if you're reading this, thank you so much for being so patient.

Stephenie Meyer owns all things Twilight. special thanks to her for a love that inspired this story, a myriad of others, countless friendships, and for bringing me LovelyBrutal. Beta-supreme, babyblue, all my stars, goddess all day every day and my partner in every single way. if you're reading this, come find me. i've got so many kisses to give you.

now he's moving close

my heart in my throat

i won't say a word

but i think he knows

that i've hardly slept

Daughter - Home

Chapter Four: Isabella

In the morning, the couch pillows aren't put back quite right and there's only half a cinnamon roll left in the pan. I smile so high it rocks me to my tiptoes and keeps a bounce in my step all the way back upstairs.

Edward stayed the night.

I was shy and foolish and went back to my room after I ran out of tea to hide behind, and he stayed here. The whole night. For me.

Undoing my braid and finger-combing pale blonde waves, I tie the top half back with a camellia pink ribbon. Excited eagerness has me ready and waiting ten minutes ahead of schedule, sitting down where Edward slept, and fighting the urge to lie down and breathe in. Just to see if charcoal black cushions kept any of his scent.

Outside, he pulls up a minute early. Sleepy greens are tucked behind sleek sunglasses when I get in the car, and I wish I could see them, but his five o'clock shadow is a charming distraction. His quiet nb, milk-sleek good morning makes the start of this already great day ten times better, and I can hardly handle how endearing it is when he yawns. The way his jaw stretches and his chest rises under his coat. Brows furrowing while tattooed knuckles tighten on the wheel. The low hum that chases the end.

A sound I want to both swallow and swim in.

An audible comfort I carry from class to class and bury myself into in crowded hallways.

An echo to keep me afloat all day.

After school, there's a bag in the backseat that Edward brings into the house before heading back out on business. I don't see him again all weekend, but six fresh cups of skyr and a Prince Polo bar remind me I'm not entirely alone.

Saturday is a little lonesome though, but Skyping with James Dean helps. I tell her about the spider, and downplay Edward saving my life (okay not really, but seriously, I could have died) and staying the night (it's his job). She asks if he snores and tells me all men do (except Robert Pattinson because he's not a man he's Adonis reincarnated) and that nothing's any fun without me there.

We fall asleep still connected and I spend Sunday between homework and missing home so much.

Monday morning brings a breath of Reykjavik to me in a black Lincoln. Quiet in his black coat and black gloves, he smells like cool vanilla and black licorice drops. He doesn't say much and neither do I, and that's okay. I don't think I want to know what Edward does when he's not around, but the weight of his work is extra-present today. He answers his phone twice. Once in formal íslenska and once in clipped sharp Portuguese.

It vibrates again as I'm getting out.

The warm, normally so-soothing air in the Town Car is heavy with something unspeakable when he picks me up later that afternoon, and it hardly lightens throughout the week. Being with Edward is still a hundred times better than being alone in the house or alone at school, but it's becoming harder to ignore the gravity of what he does, and school is worse than usual this week too.

We have to present essays in World Lit.

Out loud.

It's been restoring and uplifting to write about the poets my motherland has born, but that doesn't make speaking to an entire class – in not even my second or third, but fourth language - any easier.

My English is more than fine, and I know my paper is better than an A.

It's this confusing, combined fear of having all that attention, and having none of it. I don't know which would be worse: the overload of everyone's focus all at once, or everyone passing notes and whispering who knows what. Both possibilities and every combination of the two are equally horribly crushing.

By Thursday, I'm more nervous dread than I am girl. At this rate, there won't be anything left of me to present anything tomorrow. Anxiety's going to swallow me whole.

Watching the minute hand wind by too slowly during my last class, I secretly steal tears from the corners of my eyes onto my cardigan sleeves, before they can slide down my cheeks. I'm so ready to run away and hide, it's a conscious choice to stay put in my seat until the bell rings.

I keep my pace as steady as I can at dismissal. Gathering my things and buttoning my coat at my locker, I tuck my hair carefully into place under my hood and glance into a compact mirror to check my eyes for signs of crying.

They're a little red-rimmed, not much if you don't look too closely.

But that's the thing.

I want Edward to look closely.

I want him to see me.

But like this?

After the other night, hasn't he seen me cry enough for like, ever?

