Hello!

As always, I am really grateful to all of you who are following and reviewing this story (there are no words to describe how happy I am to read them), but also to my beta, CoppertopJ, who is absolutely amazing.

Now let's get into it!

I had forgotten the comforting feeling of being welcome somewhere. For the better part of the last two years, I had been an intruder and nothing more. An intruder in other people's attics, in other people's lives, in my family's peace of mind. Hell, even in my own existence.

But sitting in Bella's kitchen filled me with the strangest joy, as if—at long last—I had found a home; or at least a place where my amorphous anguish turned to hope, even if only for a while. Of course, I knew better than to entertain this dangerous thought for too long, because I didn't belong here, no matter how my mind was tricking me to believe I did.

"So, tell me how things are going with the house," she demanded as soon as she filled her glass back up and I was instantly reminded of my cowardly lie. "Will it really be demolished?"

"We still need certain permits in order for that to happen."

"When will you get them then?"

"Any day now."

She nodded, her cryptic thoughts far from me. I had the nagging feeling that she wanted to know more—that she would dig the actual truth out of me, because she certainly could if she put her mind to it—but she remained quiet, her delicate fingers tracing patterns on the glass, leaving warm fingerprints behind. Maybe it was for the best—this way, I couldn't be deluded into thinking that she actually cared about me in a meaningful way.

"And after that, you leave," she murmured many long, torturous moments later.

"That's the plan."

She paused, but not for long. "All right, but until then… would it bother you terribly if we hung out more?"

If she had noticed the sudden surprise on my face, she chose to ignore it. She simply looked at me, with those hopeful eyes of hers, whose secrets I couldn't possibly know, and I caved—not that I even had the backbone to refuse such tempting offers. "Of course not. I could use a friendly face around here."

"Then we're both in luck," she replied with a smile and I wondered if it was the alcohol in her bloodstream speaking. She smelled slightly different now too—sadly for me, the alteration was barely noticeable, which meant that my thirst was very much intact, reigning in the background of my conscience. Still, her desire to spend even more time with me felt unusual, out of place—and too good to be real. I couldn't understand where it stemmed from, since most humans seemed to hold either abhorrent grudges or complete disinterest regarding their past loves, no in-between, undefinable feelings.

But it wasn't like I could afford to inquire about such deeply personal matters. So I went with something else, something more broad, to give her some actual room for choosing the topics that she felt comfortable with.

"Since we're here," I began, "tell me what I missed while I was away."

"Ah, I wouldn't know where to begin!"

"There has to be a start, I'm sure of it."

"Well, what do you want to know?"

Absolutely everything and nothing less. Was she happy with her life? Was the death of her parents still haunting her? Was she planning to go to college someday, eventually? Was she dreaming about having kids with Jacob? And what new hobbies had she picked up, beyond motorcycling?

"Bella, my curiosities are plenty, but I don't want to encroach."

In return, she gave me a completely lovely, completely in-character roll of her eyes. "Look at you being all ethical. You can ask me questions, you know? Seriously, I don't bite."

"Unlike other individuals." The words left me before I could register their meaning properly. Bella's eyes widened, revealing the full circle of her irises, and I understood instantly that I had to apologize. "Sorry, bad joke."

"Oh, on the contrary," she protested, taking one long sip from her glass, leaving it empty at last. "It was a fantastic joke. So by all means, keep making them."

"I'm starting to think that wine is getting to your head, Bella." I was only half-joking now—she had to be some level of tipsy, otherwise she would have had more sense than to entertain my morbid, ill-timed puns.

"Wrong." With a swift movement of her hands, she pushed her long locks back, disclosing a perfectly kissable, perfectly edible throat. I ordered myself to refocus, choosing instead to marvel at the fabric texture of her shirt. That blue shirt, that made her veins stand out more… that barely contained their frantic dance… that wrapped the commanding swell of her breasts in a cotton embrace…

Refocus, refocus, refocus.

"Anyway," she added. "Since you're being so prudent, I'll ask you a question. Where are you living now? I mean, before you came to Forks, of course."

I thought of the dusty attic in Guadalajara, where not long ago I was making friends with the spiders. Then the humid caves of San Luis Potosí. Then the musty basements of Manizales, with their smell of wet coffee beans rotting in large sackcloth bags. I could just tell her I was living in Juneau, with the rest of my family, but lying to her never felt good—besides, I had already done a fair share of it by not disclosing the actual reason I returned to Forks. "I'm mostly traveling at the moment."

