Hello and happy holiday season, dears! I hope the festive season brings you plenty of reasons to smile.

I want to start by expressing my heartfelt gratitude for your patience. I appreciate your understanding and hope you can forgive me for the long wait. This spring, when I began posting "In Kismet's Grace", I had no way of knowing that the summer would bring an avalanche of unforeseen challenges that took a toll on my mental health. Your kind messages have been such a comfort to me during this time, so thank you for that!

I have since turned my life around in many good ways. Along the way, I've regained the energy and passion to continue writing this story that means so much to me. I cannot stress enough that I've never once considered abandoning it—the characters and their arcs hold a very, very special place in my heart. While I may not be able to commit to weekly updates as I once did, please rest assured that I am fully committed to completing this journey.

So if you're still with me, thank you from the bottom of my heart :).

In the previous chapter, Edward and Bella returned to her house after rekindling their love in the meadow. Bella revealed that she had written letters to him during his absence, pouring out her feelings into words. Moved by her letters, Edward finally surrendered to his instincts and, at Bella's request, drank her blood. The experience deepened his love and commitment to her, and he realized he could never live without her again. In a moment of profound clarity, he promised to change her into a vampire after they tell Jacob the truth.

So let's see what happens now, shall we?

After the initial frenzy of drinking Bella's blood subsided, I was so overcome by the excitement of what I had done—but specifically of what I had promised her—that I fucked her for two hours straight afterwards, only stopping to go down on her or to watch my cock disappear in her welcoming mouth. It was beyond remarkable how she didn't seem to need much rest—her human body proved able to handle a lot more than I had initially expected.

And just as remarkable, but in a different way, was the fact that her scent was no longer a curse stalking my every train of thought. Now that her blood was actively flowing through my system, I could savour its bouquet without my senses boiling over. Of course, I still wanted more of it, but the urgency—the maniacal desire to consume it—was nowhere in sight.

Our minds were still riding the wave of euphoria left behind by all the rabid sex and my blood-drinking when, after having come inside her depths again, I stopped moving, wanting to cherish the way she was still spasming all around my cock. The fusion between my venom and the excessive wetness of her orgasm felt like warm velvet as it seeped out from her pussy onto my balls.

I gazed down at Bella, a part of me quietly wondering how I could ever be so damn lucky. I wasn't some saint—hell, I was not even an objectively good person—but somehow I had everything. She held my gaze for a long time, as she tried to regain control over her breaths—something that appeared to be distinctly difficult. Our bodies were still connected, on the thin edge between taking a break and starting over again with a vengeance.

"You know, I've never seen your eyes like this," she observed in the end. "There's so much red in them…" A small smile flowered on her face right as I was getting ready to decipher her true feelings, thus answering my question before I got to ask it. "I absolutely adore them."

"You do?"

"Mhmmm…" Bella sighed longingly when she felt me thrusting again—a slow, deep thrust, to assuage our pleasant interlude. "Because it means you are satisfied at long last. Well, as satisfied as you can be… I know you probably need way more than what I could give you."

"My love… you gave me precisely the right amount." I sheltered her cheeks in my palms as I retreated slowly from her body, only to push back deeper when she ground her hips upwards, seeking the union further. "Certainly enough to keep me sated. Of course, I'll always want more, but that's the greed in me speaking. And neither you nor I should listen to that particular monster."

"But I want to give you more. So much more. As much as I possibly can."

Pretending that I was not swayed by her confession would have been an unavailing effort. Here we were, bound in every way possible, and she still wanted to climb even higher up into the fabric of my being—and I wanted her to do it, just like I wanted to do the same with her. "Make no mistake, you will," I promised. "When you heal."

Our conversation easily dissolved into another round of making love—this was quickly turning into an addiction, as I had always expected would happen.

Not that I minded.

Eventually, the evening started weaving its threads through the thick windows of the house and I was reminded of the fact that this was usually the hour she preferred to have dinner.

