A/N: I wanted to thank everyone, first and foremost, for the wonderful reviews-very constructive and helpfull-and the follows. I love that so many of you are as excited for this new unfolding of Twilight as I am. I can't get the ideas out fast enough, impeded only by the demands of being a mom. Believe me, if I could just sit and wright all day, I'd be in absolute heaven. But alas, we all need to wait for updates, and so thank you for your patience.

Something hit me, hard, but not from the direction I'd been expecting-hoping for?

I could barely comprehend what was happening; it felt like I was flying, suddenly airborne, and then I hit the frozen asphalt, the back of my head cracking off the ice.

There was an odd, metallic grating sound, and then someone cursed, and I realized there was a stone arm around my waist, pinning me, holding me down. I was moving again, flailing like a rag doll, until my legs hit the tire of the tan car beside us.

There was a pop, and then glass spilled onto asphalt.

When it seemed all was over, I blinked, dazed.

"Bella? Are you alright?" Edward Cullen's low, frantic voice said, filtering into my ears from what seemed like a very great distance.

"I'm... fine," I answered, still confused. How was I alive in this moment? Why was I alive in this moment?

Sudden rage flared as clarity came, hot and red, and I struggled against his hold. Immediately, he released me, sliding as far away from me as the small space allowed, his eyes wary.

"What the hell was that?"

He seemed surprised, and confused by my words. Truth be told, so was I, but a lot of things were surprising me at the moment. Like, for example, how I was alive at this moment. Shouldn't I be a crushed pancake on the pavement right now? It should have concerned me that I had been hoping for that alternative, but all there was right now was anger. Anger that he had stopped it. Stopped it. With his bare hands. I shook that thought off.

"What do you mean?" Edward said, "I pulled you out of the way."

I shook my head to try and clear it. "No." My jaw set. That wasn't what I was talking about.

Again, he misinterpreted my anger, my confusion. "I was standing right next to you, Bella, and I pulled you out of the way."

"You were standing over there, by your car. Across the lot." Unthinkingly, I was falling for his games, arguing against the cause I didn't even mean to pay any mind to, though it was one that I couldn't help but notice.

How on earth had he made it across the parking lot to me so fast?

And now, as I got a closer look, there were dents in the side of the blue van that looked a lot like hand prints.

What the hell was going on?

"No, I wasn't." His burning golden eyes were guarded.

"Yes, you were."

I could hear the sirens now, coming for us, no doubt.

Edward shook his head slightly, muttering something under his breath. And then, to me: "Can't you just thank me and get over it?"

"No way in hell."

This surprised him, and suspicion gave way to what looked like horrified shock. Shit. Had I said too much? What if he said something to Charlie?

"Thank you," I quickly back-pedaled, but it was too late.

They found us then, the crowds of students and teachers, with tears streaming down their faces, and the conversation was over. For now.

.

Dr. Cullen looked like a supermodel, with his golden blond hair, and the same, odd golden eyes as his god-like son.

He examined me in the emergency room, delivering the verdict I already knew-nothing was wrong.

"Can I just go home now?" I muttered. Desperately, I just wanted to crawl underneath the covers, plug myself into my iPod, and forget about the questions I couldn't seem to find an answer to. I couldn't explain Edward's superhuman speed, or strength, to myself, no matter how many solutions I came up with in my mind. All of them were clinically insane.

Who was this stupid boy, who had barely said twenty words to me and yet already seemed to know way too much about me, with his crazy speed and inhuman feats of strength? I'd seen the dents he'd left in the van, and the divot in the other car, in the shape of his broad shoulders, when he'd seemingly braced himself against it...

Across the emergency room, where he was talking to his father, I glared at him, suddenly filled with more of the rage I'd felt just after the accident.

I didn't want to be saved.

I'd been ready for death.

"Bells?" Charlie said now, from where he stood by the gurney, holding my bag in one hand. "You ready to go?"

"Yeah."

We headed toward the emergency room exit together, and I kept my head ducked down, but right as we were passing Edward, he reached out a hand and grabbed my arm, over my jacket.

"Can I talk to you for a minute?" he murmured.

I glanced between him and my father, multiple times, indecisive, like an idiot.

Charlie said, "Go ahead. I need to fill out some paperwork anyway."

Reluctantly, I followed Edward down the hall, where it was more private, quieter.

"What do you want?" I snapped, the anger finding fresh renewal, like fire and a blast of oxygen, seeing his face. Looking so infuriatingly innocent and careful.

"Didn't you want an explanation?"

"You don't owe me anything," I told him coolly, folding my arms over my front.

Edward's brow furrowed for a minute as he stared down into my face, his posture mirroring my own. "You don't seem all that thrilled that I saved your life."

I shrugged, looking away. "No one asked you to."

There was another minute of quiet, as Edward processed my off-handed attitude. Finally, he said, quietly but fiercely, "I had an adrenaline rush. You can Google it. And maybe, while you're at it, you should Google some psychiatrists in the area."

My head snapped up, heat rushing to my face, but my the time I opened my mouth to retort, his back was turned, and he was halfway down the hallway, striding away from me.