"Oh, where?"

"Here and there. I never spend more than one month in a place."

"And… is your family traveling with you?"

"No, it's just me. We talk every once in a while, of course, but we parted ways, for the most part."

Her previously jesting mood melted into something that looked a lot like concern. "It sounds really lonely."

"Perhaps, but you can always find distractions."

"Distractions," Bella repeated, and this time the concern was mixed with a different emotion. She seemed almost… irritated, although I couldn't tell why. "Right. Of course. Thank God for those."

I shrugged off her strange reaction, attributing it to what I could guess was an alcohol-induced dizziness. I was far more concerned by the fact that my strength was diminishing the more I lingered here, taking me closer to the point in which I was not sure if I could—or even wanted—to resist the different urges she was rousing in me much longer.

Common sense alone was keeping me in my place. Without it, I would be doomed. And she would be too.

"Well, I wish I could travel too," Bella offered afterwards, her voice still bearing the remnants of an irritation I couldn't fathom. But even with the mask of chagrin, I recognized the longing in her voice easily. The same longing I was once privy to when we talked about all the places she never went to, but hoped to visit someday. Back then, I dreamed of promises I knew I couldn't make out loud—promises of the two of us, driving down a highway at night. Stealing kisses in an opera house. Holding hands under the glorious dome of the Northern lights. Resting in each other's arms on an island far away from the world, while the sunrise enveloped us in its honeyed light. Sun warming her skin, her skin warming mine.

I sighed, accepting the painful weight of the future we never had.

"You should. You've got your whole life ahead, you might as well start now."

"It's not so simple."

"Why?"

"Why? Because I've got responsibilities here that I can't just abandon. Like… the library. And the house."

"I understand that, but a few days off won't be the end of the world for either of those."

"I'm not so sure about that," she countered. "I'm the only one working a full-time shift at the library. There's one more girl, but she works part-time and it's complicated to work around that. I don't want to put her in a difficult position."

Always thinking of others, never of herself. My hopelessly and agonizingly selfless Bella. "But you deserve a break every once in a while, regardless of that."

"What break? I don't even have any more sick days left. I lost them all at the beginning of the year when I got the worst flu you can imagine." A sudden ripple of dread traversed her eyes, and she quickly covered her face with her hands. "Oh, no, sorry, obviously not the worst." I would have smiled at her innocent oversight, but the mere mention of her having to suffer at the hands of a random virus made me less than easy to entertain.

"Don't worry, go on," I encouraged, seeing that she was still hiding.

Bella's mortification lingered, but eventually subsided, because she placed her hands back on the table and dared to look at me again, heating me with just her gaze. "Even if I could take a proper break from work, there are still things to be done here, in the house. Take the bathroom pipes, for example—they are broken and they might flood the entire house if we don't pay attention to them. What if we go someplace and get back to a flooded house?"

I listened to her, realizing that I had never been faced with such questions or worries myself. The fact that they were so mundane, so seemingly easy to fix, made them more imposing. I wished I could take them all away so that she would never have to choose between responsibilities and otherwise achievable dreams.

"I'm sorry it's not easier," I replied. "I hope it won't always be like this."

"Me too." A bittersweet smile appeared on her face. "You know, Jacob's been telling me we will go to Niagara Falls for over a year now. He's never been there himself, but he saw a flyer when he was a kid and he's been dreaming about it ever since."

I nodded through the pain, commanding myself to accept that it was more than expected for the two of them to have shared hopes and dreams. In a masochistic attempt to cement my acceptance, I asked her if they ever ventured anywhere outside of Forks.

"Not really. I mean Jake has, because he's got his clients all around the state, but we haven't gone anywhere together yet. Now, to be fair, the timing was never right. So many things happened these past few years… to both of us. The mood for vacation simply wasn't there."

God, how I wanted to know what she meant, beyond the outlines of what I already knew. Would she understand my need to know more? Would it reveal how disturbingly obsessed I was with her? Or would she chalk it up to our apparent friendship? "Hmmm." If I kept hesitating, we weren't going to get anywhere. Our discussion would run around in circles, never reaching a meaningful destination—and we really didn't have as much time as I would have liked. "Tell me about those things."