I close my locker and slide mint-rose balm onto my lips before I head outside, looking around the snowy parking lot for the closest thing I have to a friend. But as groups of teenagers part, and I find my father's right hand instead of the fiercest of his men.

My already uneasy and and fervent-just-for-him-heart falls, filling my stomach with cold, ragged panic.

"It's alright," Alistair tells me in íslenska, then shakes his head a little, correcting himself and opening my door. "Stefan needed babysitting more than you today."

Babysitting.

It stings worse than the panic twisting into my sides like wires, making me feel exactly how they all must think of me.

Childish.

Helplessly burdensome.

A feeble inconvenience I don't want to be anymore and they could all do far better without.

Friday morning, the sound of my alarm is enough to bring tears behind my hardly rested eyes. I swallow them down, but every step after requires more and more effort.

Pushing away blankets and getting out of bed calls on muscles it's not fair to need so early in the day, and brushing my teeth takes longer than it maybe ever has. I pull on my favorite socks, tugging hand-knitted, lace-delicate white wool over both knees to carry some warmth from home with me as I go, but it doesn't help.

Every step feels like I can't do this.

I can't.

Sitting at my dressing table mirror and combing my fingers through my hair, I reach for my best loved alabaster silk ribbons. The ones Corin got me last year. I start to tie them into bows under each ear, but I remember what Alice and her friends said, and my cheeks sting so bad.

Dropping my eyes from my reflections, I swat tears away and leave my hair down without looking back up.

I'm not surprised when I walk outside to see Alistair again. He told me yesterday he'd be here this morning and that Edward would resume picking me up this afternoon.

First hour flies by entirely too quickly.

Second hour, faster still.

The presentation in my backpack weighs more with every minute closer to last period, and the entire student body is ruthlessly obnoxious today for some reason. Curse words and laughter spliced with flirtatious taunting and sharp whispers fill the hall, grating down scarcely tenuous composure.

Being in class is barely better. Derisive looks from Alice and Jessica burn even from across the room.

By the time we break for lunch, my chest literally pangs. My shoulders are sore with tension that's creeping into a headache, and the inside of my bottom lip is sore from my teeth. Anxiousness makes my ribs feel splintered and like all the sharp parts are turned inward against me, and if that isn't enough, homesickness I keep thinking can't possibly cut any deeper just keeps shredding through my middle in unrelentingly slow motion.

I don't know how I manage to get in line. I keep telling myself just buy some fruit so your stomach has something to hold onto. Just get your fruit cup and you can go sit down. But with every second, the stench of overcooked food substitute and the discordant chorus of 'wig', 'tea', 'bitch', and 'blow me' start to close in like walls.

"Bro, check out Iceland."

I can't do this.

"Hey, baby, you okay?"

The second someone touches my shoulder, I shatter.

Breaking from line, I cut across the cafeteria as everyone and everything blurs together. I don't even know where I'm heading until the same doors I left through last time come into view. I'm nearly to them when what Edward said about them having to know where I am at all times stops me short.

I wind up in a bathroom stall with my face in my hands and my heart in shards between my lungs, sobbing as silently as I can.

It's just a paper, I tell myself. It's just a stupid presentation and none of these people matter.

Just get it over with.

Just get all of it over with and you can go home.

A year isn't that long.

But it is.

When you feel every moment of it, a year is an eternity of agony and it's barely even started and this presentation is a third of my grade. It doesn't matter how great my paper is if I don't give a do the presentation. I won't score higher than a C.

I've never had a C.

I can't have a C.

But I can't do this.

I can't fucking do this.

Reaching for my phone, I slide open a new message to Jane, but my desperation is too urgent for my fingertips. So I find Edward's name and call him instead.

Just hearing it ring brings a little sip of relief.

The restroom door opens around the next ring.

"It's Father Phil fucking Dwyer. Who cares?"

"Yeah, but I've already skipped like three times this quarter-"

"So? We've done our presentations already, and your parents are going to Father Emmett's banquet, aren't they?"

"Yeah."

"So, see. Your A's safe. Come on. Embry's got weed."

Edward's voicemail picks up. I'm hopeless all over again and angry now on top of everything. It isn't fair. Nothing about any part of this is fair at all.

The idiots outside the stall squawk as another girl enters, and my phone vibrates in my hand.

"Isabella?"

