Thank you to Sri, whose pre-reading feedback was simply: "Bloody hell I'm crying." And of course, so much is owed to Iris who makes this readable.

I'm 4ubleddry on twitter and simply Bled Dry on fb. Come on over and say hi. The listing mentioned in this chapter will be up on those sites.

They were pulling up to the house when Alice told him he needed to get his own car. In response to her gripe, he made a show of opening the door and jumping out while the car was still in motion. She knew where he was going to land and slammed her breaks on, deliberately spraying Edward with gravel. The commotion out front, along with the sound of Edward's laughter, sent Esme to the front porch to see what was going on. She normally would've been irritated with one of her children for intentionally destroying her property, but the ridiculous sight in front of her filled her with a hope she hadn't felt in a long time. Alice was spinning donuts on their gravel lane, and Edward was laughing, dodging the shrapnel Alice churned out.

As soon as he heard Esme's mind, Edward stopped, immediately followed by Alice. "I'll fix it," he called out.

Esme said nothing, momentarily overcome by the changes in the man who stood before her.

Edward held his hand out. "Hey, mom. Come here. There's something I want to show you." Knowing her thoughts, he added, "You can't get all emotional yet." But he smiled to let her know he was teasing. He pulled his phone from his pocket, swiped to the pictures he wanted to share, and then handed the phone to Esme.

He put his arm over her shoulders as she moved through the pictures on the real estate listing. First, there were a few pictures of the rocky coast and then the small A-Frame wooden cabin.

Nice property. House needs a lot of work, she thought to herself. Edward smiled. So far, Esme was reacting exactly as he'd expected.

"It's sold," she said out loud, getting to the end of the listing information. "That's too bad. It wasn't far from here. I could have built something new on that. Maybe something for Alice and Jasper when they want to get away." She looked over to Alice and then to Edward. They were both on the verge of laughter, but she wasn't sure why. "What?"

"Of course you want to knock it down. I'm not going to let you, though. And I'm a little offended that you want to give it to Alice. Again, I'm not going to let you."

Esme turned to face Edward, but he didn't remove his arm from her shoulders.

It's yours?

"It is. And you aren't going to mess with it." He continued to tease her. "Stop thinking about all the things you want to do to it. This is my project."

Esme put her arms around her son. Edward was surprised at her instant, happy reaction.

Alice supplied him with the answer to his unasked question. She needs to let you go so that you can come back.

Edward was startled to find Bella already upstairs. This time, she wasn't sitting behind Mike's desk but curled up at the end of a shabby couch in the far corner of the office. She had her bare heels wedged between the seat cushions, and one hand propped a book on her knees while the other held a beer. He rested on the windowsill for a moment unnoticed, watching her turn the page and then take a sip of beer with the same hand. In one action, she represented both Bellas; the quiet book worm of his past, and the mature woman of his present.

It lasted seconds. As if she sensed his presence on the window's ledge, she turned to him with a gentle smile. He may have told Alice that he didn't float, but the look on her face when she greeted him caused him to lose it, and just for a split second, it felt like gravity dissolved. He placed his hands on the interior wall to stop himself from falling backwards and then leapt down from the ledge.

"Hey," she almost-whispered. Her voice had a slight hoarseness that came from not speaking for a while. "Nothing was happening downstairs, so I came up a bit early to relax." She shut the book and placed it on the back of the couch so the spine butted against the wall. It was missing its cover.

"What are you reading?" He was lingering in the middle of the room, near the chair he usually sat in. He didn't know where to sit. The chair seemed too far, and the couch seemed too intimate. She hadn't changed her position. If he sat on the couch, he was sure her feet would touch him. He didn't know if he could keep up the friend pretense if it included touching.

"Have a seat." She lifted up her right leg and gestured to the end of the couch with her toes and then hugged her knees to her chest. "I hope you don't mind sitting over here. I'm feeling a little burnt out tonight, and I just wanted to be comfortable." She finished her beer and put the can down on the floor.

He wondered how long she'd been sitting up here. "No, this is fine." He sat down but felt vaguely awkward. For a vampire, he suddenly felt grace was a struggle. He positioned himself so that his body was turned to face hers. He had to tuck his right leg under part of his left to fit without touching her. He rested his right arm over the back of the couch. He was sure he'd never sat in such a relaxed-looking-human sort of way before, and yet, he'd never felt more self-conscious about sitting. He grabbed his dangling left foot with his free hand to prevent it from reaching over and grabbing one of hers.

"Did Alice pick you up?"

"She did."

"That car-"

"It's very yellow." He grinned at their similar reactions to Alice's newest ride. "I told her the same thing."

