Edward's POV

"God, I missed you."

It had taken me every bit of strength and control I'd gained in my nearly ninety years as a vampire to pull away after Bella's words. When I'd told her I thought we should stop and she'd stiffened, trying to escape my arms, I'd held on tighter. Now, I needed to try to fix this screwed-up situation before I did even more damage to my relationship with her.

"Isabella," I said softly, trying to dazzle her as I so often had when she was human. "Look at me, please."

Her hands were clenched into fists between us, and she was staring down at them, avoiding my gaze.

"Bella, please," I begged, feeling my heart break as she sniffled.

She shook her head, and her next quiet words ripped me to shreds from the inside out.

"Y-You don't want me." Before I could say anything, she continued, "I'm a vampire now, and you still don't want me. I wasn't good enough for you then; I don't know why I thought I'd be good enough for you now."

Fuck! Was that what she thought?

"Isabella Marie Swan, you look at me," I said in as commanding a tone as I was able.

She looked up as far as my chin.

Sliding my hands to her hips, I rocked her against my erection, which was still hard as a rock, thanks to her position on my lap.

"Does that feel like I don't want you?" I asked her, rocking her once more as I thrust my hips up, making us both gasp.

"Purely physical," she answered, shaking her head. "It's your b-body's natural reaction to—"

"Bella, please," I said again. "Look at me. Look into my eyes and tell me I don't want you."

There was a long pause before she finally—finally!—raised her gaze to mine. I let every ounce of love I had for her, every bit of desire, fill me, permeating every pore. She must have seen something that convinced her, because she gasped.

"B-But you said—"

"I know, love," I said, shaking my head. "I said we should stop. Not because I didn't want you—God, never that!—but because the first time we make love should not be out in the middle of the woods, and it won't be before we've really had a chance to talk.

"Fuck, Bella," I sighed, "don't ever think I don't want you or that you aren't good enough for me. You've always—always, dammit—been too good for me."

"You said you didn't want me before. How do I..." Her voice trailed off, and she shook her head once.

Clenching my teeth, I cursed myself once again for my stupidity. "Bella, love, I lied. Remember? I thought I was doing the right thing, so I lied. I've never not wanted you. Every time I stopped you, I'd have given anything to be able to continue. To kiss you like I wanted to kiss you. To feel your warm hands on my cold skin. Back then, your safety was the only thing on my mind. I was so worried I would hurt you physically."

"But I'm not breakable now!" she said quickly. "See?" She picked up a small rock from beside us and crushed it with a flick of her fingers.

Swallowing thickly at the reminder that she was now as strong as I was—stronger, even—and that I didn't have to keep myself in check like I had before, I nodded. "Yes, love, I know. But we've—you've—been through so much. I want to make sure we take it slow. We have all the time in the world now, and I don't want to mess this up again." I closed my eyes, hoping she would understand.

She was quiet a moment before I felt her small hands on my face, her thumbs caressing my cheeks. "Okay," she sighed. "I'm not sure I like it, but I get it."

I pressed my forehead to hers, exhaling in relief, feeling the sharp pain in my chest slowly fading away.

"Is it..." she started before shaking her head and trying to stand up again.

Holding her firmly, I kept her in my lap and frowned. "Is it what, love?"

She sighed. "Is it easy for you? To stop, I mean."

Never letting go of her, I laughed ruefully. "It's easier in some ways, and harder in others," I admitted. Before she could scramble off my lap, I rushed to explain. "Before, my bloodlust and my worry about hurting you made stopping unavoidable. I wanted you as much then as I do now, but no matter how much I wanted to continue, I couldn't."

I took a deep breath before explaining further. "Now, it's easier to stop because I know we have eternity. There's no rush to do anything now before we can't anymore. But love, if you think it's easy?" I shook my head. "It's not. I want you—" I huffed a laugh "—so fucking much, I can't stand it. I've spent a year and a half wanting you. And now, when I can actually do something about it, stopping is the hardest thing in the world. I can't... God, Bella, I can't explain how hard it was to stop just now. Even now, I can barely keep my hands off you."