The softness of my name on his tongue swallows my whole broken-sharp heart with warmth.

"Please," I whisper behind my hand, trying so hard not to cry anymore. "Please, come get me. I can't be here anymore. Not today. I can't. I can't-"

Traffic and wind on his end drowns me out, then a car door opening. Then closing, and it's silent for a moment before he speaks.

"Is there a spider in the holy water?"

A smile splits my tear tracks.

"Worse." I dry my eyes. "So much worse."

His voice is just as consoling as it is coltish when he speaks again.

"Worse?" Even his mock-disbelief feels like comfort. "On your rosary?"

It's little, but I laugh.

On his end, the car starts and our connection's muffled as he switches ears. I picture his hands shifting between the phone and steering the wheel, turning the heat on and I think about he always turns it up for me.

"I'm on my way, okay?"

I nod.

"I'm going to call and excuse you. Are you okay to go back to class and wait there?"

I still have another hour of physics before World Lit.

"Yes."

"I'm not far," Edward says, the cadence of our language as heartening as the words themselves. "I'll be right there."

When we disconnect, the girls are gone and I step out to wash my face.

Back in physics class, being present is different kind of difficult now. My muscles have calmed, but every one of them feels sore. Leftover anxiety-adrenaline throbs through my veins in waves that make my hands shake, and even though my ribcage is made of normal, smooth bones again, it feels so heavy.

I try not to watch the clock, but I can't help it.

Every tick of it is too slow now instead of too fast.

I try to be patient and pay attention to whatever Sister Rose is saying about Newtonian mechanics, but mentally, emotionally, I'm already in Edward's car. I can't wait. It's dizzying, how deeply I can't wait.

"Isabella Swansdottir," the secretary's voice interrupts through the loudspeaker. "Please report to the office. Isabella Swansdottir to the office, please."

The weighted silence that follows any student, anywhere, getting called to the office for any reason, fills the room as I stand up. Head down, my hair hides my face as I breathe relief and gather my things.

I want to sprint the instant my feet hit the hallway, but I take a deep breath. I hold myself together with steady steps.

Until I get to the bottom of the stairs.

Right outside the office door, Edward doesn't lean against the lockers like the boys here do. He stands straight and tall, and from his boots to his stocking cap, black has never looked so warm. Kind eyes are low with tired, but gently lit when they meet mine, and with the stubble that's grown into more of a soft shadow across his jaw, I can't help wondering if he's been working the entire time he's been away.

Keeping my steps evenly paced feels like the hardest thing I've done all day.

Solace on long legs meets me halfway.

"That was too easy," he tells me, glancing around disapprovingly as we come to stand almost toe to toe. His black boots have scuffs they didn't only a few days ago, but the sight of his marked right hand reaching out takes over everything.

My stomach flips as he fits his first two fingers under the strap of my baby-pink backpack and slides it off my shoulder.

"Are you hungry?" he asks, putting it onto his own back.

I know that I and my choice to leave are not free of consequence. I know there's a conversation to be had. I know this is all just his job, but I am starving.

Pressing my lips together, I nod, and we stop at my locker for my coat. He keeps my bag slung over his shoulder as we head outside, and the sight of this hitman in all black carrying my cotton candy colored backpack does things to my pulse I've never felt before.

He drops it in the back seat as he lets me into the car, and the scent of perfect security – anise trees and birch tea, crisp snow, military and merino wool woven together, everything rich and dark and smooth and hot and him – covers me as I sink down into warm leather.

The quiet ride to a place called Gosman's Dock is so relaxing, my eyes start to close, but then he parks, and I'm following him into this little restaurant right on the water, and the waiter leads us to this booth, and as my favorite of my father's men sits down across from me, all that I am is drawn widely, wholly awake.

"It's not Tryggvagata," he says and I'd forgotten how much I miss the best fish and chips in Reykjavik until right now. "But it's not bad."

Not only is Edward right, but it turns out, he was starving too.

While winter falls in thick flakes, melting a white blanket over the Atlantic just outside our booth's window, we share a plate of crab cakes and another of fresh greens. We split an order of crispy haddock and golden fries with all the lemon, and bites of banana bread pudding that's so good I hum.

With so much satisfaction between us, opening up afterward about why I called comes easily.

"I know it doesn't seem that bad when I say it out loud. I know it's just school and there are way worse things out there."