We were in the kitchen—Bella enjoying a sandwich I had put together for her, while I silently read through the rest of her letters—when the unpleasant reality decided to knock us over.

Her phone started ringing, cutting through our peaceful silence.

A cold shiver ran down my spine when she picked it up from the table with trembling hands and I heard Jacob's voice on the other side, but I kept my composure.

This was the first time the two of them were talking since she and I dropped everything to visit our meadow. So much had changed in the meantime that it felt fantastically bizarre to hear another man using words like honey and baby to address my mate. My mate, alongside whom I had been fulfilling fantasy after fantasy and dream after dream in the past day. My mate, whose blood now flowed through both of us and whose cunt was dripping with my cum as she sat naked on the chair by my side. My mate, who would soon bear my venom in her veins.

My love, my angel. Not his honey, nor his baby.

I tried not to pry too much into their conversation, pouring my attention into the letter I had in my hands, more specifically the second paragraph—although I had re-read it so many times in the thirty seconds it had taken Jacob to greet Bella and tell her how much he missed her that I knew it by heart.

"I think I missed laughing the most. He's good at making me laugh. And it honestly doesn't require an awful lot for my days to be acceptable when he's around. Just a day at the beach or a ride into the sunset on our motorcycles and life feels substantially easier to go through. It even feels—dare I say?—worth living. Spending time with him makes my mind dissociate in a way that might not be healthy if you were to ask a professional, but at least it makes me feel hopeful."

I digested those words, deeply sorrowful over the mental image of Bella accepting a kind of happiness that offered her so much less than she deserved. Struggling, I continued.

"The days we spend at the beach are my favourite. Jacob is at his happiest there. I know that he needs solace just as much as I do, even if he needs it for different reasons. He never drinks on the days when we go there, so I try my best to make sure we do that at least three times a week.

That beach is also doing wonders for me, to be honest. When we are there, it feels more natural to kiss him. To let myself be wrapped in his embrace. Some days I even crave him to do it. After all, La Push is the only place in this hell hole that is not tainted with memories of you. I can go there without feeling the weight of your absence pressing so hard on my shoulders."

I was usually great at concentrating on several things at once, but Jacob's voice in the background was so annoyingly distracting that the words carved into paper were becoming harder and harder to process. Distraught as I was, I placed the letter on top of the pile waiting for me on the table.

Bella's eyes were already on me when I looked her way.

"Anyway, I was thinking we should make a trip to Port Angeles next week," he began, "and see that movie about the rat. Seth told me it's pretty good."

"Yes, we could do that."

"Throw in some dinner and it's a date."

"We'll see."

She was being evasive and I could tell that she wasn't feeling comfortable. Her heart was beating so fast it almost overrode the sound of their conversation. Wanting to help her calm down, I pulled her chair closer to where I was and grabbed her away from her spot, offering her a new seat on my lap.

"You're usually more excited about these things," he noticed.

"I know, it's just that today was such a long day and… I'm tired."

"Then you better find your energy for when I get back, baby."

She rested her head on my chest, sighing before she talked again. "I will, don't worry."

"So, listen… I know I've been a pain in the ass about this throughout the last week, but I have to know, so bear with me. You're still keeping your distance from him, right?"

My fingers moved in small circles on her skin while she talked. "Yes, Jake, I am."

"And he hasn't tried to contact you again? Not once?"

Her heart was pounding at full speed now, clearly bracing for another lie. "Not even once."

"Good. He was getting way too close."

He couldn't even comprehend how close. I kissed the top of her head with great care, patiently waiting as their discussion slowly, awkwardly, finally died. After she hung up, we sat in silence for a while.

She was the first to talk.

"I wish I could teleport there and break up with him right this second," she muttered. "He needs to know."

"We'll do it together," I reminded her. "After he's back."

"I don't know if he'll like that."

"You need to consider that he will get mad either way. I don't trust his temper, so I'd much rather be there when it happens, in case he gets out of hand."

"He wouldn't hurt me."

"Bella, your safety is everything to me, so that's one chance I'm not willing to take."

