Sorry about a lot of things. Most of all, for this taking so long. I went through a thousand different drafts before settling on this one.

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After that night, things changed. I suddenly felt hyper-aware of Edward’s past whereas before it was only a shadow we had both pushed aside without acknowledgement. Now that we had recognized that we were pushing it out of our minds, the shadow had turned aggressive and it seemed ominously brooding over us. Instead of sweeping it under the rug like Edward wanted, it seemed like we only encouraged it to haunt us.

Everything we did together took on a new timbre and I felt as if I had suddenly been un-blindfolded and could see clear as day that Edward was made of the finest glass. He was not the man I had formed him in my mind to be, but that didn’t stop the fierce pull I felt towards him. In fact, the need to care for him, to heal him only made me want to be around him more.

The drive I felt to heal him was what he hated most.

The days leading up to Christmas were filled with this strange tension and now I was filled with a sick dread instead of the former elatedness when I saw Edward. The high I felt around him had faded into a dim, but piercing pain that sent jolts of a very different kind of electricity through me.

The silence we cultivated around his past was suffocating me, but if he noticed its effect he never let on. Edward seemed to be in a state of complete bliss whenever we were together. He truly was oblivious to the monumental shift inside of me.

For his benefit, I acted my part in the charade and never brought up the taboo. The days following that argument felt like years instead of days and when Christmas Eve finally rolled through, I felt stretched to my limits. I was going to explode from the pressure of all the unspoken words that were building up inside of me.

I was cooking the pies for the next night’s dinner when it all came to a head.

Edward was leaning casually against the counter, watching me as I chopped up nuts to go into the mix. He was quiet and seemed contemplative for the first time in weeks. It was almost strange to see his old characteristics peek out because of all the time spent adjusting to the new, happier Edward, but there it was in his eyes.

After a long silence settled between us, I felt my throat burn with the need to puncture the air with words.

“Is something wrong?” I asked at last, the question escaping me in a whoosh of air.

He looked up from the floor, as if surprised I had noticed anything different in his demeanor. His brow furrowed and he started to shrug but then stopped himself.

“You’re not happy,” he said at last. It wasn’t a question, but a statement and I couldn’t bring myself to refute it. There was too much truth dripping from the words for me to even hope to deny it.

Instead, I turned back to my chopping. He let me continue on in silence for another few minutes before speaking again.

“Can you tell me why?” His question was so soft that I almost missed it, but its diminutive volume didn’t stop it from tearing violently through me. Could I tell him why?

I pressed my lips together and set the knife I had in my hands down on the counter carefully.

“Edward,” I started uncertainly, unsure of the words that rushed to my mind. I discarded most of them before they could fly past my lips. I had to be careful now. “We need to deal with some things.”

Even to my own ears, my words sounded weak and unstable, although they were the strongest choice that had flown through my mind.

“There’s nothing to deal with,” he said tersely. Abruptly his face hardened and he turned away from me, arms crossed against his chest. I walked over to him and gently laid my hands on his arms, but he didn’t budge. He was wrestling to try to suppress any emotion that my words had triggered inside of him.

“There’s everything to deal with,” I challenged his assertion gently.

“No,” he rebuffed me roughly and shook my hands away. It was strange how much this small rejection cut into me. Anger at the injury welled up inside of me and I felt every small frustration of the past week rise up violently inside of me, like a tidal wave finally breaching the surface and ready to wreak devastation on the nearby shore.

“We have to talk about this. We can’t just pretend it never happened just because it’s painful to think about. It will always be there, Edward,” I pleaded with him, but he shook me off again.

“No,” he repeated, this time sounding even rougher. I was reminded of my vision of the fragile glass Edward and how I could shatter him with any mention of this, but I was beyond the point of no return now.

“Edward,” I said firmly. “Your past is a part of who you are, you can’t ignore it forever. It’s not that easy.”

I reached out for him again, but this time he crossed the room to get away from me, instead of merely brushing me off. I blinked back the stinging tears his rejection triggered inside of me as I watched the dam of our silence crumble between us.

“Bella,” he choked out and my heart shattered at the sound of his pain. “I can’t talk about this with you. I told you all that I could and ever will, now just leave it alone.”

His words held a warning in them that I recklessly ignored.

“I can’t just leave it alone, Edward,” I gritted out. “Not talking about, pretending it never happened doesn’t help anyone. It just makes it worse. You need to talk about it. Talk about everything. Stop trying to ignore it. That won’t work forever.”

At some point, tears began to flow down my face unchecked but I hardly noticed. All I could see was the man I cared for deeply closing himself off from me. With every word I said, his expression darkened and I could tell I was losing him.

“It works just fine for me,” he replied coldly. His eyes were flat with anger that simmered just below the surface and I could tell he was barely reigning himself in. I bit down hard on my lip to stop myself from saying anything more although a thousand words burned the inside of my mouth.

Our eyes were locked together and I hoped he could read the desperation I felt for him. I hoped he could see that I only wanted to help him. He was the one making this difficult. I was right. I knew I was right. If only he could just see that and talk about this then he would finally be able to heal. But he didn’t see.

