By the time Bella pulled into the driveway, the sky was the color of old denim. Rain freckled the windshield in lazy splats, and her truck's wipers made that pathetic wheeee-grnk noise like they were trying to do their job but were also clinically depressed.
She cut the engine. The truck shuddered once like it was sighing.
The porch light was on — Charlie's doing. The only constant in her entire week had been that soft, yellow glow waiting for her every night. The thought almost made her emotional, which was embarrassing. She chalked it up to the sleep deprivation and the existential vampire spiral currently setting up camp in her chest.
She shouldered her backpack and stepped inside.
The smell hit first: a combo of leftover pizza, gun oil, and wet flannel — the Swan household trifecta. The TV was on in the living room, low volume. Baseball. Charlie was slouched in his recliner, socks on the coffee table, a half-eaten slice of pepperoni on a paper plate resting precariously on his stomach.
He glanced over at the sound of the door. His mustache twitched like he was about to say something but forgot what it was.
"Hey, kiddo," he said finally, his voice scratchy like he'd just woken up. "How was the beach?"
Bella kicked off her boots and peeled her hoodie halfway off as she moved for the stairs. "Cold. Damp. Probably a biohazard."
Charlie grunted — the universal Swan man approval noise.
She hesitated on the second step. "I've got a ton of homework."
"Okay," he said, already turning back to the TV. "There's pizza in the fridge if you want."
"Thanks."
She climbed the stairs two at a time.
Upstairs, the walls felt thinner. Like the air was pressing in. Her room was exactly how she'd left it — slightly off-center, like someone else's idea of a teenager's room. She shut the door behind her and locked it. Not because she needed to.
Just because she could.
Her backpack hit the floor with a heavy thunk. She toed off the rest of her clothes like they offended her, changed into an old T-shirt with a cracked Nirvana logo and flopped onto the bed face-first.
She lay there for a beat. Then two. Just listening to her own brain do cartwheels.
Edward.
Cold ones.
They're the same Cullens.
Not human.
Not alive.
Bella sat up so fast her head spun. She grabbed her old Discman from the nightstand — the kind with the anti-skip buffer that never actually worked — and jammed in her earbuds. The mix CD inside was her usual: angsty girl rock, rainy-day piano ballads, and the musical equivalent of screaming into a pillow.
She hit play.
The first song kicked in like a freight train: Evanescence – "Bring Me to Life." Peak 2005. Overdramatic. Kind of embarrassing. Perfect.
She cranked the volume until it hurt.
The lyrics hit hard.
How can you see into my eyes like open doors—
Her hands trembled just a little as she dragged her blanket over herself. She didn't get under it. She just wanted the weight. Something to anchor her to the now, because her thoughts were slipping sideways.
Was this real?
Cold skin. Golden eyes. Marble hands.
She pressed repeat on the Discman.
Then again.
And again.
Somewhere downstairs, Charlie opened the fridge. She heard the clink of a beer bottle and the rustle of the pizza box. He probably thought she was studying. Or on the phone. Or doing whatever it was girls did when they locked themselves in their rooms.
He didn't knock.
She was grateful.
The CD whirred. The vocals rose.
Bella curled sideways, knees to chest, hair tangled across the pillow like a messy question mark. The music was too loud. She liked it that way. It scraped against her nerves and left her too numb to feel scared.
She didn't remember falling asleep.
But when she did, it was with the chorus still playing in one ear, the other bud fallen somewhere into the sheets.
And as the rain tapped the window like it was trying to get in, Bella Swan slept.
And dreamed.
Breath shallow.
Waiting for morning.
And for the next piece of truth to find her.
—
Bella knew it wasn't real the second she blinked.
Everything was too something.
Too sharp.
Too quiet.
Too green.
The moss beneath her fingers pulsed like it had a heartbeat. The air shimmered with static, like lightning had just passed through and left its echo behind. Trees loomed above her — old trees, silvered and bone-thin, their trunks twisted like someone had tried to wring the forest dry and left it half-screaming. Their branches reached down like they knew her name.
And the sky?
Gray. Heavy. Flickering faintly around the edges like a dying fluorescent light.