She didn't contradict me on that, but it was obvious that her mood had taken a hit.

As the evening stretched its tendrils all over the house, we found ourselves back on the sofa, with Bella taking a nap in my arms. I was reading the remaining letters, making sure to soak up as much information from them as I could.

While I read, I learned more things.

I learned that there had been better times in her relationship with Jacob—times she clung to too tightly for the sake of her mental sanity. Late evenings spent at the beach, quiet nights watching a movie, him enjoying the meals she prepared—simple things, but enough to get her to dream of a world in which loving him all the way was actually within reach.

But there were so many contradictions in her writing too; for each long-winded paragraph about how their relationship was growing into something better, there was always a paragraph at the end of it all in which the memories she had of me managed to cast a shadow of doubt over her life. And sometimes, vague trails of fantasies she once had of me also made their way into the letters. Still, the acute fear of loneliness, coupled with the sentiment that she owed it to Jacob to stay with him after the way he managed to keep her afloat after my leaving, made for quite an easy decision when he asked her to marry him.

The words she used to describe that sent me on a new path of pain: "There was nothing left for me if I said no. It would have broken his heart, but also mine. It's not worth it to go through all that trouble when saying yes is so simple".

That was a deeply sad conclusion and it made me hold Bella a little tighter in response. She felt so incredibly precious and I couldn't possibly forgive myself for what I did to her—not even now after she had already offered me the gift of absolution. But in a way, I was also content, because having her safe in the home of my embrace meant that she would never know that kind of suffering again, as long as I had a say in it.

For better or for worse, my mistakes had taught me the lesson of a lifetime.

The last letter was the only letter she wrote after my return. The first few words alerted me that she wrote it on the same day when she and I met again.

My mind quickly flipped through recent memories, bringing forward one that never held much significance—until now. It was a memory from the day when I collected a wounded Bella from the forest floor and brought her back inside, to safety. That night, she told Jacob she was too tired and that she needed to go to sleep early. However, as soon as she was alone in the bedroom, the sound of paper rustling became obvious.

It intrigued me then, but I never would have guessed the actual reason behind those sounds.

"Edward,

I saw you today—which is impossible. Unreal. A dream.

But at the same time, it isn't—and I don't know if I should be thrilled or scared.

I don't understand how or why, but you were here. It's like you materialized from the depths of my conscience just for the hell of it. I touched your face and you felt real. And then I was in your arms and I couldn't remember the last time my emotions had been so out of sync with my mind.

Because a part of me wanted to confront you properly, to ask you every question you had left unanswered on the day you decided to abandon me. But another part was so impossibly thrilled by your touch, your face, your presence. So thrilled that I realized I didn't have it in me to be as firm as I would have liked to be.

It didn't matter anyway, because you disappeared before I got the chance to properly comprehend what was happening. In a stupid, nonsensical way, it feels as if you've found all of my letters, read them, and decided not to spend another minute by my side since you knew just how warped my mind had become. Otherwise, why would you have left so quickly, as if lingering just a little longer would have ruined your day?

I've been thinking all day about you and it's driving me crazy. I want to know if we're going to see each other again. If this meeting stirred you as much as it stirred me. If I should even tell Jacob about you—he knows more than enough about what you meant to me, so would he be upset about this chance encounter? Would he even believe me if I told him how you managed to find me? I'm not entirely sure I believe it myself, although I don't see why you would lie to me.

God, my mind is a mess right now. I wish there was a way to reach you. If this stupid ankle worked, I wouldn't have thought twice about driving all the way to your old home to see if you were there. But as it is, I'm stuck.

I want to see you again, even if I have no idea what I would tell you if we were face to face. I guess that after writing all these letters to you, I almost feel like we're friends now, so I am hoping things won't be too awkward. It sounds delusional, but I think there was this writer whose name I can't remember who was convinced that no human is happy without a delusion of some kind. I'd be happy if my delusion was you.

So I could be your friend, if you let me.

