To those of you who noticed the clatter on the nightstand in the previous chapter – awesome!

To those of you waiting for them to be caught, well – I'll shut up now.

BPOV

I think back on the last handful of weeks.

It's funny what you notice when looking back; the things you see when you put yourself under a microscope can be quite astonishing.

I see myself in passing waves. Flashing images filled with laughter when I've used humor to mask feelings I didn't know how, or wasn't ready, to deal with. I see myself physically present but I feel the doubt and insecurities within the girl – me – from the memories my mind conjures to the present.

I'm a year away from completing my undergrad, and I've spent the last three years designing my schedule and course loads to guarantee a focused upcoming Senior year. I've taken extra classes during each semester and summers to make sure that my last year forges a path towards a successful teaching career. Though my college days have been filled with fun, friends, sand, and water, it's also been exhausting. The mental juggle of planning for the most important year singes the edges of myself in this pictorial memory before me.

Still looking under that same microscope, I examine my relationships. I've opened the bridge between my mother and I; the bridge may still be small but it's the largest one between us I've allowed in the twenty-one years I've known her. It's taken me that long to accept that the role of Mother is layered and presents itself in different ways. It's been a heavy burden for me to carry, realizing that what I need isn't exactly what she's able to give. She's never been neglectful. She's never hurt me physically or even verbally.

She just wasn't enough.

When I moved to Forks, Washington when I was in high school, I welcomed the change. I thought it would be a chance for me to have a life absent of her shortcomings, and for the most part, it was. I reveled in the opportunity of being able to just be a teenager and Dad gave me just the right amount of independence to make me feel comfortable in making mistakes and learning from them.

So here I am now, in Florida with a group of friends that make me feel like I have been waiting for them all of my life, and I'm trying to find ways to fill in financial gaps that college kids like me have no business shouldering. Thanks to my mom, I don't like being dependent on anyone; she has subtly let me down too many times to leave myself vulnerable like that again.

Maybe that's why having boyfriends never crossed my mind. Surely entrusting someone else with my feelings and well-being could only lead to a disaster that I didn't have the time or energy to focus on. So I relied on myself, and used to carrying burdens from an early age, I figured out how to make things happen on my own. Instead of borrowing money, I made my own. Granted, the way I made it was questionable at best, but I still made it happen, which brings me where I am right now.

Lying on my stomach at the end of the bed, laughing hysterically at another episode of Impractical Jokers on the TV screen in front of me, empty plates of food from the hotel's room service surrounding me.

I hear myself laugh, feel myself laugh, and it dawns on me that I haven't felt this light, this relaxed, in a time so long that I can barely remember the last time, and when I look over towards my right, I instantly know why.

I'm happy. Truly and blissfully happy.

It's a simple word but it carries a lot of weight, and I can almost feel the weight fall from the word just by me simply admitting that I feel something that I haven't genuinely felt in a long time. Through no fault of his own, Edward has brought out a side of me that I didn't know I had buried beneath stress and worry.

The right person will make you fall in love with yourself, too.

He didn't plan to.

In fact, he was opposed to this whole thing in the first place, so I know he didn't have any other agenda other than doing what he had to do to get the money for his car. But I watch his face as he lies on his stomach next to me on the bed, the way he laughs so hard that his eyes close, and a need wells up inside of me so strong that I need to tell him.

I don't know how, but he needs to know that he has unknowingly become my safe place.

When I was fresh onto Florida soil from Forks, unpacking in my dorm room and thinking about what could happen over the next few years, I never expected to find a friendship like this with a guy. I had expected on meeting new girlfriends, new roommates, getting my heart broken by a guy – but not this. I didn't plan on having the benefits of a boyfriend minus the sex.

He's listened to my venting, my stressing, my humor that not many people get. He's laughed at me in good fun, taken care of me when I drank too much and had to be carried home from his frat house. He's talked me out of taking more classes than I should in one semester, and on the other side, forced me out of bed for a morning class that I didn't really mind missing. He's listened to me rant about my mom, about learning how to write a three-page lesson plan when most teachers can confine them into a neat little box.

He's my voice of reason when I get too crazy, yet at the same time, he goes along with my off-the-wall ideas, even if they go against his better judgement. He agreed to do this with me – to have sex for money on camera – without too much convincing.