"Okay," Bella muttered, her voice too loud in the stillness. "Either I'm dreaming, or I've been dropped into a Nine Inch Nails music video directed by M. Night Shyamalan."
She pushed herself upright, brushing off her jeans — though there was no dirt. Her hands came away clean.
The woods didn't move the way woods should. The trees swayed even though there was no wind. Leaves rustled like whispers just out of reach. From somewhere in the distance, she heard the ocean.
Not lapping gently.
Not soothing.
Crashing.
Loud. Angry. Like it wanted to climb up the cliffs and swallow the whole world.
Then—
"Bella!"
She spun, breath catching.
Jacob was there, half-shadowed beneath the trees. Barefoot. Hoodie hanging loose. Hair mussed like he'd run through a storm. His chest rose and fell like he couldn't catch his breath — like he'd been chased.
He held out a hand, eyes wide. "You need to run."
Bella took one cautious step toward him. "What is this? What's going on? Are we in a Stephen King novel now or—"
"There's no time," Jacob said, stepping back. "They're coming."
"Okay, who's 'they' exactly?" she snapped. "Because if it's, like, Blair Witch and the Ring Girl forming a book club, I deserve a heads up—"
"I'm serious, Bella!" he said, eyes flashing, voice cracking. "You have to move!"
She tried. She really did.
But the moss was sticky and thick, squishing under her like warm jelly. Her feet sank with every step, and her arms felt heavy, like someone had filled her veins with syrup.
"Great," she muttered, gritting her teeth. "Paralyzed by dream-vegetation. Totally normal."
Jacob flinched suddenly, staggering to one knee like something inside him snapped. His fingers clawed at the ground. His face twisted in pain.
"Jacob?!"
His body convulsed.
Then cracked.
Bones popped. His spine arched unnaturally. He didn't scream — but his mouth opened like he wanted to.
Then he began to shimmer.
Shift.
Bend.
The hoodie tore apart at the seams, and fur erupted from skin. His limbs twisted, stretching into something wild, something bigger than human.
And then — in his place — stood a wolf.
Massive. Shadow-dark. Panting. Amber eyes burning with something furious... and familiar.
Bella froze.
Not fear of it. Fear for it.
"Bella!" a second voice cried — higher. Nervous. A little too much edge.
She turned.
Mike Newton was standing on a rocky ledge above her, arms flailing like he'd somehow just tripped into this nightmare straight from a My Chemical Romance concert. He looked completely unqualified for whatever genre of horror they were now trapped in.
"Run!" he shouted. "You have to run! It's not safe here!"
"I swear to God," Bella called back, panting, "if one more person tells me to run while I'm being slow-cooked by radioactive moss, I'm gonna scream."
Mike blinked. "That would be... fair, honestly. But seriously — he's here!"
And then everything stopped.
The air went still.
Time... shivered.
From the fog stepped Edward.
But not her Edward.
This one was too perfect. Too silent. His pale skin practically glowed, like it had absorbed moonlight and never let it go. His bronze hair curled artfully over his forehead like a teenage Greek god, but his eyes...
They were red.
Deep, bloody crimson.
He moved with glacial grace — like a painting come to life, smooth and surreal and utterly wrong.
His lips curved into a smile.
Fangs flashed.
Actual, honest-to-God fangs.
"Nope," Bella whispered. "No, no, no, no—this isn't happening. This is anti-Edward. This is the bizarro version."
He lifted one hand.
Beckoned.
One long finger. One crooked smile.
Come to me.
Bella's heart stuttered. Her body locked.
Mike's voice cracked, echoing through the trees. "Bella, please! You can't let him—he's not who you think he is!"
She couldn't answer.
The wolf beside her let out a snarl like thunder, fur rippling with rage.
And then — bam — Jacob lunged.
He collided with Edward mid-step, the sound like metal colliding with stone. The clearing exploded.
Fur and fangs. Teeth and snarls. A blur of silver and shadows. Marble fists and claws and something more—something primal—tearing through the dream like it wanted to shatter the sky.
Bella screamed—
—
When Bella bolted upright, the world was wrong.
The room was too dark. Too still. Her sheets were twisted around her legs like they'd been trying to hold her down, and her breath came in short, panicked gasps — like she'd surfaced too fast from somewhere deep.
