Hey everyone!

We just wanted to let you guys know that we are taking a little posting break next week to enjoy some summer fun! Don't worry, we will be back on schedule next Monday, August 20. Thanks for understanding, and we look forward to talking with you all again! See you in a week!

XO, Bee and Blue

Chapter 22

~Edward~

Dust, rust, scrapes, and bruises. Dead mice, cobwebs, and articles unknown. A week and a half later, the shed had been transformed, and the finishing touches almost put in place.

My finger traced the wood filler, pushing into the cracks and lines of the aged boards. Even though it leaned a little to the left, the shed wasn't in bad condition, not really. The old man took pride in the work he'd done in here, and amidst the junk now out on the gravel driveway, I found some good power tools Bella told me he'd used for wood crafting. Furniture, to be exact. I wondered what in the house might've been handmade.

His hobby created the perfect space for our darkroom; power had been hooked up, and plumbing from the house had been connected. Once I'd cleared the knickknacks and rusted memories, the shed revealed a big, sturdy workbench in the back, and that's where Bella sat now, watching me.

Her bare legs swung in time with the music coming from the radio, my too-big gas station flip flops on her feet to ward off stray splinters and rusty nails that might have lingered after the third sweep out. "I guess if we're going to be spending a lot of time in here, I should upgrade the stereo system."

When I glanced at her, she shrugged. "I dunno—I like it. Reminds me of him."

Finally finished sealing the last of the gaps, I stood, my knees creaking a little from crouching so long. "You were close?"

"We didn't share blood, but he was my grandpa."

"Very close, then."

She shrugged and glanced out the door, my house perched proud in its bright colors just there through the sunshine. "They were always here. Always close. I loved them."

"They teach you things?"

"Loads. She was a great cook. And he could fix anything."

I cleared my throat, unsure I wanted to bring up something that might damage the levity between us. "Mind me asking what happened to them?"

"She had a stroke. Maybe seven years ago, by now. He went with her to the nursing home." She paused, a sigh filling up her chest before she spoke again. "He had to, you know? They just went together. Like a puzzle."

I frowned a little, wanting to ask more questions, but I knew how it felt to not want to answer any, so I left it at that and used the slop sink in the corner to wash the filler off my hands. The deer put its head over the rim and stuck its tongue out, trying to lap up the cool water just a bit too far out of reach. I rinsed out my coffee cup and filled it, putting it on the floor. "Will you please name this thing already? I mean, if it's going to stick around, it deserves that much. It makes me feel a little guilty calling a living, breathing thing an 'it'."

"I thought you didn't like her."

"I like it fine." My mind played over the last two days of searching through my attic for my equipment, sidestepping that group of pictures in the corner even though they were all I'd thought about the whole time I was up there. But I had stayed, battling my demons with one goal in mind: to do something for another human being, to do something for Bella. "I've started to contemplate that all life needs to be honored, remembered. Not shoved away like it's nothing. Even that thing. She deserves a name."

Turning away from her before I could move between those legs and stop their dance, my face flamed, and my heart thumped uneasily in my chest. "I might've found something better." I threw odds and ends into a metal bucket, the clanging sound drowning the hum in my ears."Did you find God somewhere under all the junk you've cleared out? You're awfully… upbeat," Bella teased, swinging her legs up high enough that her skirt ruffled.

Her voice was hopeful, almost childlike. "What did you find?"

A knock on the side of the shed made us both turn, my insides saved from harsh exposure as a delivery man stood in his brown uniform, two boxes in hand and two more on the ground.

"Edward Cullen?"

"Yeah."

"I thought this place was empty, was sure there was a mistake on the packaging." The man smiled and put the boxes down, holding out his pad for me to sign. "No one's lived here a good while. You fixing it up?"

"Yeah, a bit. Doesn't need much work." Bella moved from the shadows next to me and picked up a box. The guy's eyes followed her, watching the neckline of her shirt as it gaped, and I shoved the pad into his hands. "Thanks."

"No problem," he answered, still looking at Bella as she read the box. "You gonna be here long, or you're just fixing it to sell?"

I felt the moment she stiffened next to me, a little wisp of breath sucked into her mouth. We hadn't had any sort of discussion about what we were doing, what this thing sprouting between us was. Maybe she hoped I was temporary, maybe that's why she'd invaded my space and gotten so close. Perhaps I was just a quick breeze to her, passing through to cool off with on a hot day.