He's always been my best friend, and that won't ever change, but now he'll also always be more.

I can't have him any other way – unless I have him in every way possible.

Finding a friendship as deep as ours was unexpected but welcome; looking at him and feeling this undeniable desire to tell him how much he means to me is just as welcome.

I don't know how to tell him, but he needs to know. He needs to know that somewhere along the line, this became more to me than making money. It became more than a chance to live off campus for senior year.

This changed my life – and turned him into someone more than just my best friend.

He's become the first, and only, person that is worth my making myself vulnerable. He's the only person I want to risk myself for. He needs to know that he is the love that came without warning; he had my heart before I could say no.

But when he turns to look at me during a commercial break, my eyes land on his sex-messed hair and I struggle to find the words. How do you tell your best friend that even though neither of us forced it, I've still fallen?

His voice breaks my thoughts and I actually look at him like a normal person and not like he's something to eat.

"More?" Edward asks me over a mouthful of nachos, handing me what remains on the plate. I shake my head, thinking of the amount I inhaled when it had first arrived in our room, and he takes the plate back to devour what remains.

I look over at him with a laugh. "How can you still be hungry?" He's got most of the appetizer menu cooked and laid out in front of him on the bed even though not much remains. He licks the remnants of the nachos off of his fingers.

He shrugs casually. "I could go for more, actually."

Not surprising, considering he always has a monstrous appetite after sex.

That is just one of the things that I'm privy to know now, and it makes me hungry again.

And not for nachos.

"You could always go for more," I respond sarcastically, purposely setting myself up with that one, and Edward doesn't disappoint, shoving the empty plates aside and pulling me towards him in one swoop of his arm. Despite my giggles at his quick and desperate attempt to get me closer, I'm settled against his side before I can protest. Not like I would protest, anyway.

"Always," Edward answers, the gaze of his eyes bouncing against mine before dipping down to capture my lips with his own again.

I sigh against his mouth, the cadence of his lips already becoming etched into my memory. They're the kind of lips that are meant to tease and torture, just full enough on the bottom to take my top lip completely under its power, yet soft enough to make my toes curl and my fingers tingle. They tingle so much that it's almost impossible not to touch him in some way, so I act on that impulse and run my fingers through his hair, pushing him closer to me to deepen our kiss.

Now that our kissing rule is no longer valid I refuse to spend another minute not being able to do it. Right now, I crave his kiss more than any other part of his body – and that's saying a lot. He kisses like he's making up for lost time. Each kiss means something new, holds a new promise, and I take each of them like he's air and I can't breathe.

This is how we've spent the last two hours. Food, TV, laughs, stolen kisses that threaten to turn into more, and the incessant buzzing from both of our phones. I haven't even looked at mine since I had placed it on the nightstand next to the bed, and Edward's is vibrating from within his pant pocket, wherever they may be.

It's become distracting enough for Edward to pull away from our kiss, only to lean in again for one smaller one, before sitting up over the side of the bed with his legs planted on the floor. With a groan, I stretch and go to reach for my own phone. Maybe if we answer them all once they'll go away.

"Group chat?" I ask, already knowing that the non-stop back and forth can only be from our group.

He nods as I eye my phone on the nightstand. "Yeah, they're blowing us up," Edward answers, stretching towards his discarded pants to put an end to it.

The sight on my nightstand puts my response on the back burner. "Hey, my phone fell." I say it more like a fact than a concern.

"Hmm?" Edward responds but doesn't look over. He's too busy answering all of the missed texts to see what I'm trying to tell him. I stretch a little again and nudge his shoulder with my foot so he looks up at me. "What?"

I point to the way my phone has tilted so it's leaning on its side, still on the ledge of Edward's phone stand. It must have happened when Edward had ransacked me onto the bed when we had first gotten into the room. I see the realization dawn on his face when he calculates what this means.

"There's no way we can use it then," he concedes, tossing his phone onto the bed and finding his way back to me again.

"Probably not," I agree, taking my phone back with me to the bed. I'm lying back on my stomach next to him on the bed with my legs moving lazily in the air. I pull up the footage from my phone. "Let's see."

Sure enough, the video starts out exactly as I had planned it. Even without our bodies yet in the spot I had envisioned, we can tell that it would have been the perfect shot, but sure enough the phone clattered to the side of the phone stand and recorded the top half of the bed. In this video, there is no denying who we are, making it completely unusable.