But I'm so scared I might also want more—not that I would ever tell you that… or do anything about it if it happened. And not that it matters anyway, since you've disappeared.

Again."

Pure confusion radiated from each sentence—a confusion that I knew now had its roots in the splintered fragments of her longings. I felt like a total fool, no longer understanding how I had ever managed to convince myself that she would be able to get over me. It was so obvious now, when I was no longer blinded by the fatuous conviction that I knew what was best for her.

After reading the letter enough times, I ended up letting go of it, returning it to the pile that was now on the floor, and sensing that an important piece of the puzzle of my love's mind had been found. My movement had been deliberately smooth, but somehow it managed to startle Bella enough to get her to shift slightly and awake with a lazy sigh.

"Sorry," I whispered, kissing the top of her head. "I didn't mean to wake you."

"Mhmmm… have I been asleep for long?"

"Not longer than two hours."

She stretched, her form soft and pleasant against my bare skin. "Just two hours? I feel… weirdly rested."

"You should go back to sleep, it's getting late."

"How late?"

"Only two hours left until midnight."

Bella huffed. "That's nothing. I'm not an amateur."

"Never would've thought you were. But I expect you to need plenty of sleep after a day like this."

"Well, good, because I just got my fill."

She repositioned herself until her lips reached mine. I kissed her without much thought, eager to inundate my senses with her taste. My thirst simmered, but didn't boil over. Unlike before, I felt fully in control of it now, as our mouths moved languidly together. It couldn't wreck me—not while the miracle of Bella's blood was circulating through my limbs, soothing and reassuring me in unspeakable ways.

"At this rate, this day might just go on forever, as you wished," I offered, once my lips ventured sideways, to find her earlobe.

"That sounds like my idea of heaven."

She made beautiful little noises as my kisses traveled along her neck, down her shoulders, over her clavicles—and then, at long last, across the small indentation left behind by my nail above her nipple.

"Does it hurt if I do this?" I checked, as my lips brushed gingerly over her skin.

"No. You feel absolutely incredible."

"And… if I do this?"

She trembled when she felt my tongue tracing the edges of the small wound. "Not at all." A little moan escaped her. "Please, don't stop."

We explored that particular thread of pleasure for a while, no longer exchanging words. Bella was happily receiving my ministrations, all the while trying to offer me some of her own in return. I enjoyed how her hands were unable to focus on a single part of my body for too long, as she constantly got distracted by what I was doing. This made for a terribly exciting journey for me, as I tried to guess where she was going to touch me next.

Eventually, we got so fired up that I had to stop my teasing. My cock had been in a constant state of being stiff and ready throughout the day, while Bella's pussy had become increasingly wet, as the combined sap of our orgasms soaked her folds and smeared on her thighs. It was so easy to find our way back into each other—two pieces of the same puzzle, fusing so naturally together that it was a great wonder that we could ever endure being separated.

The splendid miracle of making love to Bella was the effortlessness with which our specific needs and desires synced. When she craved the sensual act of protraction, my body was in no hurry to get anywhere fast. I wanted to extend the length of each second and dilate time, to harmonize the pace of the world with the pace of our inner universe. And when my fierce appetite demanded me to douse its urgent hunger by fucking Bella hard and fast, her ravenousness screamed even louder, encouraging me to go ahead. To allow my carnal impulses to win. To fuck my way to our mutual serendipity.

We came together twice, shamelessly crying out each other's names as we rode those peaks of delight.

Once we were done, whatever traces of sleep had been left in Bella's eyes when we began were now long gone. She was alert and energetic, showing no signs of needing to go back to sleep anytime soon.

As for me, I knew better than to convince Bella to do what was theoretically right for her when she had completely different plans.

"You know what we should do?" she asked, jumping up from the couch. Her voice was so vibrant and zealous that it almost sounded like she was high on a particularly delirious drug. I had to make an effort to look at her face and not stare at how appealing her naked curves were. "We should go for a walk."

