I bolted awake, my body sweaty and shaky.

"Bella?" Edward called from somewhere in the darkness.

My breaths came out in short gasps, I could feel the beginnings of a panic attack. I'd had the worst nightmare I'd ever had since Edward left, and I was desperate for some sort of release.

I flipped out of bed and scrambled for the bathroom, intent on releasing the pain that festered inside me.

I frantically opened drawers and cabinets, looking for a razor, for anything sharp, to help release this pain.

"Bella, please just come back to bed," Edward pleaded. He had been following me around like a shadow as I scrambled around the bathroom. "You're not going to find anything in here. I got rid of everything you could hurt yourself with."

I ignored him, focused on my mission to find something sharp enough to cut myself with.

"Please, Bella. Let me help you. Come back to bed and I'll help you get through this."

I shook my head. I had been down this road before. I had felt this kind of pain before, and I knew from experience that the only way to get rid of it was to hurt myself.

"Did I ever tell you about the time that I broke my arm sledding?"

His question took me by surprise, and just for a second I stopped looking for a razor. Just one second. Then I resumed my frantic search again.

"Vampires can't break their arms," I replied dismissively, as I pulled out cleaning supplies from underneath the sink, trying to find a razor that had been forgotten during Edward's clean out.

"It wasn't when I was a vampire, It was when I was still human," he replied from behind me.

I reached for another drawer and started pulling its contents out and laying it on the floor. "No, you never told me about that," I said.

"I was eleven years old. We had gotten eight inches of snow the night before, and all the roads were closed down, which meant that school was canceled. I remember looking outside the kitchen window and seeing a perfect layer of white powder on the ground. At the time, it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. The snow was so white, it almost hurt to look at. To this day, I have never seen snow that white. I remember taking my dog and my toboggan out to the woods behind the house, to the sledding hill,"

I stopped searching for a minute, intrigued by his story. "I never knew you had a dog."

He nodded. "His name was Jackson. We got him after we took a ski trip to Jackson Hole. And the name fit so well since he was white and loved the snow."

"I never knew that," I said, fascinated about learning something new about his past.

"He was my best friend growing up. The best dog anyone could ever have." He said. "Anyways, I took him with me on my sledding trip. And it was difficult to see him, since he blended in with the snow so well. The only reason I could actually see him was because he was running around so crazily in the snow, jumping into the air and rolling around. Otherwise, I don't think I could have seen him. Sledding went well for most of the day, I would race down the hill, full speed, and Jackson would chase after me, struggling to keep up."

"I can picture you flying down the hill," I said. "You've always liked speed."

He smiled. "Yes, I've always liked going fast, even when I was a human. I guess that's why I started to get bored. I needed to find a way to go faster. So eventually me and Jackson traversed through the snow even deeper in the woods to find a steeper hill. It took awhile, but eventually we did find one. The only problem was that it was covered with trees," he smiled. "I took that hill as a challenge, part of the fun was the impossible speed of the steep hill and the other part of the fun was dodging the trees. Things were fine for the first few rides. In fact I had never had so much fun in my life. But by late morning the temperature had dropped, and the once powdery snow had frozen over, making sledding icy. That was when I got hurt. One minute I was flying down the hill, going impossibly fast, and the next minute, I was laying on the ground, pain searing up my arm. I had hit a tree. Jackson was at my side immediately, and he knew something was wrong. When I trudged home, Jackson circled me around and around, just making sure I was ok.

"When I finally got home, my mother was frantic with worry. She made me rest in bed all day while we waited for the doctor to come. There was a perk to breaking my arm though," he said, "I got to drink all the hot chocolate I wanted. And I got to miss school for the next two days, since my mother didn't want me walking to school while I was still in pain."

I hadn't noticed it, but I had stopped searching for a razor. I was sitting on the bathroom floor at two in the morning, completely fascinated with Edward's simple story. Everything about Edward interested me. Learning something about his past was like obtaining a new puzzle piece to Edward's life. It gave me a clearer picture of the man standing in front of me. For a second, I remembered when Edward and I first met, how he asked me a million question: what my favorite color was, what my room looked like, what my old school was like. He acted like every answer was the most interesting thing he had ever heard. At the time I didn't understand his fascination with all the little things about me, but now I understood. I wanted to know everything about Edward. Every detail was interesting to me.

"Why don't we go back to bed, and I'll tell you another story?" He asked.

"I made a mess in here," I said, looking around at the items scattered on the floor.

"It's okay, Sweetheart. We'll clean it in the morning. Just come to bed."

I nodded, suddenly overcome with sleepiness.

Edward scooped me into his arms and carried me into his room, laying us both under the covers of the bed.

I wrapped my arms around his middle. "Can you please tell me another story as I fall asleep?" I asked.

Edward kissed my forehead. "Did I ever tell you about the time my cousin convinced me to throw eggs at the neighbor's house?"