Yes, he definitely knew more than he should.

.

The dream started typically, the usual flicker of memories, some of them shoved so far back in my mind I didn't know they still existed. Opening presents on Christmas day, watching my mother sit front row and center, at my ballet recital when I was ten years old, a flash of our trip to the emergency room afterward, when I'd twisted my ankle in a fall off the stage, reading Harry Potter together in bed, firemen stamping through a blazing inferno to save me, to rip me away from my unconscious mother, nearly pulled under by the smoke inhalation myself, waking up in the hospital after the fire, and then, unexpectedly, Edward was there, sitting by my hospital bed, holding my hand. And then we were in the parking lot and, as it hadn't been this morning, everything was moving in slow motion.

My dream self kept her eyes fixed firmly on his face, as he vaulted across the parking lot toward me, gripping me around the waist, knocking me out of the way, my head rebounding off the black ice painlessly, pinning me to the ground. In the dream, the electricity between us was palpable, zapping between our bodies like a current, and my dream self lingered in this moment, taking in every detail of his perfect face, the high, prominent planes of his cheekbones, the straight angle of his nose, the firm line of his jaw, the perfect shape of his full lips... Those wide, sincere, honey-golden eyes, which slowly filled my vision until they were all that I could see...

I started awake, my heart pounding in a very different way than what I was used to.

Despite the thin, fraying tank top I wore, and the fact that the sheets and blankets were tangled on the floor, I was warm, and as I sat up to gather them, I took a breath to steady myself, trying to clear my mind of the now unrelenting images of Edward Cullen.

That was the first night I dreamed of him, but it would, by no means, be the last.

.

I was surprised when the next few weeks passed and Edward Cullen didn't say another word to me. It was clear he was avoiding me from the way he angled his chair away during Biology, but every now and then, I caught him looking at me out of the corner of his eye, and a fresh wave of shame and guilt would rise up in my chest.

As my anger cooled over the next short while after the accident, I realized I had a lot to thank the guy for. Namely, for not telling his or my dad about my obvious depression-to put it lightly. It had been clear as day to him, after that conversation in the hospital, that I'd been hoping the van would have crushed me.

I knew it was the coward's way out, but then I wouldn't have had to take any sort of action. The course had been laid out in front of me, effortless, and I didn't have to play a hand in it at all. That way, I would have got what I wanted, and no one-namely Charlie-would have been beat up over my death, because it wouldn't have been an obvious suicide. An 'accident', purely on basis, yes, but an accident all the same.

While Edward's interest-if you could even call it that-had waned, I couldn't say the same for the new friends I'd made since I'd moved to Forks. 'Friends' was an exaggeration of the word. Obviously I didn't really consider them so, but I kept up the charade to make things simpler. It was easier to put on the mask, than to leave my reality exposed and try to explain it. I much rather would have preferred to sit alone at lunch, plugged into my iPod, a firm wall of isolation between myself and the rest of the world, but from day one, Jessica Stanley and Mike Newton were not about to let that happen.

Eric Yorkie had been the first to introduce himself, and then it had been Jessica, and all her friends at lunch-Lauren Mallory, who I had immediately taken a strong dislike to, Angela Weber, Tyler Crowley... Mike Newton, of course.

He had been bugging me to join them on an upcoming trip to First Beach down by La Push, the local reservation. The first time he'd asked about it had been on my second day at school, but for the past few weeks, the rain had continuously, unceasingly, rained out his plans. Which I didn't mind much. Beaches, in my opinion, were supposed to be hot and dry-the sand, at least.

I doubted First Beach was anything like the beaches I was used to.

But I had agreed to participate in the outing either way, because I knew Charlie would appreciate my being involved with the other kids.

One thing I refused to be involved in, however, was the upcoming Spring Dance. A blessing: it was supposed to be girls' choice-so at least I wouldn't need to worry about any unwanted invites-in theory, at least.

"So, Jessica asked me to the spring dance," Mike said now. It had become routine for him to sit on the edge of my side of the lab table while we waited for Mr. Banner to start the class.

I didn't miss seeing, in my peripheral vision, Edward's head twitch slightly. Cocking an ear?

Jessica had approached me earlier in the week, expressing her desire to ask Mike to the dance, though she'd been worried I had been planning on doing so myself. I couldn't understand the way she'd talked to me, as if I already had some sort of claim on the boy.

Maybe it was because he tended to act that way himself, around me.

I'd made up an excuse for Jessica quickly, unthinkingly, sighting some reason for a trip to Seattle that Saturday. Luckily, the impromptu plan had been a good one, and had seemed to hold, at least for Jessica.

"You're sure?" she'd asked me.

"Absolutely," I'd assured her, "You go ahead and ask Mike. Have fun."

I perked up now, at Mike's words, ejecting forced enthusiasm into my next words: "That's great. You two will have a lot of fun together."

"Well..." He ducked his head, and I didn't miss the two identical splotches of red on his cheeks, "I told her I'd have to think about it."