"Why did she pick you up?" Bella questioned, tilting her head slightly as she waited for his response.

"I don't have a car."

"I've seen you driving."

"That was Carlisle's. I need to get a car, but I just haven't gotten around to it." As he spoke, he shrugged a single shoulder to convey it wasn't a big deal. He swore that he would be honest with Bella, but he wasn't ready to talk about how dark the early days without her were for him.

"I thought you had a garage full of cars."

"I did. Rose put some of them in storage for me when I left Forks." He decided to omit that the location of this storage was kept from Edward so he wouldn't do to his rare collection what he did to the Volvo.

"Some of them?"

"All of them. Except for the Volvo. I don't have that anymore, though." He didn't feel like it was time to offer the details of what exactly happened to his once beloved car. "I've been borrowing Carlisle's car, which actually used to belong to Rosalie. He had it today, so Alice came by to pick me up. She complained about it, but really, I think she was glad to show it off." Edward steered the conversation away from cars and back to Alice. He sensed that this is what Bella really wanted to know about anyway.

"How's Alice?"

"She's good," he replied. Then he thought he would take a chance and speak on Alice's behalf. "She missed you. Misses you still."

Bella's expression turned cold. "I don't think so."

"She does." His hand let go of his foot and came down on Bella's knee. "She doesn't know how to approach you." He kept his voice even and his eyes on Bella, but he didn't move his hand. He hadn't meant to touch her, but now he found he couldn't let go. "She doesn't know if you would even want her to."

Bella looked away from Edward's face for a moment to his hand on her knee. "I want that." She looked up again. "I'd like her to."

Edward smiled and forced his hand away from Bella. If he didn't stop touching her immediately, he was afraid he wouldn't be able to stop. Even as he willed his nerves to let go of her, they acted on their own, taking a second to caress along her knee and down to where it met her thigh, gently squeezing before letting go.

"She'll be happy to hear that."

"She really can't just see I'd like to spend time with her?"

"No. She hasn't been able to see you for years."

"Why?"

"We don't know. At first, we thought it had something to do with you going to the reserve. Every time you crossed the treaty line, you disappeared. As time went on, it got harder and harder for her to see you. Then we just figured it was because it'd been too long. I'd forbidden her to watch you at first." He watched Bella for any reaction, but her face remained neutral. "But now we're wondering if it was something else all together."

"What do you mean?"

"We think you might be blocking her the same way you can block me."

"Really?"

"Yes, and there's more. Today, whenever I was with you, I disappeared from her visions, as well. She could see where I was, but it was empty."

"What do you mean?" Bella shifted, leaning forward slightly.

"She could see me at the hospital with Carlisle, and then, suddenly, we weren't there. She just saw empty rooms. But everywhere she looked, either Carlisle or I were with you in that location. Then today at the library, she could see me until you showed up in the room. She said it just went empty."

"Wow. I'm blocking Alice? I can hide people from her?" Bella let out a little giggle. "That's actually kind of cool."

Edward laughed, too. The tension he'd felt in the room since his arrival momentarily disappeared. "Alice doesn't think so."

"I bet she doesn't. Wow." Bella raised her eyebrows, a momentary look of mischief on her face. "That makes it even more awesome." Suddenly, Bella's amusement vanished, and she leaned back against the arm of the couch. "When she could see me, what did she see?"

"At first, when I was chasing Victoria, she just would have a vision of you driving toward the reservation and disappearing at the treaty line. It took her a while to figure out she couldn't see the wolves, but once she realized that, she assumed that's why she couldn't see you."

"She can't see the wolves, either?"

"No, it seems she can't. It took her a long time to figure that out. If she could've seen Jacob, she would have been able to warn me you were together."

"That may have changed some things." Bella's smile was sad. Edward didn't know how to respond to that, so he just nodded. "How did she figure out she couldn't see the wolves? What if it was just me she couldn't see?"

"She could never see Jacob. Then she tried looking for others. Some she could find when they came off the reservation, but there were others that she couldn't see no matter what. That, combined with you disappearing from her vision when you went on their land, led her to believe the wolves could block her."

"So can I do it because of the wolves?" Bella was curious what exactly this meant.

"I don't think so. I think it's related to why you can block me. I think they're connected."

"Oh." Bella said nothing more, but she wondered if this related to more than just her ability to block Edward.

"The last time she had a vision about you, it wasn't you at all. It was Charlie."

"Charlie?"

"His accident."

"Oh."

"That was the other time I came back." It was what he came here to tell her. It was why he felt tense and full of trepidation since he'd arrived through the window. If he was going to move forward with her in any way, she needed to know about the past.

She looked at him, her mouth open slightly, frozen in shock. She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them, he could see that tears were pushing against the rims. "When? When exactly did you come back?"