Bella had been watching me as I spoke, her eyes wide, lips pursed, and breathing unsteady. She swallowed before whispering, "I thought it was just me. Back then, I thought my feelings were stronger, and I worried about that again when you stopped us just now. You do feel as strongly as I do, though, don't you?"

I did the only thing I could think of at that moment. Sliding my hands up her arms, I gently cradled her face and pressed my lips to hers, pouring every bit of my love into the kiss. When we finally pulled away, breathing as one, she smiled shakily.

"I can't keep my hands off you, love. Even before, I felt—" I paused, unsure of how best to phrase it "—off if I wasn't touching you somehow. Now? The feeling is ten times stronger."

She nodded, as though she understood exactly what I meant, and then rested her forehead on my shoulder.

"We should get back," I said finally, standing with Bella and setting her on her feet. "Hopefully I'll be able to find a new shirt." I laughed ruefully at the tattered remains of my shirt on the ground near us.

"Oops," she laughed.

I grabbed my shirt in one hand and her hand in the other, and then we began running through the woods toward the house.

When we got back, there was a stack of clothes and a note sitting on the counter in the kitchen. Bella picked up the note while I grabbed the clothes.

"Alice said she and Jasper are hunting and will be back before your family gets here," she said, passing me the note and taking the jeans and shirt I held out for her. "I'm gonna take a shower and change clothes." She plucked at her ruined shirt, smiling ruefully. "Mind if I use yours?"

"Sounds good, love," I murmured, pulling her in for a quick kiss. "I'll change down here."

I smiled as she walked up the stairs at a human pace. For a newborn only weeks into this life, she was doing so remarkably well. Then again, I shouldn't have been surprised. Even as a human, she'd constantly surprised me.

When I heard the water turn on, I raced to the guest bathroom on the first floor. I wanted to linger in the shower, but that would have to wait. I hadn't touched the piano since I came back—in fact, it had been eighteen months since I'd touched any keyboard—and I was itching to get my hands back on the keys.

I washed off the grime and dirt from hunting with the body wash Alice had stocked in the bathroom and then dressed in the clothes I'd set on the counter. I could still hear Bella in the bathroom upstairs, washing her hair. It was an odd—yet comforting and familiar—feeling of being able to hear her, but having my mind quiet. It was the first time in forever that I felt completely at peace.

Leaving my ruined clothes in the bathroom, I made my way back to the living room, sliding down onto the piano bench with a relieved sigh. Music was such an ingrained part of me that it was literally like coming home after a prolonged absence. I played a few scales to loosen up my fingers and immediately flowed into Esme's song. As I played, I could hear Bella moving around upstairs, brushing her hair and putting on the new clothes. When I transitioned smoothly into Bella's lullaby, I heard her gasp softly. If her heart had been beating, I knew it would've sputtered like it had so many times before.

I continued to play, moving from Bella's lullaby to "Claire de Lune," another song that meant a lot to the both of us; it was the first thing I'd learned about Bella that had really surprised me and made me realize there was more to her than the normal teenage girl.

"I've missed hearing you play," I heard softly from behind me. "Did you play a lot while you were gone?" She moved up and sat lightly on the bench beside me.

I inhaled the clean scent of her—all freesia and strawberries and simply Bella—and shook my head. "I—I didn't...I didn't listen to any music. I couldn't," I admitted. "It seemed wrong, like I was trying to be happy, and...well, I didn't feel like that was something I deserved." I whispered the last bit, feeling my body trying to curl in on itself.

Bella turned sideways on the bench, wrapped her arms around my waist, and squeezed gently. "I didn't listen to music for a while, either," she admitted. "Not until I was about midway through my pregnancy."

I smiled sadly, upset once again at how my leaving had affected her.