"Why would you do that?" I couldn't mask the surprise or the disapproval in my voice, though I wasn't sure that the latter was a bad thing.

"Well," he started again, and he looked up at me again, "I didn't know if maybe... I don't know... You... Were planning to ask me?"

"I'm not going to the dance, Mike. Didn't Jessica tell you that?" My tone was numb, disbelieving.

"She did..."

"Then why-?"

"I didn't know if... You were just... I mean... I thought maybe you were planning on asking someone else?" He glanced surreptitiously at Edward, and again, I was surprised by his assumption.

"Um, no. I have something in Seattle that Saturday."

"Oh."

A beat of awkward silence settled over the table, and I scraped my hair back into a ponytail, for something to do.

"So..." I finally said, "You should tell Jessica yes. It's not nice to keep her waiting."

"I guess so."

Mr. Banner, mercifully, called the class to attention then, and Mike went to go sit at his lab table. I tried not to watch the way his shoulders sagged as he walked away from me.

I let out a long breath, rubbing the pads of my first two fingers into my temples. I did not have time for this. For friends, for boys, for human interaction of any kind, really. But how could I get away with that and not have to explain it to Charlie? Because if his formerly 'well adjusted' friend making daughter was suddenly blocking herself off from the outside world, it would raise concern among the teachers and the student body. And in a town this small, it would get back to Charlie.

When I opened my eyes I found Edward Cullen staring at me.

I sat there for a long moment, like a dowdy, boring mouse caught in the viciously beautiful eyes of a snake. He did not flinch, did not look away, and I continued to stare. My head began to swim.

"Mr. Cullen?" Mr. Banner finally called, and it was only when Edward released me, looked away, that the spell seemed to break, and I pulled in a ragged breath, having forgotten to breath.

"The Krebs Cycle," Edward said, answering the question I hadn't heard Mr. Banner ask.

For the rest of the period I kept my eyes down, fixed on the text book in front of me, though I couldn't follow along with the rest of the lesson for the life of me.

Stupid, stupid girl, I chided myself, the cruel inner voice stabbing and menacing.

The bell, its hollow ring, released me from my purgatory, and I quickly began to gather my things, angling my shoulders away from Edward so that I wouldn't be tempted to look at him again. But every other sense was hyper-aware of his presence, and of his inactivity.

He hadn't moved. There was no scrape of chair against floor, or the gentle thump of books closing, being stacked together. There was nothing.

I was just about to scoop my books into my arms, halfway out of my seat, when his quiet, somewhat hesitant voice said, "Bella?"

"What?" I snapped, temper flaring, "Are you talking to me again?"

It had been four damn weeks, and not a word, not one freaking word. What did he want now? I tried to push away the image of his eyes in my mind, the eyes I'd been seeing in my dreams for God knows how many nights now...

"No," he murmured, "not really."

It was easier if I didn't allow myself to look at him, to allow myself to get caught up in his golden stare, so I stared straight ahead, watching Mr. Banner clear away the class notes from the blackboard as I said, trying to keep my voice calm, "Then what do you want, Edward?"

"I'm sorry for being so rude," he said now, and much to my regret, he sounded totally and completely sincere, "but it's better this way. Really, it is."

I risked a glance at his gorgeous face and immediately regretted it. My heart skipped unevenly, flip-flopping in my chest, but I managed to keep my words stable and in control. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"It's better if we're not friends," he went on. The emotion in his eyes was unreadable, but if I had to guess, I would have assumed he felt bad about what he was saying, regretting it even as the words came out of his mouth, "Trust me."

So he pitied me. He felt like he was taking something from me by denying my friendship? My temper flared again, and I narrowed my eyes at him.

"It's too bad you didn't figure that out earlier and just let that stupid van crush me. I'd be dead by now, and you wouldn't have to go on like this... You could have saved yourself all this regret."

"I don't regret saving your life." These next words sounded like they were coming from between his teeth, breezing out between clenched jaws, but his eyes stayed flat, emotionless, betraying the anger he was obviously feeling. He could have fooled me.

"I have no idea why," I muttered, scooping up my books. I was fighting back tears now, trying to ignore all the feelings of worthlessness swirling inside me. Of course he did. How could he not? What was I to him? What was I to anyone?

"You don't know anything," he snapped, and when I glanced at him over my shoulder, halfway across the room, his eyes were definitely honest now, betraying nothing, and he was pissed.

My teeth snapped together audibly as I steeled myself against all the bitter accusations I wanted to throw at him. I turned, meaning to sweep icily, dramatically from the room, but of course the toe of my boot snagged the door on the way out, and I pitched forward, my books crashing to the ground.

An icy hand clamped around my upper arm, pulling me upright again, keeping me from falling face first into the damp walkway outside the building. And then, uncomprehendingly, he was kneeling in front of me, my books already piled, holding them out to me like an offering.

"Thank you," I said icily, forcing myself to take the books gently, though I wanted to jerk them out of his hands.

"You're welcome," he returned, equally as cool, and then he rose to his full height, turned, and strode quickly away from me.