Or maybe I was the one that was nervous at the question, worried I'd gotten her hopes up, if that's what she had. I tried to figure out how that made me feel, and I thought about the dreamless sleep I'd had the night before, the first time in months my head hadn't screamed at me from behind gray clouds.

"No, not selling."

"Hand me that screwdriver." I held my hand out blindly behind me and felt the weight of the tool placed into my palm. Two more screws and we officially had ourselves a ventilation system. The old man had one fan on the side, to vent out sawdust I guessed, so all we needed was a source of return air. So one new hole in the opposite wall was cut and two light proof vents I'd ordered, rush delivery, were installed.

"Is that it?"

"Nope, the most important part of the whole thing needs to be done first. You might want to put the deer outside."

Bella looked at me curiously but led the deer out, and I promptly closed the wood doors behind us with a rattle and a creak. Pulling the black velvet drape down from the perch I'd made it, I flicked the light switch to the off position.

My eye adjusted, and I scanned the walls, the two places I figured the fans were, and the folds of the drape.

Nothing but blackness. Perfect, clear, absolute nothingness. It was a good, familiar feeling, like an old friend coming to visit. Memories of hotel bathrooms and heavy canvas tents in remote wilderness fluttered through my mind, and I inhaled, swearing I could smell the chemicals and paper, even though we hadn't started yet.

"Edward?" she whispered next to me, almost like she knew. Like she knew I was shedding a cocoon and needed a moment.

My voice was rough, my insides tumbling with the idea that I wasn't convulsing in fear, wasn't feeling the least bit like running away to avoid what I had come to believe would be horrific if I were to even put this hat on again. "Testing the light. Not a single ray can come in if we want to accomplish perfection."

She said nothing, and I assumed she was searching the walls. "I don't see anything," she finally whispered. "But I feel it."

My throat constricted, and I rubbed my fingers together in the dark. "What do you feel?"

"Magic," she breathed out, like someone seeing the Northern Lights for the first time.

I knew exactly where she stood next to me; I could feel her presence vibrating in the dark. I could feel her energy filling every square inch of the shed. My hand moved to her like a missile honing in on its target under the cover of midnight. "Bella." She said nothing, just laced her fingers through mine. "I—"

A lightning bolt of sunshine broke through whatever was going on in that darkroom, and I swallowed, saved from admitting out loud that I was happy she was the one with me in this moment that weighed more than ten tons of lava. The deer came in, peeking around the heavy velvet curtain, curious and tired of being alone outside.

"What were you going to say?" She squeezed my fingers, but I let them drop.

"I guess we're ready to start. Go on in the house and get the film."

She nodded but gave me a look almost like disappointment before heading out of the shed. It'd been a long time since I had to communicate with people. A life of photography made for a lonely existence. Foreign countries, desolate landscapes, people unable to converse with me due to language barriers. I was there to capture moments, not become intimate with my subjects. I'd learned to be a passing entity, something on the fringe of life, observing but not joining. Especially at the end.

But Bella was making me want to try to connect with the world again. And I feared I was going to speak those thoughts out loud, giving them form and shape, and then I'd fail and let her down, like I let everyone down.

Moving the developing trays in place, sorting the chemicals and the paper we'd had delivered— the routine of getting it all ready didn't feel crushing like I expected. When she looked so forlorn at Sam's because she couldn't send the film out to be developed, it just tumbled out of me to make her a darkroom. No thought of what that would mean, what feelings would surface, how it would affect me. The only thought I had in that moment was I wanted to make her happy.

She came back in, holding the bag high with a bright smile on her face, all signs of disappointment gone. So beautiful, so unlike what I originally thought she was, I stepped right up to her and held her smiling face in my hands.

She was happy. I had done something to make another human being happy.

So I kissed her.

Kissed her solid in the middle of our makeshift darkroom, and I let the weight I'd carried for so long—the self-loathing and guilt—let it all lift from my weary shoulders and fly away to bury itself in foreign debris.

Because she made me happy, too. And I was tired of fighting it.

We put the deer in Bella's garden to eat and sleep while we worked all afternoon. Teaching her was easy, comfortable. More comfortable than I thought, and she was an eager student. After using a dummy roll to show her how to spool the film, we did the real one in pitch darkness as is required: her hands on mine feeling my fingers work the film, then mine on hers to guide her doing the next. Once the film was secured in the developing canisters, I fumbled in the dark to turn the red bulb on. "Reminds me of a whorehouse in Amsterdam." I smiled.