Bella's posture shifted almost imperceptibly—she pushed her shoulders back and her eyes widened with renewed yearning. "Fine, but more wine first," she said, getting up. She instantly reached to grab the table when she lost her equilibrium—and thank God she did, because I had been one wrong instinct away from reaching out to keep her steady with my hands. She walked back to the counter where she had left Jacob's bottle, this time bringing it to the table and using it to fill her glass back up. Red droplets—so small, so inconsequential—took flight, but she didn't seem to mind the way they were painting the tablecloth.

When she sat back down, the air moved again in dangerous patterns, forcing the full delicious blast of her scent into my lungs. My tongue twitched in agony, as it anticipated a feast that would never come.

"Well, as embarrassing as it is to admit out loud, those things started after you left," she began, coercing my thirst to take a back seat. Being reminded of my decision to leave her had predictable effects on my heart, almost making it move from the cold confines of death. Beyond its motionless shell, I felt it bleeding with regret. "For a while, I refused to believe there was a life after… you know, everything I lived with you back then. And yes, I know now that it was so, so very stupid to even think that, but… I was pretty clueless and didn't know any better." Bella found her way back to the chair, cheeks tinted again. "Anyway, Jacob and I started hanging out after a while. We didn't know it at first, but we both needed each other more than we realized."

"In what sense?" I asked, careful to keep my tone neutral. Casual even.

"In the sense that we both needed a friend at the time. Maybe to forget certain things, but also for the sake of having someone you can rely on. You see, Jacob had quite a rocky relationship with his mother. About the same time that he and I started hanging out, his parents divorced and his mother moved back into her parents' home, in Nebraska, so they rarely got to hang out. And when they did… it wasn't necessarily pretty." She hesitated, dark concern weighing her eyebrows down. "She had a good heart, really, but she didn't know how to let Jake in. Nor his sisters, although they lost touch completely, unlike Jake. She enjoyed drinking—she enjoyed it a lot—and that hurt him."

"I'm sorry," I offered, somehow meaning it. Not just because the situation seemed to worry and disturb her, but because a part of me still remembered a version of Jacob that was carefree and happy—the version of him that dreamed of Bella, never knowing she would actually become his one day. "That must've been difficult for him."

"It was, because he constantly had to question if he had done anything wrong." She used the next pause to lift the glass to her lips and drink. When she put it down, she looked paler than ever. "He was devastated when she died. It was this awful car collision on the highway, and she died before help even arrived." The news crashed against me, making me realize that, as much as I had been relying on Alice to satisfy my curiosities, there was still so much I didn't know.

I leaned forward over the table, aching to console her and not knowing how. I couldn't take her hand in mine. I couldn't graze the warm velvet of her cheeks. I couldn't do a damn thing. All I was capable of was staring, pining, aching for her.

"I'm really sorry." If I sounded repetitive, I didn't care. Our gazes danced together for a few moments in an unstable rhythm. I refused to look away, willing to take in as much as I could from this interaction with her. "What happened after?"

Her eyes separated from mine, her heart stammering in the process. Fuck, I was making her uncomfortable. "I remained by his side, of course," she answered, her voice low and strange. "It didn't take him long to find the bottles his mother had left behind before she went back to Nebraska. And… it took him even less time to empty them when Billy was asleep." She didn't have to say more. The short silence that followed was crushing. "I tried getting him back on track, but then… then my own parents died, and it… it all became a farce. The blind leading the blind and all that. So, so stupid…"

"It doesn't sound stupid," I countered. Then, fighting with my own pointless jealousy, I dared to continue. "You both fought to bring the other to the surface, right?"

"Yes… that we did. Although I'm not sure I was any good at it."

"I doubt that. You have always been a good listener."

She huffed, rolling her eyes. "Yeah, right." Once again, I was puzzled by her reaction, not knowing how to dig deeper into its meaning without seeming overly intrusive. My inability to read her better was slowly, but surely killing me. Was there no end to this madness? "Anyway," Bella said, "enough with the tragedy. Tell me something."

"What do you want to know?."

"Earlier, you said you've been traveling on your own a lot. So… what were you doing during all these travels?"

Missing you.

Hunting Victoria.

Missing you more.

