You tell me my tears are your weakness and that you live for my smiles. You tell me that life is never easy, and all we can do is try. You tell me what I am to you, and sometimes it's so hard to believe that what you say is true. Because all my life, I never meant so much to anyone. I never felt worthy. I never felt cherished. I never felt the warmth that you make me feel. And here I am, trying – always trying – to be worthy of you.

And here we are now, losing ourselves to find each other in a different way.

–

He calls me over and over. I'm taking a shower on Sunday night and the phone rings. I'm still in bed on Monday morning and the phone rings. I am putting on my jeans in the afternoon and the phone rings. I have just finally put Kathleen to sleep and the phone rings. She wakes up and throws a tantrum because she is so cranky.

The phone just rings and rings and rings for two days and I don't pick up even once. I can't. I don't even know what to say to him. If I hear his voice, my heart will melt. I can't have that. I need to be strong as iron. I don't want to be crushed. I just need to get my shit together till he gets here on Tuesday. I need to face the facts and stop living in daydreams.

He leaves voice messages on my phone, but in all the messages I just hear a frustrated sigh before the line goes dead. He leaves texts, ranging from 'Are you ok?' to 'Goddammit, just pick up the phone before I lose my mind!' to 'I am sorry. I don't know what for, but sorry' to 'Just send me one reply so I know you're alright.'

It's not about just one reply. Just one reply would break my resolve and then I will need his reassurance and I will need his voice. I am a horrible person, but right now I just want to be with my silence. Silence lets me think. I don't switch off the phone, though. Stubborn as I am, I still read his words. I don't know why. I probably read his texts a hundred times.

When he finally shows up, he is clearly not happy. He runs his hand through his hair and asks me why I haven't answered or returned his calls and texts, and I don't have an answer. He asks me why I ran away, and I don't have an answer. We soon lose ourselves in kissing – angry making out is so much better than just being angry – and before we know it, we are a panting, sweating mess, but decidedly far more relaxed than we have been since Sunday.

He hovers over me and kisses the corner of my mouth.

"Smile for me?"

"What?"

"You haven't smiled at all tonight."

"And?"

"The amount of times you smile is directly proportional to how happy I feel."

I scoff, "You're full of it."

"I'm serious." He kisses my cheek and makes me look at him. "I actually count your smiles. Last Tuesday you smiled twenty seven times. A week before that it was fourteen. On your birthday, I lost count because you pretty much smiled all night and were so happy. But tonight? None."

I'm silent. His explanation stings worse.

"What can I do?" he asks softly.

I look at him in confusion.

"Tell me what I can do to make you smile."

"I'm fine, Edward. Just go to sleep for a while. Or you should be going home. Sophie needs you. Tanya must be wondering where –"

"Stop. Stop. I'm not going anywhere till you smile." His hand unconsciously makes patterns on my stomach, as if he's going to tickle me.

I sigh exasperatedly. "Will you drop it, please?"

"Just tell me what to do. What do you need?"

"What do I need?"

He nods. Seriously. I'm silent. He waits and waits.

Finally, I look into his kind eyes. "I need you."

"You have me, baby."

"Do I?"

He sits up some on his right elbow, and his left hand stops its movement and comes to rest on my cheek.

"Heart, body and soul, I'm yours." His eyes are fierce.

"Not in the eyes of everyone else."

He closes his eyes and touches his nose to mine. "Fuck everyone else."

I smile sadly. "I already did."

His eyes open, as he pulls away from my face. His nostrils flare and he glares at me. His jaw is so tight. "You know that's not what I meant," he grits out.

And then the dam breaks. I can't hold back. I can't even look at his face anymore. I talk to his chest, his heart.

"I know you didn't mean it like that, but what else do I say? I can't smile. I don't want to. You think my heart is made of stone? You think you can stand in the middle of a grocery store and introduce your daughter to me and call me 'that lovely lady' and it doesn't hurt? Well, it hurts. It just hurts, Edward.

