A/N: Hello, friends! It is, once again, my birthday (weird little things come around once a year). And we all know how much I love attention.

So here's a little bit of a tale that has been cooking in my head all year.

All the usual excuses still apply. My kiddo keeps my brain properly fried and I'm also actively working on One Right Thing, so while I was planning this for a year… I didn't get the words down on time. It's not polished. It's not edited.

But I'm going to share it anyway, because your response is going to make me smile all day.

Thank you for coming with me on this…hopefully short…journey. It won't hurt nearly as much as the original.


Edward Cullen opened his eyes to a somber sight. His family—his brother, sister and their spouses—surrounded his bed, their faces etched in dour expressions, pinched with worry. He blinked hard, trying to orient himself in time and place. He was in a hospital, he remembered that much. He'd been struck by lightning. Last he'd heard, he was going to survive, but given the look on everyone's faces…

"Am I dying?" he mumbled.

His brother's grim face broke first. He grinned and rubbed the back of his head. "Naw, your vitals are improving pretty steadily now. The doctor said if you keep it up, you'll probably get released tomorrow or the next day."

"Okay." Edward groped for the control to his bed, shifting carefully as he got himself into a more upright position. "So why are you all looking at me like that?"

They all exchanged looks.

Despite the unique situation, Edward was familiar with the silent communication going on. Irritation spiked in him, tempered by a bone-deep exhaustion.

He hated this part; the way his family walked on eggshells around him, as though expecting him to explode or shatter if they used the wrong word. He hated that they worried the slightest problem or inconvenience could send him spiraling.

He hated that, for so many years, they'd been right. He hated that he'd given his family so many reasons to handle him with kid gloves.

Out of patience, Edward looked at his sister-in-law. "Rose?"

She could be depended on to give it to him straight. "Bella left," she said.

It was that record-scratch moment when everything went silent. The ambient sounds of the hospital faded away as his breath left him in a gust. His head spun, one of the most painful memories in a sea of bad memories floating the surface

Many years ago, Alice had used her emergency key to come into his house. He could hear her call his name, but he couldn't bring himself to move. She'd found him eventually. He could still remember the frantic way she'd said his name as she rushed to him, dropping to her knees beside him. The room was a wreck. The pain had been too much, and he'd thrown most everything he could get his hands on. He knew he was bleeding; he remembered that much, that the screaming had stopped when he'd cut his arm on a shard of glass, the physical pain just enough to catch his attention. That had been hours before, and now his sister shook his shoulders, asking him for the fifth time what the hell had happened.

He must have looked like a nightmare, sitting there among the wreckage of his life, arm soaked in blood, his stare glassy and sightless. He didn't speak except to whisper those same words as explanation to his frightened sister. "Bella left."

In the present, Edward blinked rapidly. He pushed the panic away and searched for logic, truth.

So it hadn't been a dream then that Bella, his ex-wife and forever the love of his life, had been on the mountain when he was struck by lightning. She'd been by his side the first time he woke to full consciousness. He thought it was possible he'd dreamed all that, but if his family had seen her, she must have been real.

"Can I kiss you?"

"We really are fated, aren't we?"

"We had a date," he said, speaking more to himself than the others

"What?" Alice asked, rubbing his arm consolingly.

He cleared his throat, trying to un-muddle his thoughts. "I mean, I don't think she's gone."

His sister rubbed his arm harder. "She left, Edward," she said with that gentle edge that drove him crazy. "She didn't leave her number."

"She left," Edward agreed. That made sense. She'd stuck around the hospital, subjected herself to his family—that had to have been overwhelming for her for a number of reasons—only long enough to see him out of peril. "I don't think she's gone."

His family, clearly relieved Bella's disappearance hadn't triggered another crisis, tactfully changed the subject. But even as they talked, Edward replayed his reunion with his ex-wife in his head.

There was, of course, every possibility that Bella had left him. Again. She owed him nothing. She'd escaped him twice already, and it would be no less than what he deserved to have to go through the agony of losing her again.

But she'd said yes to coffee.

She wasn't gone.


A/N: SO.

Many thanks to May. She read this bit a while back and encouraged me.

And many thanks to YOU. You, the beautiful reader who gives me so much joy.