"And how would you know that?" She laughed easily.

"Purely passing through, I promise." The use of that word was curious, like I wanted to reassure her I was as good a person as she was. I was in some ways—always treated women with respect, was never cruel to anyone—but in my heart, I knew I was contaminated.

Dirty. Soulless.

Smiling at her weakly, I turned my attention back to the film. "Let's see what interested those pretty eyes of yours."

After I showed her how to use the enlarger I'd set up, we went through the steps, the paper sifting back and forth between the trays until we were at the final stage.

The ghostly appearance of black beginning to take shape on white paper made my adrenaline surge. This was always my favorite part: seeing if what I had in my mind matched what I'd been able to capture. "See the image starting to develop?" My hand was on hers, moving the tongs with her as we swirled it in the solution.

The deer, with a crown of flowers around its neck, appeared, and Bella let out a slight gasp. "I did that."

"Is it the way you saw it? When you took it, I mean?"

I had to admit, the image was a good one for a first try. We didn't have to crop it much under the enlarger. She'd gotten the composition almost perfect: not too much head room, just close enough to pick up the shine in the deer's eye but not so close you couldn't see the surroundings of tall grass and setting sun.

We pulled it out of the stop bath together, and Bella carefully clipped it on the line to dry. She stared at it, her hand on her mouth, when a tear slid down her face. "What? What is it?" My hands went to her shoulders, and I felt her shudder a little.

"It's perfect. It's beautiful… I can see why you're drawn to this."

I leaned into her, the moody glow of the room making me feel more human than I had in a long time. To me the darkroom was always the place I could be myself, where I felt most like I was connected with something. It was the same, no matter where I was, whether it was in a hut in Borneo or a five-star hotel in Iceland. My chemicals, my trays, my paper and tongs. They were the familiar things in the nomadic life I'd created.

My chin went to her shoulder, and I didn't stop my arms from circling her waist, pulling her back to me. "There's nothing better than seeing something with your own eye, something majestic or achingly beautiful, but if you can bring those images to people and make them see it like it is with their own eyes... well, it's a close second."

She shifted against me, her weight leaning, allowing my lips to find her neck. "Want to do another?" I said against her, kissing her perfumed skin and letting myself go, letting myself revel and not overthink the fact I was sharing something so personal, something I loved so damn much, with someone else.

She nodded but didn't move, so I kissed her neck some more, let my hands slide over her abdomen to bunch up her shirt. Rough fingers on soft skin, and I longed to take a picture of all of it under the somewhat racy red light.

The moment a small moan escaped her is when I lost it, turning her quickly and bringing my hands up to her face, holding her there while I took her mouth under mine and buried all my doubts and self-loathing into her. She took it, her hands crawling up my shoulders to catch themselves in my hair. I thought I'd come when she pulled, gently, but pulled just the same. I shuffled us, so she was pinned against the workbench, the tools on the bottom shelf clanging together as her leg hitched up around mine, pulling me closer against her.

There was no denying my body wanted her, and she didn't pretend like she didn't know. She moved against me like the red light made her bold—flashes of her hair, her lips, her eyes more vixen than virgin, so I gave up and ground against her, making her cry out my name. I knew we had to stop, that I had to be the one to do it, so I eased off, my mouth moving slower, less frantically, more politely. She fell in step right with me, letting me go easily, like she knew this wouldn't be the last time. I felt like a child staring at her, like a horny teenager making out in a closet, unsure she was really there, or if my mind wasn't conjuring her from years of solitude.

She broke the spell first, and I was glad because I wasn't sure I wouldn't escape within her, never to return. "I want to see another of the ones we took together."

We moved to the enlarger, Bella's back attached to my front, and I watched and kissed her as she looked through the negatives, until she picked one of her house and began to work on it. Under my hands, her stomach rumbled, and she let out an embarrassed laugh. "Forgot to eat today."

"I'll go make us something." I kissed her once more, somewhat awed at the fact that being with her, touching her, and showing just a small bit of affection was feeling natural. "You can do a few without me, I think."

"I'll try." Her smile back at me over her shoulder was playful, unsure, but no less bright.

As I walked towards the house, the clouds overhead broke apart, and sunshine fell through, melting across the rocky driveway, inching along the grass, and finally shining down on me.

Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.

Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!

HB&PB