Her chest hurt.
Her throat hurt.
Her brain hurt most of all.
One of her earbuds had wound itself around her neck in her sleep like some poetic little metaphor for bad decisions. The other was still buzzing faintly with the last seconds of Track 12, whirring in the CD player like a warning siren with stage fright.
Bella didn't move at first.
She sat in the center of the mattress like it might open up and swallow her whole. Her hair clung to the sides of her face, and her skin felt damp — with sweat or fear or just too many feelings she didn't know where to put.
It was just a dream.
She told herself that once.
Then again.
And again.
But the words didn't stick. They fell right through her like everything else that made sense yesterday and didn't anymore.
Jacob had changed in front of her — bones snapping, voice turning to howls.
Mike had shouted for her to run like she was in a horror movie and he'd read the script.
And Edward—
Edward had looked at her like she was prey. Inviting her closer. Daring her to ignore every shred of common sense she had left.
That smile.
Those teeth.
That inhuman stillness.
Bella dragged her knees up to her chest, curling in like she could hide from her own subconscious. She rested her forehead on her arms and tried to remember how to breathe like a normal person.
A soft clunk came from the kitchen downstairs. The fridge opening. Then shutting again. The dull hum of the world continuing. Charlie, probably up early for his fishing trip or just unable to sleep through her haunted house pacing above his head.
It grounded her. A little.
But not enough.
Because everything outside this room still felt the same — rainy, dull, safely forgettable. But everything inside her was screaming.
She whispered to the dark.
"Get a grip, Bella."
But even her voice sounded off. Fragile. Shaky around the edges.
She climbed out of bed and went to the window.
The rain painted streaks across the glass, turning the backyard into a watercolor blur. Everything gray. Everything quiet. Everything still pretending to be normal while her insides burned and churned and threatened to rewrite themselves.
Was it really just a dream?
Or was her brain finally catching up to the things she'd been trying not to say out loud?
Cold skin.
Gold eyes.
No heartbeat.
No human tells at all.
She remembered what Jacob had said on the beach. "They're not like us. Even when they act like they are. Even when they pretend."
Bella swallowed hard and touched the cold glass.
"You're losing it," she whispered. "You've officially lost it."
She waited for the glass to fog under her breath.
It did.
Small relief.
Still breathing. Still alive.
Still spinning way too close to the edge of something dangerous and electric and absolutely not safe.
She wrapped her arms around herself and stood there for a long time, watching the rain and feeling the pressure build behind her eyes. Not quite tears. Just the ache. The ache that came from knowing there was a line, and she was about to cross it. Not later.
Soon.
Because the truth was waiting.
And it had Edward Cullen's name written all over it.
—
There was no point pretending she could fall back asleep.
The sky outside was the color of wet concrete. The rain left smeared fingerprints on the glass, and the whole house smelled like a sad mix of leftover pizza and whatever Charlie was smoking for breakfast.
Bella sat up, muscles stiff and brain refusing to shut down. Her heartbeat thudded against her ribs like it was trying to escape a cage.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed, the cold floor shocking her into wakefulness. A thin thread of dread curled up her spine, the kind you get when your brain won't stop chasing shadows.
She shuffled to her desk, grabbed the ancient laptop—the one that still made that clunky fan noise like it was breathing hard from running a marathon—and booted it up.
The blinking cursor blinked back at her like it knew all her secrets. She hesitated for a heartbeat before typing the single word she'd been scared to face all night:
vampire
Her eyes skimmed over the search results, landing on a site called Vampires A-Z. Probably a goth kid's labor of love or some late-night horror fan's shrine.
Exactly the kind of nerdy nonsense she'd have mocked in another life.
But that life was gone.
The page loaded slow, pictures of gaunt faces with sunken eyes, pallid skin stretched too tight over sharp cheekbones—everyone staring back at her like they knew what she was trying to deny.
Folklore, myths, old wives' tales spun to explain what people couldn't understand: infant deaths blamed on demons, husbands turned into monsters when they looked away, sickness blamed on bloodsuckers hiding in the night.
Bella skimmed past the obvious clichés—Dracula's castles, Nosferatu's shadowy lurking—until three descriptions caught her cold like rain on skin.