"Can you tell me more about where you went?" she asked, turning her head to watch my fingers dance over the keys.

"It's really not that exciting." I huffed lightly. "At first, I stayed with the family. We went up to Alaska—"

"You know another family of...vegetarians...up there, right?" she interrupted, curious.

"To see Carmen, Eleazar, Kate, Irina, and Tanya, yes," I agreed. "That's where Laurent was for a while, although he didn't stay, apparently." I frowned, worried about having brought up the reminder of why Bella was where she was. She squeezed my waist again, as if silently urging me to continue. "I only stayed there a few weeks, until it got too uncomfortable to be around all the loving couples and Tanya's...attentions."

Bella raised her head. "Her attentions?" she asked. "What do you mean?"

I grimaced, shaking my head at the reminder. "Tanya and her sisters are...highly sexual creatures. They like to claim they're the original succubi. For years, Tanya offered herself to me—I believe mainly because she's not used to being rebuffed. When she saw how broken I was, she believed, like both of her sisters, that all I needed was to spend some time with a woman, and she...made her intentions very clear as to whom she thought it should be. After several weeks of having to listen to her thoughts and politely decline her advances, I'd had enough. I said goodbye to my family and headed south."

The whole time I'd been speaking, I'd been playing, moving from song to song. Bella had listened intently, getting more and more tense.

"You don't want her?" she mumbled into my shoulder.

At that question, I moved my hands around to grasp her waist and pull her to my lap so she was straddling me. When she looked down, I used a finger to tilt her head up so she was forced to look at me as I asked, "Bella, love, if I didn't want her when I was without you, what makes you think I want her now, when I have the only woman that has ever turned my head or captured my heart in my one hundred and six years on earth?"

Bella smiled beautifully and leaned forward to kiss me softly. "Good. I'd hate to kick her ass. According to rumors, I'm much stronger than she is right now, and I don't wanna hurt her," she teased, pulling a laugh and a nod from me. "Where'd you go after?"

"Mainly, I ran," I admitted. "I think I thought running would help me forget—about you, about my feelings, all of it. But of course, it didn't. You were with me everywhere I went. I stopped in Chicago this time last year, spending several days in my family's home there. It's been rented, but the company that manages it was having some work done last year, so it was empty. Other than that, I visited several of the houses Carlisle and Esme own and stayed away from civilization as much as possible."

Resting her head on my chest as I played and talked, Bella sighed. We were quiet then, just listening to the music from the piano, until my curiosity got the best of me.

"What about you, love?" I asked reluctantly. "I, uh, know what happened that March, but can you tell me about before that?" She tensed in my arms, and I hurried to say, "If you don't want to, it's okay. I understand. You certainly don't owe me an explanation or anything."

"No..." she said, drawing out the word. "It's not that, exactly. The first couple of months weren't pretty, Edward. I don't know if you really wanna hear about that."

I swallowed back my anger at the pain I'd caused my Bella and tried to smile. "Isabella, I want to hear it all—or as much as you want to tell me. Please," I sighed.

Without looking up at me, she said, "I was nearly comatose for the first month. I tried not to fall asleep, because sleeping meant nightmares, and nightmares meant I woke up screaming. I actually developed laryngitis from all the screaming. I barely ate enough to survive; most of what I did eat, I threw up later. Jake, Ang, and Jessica really became my support system—and Charlie's. They came and helped get me in and out of the shower every day, helped as Charlie forced me to eat..."

I felt absolutely sick to my stomach as I listened to her. I hadn't felt this nauseous since I was human, but I was afraid I was going to throw up every bit of blood and venom in my body if I heard much more. I swallowed it back and nodded for her to continue when she looked up at me with a sad smile on her face.

