering her face with her hands. Her skin was super-heated. There was that flutter in her belly, that twist of nerves, and she wondered if someone else would be a million times smoother in this position. "Look, when all of this started, I thought it would be a miracle if we could be friends. That's what I wanted, for us to be friendly. But we kind of skipped over that part. I have feelings for you. I mean, I guess that's obvious. You don't go around kissing your friends, and I want to kiss you all the damn time. I don't know. Nothing makes sense right now. This is completely irrational."

"Bella." He circled her wrists with his fingers, drawing her hands down away from her face. "You're pregnant. You're allowed to be a little irrational about what you feel and what you want." A smile played at the edge of his lips. "Granted, that usually applies to bizarre food cravings, but this counts too." He squeezed her fingers gently.

"Yeah. Might be the hormones," she said, looking down to her lap where their fingers were entwined.

He lifted one hand, and his touch then was tender. Bella looked up, and her belly fluttered when she saw the intensity of the look in his eyes-cloudy with conflicting emotions. He was so close, and his head was tilted toward her. Her breath caught. "Me, on the other hand," he murmured, his tone a rumble that was like the quiet roll of thunder. "I have no excuse." He brushed the pad of his thumb over her lips, his eyes following the motion. "I always want to kiss you too. Irrational, maybe, but is it wrong?" He pressed a kiss to the side of her mouth. "It doesn't feel wrong."

He didn't kiss her at first, though she was dizzy with the idea he might. It was almost as though he was trying to read her. He studied her, and as he stared, their fingers moved, exploring the ridges of knuckles, the soft flesh of palms, the shape of each other. His eyes returned to hers, confused and sure at the same time. Her belly fluttered, and she-

Bella gasped, pulling away.

"I'm sorry," Edward said, his voice a rough whisper as he pulled his hands in.

"No." She grabbed his hand and pressed it to the small swell. "I felt it."

He raised his eyebrows. "The baby?"

"Yeah." She laughed again. "I thought it was you. I mean. I thought it was, you know, butterflies in the belly. Nerves. But it's not. Can you feel?"

"No, sweetheart. I won't be able to feel it for a while yet. It's actually pretty unusual that you're feeling it this early." Despite what he said, he didn't try to move, didn't pull away.

"Oh," she said, disappointed. She didn't let him go either, but kept his hand pressed against her. She looked up, and anything she might have said died on the tip of her tongue. Her heartbeat quickened, and it was instinct to tilt her head up to meet his lips with hers.

With their hands together over their baby, it was impossible not to remember that first night together. There was something between them that had nothing to with ration or logic. True, Bella had something to prove that night, but there was a reason it was Edward she was drawn to, a reason why she'd overcome a huge barrier for one night with him. It was chance that they'd met, but he wasn't some random guy she'd used just to get it over with.

Bella put her hand against his chest, feeling that his heart was pounding as hard as hers was, just as it had that first night. It didn't matter that he was older and more experienced in every way. She sensed that if he wanted to, he was more than capable of being charming and seductive. Yet with her, he was frightened and lost. It wasn't a bad thing-not in this case. It gave her strength to know she wasn't so ass backward and warped.

It was nice to know that maybe they were on the same page, even if both of them had no idea what language the book they were reading was written in.

Edward opened his mouth to her, and teased her tongue. His hands were at her waist, and then they crept up her sides under her shirt. He tickled the skin along her stomach, making her groan into his mouth. He sighed in response.

Where Bella made her mistake was that she started to drift. She let her conscious thoughts go, stopped worrying about what in the hell they were doing-what was the worst that could happen when she was already pregnant?-and gave herself over to the delicious haze of sensation. She wanted to get lost in the tingles that went down her spine as his fingertips skimmed her skin. She wanted to devote all her mind to the simple experience of how he tasted on her tongue and felt against her fingers.

But her subconscious was still raked down to raw nerves. What her subconscious knew was that Jacob and a man she was intimate with had been in the same room together. She knew what happened next. She knew what happened when they were out of Jacob's sight, back home alone.

"No."

The word was ripped from her against her will. She shoved Edward away from her and clapped her hands over her ears, trying desperately to hang on to reality. She knew who she was with. She knew it, but it was far too late to convince her broken psyche.

"No, no." When Edward tried to reach for her, she scrambled backward crablike, holding one hand out at him in a stopping motion. "Please don't. Please. Please. Don't." The words all ran together, nonsensical seeing as she was only half aware she was speaking.

He held his hands up and out where she could see. "I'm over here. I'm not going to hurt you."

She blinked at him, hands gripped in her hair now as she wrestled with what was real and what wasn't. Her eyes were open. She could see Edward in front of her, could see the devastated look on his face and the worry in his eyes. But the sound on reality was turned down low, and in her head, she heard herself pleading, trying to explain. If only Mike would listen, she could make him understand. Nothing had happened. Nothing would happen. She felt the iron strength of his grip as he hauled her into the house not saying a word. She flinched when she heard the sound of the door slamming behind them like a reckoning, keeping the world out so no would see. No one would know. She saw his cold eyes, sparked and dangerous with loathing and fury.

Bella shook her head hard.

The plain hotel room, not Mike's house.

Warm green eyes, not cold blue.

Edward, not Mike.

She drew in air in sharp gasps and crumpled down on the bed. "Fuck," she muttered between clenched teeth. Bella was furious, but it was an anger dampened by exhaustion. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

His footsteps were soft as he walked a few steps. Toward her or away-neither would have surprised Bella. But when he called her name, his voice was near. She didn't want to open her eyes and have to face him.

"That was careless. I'm sorry."

Bella growled, lifting her head so she could glare at him. He was kneeling by the bed, far enough away to give her breathing room but close enough that he could reach out and touch her. "Don't fucking apologize."

"I will apologize, because I was careless," he said, his tone firm but gentle. "Come on. I came up here because I knew you were struggling, and who the hell could blame you? This town is poisonous, Bella. It's full of triggers and people who keep tearing you apart whether they mean to or not."

He put his hand, palm up, on the bed between them. Sniffling, Bella put her hand in his. He rubbed his thumb across her knuckles. After a few more seconds, she tugged and he got the idea. He sat, opening his arms to her, and she let him envelop her in the safety of his embrace, her back to his chest. Bella closed her eyes, letting him warm the places that had gone cold inside her.

"Do you want to talk about it?" He began to rock them in a gentle swaying motion. "I'll listen, if you want to talk."

She shuddered, because what she wanted more than anything was to forget. "Not yet."

"Okay," he said, and he kissed the side of her hair. "Do you want to go home?"

She shook her head.

"Do you want to stay tonight?"

She pulled away but only enough that she could look at him. "Do you want me?" she asked, and there were so many questions wrapped up in the same four words, she couldn't pretend even to herself that she didn't know what she was asking.

He knew too what she was asking, all the things she was asking. "Yes," he said, the word a whisper.

She settled back into his arms, lapsing into silence again.

Trying not to remember that he had to leave tomorrow.

A/N: Thanks to my lovely girls for putting up with my neediness.

How we doing out there, kids?