A/N: Thanks to Sherry & Tiffany!

Sorry I have been absent. My CFS has been flaring up. Thanks for sticking with me. xx

Chapter 40

It felt strange to be cooking again, but good all at the same time. I hadn't realized how much I had missed it until now. I couldn't even remember the last time I had cooked. I knew it was before the accident, but I wasn't sure when.

My mother and I had been distant before her accident. She didn't approve of Jacob, and I was angry at her. I had thought he was the one, funny how she turned out to be right.

I watched Edward as he rolled out the puff pastry and start to cut it into strips. He had insisted on helping me, even though I had told him he had filled his end of the deal by supplying the food. I actually enjoyed watching him work. He was a natural in the kitchen. I wondered if he and his mother had cooked together as often as I had with mine.

"Jasper said it's your birthday in a few weeks," Edward said, looking up at me.

I shrugged, going back to what I was doing. I wasn't sure that I wanted to celebrate my birthday. This would be my first one without my parents and it was going to be hard. It would have actually been better if Jasper hadn't remembered at all.

"We should do something special."

I shook my head. "I, uh, don't really feel like celebrating it."

"It's your eighteenth. We can't not celebrate it."

"We can if it's what I want," I said, annoyed that he was trying to force me to do something I didn't want to do.

"Hey," he said, stopping what he was doing and walking around the kitchen island to stand in front of me. "I'm not trying to push you. I just know that you'll regret not celebrating it later if you don't do something. It doesn't need to be a big affair. It can be just you and me if you want, but please promise me that we'll do something, anything..."

Before I even got the chance to answer, he put his flour covered hands on my cheeks, smearing the flour all over my face. I scoffed, taking a step back and looking at him. He cocked his eyebrow at me as if he was challenging me. He even had a cheeky smile playing on his lips.

Well, two could play that game, if that was how he wanted to play it.

I moved over to the bag of flour on the counter and grabbed a fist full of flour and threw it at him. I laughed as I watched him dust himself off. Though, that laughter was short-lived when I seen him reaching for the same bag.

"Don't you dare!" I screamed, running from the kitchen.