No, these were not acceptable answers. I decided to go with something a little less specific. "I did a lot of running and hunting."

"Hunting what?"

"Whatever animals were available."

Her eyebrows jumped up, almost in disbelief. "Hm. Animals."

I was a little distraught by her response—she had to know me better than this. She had to know I wouldn't go back to my old ways. "You seem surprised. What did you expect?"

"No, I expected animals, yet… I don't know. I was thinking you might be out of practice."

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"Well, it's just that your eyes got darker since you got here."

Fuck. My own body was actively working towards betraying me. I fought to keep my guard up, despite having been caught already. "Did they?"

"Yes. A lot darker, actually."

Flashbacks from a lifetime ago, when she first observed the different nuances in my eyes, struck me like a lightning bolt. Unlike then, now she knew what the nuances meant. She knew all too well. There was no excuse good enough to hide the truth. Invoking the faint light in the kitchen would have made me look like a fool.

She didn't give me a chance to redeem myself. She went right back in, even more determined to dig the uncomfortable truth out of me. "I can't help but wonder… do you still want to eat me and all that jazz?"

I didn't answer. I couldn't. Instead, I leaned back in my chair, trying to comprehend how it was even possible for a creature like me to lose all reason in less than ten seconds. For someone who should have known better, I had no idea what I was going to say next. My mind was a blank canvas, devoid of any reasonable explanations.

Bella didn't seem bothered by my silence. She leaned over the table conspicuously, getting closer to me, her skin blooming with pink undertones. Even in my torpor, I couldn't help but notice the graceful lines of her cleavage, revealing themselves in a torturous way. My cock twitched at the sight, protesting in the confines of my jeans for the hundredth time that evening. "Edward, it's fine, you can tell me," she muttered. My name sounded unexpectedly tender rolling off her lips. I instantly wanted to hear it again. "Does my blood still have that effect on you?"

Hypnotized, I pondered about capitulating. It wouldn't have been so bad, come to think of it. She had always held a deep understanding of my demonic hunger, never really judging me for it, even though she had every right to. What was there to lose if I confessed my shameful yearning to her once more? After all, it didn't have to mean anything.

At least if I told her the truth, she wouldn't keep pushing further.

"Yes," I said in the end, perhaps harsher than I had intended to sound. "It very much does. Can we move on now?"

"Well, if that's the case… do you maybe want a sip?"

It took my entire will and an instant miracle not to combust then and there at the profane invitation. Maybe she had gone completely mad and her question was the first symptom. "Bella, what the hell?"

"You know, just… a little slit to the wrist, so you can have a taste and see what it's like."

She was still leaning in and I was still leaning back, too afraid to get one inch closer to her. My morals struggled with the possibilities she was laying on the table, almost considering what her preposition entailed. As soon as I allowed myself to picture the debauchery, I knew I had fucked up. The flash image of my mouth glued to her skin, waiting for blood to be spilled, shook me to my core.

I hated that image with a vengeance. I hated what it meant—it meant that I had caved, that I had placed my needs before her safety. I could never do such a thing to Bella, and not just because it went violently against my love for her. The problem was that if I allowed myself to taste even a single drop of her essence, I wasn't sure I was strong enough to stop. I would want more, I would want so much more. I would want to drink it all, to gorge on it, until there was nothing left.

Goddamn, I despised that image.

Yet I craved it in such a carnal way it scared me.

I sat up, disturbed by how vile my thoughts had become in the span of a few moments. "All right, I think it's safe to say you're drunk."

"I'm so not!"

"Then you have a death wish. Either way, you're talking nonsense."

"I'm not," she retorted, annoyingly confident. "You want it."

"What I want is for you to rest. I seriously think the alcohol got the better of you."

"You didn't deny it."

Refusing to entertain the madness further—because that only meant feeding my crazed lust, which was never a good idea—I stepped away from the table. "I'm leaving, so that you can rest. Do you understand?"

"Don't be ridiculous, I… I didn't mean what I said, all right? It was a joke… of sorts. You do remember what a joke is, right?" Her fast-fluttering eyelids did nothing to make her seem credible. She was as unskilled of an actress as she had always been, no changes there. I walked further away, towards the hallway, not trusting myself enough to linger. "Come on, you can't seriously leave! We barely got to talk. Please?"

"I hope you get a good night's sleep. I mean it."

