A/N: I'm possessed. I don't know what else it could possibly be.
A few of you really hit the nail on the head in your reviews, so it makes me happy knowing that I'm somewhat successful at foreshadowing.
Thanks for all the super sweet reviews you guys give me. I really enjoy reading them and they make me blush.
Okay shutting up. And may my writing spree long continue.
Hope you enjoy.

Footprints in the Sand

Chapter 33

After Addie's not-so-subtle hints all afternoon that she loves to have mac and cheese for dinner, that's what I make. With bacon bits added, of course. My father was an absolute stickler for adding protein to my meals. Essential for growing bodies, he'd always claim.

She cleans her plate, and a bubble bath later, that floods my entire bathroom, we sit down to watch Pocahontas.

This little girl can really sing. She easily makes all the high notes in Just Around The Riverbend, and when she notices me watching, her expression becomes identical to her father's.

"Did you eat Kelly Clarkson?" I tease her, making her giggle.

"Bella... You're silly." Wrapping her arms tighter around my waist she breaks into a shuddering yawn. "Bella?"

"Hmm?"

"I'm really tired."

"You can have a rest, sweetie. Close your eyes."

She does, and I lull her to sleep by running my fingers over her forehead and through her hair; not a minute later she's off to Hush-a-bye Mountain. After covering her with a blanket, I use the opportunity to clean my kitchen and mop my bathroom floor, and more than an hour before I was expecting her father, my intercom beeps.

"It's me, sweetheart," Edward answers, and the poor man sounds absolutely exhausted.

"Come on up."

I open my door in anticipation of him, and as he steps around the corner, the first thing I notice is he looks like he's been put through the shredder. Despite the warm smile tugging on his lips, his hair's a complete mayhem, his tie's pulled loose, the top button of his shirt open, and his eyes are bloodshot.

That's when I notice the state of his left eye as a gasp immediately erupts from me. It's red and swelling, the beginnings of a bruise forming, and there's a notable cut along the end of his eyebrow.

"What happened?" I burst, completely horrified. If Rosalie done this to him, I will murder her.

"Emmett," he says, motioning to it with a weary sigh.

Emmett?

"Oh my god," I utter expelling a gushing breath. "Come here."

Taking his hand, I pull him inside my apartment with the objective of cleaning him up, but before I can get him past the foyer, he pulls me into his arms and plants his warm, parted lips to mine.

"I thought about you all day," he mumbles against my brow, practically swaying on his feet where we stand.

Edward is not a mumbler, and this really concerns me. "Let me take a look at you."

Taking his hand again, I grab a dining chair, drag it into the kitchen and force him to sit on it.

"I'm fine," he complains, grabbing my elbow as I turn in the direction of my bathroom.

"No saying you're fine when you're not—wasn't that our agreement?" I remind him.

He scoffs out a conceding smile and briefly nods his head. "No getting anything past you, is there?"

"No." Tweaking his earlobe, he releases me.

I return a moment later with disinfectant and a Q-tip.

"Where's Addie?" Edward asks curiously, glancing around my apartment.

"Asleep on the sofa," I answer simply.

"Asleep?" he echoes, clearly in disbelief.

"Yep, so you'd better get yourself that tux," I say lightly, and leaning over him, I gently inspect his cut eyebrow. I'm relieved to see it's not deep enough to require stitches, and after dipping the Q-tip into the disinfectant, I apply it cautiously, knowing it's going to sting.

He immediately flinches, groaning only half beneath his breath, and grabbing me around the waist, he pulls me into a straddle on his lap.

Sighing good-naturedly, I finish cleaning it out, blowing softly against his tender skin, when something amiss catches my attention.

"Edward—" Cupping my hands to his face, I angle it upward toward the light. "Your pupils are dilated. How hard did he hit you?" My voice rises so sharply, I momentarily forget about the sleeping five-year-old not ten feet away.

"Not that hard, but I'm pretty sure I hit the back of my head on the wall of my office," he admits, severing his gaze from mine with a frown.

"Drywall?" I venture, perhaps naïvely.

"Cement."

"Oh my god. Does your head ache?"

"It's killing me," he mutters. "You got any Advil?"

"I am not giving you Advil," I state categorically. "It's a blood thinner. You never give someone with a suspected concussion Advil. Do you feel dizzy? Nauseated? Confused? Do you have double vision?" I barrage him with questions, and moaning softly, he drops his head to my shoulder.

"I'm fine, sweetheart," he assures me, his voice hopelessly rustic and broken.