I couldn't help but laugh—it was thrilling to see her so carefree, even when she was coming up with highly questionable ideas. "Now?"

"Yes. It wouldn't be the first time we took a walk late at night, right?"

"Certainly not the first time," I confirmed, my arousal brewing at the memory of why we took those long walks in the past. "But how are you so seemingly tireless?"

"I'm pretty sure you are the cause."

"Oh, so I'm giving you insomnia?"

"Not insomnia. Just the most intense happiness I could possibly imagine. I feel like I can barely contain it in my bones."

Her clarification softened me instantly. My Bella was happy. Happy because of me. That realization was as simple as it was profound. Before she could blink, I stood up and joined her, circling her body with my arms and leaning down to kiss her forehead.

"You are my entire life," I reminded her. "Always."

Her lips pressed against my chest and I refused to move, wanting to absorb the sublimity of the moment: how her heat was enough to make me warm, how the hardness of my form made the softness of hers submit. Even now—as different as we were, with the fabrics of our being still so polarizing—we felt right, like all the pieces had fallen into place and we were precisely where we were supposed to be.

And more than that, I could see how everything made sense at long last. Every twist and turn of my fate, every suffering, every existential crisis that had ever haunted my sleepless nights, every mistake I had made with Bella, every act of boundless insanity—everything converged into a deep pool of meaning.

The more my conscience submerged into this pool, the stronger my desire to shout my happiness from the rooftops grew. I wanted the world to know that I was the happiest man on earth—to spread the word so far that even the smallest grain of sand in the Namib Desert and even the ghost orchids in India would know, without a doubt, that no man had ever loved as deeply or as wildly as I loved Bella.

Passingly, it dawned on me that I would have to let my family know at first. Shamefully, I had not thought about them at all in over a day. My mind had been entirely occupied with thoughts of Bella, leaving no room for anything else. I wondered if they knew by now. Esme must have guessed that there was an important reason behind my long absence—and even if she hadn't, Alice must have seen enough by now.

There would be so many phone calls to make…

But for once, that thought didn't seem daunting at all. I wanted to make those phone calls. I wanted my family to know that I was happier than I had ever been and that there was no going back. And in my manic pursuit of wanting to let them know, I realized that they deserved more than that—they also deserved an apology from me. I was aware of how my choice to become a recluse after leaving Forks had hurt them—my parents especially. And even if I had never intended to bring them pain, that didn't lessen the effect.

Suddenly, the thought of Esme waiting for me at home, quietly pondering if I was making the right choices with Bella, got me to feel remorseful. Maybe Alice had told her what she knew, but what if that wasn't enough? She had worried enough, it had to end.

Just like that, what I wanted was clear to me. "If I were to tell you we should go to my place instead of taking that walk, what would you say?"

My proposal got her to raise her head from my chest and look up at me. Her eyes were filled with genuine, child-like wonder.

"Your place? Do you mean that?"

The caution behind her tone didn't escape me. I wasn't surprised by it—after all, the only time she dared to ask me to go there was also the time when I cowardly decided to take the rude way out and tell her that she wasn't welcome. Even if I apologized to her immediately after, letting her know that the real issue was my inability to deal with the traumatic events that had transpired when she and I last spent time together in that house, I knew that wasn't enough.

Eager to remedy my mistake, I rushed to tell her more. "Yes. I didn't tell you this before, but Esme joined me there a little while after I arrived in Forks. She was… quite worried about my mental state."

"Esme is there?"

Excitement always made her voice go one octave higher—which was precisely what was happening now.

"Yes," I smiled. "She is. She's been staying with me for a while—it was her way of making sure I didn't go completely insane. And I imagine she would be more than delighted to see you again."

"I want to see her too!" Bella was downright ecstatic, going by how tightly she was holding on to me, using all her puny force. "Does she know about us?"

"She certainly knows enough about how I feel about you. I suspect she figured out the rest when I took off with you and didn't return for over a day."