"Edward—"

"Goodbye, Bella."

It physically hurt to open the front door—the metal of the doorknob felt too warm for comfort—and even more so to close it behind me and stalk outside, into the night. I heard Bella's faint gasp and I wanted to run away from it, where I would not have to face the consequences of my heedless decisions.

Had I declined her invitation to join her tonight when I still had the chance, she wouldn't have had to suffer through the effects of my highly unstable disposition.

Had I kept my distance when it was still within my power to do so, I wouldn't be running away from her.

Hell, had I not been an idiotic vampire entirely too in love and entirely too obsessed with a human, I wouldn't be returning before I even got the chance to properly put enough distance between the two of us.

But I was, so not even five minutes after rushing out the door, I was back in Bella's backyard, becoming one with the shadows. For a while, I didn't hear much—until, at one point, a small sob broke the silence.

What started as a small sob turned into something else alarmingly fast—just like the sputter of summer rain turning into a deluge before hitting the ground. I stood there, in the grass, petrified, not knowing what to do—nor if I should even contemplate doing something.

That night, Bella didn't stop crying until the break of dawn.

And proving yet again that I was a fool who never deserved her, all I did was listen.

There were few things that could make me feel more like a failure when I returned to my old home in the early hours of the morning. The air itself felt loaded with the weight of yet another sin I had committed—the biggest one yet. Not only had I fallen prey to my endless desire to be near Bella in any way that I was allowed, but in my pursuit to do so, I had also failed her. She had made it abundantly clear that all she needed was to talk to an old friend, yet the minute her ribald drunken joke escaped her, I ran away almost instantly, in a way that only a complete stranger would.

And by God, her crying—whether a result of my rude manners, or something else—was haunting me. The sound was still ringing incessantly in my ears, as if we were in the same room, not miles away from each other. Taunting me with what it could mean. Tormenting me with the certitude that I could never ask her about it. Reminding me that I left her to face the strange sorrow alone.

I felt uncertain about my next steps.

On one hand, I knew what the best option was. I should leave. I had done enough damage in less than a week of being here, what was the point of extending my cursed stay way past the welcome point? Bella didn't need me here in any capacity—if anything, she needed me out of her life, as proven by her soul-stirring cry the other night. Out of her life and as far away as possible.

On the other hand, I still had to return the book to the library. And it was a lame excuse to get me to linger, but it was the only one I had.

It seemed that my selfishness knew no bounds; or rather that it had forgotten them altogether, considering that there was a time—not even that long ago—when I was still fairly able to move past what I so desperately wanted and do the right thing. It was frightening to observe just how weak my convictions were. How easy it was to find justifications for myself when temptation was so within reach. To build those justifications without a foundation and fool myself that they would be stable enough to be credible to someone other than me.

In other circumstances, I would not have thought twice about going to my father for advice. More than anyone else, he would know what to say and how to deal with my mess. He would find reason among the madness and guide me towards it so that I never strayed again. But I had not talked to him since I let my entire family know about my plans to go to Forks—not only because he had enough grace to allow me space when I asked for it, but also because I had been deliberately avoiding him. As unending as his support was, it was also undeserved. There had to be a point at which even Carlisle would understand that. After all, how long could he emotionally subsidize my mania and pretend it was fine?

I had created a trap of my own making, and I had no clue how to escape it. I wished for the sweet liberation of sleeping—just a few hours of complete mental numbness, to let go of the pain without effort. The more I went on without any type of rest, the more erratic my thoughts got. I started pondering about the possibility of visiting Bella at the library, to check if she was in a better state. Then the possibility of setting myself on fire, since it would have been arguably more helpful than to keep persisting in my foolishness. Then the possibility of humiliating myself by asking Alice if she was able to see a future that made sense for me.

The thoughts of calling Carlisle never left me. They kept playing in the background of my mind, waiting for me to pay attention to them. But how could I, when just being in this cursed house brought back the very last conversation he and I had between these walls, and how profoundly crushed I felt after it?

I could remember him in the corner of the now-empty living room—his concerned frown as he was zipping his leather suitcase, his shirt unironed for the first time in decades. Back then, I couldn't even feel the guilt of what I was putting him through. All of my emotions were crushed by the colossal weight of what I knew I was about to lose in less than twenty-four hours. Anyone else's pain seemed pale and insignificant in comparison.