"You're not fine," I say quietly, my heart aching for him as I turn my head and brush my lips to his temple. "Do you want me to see if your father's—"

"No," he immediately cuts me off.

I sigh. He's so stubborn. "You can't drive like this. You're going to have to stay here tonight," I state, "and you should have tomorrow off."

"I have a case management conference in the morning," he replies, beginning to sound moments from consciousness.

"Edward, you can't go to sleep just yet. Do you want me to run you a bath?"

"No. Just give me something for my head."

"Okay. Come on." Easing myself off him, I take both his hands and pull him to his full height

He wraps his arm around my shoulders, and I realize I'm just about all that's holding him on his feet.

His brother actually did this to him? I'm beginning to think he and Rosalie are perfect for each other.

After a short detour so Edward can see his daughter, I lead him into my bedroom, and dropping to my bed, he removes his suit jacket. I help him out of his vest and tie, and then his belt as he removes his watch and clumsily drags himself to my pillow.

With a frustrated-sounding groan, he drapes his forearm over his eyes as I untie the laces of his shoes and pull off his socks.

"Be right back," I say, tickling the sole of his left foot as he fights the impulse to laugh.

After quickly grabbling an icepack from my freezer, I return to my bedroom and gingerly place it over his injured eye.

"So let me guess. Rosalie played the damsel in distress, and Emmett rushed to her rescue," I say rhetorically, failing at keeping the bitterness from my voice.

"Pretty much," he confirms, laying his hand over mine as I hold the icepack in place, "but getting laid out by my brother was a small price to pay to be rid of her. Bella..."

"Hmm?"

"Lay with me."

I do, and opening his arm, Edward pulls me against his chest and expels one very momentous breath.

"How is it you can look this terrible and handsome at the same time?" I say ruefully, flattening my palm over his heart.

He breaks into a quick grin that pushes quickly through his nose. "Bella..."

"Stay awake for the moment, okay?"

He hums hoarsely in compliance.

"When did this all go down? What time?"

"Around five."

"A few more hours and I'll let you sleep."

"I have work to do."

"That's not happening, counselor," I put my foot down.

"Woman..."

"Homosapien," I reply, for reasons unknown, and I kind of want to die inside. I really am terrible at flirting sometimes.

Edward immediately breaks into laughter; though, he fights it, as it rocks uncontrollably from his chest. "Don't make me laugh, sweetheart. My head is killing me."

"I'm sorry," I say, curling myself further against his side. "That was my very pathetic attempt at flirting."

"There's nothing pathetic about you," he replies behind closed eyes and sounding a little too serious.

"Smooth," I tease him, running my index finger gently over the bridge of his nose. "What happened here?" I ask, referring to the slight imperfection that's only really noticeable when he turns his head a certain degree.

"I got hit with a lacrosse stick when I was sixteen."

"Ouch. Broke it?"

"I did. I had to wear a plaster on it for two months. Emmett gave me so much shit over it."

"It wasn't him who broke it, was it?" I ask a tad too cynically, but my opinion of his brother is now hovering somewhere near his fiancé.

"No," he breaks into a small smile. "A kid on the team. You know, I used to see you running—before you became my daughter's imaginary friend," he says lightly, changing the subject as he trails one of his fingers up and down my back.

"You did?"

"I did. I used to check you out," he admits with a cheeky grin despite the fact he looks pale and drained. "I never saw your face—you always had your cap pulled low over it. Then one day I was coming back from court, and you were waiting at the lights. I pulled up alongside you and you took your hat off to fix your hair. I sat in my car staring at you while god knows how many people behind me were all honking."

"Really?" I reply biting down on my bottom lip sheepishly as I fight to hold off the raging blush.

If only I'd known.

"Then I opened my parents' front door and you were standing there, staring up at me, dressed in your pajamas and a beanie that looked like it came from a flea market—"

"Hey!" I protest, nudging him as he laughs huskily. "I love that beanie."

"I thought maybe you were that same beautiful runner," he adds, curling my hair around his index finger this time, "but I wasn't sure. It wasn't until Alice mentioned you go running when I ran into you at the café that I put it together."

"Hmm, yes, Alice outed me that I have ADHD and I was mortified," I say wryly.

"It was a strange thing to mention to a complete stranger," he agrees.

"That's Alice in a nutshell. She thought she was helping."

He chuckles breathily, and closing his eyes he releases his breath into a frustrated moan.

His head's bothering him. I wish I could ease it for him, but there's no way I can give him Advil. All I can do right now is keep him distracted.