First: Pale humans who avoided sunlight at all costs. Not sparkling, but close enough to set her skin crawling.
Second: Vampires so fast they could wipe out entire villages before anyone had time to scream. Massacres in minutes. That hit too close to something she'd seen.
Third: Stregoni benefici — some Italian legend about vampires on the side of good, sworn enemies of evil vampires, protectors of humans.
She exhaled slow and steady, a small flicker of hope pulsing in her chest. Maybe not all vampires were monsters.
But then she shook her head and sighed.
None of those stories really fit Jacob's warning.
"They're not like us," he'd said. "Even when they act like they are. Even when they pretend."
And Edward. The way his golden eyes never blinked like real eyes do. The way his skin was cold, almost like marble. The way he disappeared when the sun came up.
Because vampires can't be out in daylight.
That much made sense.
Her logical side—the part of her still clinging to sanity—was screaming that she was chasing ghosts. Legends were just stories. Fairy tales. She should stop. Go to school. Pretend it was all normal.
But her gut, the stubborn knot of something dangerous and electric in her chest, told her otherwise.
There was something real here. Something waiting behind the myths.
And it had Edward Cullen's name written all over it.
Bella closed the laptop, the glow fading from the screen like a dying star.
She stared out the rain-streaked window.
Did she believe it? Did she want to?
Did she even have a choice?
She didn't know.
But one thing was clear.
She wasn't walking away.
Not yet.
—
Bella slammed her PC shut like she'd just caught it committing a crime.
"Fantastic," she mumbled, rubbing her eyes. "That was definitely the low point of my week. Googling vampires at dawn like a bored cryptid."
The monitor's afterglow faded, casting her room into the soft, moody gloom of an overcast Pacific Northwest morning. The kind of light that made everything look like it had given up.
Her room smelled faintly of rain and last night's stress sweat. Not that she was about to admit that out loud.
She sat on the edge of her bed for a second too long, elbows on knees, hands threaded into her hair like she was trying to pull the thoughts out by force.
I'm not insane.
Or maybe she was.
Cool. Love that for me.
The images from her dream were still lingering behind her eyes — Jacob turning, Edward beckoning, Mike looking like he'd wandered in from the wrong genre — and the damp forest pressing in around all of it like some living thing.
She needed air.
Real air. Not recycled angst-oxygen from her room. Not vampire lore, not blinking cursors, not folklore Wikipedia spirals at 5 AM.
She yanked on her hoodie, grabbed her boots, and slipped down the stairs like a ghost avoiding confrontation — or in this case, Charlie, who was probably in the kitchen nursing a cup of coffee and wondering how his only daughter had become a sleep-deprived forest cryptid.
Outside, the rain had eased to a drizzle, the backyard soaked and glistening, everything shining like it had been freshly scrubbed by something bigger than her problems.
Too bad it didn't work on brains.
Bella trudged toward the tree line behind the house, pausing at the edge like she was about to cross into another dimension — which, in a way, she was.
The forest didn't just look like her dream.
It felt like it.
Like it was waiting.
The trail was soft underfoot, the mud sucking at her boots, the ferns slick and cool against her jeans. She could hear birds — somewhere distant — and the occasional creak of trees stretching, or maybe breathing. She wasn't sure.
Branches arched overhead like the ribs of some great cathedral, moss clinging to them like tattered robes. It smelled like rain and cedar and things that had been alive longer than she'd been a person.
She walked without really thinking, letting her body move while her brain tried to play catch-up.
Ten minutes in, she found it: the same fallen tree from her dream. Covered in moss. Slouched across the trail like a sleeping dragon.
Bella sat down with a thud, pulling her knees up to her chest, arms locked around them like a barrier.
She didn't speak.
Didn't move.
The quiet pressed in from all sides — not oppressive, exactly, but deep. Alive. Like the forest was listening, and if she said the wrong thing, it might whisper back.
She picked at a thread on her sleeve, jaw tight.
"Okay," she said aloud, voice rough in the cold. "So let's review."
She ticked the points off on her fingers.
"One: Edward Cullen is... something. Possibly undead. Definitely not normal."
"Two: Jacob Black basically accused his entire adopted family of being monsters during a casual beach hangout, which—fun."