"You can still change your mind," he said out loud, finally voicing the thoughts I had been deliberately ignoring. "Even now."

"It's not going to happen."

"Stubborn, as always. But you must know that this resolution might be too severe of a punishment."

"It is not a punishment. It's what I had coming for messing around with fate too much. It's what sinning should get you."

"You fell in love, son. We would all be the worst of sinners if such a thing was a crime. You weren't messing with fate, you were simply following what your heart knew was right."

"What is right for me," I grumbled over his thoughts. "Not for her. And it shouldn't be like this. What is right for her should come first. Above my desires, above my caprices, above my self-interests…"

"Not above love," he retorted calmly.

"No, Carlisle. Especially above love." It hurt to admit that, but not as much as it hurt to say the next words out loud. "And if I would have known she was my mate the moment I laid eyes on her, I wouldn't have said one word to her. Not one word. I would have left her alone when I still had the privilege of not knowing what I'd lose. And I wouldn't have dragged her into any kind of relationship with me."

"Drag might be too harsh of a word," he offered, and his mind did the rest of the talking for him. "You never obliged Bella to do anything she didn't want to do. Correct me if I am mistaken, but from where I was standing, it appeared that her will and desires played an active part in everything."

"It doesn't matter now. I am not risking her life any longer. She's had enough misfortune and darkness to last her a lifetime. Thanks to me."

"That should be for her to decide."

"No," I growled. "Because if it was up to her, she would be doomed." I paused, realizing just how corrupted my ways were. "See? That's what I meant. I am not good for her, not one bit. You believe her will has always played a part, but there is too much of a power imbalance between me and her for that to be the case—I've never given her a fair chance, not even now. So yes, I dragged her into my world, and I'd be damned if I don't drag her out of it as well. It's for her own long-term good."

While he didn't contradict me again out loud, his thoughts did that for him. And as much as I wished to be able to forget them, I was unable to. Remembering them was part of my ill-starred fate.

"This decision will ruin both of you."

I didn't believe my father then—and I didn't believe him now. Because if there was someone to be ruined in the wake of my decision, it was me. I knew Bella had been hurt too—it was a truth I often ran away from—but the emotional pain was the easy way out, considering the alternative would have been an untimely death. Besides, she had something I didn't: the ability to grow. To move on. To let things go, even if that meant letting a love story as intense as ours slip away.

Not that I gave her much of a choice. But Bella was strong, I didn't doubt that. If she hadn't been, she wouldn't be wearing a ring on her finger, waiting for the day when Jacob would pledge his love to her in front of an altar. The day when she would do the same for him.

I forced myself to picture it—the chapel, the priest, the inevitable. They probably wouldn't have too many guests, since she was never a fan of lavish ceremonies. And they would probably choose a sunny day, to make her truly happy. Sunny enough to keep unwanted guests, like myself, away. Her father would not be there to walk down the aisle, and her mother would not be able to hold her when the wedding emotions would get too much—cursed be the day I failed them.

And Bella… Bella would look like a walking dream in a long, white dress. Beautiful to the extreme, the kind of beauty that would have people look away in bewilderment, not quite grasping that something like it could even exist. But it wouldn't matter, because she would only have eyes for her groom anyway, as she would walk up to him, wobbly on her feet as always. As she would listen to his vows. As she would say hers. As she would smile while he leaned over her and…

No.

My imagination refused to elaborate further, crippled by the pain. I didn't have to do this to myself, not when I knew that there was nothing I could—or even wanted to—do in order to change things.

But crippled as it was, my mind was still capable of twisting things for its benefit. And twist it did, until a single image started repeating itself, again and again, in an obsessive reprise of my previous musings. An image that simply refused to loosen its hold on me for the rest of the day, rendering me prisoner.

Bella, in that white dress, saying 'I do'.

Only not to Jacob.

To me.

Well, I did warn you that this story is a slow burn, right? ;)

Did you expect Bella to make such a bold proposition? How many excuses do you think Edward can make just so that he can linger a little longer?

I would LOVE to know your thoughts on this chapter!

Also, if you would like to get weekly visual sneak peeks, feel free to join my Facebook group: "Twilight fanfics: NightBloomingPeony & friends corner".

Until next Sunday, stay safe and happy!