Sri had this chapter off, I hope you are feeling better darling. Iris, thanks for all your help with this one, and for calming my nerves.

Mike was quiet on the way home, and for that, Bella was grateful. She would be less thankful if she knew his thoughts. He was confused. Something was off about Bella tonight. It was unlike her to not let him know if she was going to be late. She was always considerate. Usually, when she's asked him to make dinner, she'd be home slightly early to help with last minute prep. Or if she was late, it was only because she'd stopped off to pick up wine or dessert. Bella had never stayed late at work to read. She could read at home, curled up in her favorite chair.

He also noticed she didn't have a book with her.

Mike had no idea what his wife could've been doing upstairs, other than avoiding being with him. This angered Mike more than he would've admitted to anyone. He was suddenly feeling shut out by his wife, and he had no idea how to fix it.

As they entered the house, Mike took Bella's purse from her shoulder and kissed the top of her head. He felt Bella flinch. "Babe?" He tilted her chin up, unsure of what he'd done wrong. "Are you okay?"

"I'm just... Everything's hurting right now. I haven't felt like this in so long."

"Come on. I'll run the bath for you while you get undressed."

Bella sat in the bath, knees pressed to her chest with her head resting against them. She did not relax. She couldn't.

When Bella had made the decision to move on without Edward, it was something she accomplished with little baby steps; small things she did consciously, every day, to lock that hurt away. When she needed to remind herself what it felt like to give and lose everything, she would visit that little place, but she would never enter. It was enough for her to acknowledge that once she'd loved so hard it broke her. She didn't need to feel that again.

Breaking up with Jake had been relatively easy. He wasn't for her, and so she walked away from him. She didn't need a place to hole-up that hurt, because there wasn't any. They were better off as friends, and she'd moved forward. Other relationship attempts in college fizzled quickly. The partners she chose weren't looking for much, and neither was she.

But Mike.

She wasn't looking for anything from him. He was a wonderful friend and looked out for her when she needed someone at her side.

But she let him in.

And it happened so slowly, she didn't see it coming. She only wanted a friendship with him, until that day Seth showed up. Bella knew from her time with Jacob that things worked a little differently on the reserve. She'd been told about Victoria and about how they had a plan to deal with any 'collateral damage' that could result when a vampire hunts near their territory. When Seth told the pair that they'd found Mike's parents on the trail, that they had both been taken down quickly by a grizzly who'd come out of hibernation a little early, Bella thought she was hearing the wolves' contingency plan.

When she'd walked Seth out the door, leaving Mike a chance to grieve privately, she'd questioned him on it. He had reassured her over and over again that he was telling the truth. They'd caught the bear, and its body was already on its way to the biologists at the Department of Fish and Game for examination. He'd reassured her no vampires were coming back.

As she had closed the door behind Seth, she'd put the final splinter of hope away. She'd locked it forever in that dark place, along with her feelings about true love and soulmates. She'd walked confidently to Mike. She was never going to feel like that again, but she was determined to move forward, to feel something.

And here she was, curled up in her bathtub, feeling so much.

The entire ride home she allowed herself to feel nothing. She didn't think about Mike beside her or what had transpired with Edward in her husband's office. Not feeling, not thinking; these were skills Bella had nursed while getting over Edward. She'd mastered them.

But then Mike kissed the same place on her head that Edward had not 20 minutes before, and she felt the guilt bubble up.

Guilt.

She'd done something wrong tonight, and it happened so slowly, she didn't see it coming.