"Three: I spent an hour reading about bloodsucking demons and Stregoni benefici, which sounds like a pasta dish but is apparently the vampire equivalent of a boy scout."
She paused, staring at the moss beneath her boots.
"And four," she said, softer now, "I don't want to stop. I should. But I won't."
That was the worst part.
She could walk away. Pretend she'd imagined it. Laugh it off like a bad dream and a search history she'd never speak of again.
But she wouldn't.
Because some part of her — the stubborn, lonely, deeply inconvenient part — wanted to know him. Even if he was dangerous. Even if he had fangs. Even if he could crush her like glass.
Especially then.
Bella leaned back on her palms, letting the rain kiss her face, and stared at the canopy above.
"I'm in so much trouble," she whispered.
And the forest didn't disagree.
—
Bella sat on the slick moss-covered tree like it owed her answers.
It didn't. Obviously. But her body refused to move, and her brain was still short-circuiting from the late-night research spiral and the dream-that-wasn't-just-a-dream. The forest smelled like rain and rot and pine needles. It pressed in close, the way Forks always did — like it knew her secrets before she did.
Her boots were soaked through. She didn't care.
Two questions, she told herself. Just two. Like solving an emotional Rubik's Cube would magically fix everything if she just aligned the right thoughts in the right colors.
The first one?
Was anything Jacob said true?
Honestly? It sounded ridiculous. If anyone else had said it, she would've rolled her eyes so hard they'd have done a full 360 and filed for a restraining order.
But Jacob hadn't sounded like he was joking.
And... there was Edward.
Edward Cullen, with his too-perfect face and vintage movie star wardrobe and tendency to stare at her like she was both a mystery and a dare. Edward Cullen, who had stopped a van like it was a beach ball. Who moved like a ghost and looked at her like she was made of glass and secrets.
Edward, who never touched food. Ever. Who ghosted school whenever the sun came out like it personally offended him. Who talked like he was quoting lines from a black-and-white film no one had seen since 1937.
Who told her, flat-out, "I'm dangerous."
Bella hugged her arms tighter around her knees, her voice barely a whisper. "Dangerous doesn't stop a van from crushing me."
She picked at the seam of her sleeve.
So what if it's true?
So what if vampires are real?
Her heart thudded like it wanted a vote.
The second question was worse.
It wasn't "Is he a vampire?"
It was "What the hell am I supposed to do about it?"
Tell someone?
Right. Hilarious.
"Hey, Dad, I think the hot guy from school is a blood-sucking immortal."
Charlie would check her temperature, confiscate her CD collection, and probably blame it on caffeine and too many rainy-day horror movies.
Her mom? No way. Renee would panic, book a flight, and somehow make it about her own spiritual energy being "out of alignment."
Angela? Jessica? Mike?
God, no. They wouldn't get it. They couldn't.
Bella could avoid him.
That would be smart. Logical. Safe.
But even thinking it made her stomach twist like she'd swallowed glass.
The idea of pretending Edward Cullen didn't exist felt... impossible. Like deleting color from the world and expecting it to still be beautiful. Like shutting off music and pretending silence was enough.
She winced. "I don't want to stay away from him."
The words sounded pathetic in the quiet, but they were true.
Even if he was dangerous.
Even if he was a monster.
He was still Edward. Her Edward. The one who'd looked at her like she was the only person in the world. The one who made her feel like gravity didn't apply anymore.
And the Edward in real life? He wasn't the one from her dream. Not even close.
The dream-Edward had eyes like murder and a smile like a snare trap. The real Edward — well, maybe he wasn't safe either, but he wasn't that. He didn't chase her through fog. He didn't beckon like death.
In her dream, when Jacob had attacked — when the wolf lunged — her heart hadn't screamed run.
It had screamed save him.
Not from Edward.
For him.
And that?
That was terrifying.
Because if she wasn't scared of him... was she already too far gone?
Bella closed her eyes, letting the forest sounds soak through her hoodie and into her skin — the drip of water, the distant call of a crow, the ancient hush of trees that had outlived everyone she knew.
No one had answers for her.
But she finally knew the questions.
And the scariest part?
She already knew her choice.
She wasn't walking away.