"After a month, Charlie threatened to call Renee and make her take me back to Florida with her. There was even talk about admitting me to the hospital. Nothing got through to me, though, until Angela sat down on the edge of my bed one day and asked if what I was doing would be what you would want me to be doing. Of course, she didn't know anything about where you'd gone or why you'd left—she just thought you had moved away and broken up with me—but they'd tried everything else, including avoiding bringing up your name around me, so she was doing what she thought was the last thing she could do."

I saw the vulnerability and pain in those dark, beautiful eyes that I'd always loved. My chest filled with pain at her discomfort, but I forced myself to ignore it as she continued.

"That was what finally snapped me out of it, at least somewhat. At the time, I still believed you'd left because I wasn't enough for you or you didn't truly love me—"

I clenched my jaw tight, hating myself for having made her feel that way.

"—so I was determined to at least try to prove you wrong, maybe in the hopes that you would somehow see that and return to me." She chuckled wryly. "I didn't succeed. I mean, it worked for all outward appearances. I pretended well for everyone else—Charlie and my friends quit worrying—but inside, I was still dead emotionally for a long time. Then in January, Angela's brother was diagnosed with cancer. I realized I had to step up and be her friend, like she'd been mine. I began to live a little more. I still wasn't back to normal inside, but I was closer. Isaac—her brother—is in remission now, thank goodness, but for a while, things were bad."

As she changed topics, she moved slightly in my lap, a gentle rocking motion. "Anyway, because Victoria was apparently still coming around, Jacob shifted in February, so things between us were distant. When I went on spring break with the girls, he still wasn't speaking to me. When...everything happened and I came home, he came over and held me as I cried. I was shocked at his appearance—he'd grown like a foot and gained muscles he hadn't had the last time I'd seen him. Of course, he explained about the wolf thing—even though he wasn't supposed to—so the growing made more sense," she said, chuckling.

I'd quit playing during her story and wrapped my arms around her, needing to feel her as close as possible. I wanted to be there for her now, to support her the way I should've supported her always. Her arms were tight around me, as well.

"I had plans to go to school at Washington State—I'd gotten a full academic ride—but the rape changed all that. I thought about just taking a semester off and going in the spring, because I wasn't sure I would be ready to be away from home, but then I found out I was pregnant. Jess and Angela were afraid to go off to school—Jess got a scholarship to WSU, too, and Angela is in New York, at Columbia—but Jake promised to be here for me and the baby, and I told them to go."

Suddenly, I was very curious about something. "Was Jacob Alpha of the pack then?"

Bella shook her head. "Sam was, until I was about six months pregnant with Lizzie. Then Emily, his wife, got pregnant, and since Jacob had matured a lot by then, Sam stepped down and let Jacob take over as the Alpha. Sam had kind of fallen into the position when he was the first one to shift. He's the oldest of the group, too, so it was just easier all around for him to continue until Jacob was ready."

I nodded in understanding. Jacob's grandfather, Ephraim Black, had been Alpha at the time, and the man Carlisle and I had made the treaty with. Jacob was the rightful heir to the position, and from what I had seen of him with Bella, he was a good man for the job.

"And Sue? I heard something in Jacob's thoughts about her and Charlie?"

Bella smiled and sighed. "They started seeing each other shortly after you left and got married when I was four months pregnant. Sue..." She huffed, shaking her head. "Sue was a God-send after the rape and during my pregnancy. It was hard for Charlie—seeing me get that upset—and he wasn't sure what to do for me. Sue knew I just needed someone to let me cry on their shoulder, someone to tell me everything was gonna be okay."

I was about to tell her how grateful I was that she'd had both Sue's and Jacob's support, when I heard my sister and Jasper on their way back to the house.

"Alice is back," I mumbled against her neck. "Thank you for telling me, my Bella."

It had been hard to hear, but I knew that had been nothing compared to living through it. She was stronger than I'd ever given her credit for, and if she'd let me, I'd spend the rest of my existence making it up to her.

"Thank you for listening," she whispered. She moved her head and kissed me slowly, no trace of anything but pure love in her touch.