"Bella?" It's very unusual for him to speak my name as a question that it almost doesn't register with me.

"Hmm?"

"I didn't write Bella-from-next-door-to-Grandma's-house because I was patronizing you. It was how Addie referred to you as, and I didn't think you were real."

"I know. I wasn't bothered by that," I reassure him. "It was more the fact that you didn't write any contact details. It felt very patronizing. As if you were saying you were aware of my friendship with your daughter and you didn't approve. Then when I came to your parents' house to give them their mail, you stared at me like I'd just crawled from the sewers."

He laughs again, groaning with it as his eyes squeeze closed. "Bella... I was staring at you because I was wondering why such a beautiful woman was on their doorstep in her pajamas. And I was sick as a dog."

"Hindsight, hmm?" I hum, repositioning the icepack over his eye when it slips. "I was so bothered by you that it really didn't make sense. You were a stranger who owed me nothing, but my self-esteem was non-existent back then. Not only did my boyfriend screw around on me, but he screwed around on me with a colleague from work. Everyone knew about it. It was humiliating."

"He sounds like an imbecile," he says candidly, his face subtly clouding.

"He was. My father would never have approved."

"Would he approve of me?" he asks, and there's almost something uncertain behind his tone that completely breaks my heart.

"Most definitely," I promise him, tugging his earlobe playfully. "Where did you get food poisoning from? I need to know where never to eat."

"It wasn't where it was from, but the fact it was sitting in my office for hours on end beneath the central heating."

"Oh, dear," I note.

"When I'm busy, I tend to forget to eat. I had a deposition that day."

"I have no idea what a deposition is," I admit.

"It's out-of-court testimony. It was taking place in my office. I always make sure there's food to lure the defendant into a false sense of security." He smirks.

"And then forgot to eat it and made yourself sick," I chide him teasingly. "I would have cured you, by the way."

"How would you have done that?" he asks, turning his head to meet my gaze.

His pupils are still dilated. I can barely see his irises.

"I would have made you drink several bottles of kombucha and then stripped you down and placed an ice pack on your stomach and at the back of your neck."

He gazes at me for several moments as if wondering whether to take me seriously before he breaks into a little-too-affected smile. "Bella."

"You don't believe me?" I put to him.

"I don't doubt it," he says closing his eyes again and releasing a long-winded breath. "Tell me something about you. Something I don't already know."

"Hmm..." I contemplate it for a moment. "When I was thirteen, I was in love with Justin Timberlake."

He laughs, tries to prevent it and then almost chokes. "The exact opposite," he murmurs to himself.

"Hmm?"

"Never change, sweetheart."

"My father used to tell me that," I say softly as the memory of it threatens to lose me in time.

Those exact three words to be precise.

Turning his head, he presses his lips briefly to my brow, and then moves them to my lips. "I really have to take something for my head. It's going to make me sick."

"I can give you Tylenol. Have you taken any?"

"I have."

"After it happened?"

"Yeah."

I sigh and am forced to let him down. "If I give you more so soon it'll make you sick."

He groans again, and letting the icepack fall, he pushes the heels of his palms against his eyes.

"Hang on a moment." Pulling myself to my feet, I turn off the light. "Lie your head in my lap," I urge him, sitting myself back beside him.

He does, and pressing the icepack to the back of his head, I run my fingers over his scalp, and gently massage his neck, forehead and temples.

"Better?" I ask in a whisper after a couple of minutes.

He hums drowsily in answer.

"Do you want an icepack for your forehead?"

"No. Don't stop..." he practically pleads with me.

"Keep talking to me. I can't let you fall asleep just yet."

He mumbles something unintelligible, and reaching above him, he grabs a fistful of my shirt as if to brace himself. His head must be spinning, I realize, hating the fact he's in this condition, and hating his brother and Rosalie even more.

"Tell me something about you, that I don't already know."

"I play the piano," he admits after a pause, and rather regrettably.

"You do?" I'm surprised. Pleasantly surprised.

"I do, but I hate it."

"Why?"

"My wife..." He doesn't elaborate.

"What were you like before you were married?" I attempt another angle, running my first two fingers slowly up and down his forehead while I silently curse the day his wife was born.

"I wasn't much different."

"Addie told me today that when you were a little boy, your mother used to call you Teddy," I relay as his groan this time is to himself.

"She did. What else did that kid of mine out me on?"

"Nothing else, but she did tell the Amazon delivery guy and my neighbor how I'm marrying you."

"She's told everyone in our street," he says ironically, while the affection behind his voice is overt. "Carmen and her husband came to my house the other week to congratulate me."