Not now.
Not ever.
—
It wasn't a decision.
Not really.
Decisions were what you made in a grocery store aisle, weighing cereal boxes and checking expiration dates. What you did when someone asked chocolate or vanilla?
This—This was something else.
Bella didn't choose to love Edward Cullen.
She didn't choose the ache that unfurled like a second heartbeat in her chest every time she thought of him. She didn't choose the way her mind now stretched to fit impossible shapes just so she could keep him in it.
It was already done.
Stamped into her bones. Burned behind her eyes.
The answer wasn't a choice.
It was gravity.
And it was his name.
She stood slowly from the fallen log, stiff and soaked and shaking. Her jeans clung like a second skin, streaked with mud. Her hoodie sagged damply from her shoulders, the sleeves hanging past her wrists like wilted flags.
She could feel the forest watching her leave — not with eyes, but with presence. Like the trees knew something had shifted, and were holding their breath to see how it all played out.
Bella didn't look back.
Each step home squelched in the soft ground. Her boots left deep imprints like evidence, like she was carving a trail she couldn't erase. Water slid down her neck, mingling with sweat and adrenaline and something unnamed.
Her hands clenched in the sleeves of her hoodie.
Edward.
Edward.
Edward.
His name pulsed in her chest like the beat of some ancient drum. Steady. Inevitable. Too loud to ignore, too soft to share.
And the terrifying part?
She wasn't scared anymore.
Not really.
Not of him.
She was scared of without.
Of what it would mean to stay away.
Of what she'd already become just by knowing him.
The edge of the backyard appeared like a break in the dream — manicured grass, the soft outline of the old swing that hadn't moved in years, Charlie's cruiser parked half-crooked in the driveway.
She blinked. Once. Twice. Like her eyes had to readjust to reality.
Only… this wasn't the same reality anymore.
She wasn't the same girl who'd left the house this morning.
Her fingers trembled as she reached the porch.
The wooden steps creaked under her weight. The front door loomed like a threshold, daring her to pretend nothing had changed.
She didn't bother drying her hands before gripping the knob.
It turned easier than she expected. Of course it did.
The warmth inside hit her like a wall — sharp contrast to the rain-slick world behind her. Pizza grease. Pine-scented cleaner. The faint, unmistakable musk of Charlie's shaving cream.
Home.
And yet… not.
The air felt wrong. Too safe. Too slow. Like she was wearing someone else's life, someone who didn't know the world had cracked a little wider this morning.
The door clicked shut behind her.
She didn't move.
Didn't take her boots off. Didn't strip off the hoodie clinging to her like grief.
She leaned against the wood, chest heaving like she'd run all the way back.
Maybe she had.
Maybe she was still running.
But from what, she wasn't sure anymore.
Not him.
Not the truth.
Only from the quiet in her own head.
She closed her eyes.
Rain dripped from her sleeves, spattering the floor like punctuation marks. She pressed her forehead to the door, heart thudding in her ears.
No one would understand.
No one could.
Because no one else had ever looked into eyes like Edward's and thought please don't go and please never stop looking at me at the same time.
Because no one else had felt how wrong it would be to walk away.
And now?
She couldn't.
Even if it meant risking everything.
Even if it meant walking into something ancient and blood-soaked and utterly out of her depth.
Even if it meant heartbreak, or worse.
Bella opened her eyes.
The room was still dark. The house still quiet.
But something inside her had lit a fuse.
She wasn't walking away.
Not from him.
Not from the truth.
Not even if it burned her alive.
—
By the time Bella had dried her hair, tossed her forest-soaked clothes in the dryer, and reheated some leftover pizza that definitely shouldn't have survived this long, she was almost... calm.
Not relaxed. She didn't do relaxed. But something better.
Decided.
Her hoodie was warm again, smelling faintly like dryer sheets and yesterday's rain. She curled up cross-legged on her bed, Macbeth open beside her and her battered spiral notebook balanced on one knee. Across the room, her PC hummed its ancient hum, the monitor's soft glow waiting like a patient ghost.
And for once?
She wasn't blank.
She uncapped her pen, its chewed-up plastic edges familiar in her fingers, and began to write.