“I just want you to talk to me,” I sighed at last, realizing it was a losing battle but still – I clung to a small hope he would listen. He gaze was unrelenting and resentful as he did the last thing in the world I wanted him to do.

He left without another word.

I stood frozen in the kitchen long after the door slammed shut behind him. My breaths came in short, painful bursts and every word of our dialogue blazed through my bloodstream, determined to cause as much damage internally as I seemed to have cause to the relationship that had taken so long to even build.

When I could finally bring myself to move again, I didn’t go back to chopping pecans like before. I didn’t even look back at the abandoned cutting board. I only had one purpose as I moved from the kitchen and went straight to my room.

I needed to pack. I needed to run. I needed to get away from this whole disaster zone and quickly.

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It was hell trying to get a flight to Phoenix on Christmas Eve, but I couldn’t even work up any ire for the overbooked airlines. I was too dazed to even register the setbacks in my impromptu, barely formed plans. I hardly even blinked at the exorbitant amount they charged me for the one-way ticket home.

I had left my cell phone at the apartment. I had left a lot of things at the apartment. I only brought a single duffle stuffed full of clothes and my purse. I didn’t see the point in grabbing much else. I was planning on retreating into a hole when I got home anyway.

I boarded the plane a good ten hours after I caught a taxi to the airport. I hadn’t seen much point in bringing my truck along. I would have just driven the whole way home, but even my half-crazed state, I knew my truck would never make the journey. I’d end up stranded in the middle of nowhere and then who would I call?

On the plane home, I tried to reason through my need for flight. I knew that I was only making it worse by fleeing away from the sudden mess I’d caused, but something inside of me had definitely snapped. The only thing I was sure of right now is that I couldn’t face Edward again anytime soon.

As the plane began to circle Phoenix, I felt a wave of nausea overtake me. I pulled my legs up to my chest as my stomach churned and thanked God that the man next to me was still in a deep stupor. I felt very young and small as I cradled my legs against me as the plane skidded against the runway. I bit down hard on my lip, gnawing away and trying to ignore the clammy feeling that had seized my body.

The plane taxied up the terminal after a long wait and people began to shift around me, getting their bags down. I hardly even noticed and only stirred myself when the plane was almost completely empty. I was the last one to exit the plane and even the flight attendant’s plastic smile faltered when I passed by her. Great, now I was even ruining complete strangers’ holidays.

I caught a cab after grabbing my duffel from baggage claim and headed straight for home. The ride took a good thirty minutes but thankfully my driver didn’t try to strike up any significant kind of chatter with me. I had all thirty minutes to come up with some kind of story as to why I was showing up on my mother’s doorstep on Christmas Eve looking like I’d been in a train wreck. For a while, I contemplated telling her I had been in a train wreck. Then I decided I looked more like a train wreck than like I’d been in one and the idea was abandoned.

When the cab pulled up to the house, I had to take several deep breaths to calm the sudden swell of fear that rose inside me. Irrational thoughts raced through my head. What if she didn’t want me here? What if she sent me back to Washington? Or worse of all…what if she didn’t understand why I had to leave in the first place?

My fears were quieted when before the cab could even drive off, the front door of the house was flung wide open and my mother came running out.

“Bella?” she shouted right before she launched herself at me. “Bella!”

The moment her arms clasped around me, the tears I thought had all dried up came back with a force. It took Renee a few moments of holding me close to realize that I was shaking with sobs.

“Baby, what’s wrong? What’s happened?” she asked, her worry replacing her initial excitement.

“I don’t want to talk about it right now,” I sniffed and detangled myself from her arms before heading inside. Renee trailed after me in questioning silence, but she didn’t press the subject. Phil, who had watched the whole exchange from the door, nodded in greeting and took my bag from me wordlessly. I passed by the lit Christmas tree and decorations without comment and acting on my sudden drive to be completely alone with my own head, I went straight for my old room that seemed untouched since I had last been there this summer.

I threw myself across my bed and buried my face in my pillow. I heard Phil lightly set my bag down at the foot of my bed and then leave. Renee was less understanding of my need to be alone and I felt the bed shift as she sat down next to me.

Her fingers lightly ran over my back and murmured quietly to me, but I didn’t hear a word she was saying. Her murmurs eventually blended into a soft lullaby that I vaguely remembered from childhood.

After what must have been hours, I finally drifted into an uneasy sleep and Renee left me. My fragmented dreams were filled with Edward’s face and his words. When I awoke the next morning, my face was sticky and my entire body burned with a self-induced fever.

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Please, please review and let me know what you think. Review counts have gone drastically down since Breaking Dawn which makes me sad, so it would be great to hear from all of you again.

Also…I’m thinking this story has maybe 5 or 6 more chapters left – what do you think? Anything you want me to be sure to cover before wrapping this all up?

Thank you all for being patient and supporting this story. You’re all wonderful and make me smile with every new alert you send my way!