I laugh gently. "She's such a funny little thing. You don't mind that I took her running?"

"Of course I don't mind."

"I didn't get your permission beforehand."

"You don't have to get my permission on anything, sweetheart. I trust you with her."

This man is about to make me cry, and bending down, I plant my lips briefly to his forehead. "She did out you on something else, now that I recall."

"What?" he complains, but it's completely feigned, and I can hear the grin behind his voice.

"She told me when you pretend to be angry at her, you threaten to ship her off to boarding school. Only she called it broading school. She likes to imitate you. It's hilarious."

"Yeah, that kid's got me all figured out."

"She has," I more than agree, and I suspect she's got me figured out as well. When it comes to her father, at least.

And hour passes, and I'm beginning to lose the fight to keep Edward awake as much as he is.

He relents on the bath, so long as I get in with him, but his pupils are no longer dilated and are reacting to light normally, and I can finally breathe a sigh of relief.

I was so close to calling his father whether he wanted me to or not.

He falls asleep in the bath, and while I really want to join him, I'm way too wired to sleep. Instead, I let myself go completely fluid against him, and enjoy the sensation of his relaxed body beneath me, as I rise and fall with each intake of air he takes.

I wonder how the me from several months ago, who stood on his parents' doorstep, staring up at him in my flea market beanie, would feel knowing how brief a time it would take to fall completely in love with him. At the same time, I was completely unaware that I'd caught his attention.

From what I knew of him back then, he was as unobtainable as the stars.

It takes some effort to get him out of my tub and into my bed. He's absolutely dead on his feet, and after making him put on his underwear at the very least—in case we get a visitor during the night—he clumsily drags me, semi-conscious, beneath the covers with him. I lull him off to sleep the same way I did his daughter earlier, and he's snoring not thirty seconds later.

. . .

I wake early the next morning wedged between the still soundly sleeping bodies of Addie and Edward.

Edward's spooning me, his husky, not-quite snores washing the back of my neck with warmth. Addie's cradled to my chest, facing me, one hand clutching my nightshirt, and the other dangling from her mouth behind her thumb. She woke sometime during the early hours—calling for me, not her father. I sprang out of bed, while Edward barely moved, and carried her in with us.

Making every effort not to wake the two of them, I remove Edward's arm from around me, and untangling Addie's fingers, I climb over her and tiptoe from the room. I grab my phone on the way out; it's almost six-thirty.

Stretching my arms high above my head, and stifling my yawn, I make my way into the bathroom. I'm brushing my teeth when Edward groggily follows, and before I get the chance to articulate the good morning from behind my toothbrush, he engulfs me to him.

Hugging my back to him tightly, he buries his face against the side of my neck and smothers me in kisses.

The rest happens in a matter of moments. Turning me around to face him, he hoists me onto the vanity and presses his mouth over mine.

"W-wait, wait..." I stammer against his lips, and cupping my hands to the sides of his face I draw him back to inspect his eyes. Not dilated, and the ice pack done the trick last night. There's no more swelling, but I can't say the same for the conspicuous bruise beginning to spread to his temple.

"Satisfied?" he murmurs with a smirk, his voice hopelessly rustic, and returning his mouth to mine, he tears my underwear off and out from under me, inches me forward and wraps my legs around his hips.

"Your... daughter..." I point out, attempting to draw him back again, but there really is no reasonable way of resisting this man.

His answer is to kick the bathroom door closed, before he proceeds to sort me out—as he promised the day before—against the sink.

I honestly get so caught up in kissing him, the feel of it, sound of it, taste of it, that often times he's deep within me before I realize. But Addie is only a room away, which keeps me slightly on edge.

Mornings are never Edward's best time of the day, and it's over before I become convinced we'll wake her up.

I've barely begun the day and I'm exhausted already. Not to mention, I'm still worried about him. A concussion is no laughing matter.

"I'm gonna need to shower again," I say, nudging him in his bare chest with a knowing grin, even as I fight to catch my breath.

Returning it, he grabs my face and kisses me again, groaning with it, and I'm not certain of the context behind it. He sounds languidly satisfied as much as he does impatient. I suspect his head is still bothering him. "I'll join you in a moment," he adds before I can ask. "Coffee?"

"Sure."

He's hungry, which is a good sign, and after making him breakfast, he wolfs it down, and doesn't initiate round two in the shower.

I'm guess it's because of time restraints, or he no doubt wouldn't have hesitated, despite his current condition.