I draw circles in what's left of rum-caramel sauce with my spoon, wishing I hadn't said what I said or that I could just say it right.

"I know my paper is good. I don't want my grades bought for me. It's just …"

Awkwardness prickles into the start of humiliation, taking over unreasonably quickly. I've felt this way so long within myself, but putting it into words makes it feel so much worse.

"It's so stupid and nobody cares. Nobody cares and everyone is awful." I push the spoon across the plate like a scratch and bite my sore lip. "I make myself get up and go every day and I hate it. I hate how different everything is and the way people look at me and I can't even speak íslenska anywhere but here -"

Interrupted by a crushing influx of shame, I fall back against the seat and rub my eyes and forehead like my hands could keep me together. I tuck hair that's already tucked behind my ears. My cheeks fill with air as I exhale too quickly, and the sear of fresh tears behind my eyelids streaks bitterness into my stunted inhale. More anguish than oxygen, it shakes my deepest roots, and I squeeze my eyes closed, struggling to hold everything inside and shut everything out.

Hiding is my only thought when I get like this.

Wanting to hide is all there is in the whole world.

Shifting my hands to the back of my neck, I open stinging eyes to find Edward closer than before. Sliding into my side of the booth, he drapes one black-sleeved arm protectively along the back of the seat and sits so he's facing me.

In doing so, he blocks me from the rest of the restaurant.

Tucked in the shelter of his shadow, I take a breath, and all that I am soft-pedals toward the calm only this person gives.

"I'm sorry," spills out, small on my tongue and light on my lips.

Turning toward Edward, I rest my temple against the pleather seat and look down as I drop my hands to my plaid and pleated lap. Twisting my fingers together as he leans slightly closer, I watch as he rubs the softly bristled shadow on his chin with one hand and then pushes the other through perfectly messy copper.

"You should be home," he says, looking out the window.

It's crazy, I think, how just the word can make me ease and free every part of me when he says it.

Home.

He doesn't have to tell me I belong there and not here for me to know it, but hearing it means more. I feel recognized and validated. I feel real. Seen.

"The logic in bringing you here …" He starts and stops and starts again. "You don't need to be," he pauses and continues, like he's trying to get his words right too. "Here, I mean. There's no good reason."

I peek up.

Mossy dark green and waiting on mine, his eyes alone gather me.

"Let me talk to your father. I can't promise anything, but it's worth–"

I'm up on my knees and wrapping around Edward before I can even try to help it. Arms over his shoulders, I surprise myself as much as him, gripping and clinging with eagerness, abandon, and so much hope. Pressed completely close, his off-guard laugh resonates against my chest, so deep and smooth and soothing I close my eyes and hold tighter as a wave of shyness comes over.

I feel it, burning my cheeks pink and bottoming my lungs out, every bit as strong as this overflow of nearness and possibility.

Warm and wide, two hands find my hips and my pulse pounds in my ears. Without saying a word, Edward nudges my lower half a few inches from his, and goosebumps rush across my skin as I remember immediately.

His weapons.

Little white stars open the backs of my eyelids as his hands brush gently up my sides and settle carefully light around my ribs. I feel simultaneously like I can't breathe and like I can't do anything but breathe harder.

It only last for a second.

Just long enough to quiet and quicken every beat of my heart.

Just in time for our waiter to approach.

He keeps walking, but my self consciousness boils over in his wake.

Pulling away from the best I've felt in nearly a month, I avoid heedful green eyes, but that isn't enough. My cheeks burn so hot I feel pink all over, and I'm at intense loss for what to do with my hands. Retucking hair that's already tucked behind my ears again. Picking at the edge of my skirt. Pushing my palms down on shaky, pressed tightly together legs.

Peril to others and peace to me sits up straight in my peripheral. I don't let myself look at him entirely. I can't. I don't trust myself not to reach for him again.

I focus on anything else instead, the background noise of others' conversations. The glow of snow-light pouring in from the windows. How the temperature in the whole place feels cooler now that I know how much heat is sitting right beside me.

So within reach.

Tilting his head toward mine, like he wants me to look, like he wants me to see him, Edward waits to speak until I do.

Dauntless eyes enfold me in devotion and his voice is balmy dark behind the start of a sheepish sort of smile as he says, "It's worth a shot."