"As soon as Alice had the vision." He leaned forward and, without stopping to think, reached over to grab her hand. As he did so, he realized she had put her hand over the same place his had been. It was something he would think about later. For now, he needed to put all of his focus on telling her why he ran. Again. "All she saw was a split-second flash of the accident. She didn't have any information about when it happened or the outcome. I came with the intent to stop it." The tears that had been threatening to fall now did so. Edward shifted his body forward. Keeping a tight hold of her hand, he moved her legs over his. He leaned forward and brushed her tears away with his free hand. "Come here, honey. I know. I'm so sorry. I wanted to save him." Edward stopped the futile task of wiping Bella's tears and pulled her into his lap. She pressed her head to his chest as she curled into him, and he let her cry. Her tears were over as quickly as they started, but she stayed cuddled into him.

His initial drive was to comfort her; he thought nothing beyond consoling her. But now that she'd settled and remained in his arms...

He was the one to move first. The arm around her shoulders tightened its grip, and he leaned down to press a kiss against the top of her head. He lingered longer than he had originally intended to, breathing her in. Her sigh was barely audible, even to him, but he picked it up in the movement of her chest. He pulled his lips away but rested his cheek where he'd laid his kiss. "I came with the intent of stopping the accident, even if it meant I was threatening to expose who I was to him. When I arrived, it was the day of his funeral. Alice's vision had been too late." He whispered his confession, pausing for her to realize he had been in Forks the day of Charlie's funeral.

At her deep breath, he moved his head away. She looked up at him, and he looked down at her. Despite the fact she had been in his lap for minutes, despite the fact that he had kissed her head and breathed her in, despite all these things, his focus had remained on soothing her. But now, looking at her in his lap, their fingers entwined between their bodies and his other hand large against her small shoulder, seeing them together like this was too much for Edward. He was an instant away from snapping and ruining what he was carefully trying to build. Bella, perhaps sensing Edward's hunger, let go of his hand and shifted backwards so that she was off his lap. She kept her legs over his. Edward didn't dare to move.

"Were you here for his funeral?" Her face remained stoic, and he nodded. "Were you at his funeral?"

"I was... nearby." Edward couldn't read her expression but forged ahead with his pledge to be honest about this.

"You kept yourself hidden?"

He nodded.

"Why?" she whispered.

"Do you believe me now? When I told you that I lied that day in the woods?"

She paused before answering, not sure how this question related to hers. "I do."

"In Mike's mind, I saw what you were like after we left. He wasn't the only one who was worried about how you would handle your father's death, if you would have another break down. I saw so many versions of the same broken girl at once. I'd had no idea that I'd done that to you." He paused for a moment to gather his thoughts and his courage. "But you need to understand I'd done that to myself, too." Unconsciously, his arm drifted down so that his hand was once again resting on her knee. "You were so much stronger than I was. I saw you in there, how strong you'd become, and I saw what you'd come from... I was still there. I know that I did it to myself and I only have myself to blame, but that boy sitting in the tree was just as broken as you had been four years earlier. That had been the first time I left our property since I ran away from here the last time."

This time her hand covered his to provide comfort. "Oh, Edward."

"I had nothing to offer you. I was nothing without you." He stopped, unable to speak, even without the ability to cry. "The first time, I thought if I could kill Victoria, I would deserve your forgiveness. Then I thought if I could save Charlie..." He looked at her hand over his and then watched as his fingers grasped hers once more, seeking whatever consolation she had to offer. "So I was just there, in awe of how you'd moved past your broken heart, when mine was still shattered. And Mike..." He couldn't continue. It was now his turn to tell Bella how it was for him when he left. He put his head down so that it rested on their hands, on her knees. His shoulders shook. Even without the ability to cry, he still felt the compulsion to.

He felt her hand move across his shoulders and into his hair. He held onto her, wrapping his arm around her legs. The hand that didn't hold hers clutched her shin, desperate for an anchor. He felt like he was going to run away or claim her ‒ first with his mouth and then his body. Neither were options he could entertain. Her fingers danced over his scalp, gently bringing him back from his shame and guilt.

Once he felt he could continue, he turned his head so that his cheek leaned against their hands instead of his forehead. "And Mike," he continued where he left off. "All he thought about was you; how much he loved you, how he had always loved you. He wanted to take care of you and share a life with you. He wanted to give you all the things I couldn't, even when I was at my best. That broken boy in the tree had nothing to share with you but guilt, and shame, and self-perceived selfishness. I was there, but I wasn't there." He looked at her, hoping she would understand what he was saying.

"But now..." she trailed off.

"I'm here now."

"You are."