"Macbeth doesn't start out a villain. He becomes one the moment he decides to stop asking what's right and starts asking what's possible. That's the difference. That's the line."
She paused, the pen frozen midair. The line felt heavier than she'd meant. Too close to her own morning in the woods.
But maybe that was the point.
Making choices wasn't her strong suit. Bella had once spent twenty-seven minutes in a Target cereal aisle debating between Honey Nut Cheerios and Raisin Bran. She second-guessed everything. Apologized when she hadn't even opened her mouth. Lived in her own head like it had a security system.
And yet… this?
This crazy, terrifying, vampire-shaped choice?
She'd made it.
And somehow, it had quieted the rest of the noise.
She didn't care what he was.
She just wanted to be near him.
End of sentence.
She spent the next few hours writing her paper. Then formatting it. Then stress-formatting it again in three different fonts before deciding Times New Roman was her one true love. When she'd finally typed her name in the header and saved it twice — once on the desktop, once on a floppy disk, because trust no one — she leaned back in her chair and let herself breathe.
Not safe.
Not smart.
But still.
There was peace in the choosing.
—
The gravel crunched out front, followed by the familiar dying-walrus wheeze of Charlie's cruiser pulling into its usual place. Bella padded downstairs, still in her hoodie and socks, and opened the door just as her dad emerged into the porch light, damp and smug.
"Caught three rainbows," he announced, holding up a plastic cooler like he'd just won a state championship. "Up near the ridge."
Bella arched an eyebrow. "You didn't fall in?"
Charlie's mustache twitched. "Define fall."
She grinned. "You know. Gravity wins. Your dignity loses. That kind of thing."
"I slipped," he clarified with mock solemnity, "but I stayed vertical. Mostly."
She let out a short laugh — the kind that startled her by being genuine. Charlie always had a way of making awkward things less awful.
He stepped past her, kicking off his muddy boots and heading straight for the kitchen. "Dinner'll be fish," he called over his shoulder. "Hope you like scales."
"Is that your way of saying I'm cooking?" Bella followed him in, watching as he laid out newspaper on the counter like he was preparing for a crime scene. "Because I feel like there's a health code violation happening already."
"You want me to wear gloves, Princess Hygiene?" he asked, already elbow-deep in rainbow trout. "Or do you want to clean these?"
She made a face and opened the junk drawer, digging around for anything vaguely resembling a recipe card or cooking instructions. Instead, she found five dead batteries, a roll of tape that was more cardboard than adhesive, and a rogue Christmas ornament.
"We don't have a fish cookbook, do we?" she muttered, holding up a broken twist-tie like it might help.
Charlie snorted. "You don't need a cookbook. You need butter. Salt. A hot pan. That's it."
"Okay, Gordon Ramsay." She leaned against the counter. "I'm getting a real one next time I'm in Seattle."
It slipped out too fast. Too natural.
And then her heart stuttered.
Seattle.
The word hit her like cold water.
Charlie kept gutting the fish, whistling some off-key country tune, blissfully unaware that his daughter had just short-circuited ten feet away.
Seattle was supposed to be an escape.
Seattle was supposed to be an excuse.
Seattle was supposed to be alone.
Until it wasn't.
Until Edward had said he was coming.
Until he'd looked at her like she mattered. Like she was a problem he didn't want to solve — just hold onto.
She could see it again — clear as the forest that morning. His eyes, gold and aching. His voice, low and angry and afraid. The way he'd said her name like it was the first word he ever spoke.
You were supposed to go alone.
Now it's a maybe.
Now it's a memory waiting to happen.
Bella felt the shiver before she registered the chill. It wasn't fear exactly. More like something waking up inside her. Stretching its arms. Taking up space.
She turned toward the window. The night had crept in fast, swallowing the world in gray and black. Rain tapped the glass like it wanted her attention.
She folded her arms, pulling her sleeves over her hands. The house smelled like fish and old wood and Sunday evening.
Behind her, Charlie cracked a joke about the fish still blinking.
Bella wasn't listening.
Because somewhere between Macbeth and fillets and the word Seattle, she'd remembered what it felt like to fall for someone who might not be safe.
And she'd remembered something else, too:
She wasn't afraid of the fall.
Not anymore.
---
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