"It hurts that you go home to your wife and your kid and your white picket fence, and then expect me to smile because I couldn't possibly want a white picket fence, your wedding ring and two point five kids of my own. Whores don't want any of that, do they?"

"You're not a –"

"I am! I have been for years. And with the way things are going, I won't be surprised if I become one again. You can't change things overnight, Edward. You think I don't have a heart that bleeds every damn morning, and more so on Tuesday nights when I reach to your side of the bed and my hand touches cold sheets? That I don't have tears that burn my soul when I look at your picture perfect family and realize that I'll always be your dirty little secret? That I don't have emotions that threatened to choke me when a guy would be fucking me from behind and all I would see was your face behind my eyelids? When I would just pray for it to be over soon. I don't even feel whole, Edward. I don't. My heart is in tiny pieces and I let you trample allover them and break them further because you're the only thing that makes me feel anymore. So no, Edward, I don't have you even when I do; I will never have you or be a part of your life. I will never love another man and will die homeless and alone, with twenty cats surrounding me, so excuse me for not fucking smiling about it."

When I look back up, I see tears streaming down his face, and so help me, I want to take back every word I just said. I have never, ever seen him cry, and in an instant his tears become my torture. My anger, my frustration melt like snowflakes in hell and all my passion turns into helpless pleading.

"Don't," I beg him. I put a hand on his cheek and wipe the tears but they are never ending.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, and I know he isn't apologizing for the tears. I shake my head, pull him closer and kiss his tears away. He should never cry. Never, never ever.

I hold him to me and he buries his face in my neck, apologizing over and over. I hate myself for causing him so much pain. "Please don't cry, Edward. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said all that."

He shakes his head against my shoulder. "I'm yours. We'll work this out, I promise you. You won't be alone. You're not my dirty little secret; you are the love of my life."

He lifts his head and his red–rimmed eyes meet mine. "I love you, Bella. I'll make you happy again, I promise."

He kisses me then – soft and sweet and full of hope. My lips against his aren't as soft – they desperately cling to that hope.

"I wanna show you something," I say before I end up crying, and wriggle myself from under him to open my bedside drawer. I take out the piece of paper that says more than I ever could to him, and hand it to him without a word.

He looks at it curiously, and shifts us so we're both lying on our sides, facing each other. Our legs entwined, he puts an arm under my shoulders while I snuggle against him. He quietly reads the words, his face slowly losing all the pain and reflecting his happiness, his love.

When he is finally done, he has tears in his eyes again. He asks me for a pen and asks me to face the other way. He then rests the paper on my back and scribbles on it, the movement tickling my shoulder and making me giggle. When I turn back around, he turns the paper around and I smile at his words. It's silly, it's high–schoolish, and it's crazy, but that's what our love is like.

"This is ours," he says reverently and holds the paper between our chests.

"I want to burn it."

He raises a brow. "Burn it?"

I nod. "Because it will be consumed by the light and the heat that you are to me, and it will be ours forever. It's not meant for anyone else."

I expect him to laugh at me. He looks into my eyes for a long moment and kisses me instead. "Whatever you want."

We go to the terrace, with bed–sheets wrapped around our naked bodies, and I carry the matches from the kitchen with me.

I hand it to him while I hold the paper. "You light it."

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

He lights up the match and brings it close to his face for a moment, the flame reflected back in both his eyes and mine. Then he brings it to the paper and sets a corner on fire.

I throw the burning paper away from us. The flames lick away quickly…every word turns to ash. This is our story – in these ashes at our feet. In these words that will never be heard by anyone else but us. We burn it. We burn our story to the ground because in these unspoken words is immortality. It does not matter if no one else sees them, reads them, breathes them. We've seen it, read it, breathed it. This piece of paper is a part of our light now. The words 'I love you more, Butterfly' written in his elegant script are the last to be consumed in this light. He is the light. He is life.

Flames consume our story, so we can take a new page and begin another.

––x––

End of Part 1. Part 2 next week :)