He has to get back home, shave, change his clothes and drop Addie off at his mother's. I offer to help him out on the latter.

"I don't have to be at work until midday," I remind him when he flashes me that dubious, skeptical look of his, "and I live next door."

"Fine, woman," he concedes, grinning cheekily down at me.

"You say that word more than I do." I tweak his earlobe.

"Which word? Woman?" he says with a smirk, and grabbing me around the waist, he pulls me to him and plants his lips a little too briefly to mine. "Have you seen my watch? I can't find it."

"It might have fallen under the bed," I surmise. I recall him taking it off the night before, so he was definitely wearing it.

"It doesn't matter." He shakes his head, his frown reappearing.

"Do not take Advil until you've seen a doctor," I caution him. Whether he's aware of it or not, he keeps rubbing his forehead heavily. He has a headache, and Tylenol is not offering him any relief. "Try and take it easy today."

"I'll try," he humors me, being entirely too charming for his own good, and dropping to a knee he ties up the laces of his shoes. "Okay..." He pats down his jacket and pants pockets, looking around my apartment, no doubt searching for his phone and wallet.

Picking them up from the kitchen counter, where he'd dumped them the night before, I hand them to him. "She's still asleep," I muse.

He shakes his head in an amused kind of wonder. "Never in her entire life has she slept this long. Better pick out that white dress, woman."

"That won't be a problem. I have Oscar de la Renta on speed dial," I say, and after gazing at me like I'm completely nuts for several long moments, he laughs.

Once he's fully dressed, sans watch, he follows me back into my bedroom where we both gaze down at his incredibly adorable, still-sleeping daughter cheek down on my mattress with her pouty lips puckered together.

"Hey," Edward says gently, attempting to nudge her awake, his voice overrun with open affection.

Stirring, Addie rolls to her back and stretches lazily. Her eyes open a moment later and a huge smile spreads wide across her face. "Hi, Daddy." It takes her exactly two seconds to notice the state of his eye as her face steadily creases with alarm. "What happened, Daddy!?" Clumsily sitting herself up, she points to it and pouts.

"It's my fault, sweetie," I quickly interject as Edward frowns, no doubt searching for an excuse to placate her. "Daddy dropped his keys, he bent down to pick them up and I opened the fridge door right on his eye." I might have borrowed the plot point from Grease, but Addie's satisfied, even as her expression turns somewhat rueful.

"Bella," she teases me, her voice still hopelessly broken from hours of sleep.

"I know. I'm really clumsy," I play along.

"But you're not mad at Bella, are you, Daddy?" she asks her father, her expression turning sedate and a little authoritarian.

"I'm not mad at Bella," he assures her, and springing to her feet, she jumps into his arms.

"Can I stay with Bella again today?" she asks her father, using those huge eyes on him to full advantage and wrapping both arms around his neck.

"For a little while until Bella has to go to work. Then she's going to take you to Grandma's, okay?"

She nods happily, her grin broadening. "Okay."

"I have to get going, so give me a kiss, kid."

Overaccentuating it, Addie smacks a very loud MWAH on her father's cheek, as he carries her to the living room.

I turn on Nickelodeon for her, and after she settles herself in the middle of the sofa to watch it, I walk Edward to the door.

"No working too hard this week," he tells me, tucking a stray strand of my hair behind my ear.

"See a doctor sometime today," I respond in kind, mirroring his smirk.

"Thanks for looking after me last night," he says after a pause, his voice softening and quickly matching the tenor of his eyes and smile.

"My pleasure. Lunch this Friday?"

He nods once and then leans down to kiss me. It's almost long, tender, his lips parted, and leaves me wanting a whole lot more. "Let me know when you get home tonight," he murmurs against my brow.

"It'll probably be some ungodly hour," I draw back and warn him.

Breaking into a smile, he scoffs to himself and shakes his head lightly. "I don't mind."

"Goodbye, Daddy!" Addie breaks in from the sofa.

"Bye, Tiger." Edward's gaze darts to her, warming as it does, before it rests back on mine. He hesitates. "Before you call Oscar de la Renta, I... need to tell you something."

"Oh?" I tilt my head. His frown's returning, and his eyes sever from mine to look at seemingly nothing behind me.

"Soon," he promises. "Soon..." he repeats as though cementing it to himself.

"Okay... Edw—"

"I'd better make a move," he cuts me off, and planting his lips to mine one last time, he turns and disappears down the stairs.

"He's fine," I mumble to myself as I close my door behind him, but I'd be lying if I said I fully believed it.

A/N: thanks for reading :)