She blushed at my choice of phrasing. I had to admit that I found it wonderfully endearing how she could still get flushed so easily, even after spending the better part of the last twenty-four hours engaging with me in a passionate and shameless streak of depravities.

"That's good. I miss her. I miss all of them."

"We'll tell all of them," I promised. "Let's just start with small steps, I don't want to overwhelm you."

In the peacefully quiet house, Bella dressed up for what was going to be a momentous meeting for both of us; well, she tried to dress up, because as soon as she put on one of the few dresses she owned, I was already pulling the skirt up and her underwear down, sinking tongue-deep between her legs and not coming up until I had the juices of three consecutive orgasms splattered all over my lips. That wasn't nearly as much as I actually needed, but it had to be enough to keep my appetite in check for a couple of hours.

She looked so beautiful and full of life when we got inside her truck. Looking at her now—seeing that she looked positively vibrant even though she was supposed to be sleeping—I was convinced that I could see the future with as much clarity as Alice could. I could see us, years from now, spending every single second of each day together, never once letting go of each other—we already knew how unbearable the pain of being apart was; soon enough there would be no reason to endure it again. And I could see us, driving late at night, heading to all the places that we only ever talked about, and fully knowing that there were no obstacles hindering the natural path of our fate. We would travel together and we would laugh together and we would drown in each other's minds and we would fuck whenever and for however long we damn well pleased.

That vision was so clear, I might as well have lived through it.

"Do I look decent enough?" she asked impatiently—probably because I had been staring like a lunatic at her for the last few minutes instead of starting the engine. "Be honest."

To be fair, that dress on its own was an abomination—shapeless, green, and sad. I didn't have to possess Alice's aesthetic skills to see the obvious. But on Bella? It was a transformed garment. The fabric couldn't help but yield to her spectacular shape, revealing round contours and enticing swells that I now knew like the back of my hand. "My angel, you couldn't look decent if you tried."

"Come on, you know what I mean. Should I have picked something else to wear? I just think that this dress is—"

"Bella, you wanted the truth. The truth is that you look so beautiful that any man would invent a religion just to worship you." I knew that better than anyone—after all, she was my religion. She didn't seem as sure when she looked down and bit her bottom lip hard. Unable to remain sane for long when she was behaving like this, I leaned over the stick shift and used my fingers to grab her chin and make her face me directly. "They'd do it simply to justify killing for you, do you understand what that means?"

"You're certainly overselling me," she giggled nervously.

"Trust me when I say this—this is me underselling you."

"Yeah, right."

Ravenous—and quite annoyed by how she dared to contradict me on such an important matter—I swiftly pulled her face towards mine and kissed her. My tongue easily domesticated hers in seconds, but I didn't let up. It wasn't enough to get her to submit in front of the pleasurable onslaught—it never was. In fact, it wasn't enough until every neuron inside my brain was set aflame and the taste of Bella overpowered everything else.

I was just getting started when I felt her pulling away, gasping for air. I only allowed her face to retreat one inch, setting her in place with my hands and my gaze.

"Too much?" I checked, even if I knew the answer already.

"God, no," she purred. "I was only afraid I might end up looking like a crazy person if you kept doing that right before I'm supposed to meet your mother."

I laughed at her silly worry and pressed my lips once more against hers—delicately this time, knowing how worked up she would get by the teasing. In fact, I sought to get her in that state.

"You just love torturing me, don't you?" she moaned under my slow-moving mouth.

"You know it."

And with that, I broke all the rules and pulled her on top of me in the driver's seat, ripping off her underwear and sliding my entire length inside her molten core in one fell swoop, with no preamble.

We cried out together at the familiar feeling—the only feeling that made us whole—and in the far distance, I could hear clocks all around the world slowing down their ticking for us.

My mother can wait, I thought passingly.

The entire world could wait indefinitely, for all I cared. After all, nothing stopped time quite the way making love to Bella managed to.

Things might be looking good for these two, but the clock of Jacob's return is ticking in the background ;).

Until then, how do you think the meeting with Esme will go?

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Until next time, stay safe and happy!