There's also no denying that this is not just two people fucking for personal gain. The camera had captured two people so desperate for one another that nothing seemed to be close enough. Edward's hand holding my own above my head is the only time our faces are covered.

Exhaling loudly, Edward states the obvious. "Yeah, definitely not." He nods his head in thought. Before I can do anything drastic, his hand reaches out towards my phone. "Don't get rid of it though. We may need to view it for other errors."

For a second I wonder if he's talking about some video thing that I don't even know about but when I feel his hand start to creep under the pair of pajama shorts I had slipped on, I realize he's joking. Laughing, he flips me over so he's hovering on top of me again, his lips landing in a spot on my neck that makes me crave his mouth in other places on my body.

"You're so full of – "

"Yo!"

A loud knock on the door and a shout from the other side stops us in our tracks. His hand slides out of my shorts as more knocks and voices follow. I push Edward off of me at the sound of Emmett's voice bellowing on the other side of the door and throughout the hallway.

"No, wait." Edward says, stopping me. His words come out as a whisper and slowly and silently he moves off of me. He stays next to me on the bed with a hand over my mouth. "Don't move."

The lights are off, the fluorescence from the TV being the only light in the darkened room. If we're quiet enough, we can act like we're asleep and hopefully they'll leave.

After a few minutes, we hear them retreat to bother someone else. I turn to look at Edward and try to relax again. My voice is still a whisper. "Do you know what they wanted?"

Edward nods with a chuckle, "They're going to try and sneak into the pool." That sounds like a great idea after drinking all day and night. I roll my eyes at their stupidity and hope that they trigger an alarm or something to stop them from doing something stupid.

"And you don't want to go?" I ask him, my heart finally regulated enough to a normal and steady rhythm.

"Not really," Edward answers, his eyes finding mine in the semi-dark room. He adds with a slight clear of his throat, "I kind of want you for myself."

It's the first time either one of us have spoken the words that hide beneath every look and touch. I know exactly what he means without further explanation. I don't think I'd want to share Edward's time with anyone after the night we've had. I give him a shy smile, still not used to this side of him being directed at me. As his best friend, I've had my fair share of wingman duties. I've heard his game towards other girls before, and now that I'm on the receiving end, I don't know how no one has snatched this boy right up and away from me yet.

This time though, there's a sincerity to his voice that I've never heard. A seriousness. A finality.

He reaches for my hand and continues. "And I don't just mean tonight."

I let his words sink in before I take them for what they are.

A declaration. A hidden confession. Even though the room is dark, I can see the truth in his eyes. I can see, I can feel, that he's asking me to take this leap of faith with him. Towards him.

I feel like I stutter on the words even though they come out stronger than I think they do. "I think I know what you mean."

Our hands are still linked together, fingers sliding against skin to commit to memory.

He gives a soft laugh with a smile to go with it. "You think?"

I nod on an inhale and then exhale softly into the air between us. "Something's changed."

I've seen it in the way he looks at me when he thinks I'm not looking. I feel it every time he slips up and forgets other people are around us.

It's not totally a lie what I've said. Something has changed between us. The truth is that everything has changed and I can't go back to the way it was before with him being just my friend.

"We promised it wouldn't." He shakes his head hard. "It's in the contract." I know this is his way of making light of this enormous situation in front of us.

I laugh at the thought of our contract, practically void of any validity we had hopes it would possess. "I think we've broken every rule on that contract," I add, still clutching his hand in my own. "Well, except for one."

I think of the last four words of the contract and realize I've broken them before we even started this. No falling in love. Too late.

One look at him, at the way that he drops his gaze from my face to our intertwined hands, the way his fingers stop tracing patterns onto my skin, tells me that he knows which rule I'm talking about.

He clears his throat and I catch the slight shake of his voice. "I think I broke that one, too." With that, Edward brings his gaze back up to me again. I see the smile he's failing to conceal. "You didn't really leave me much of a choice."

"I don't think I had much of a choice, either," I admit, using our enclosed hands to pull him closer to me. He wraps his arms around me and we hold each other in silence, letting the closed space between us become the locked door of the days of just being friends. I revisit every filmed session, every text from him, every soft nudge or provoked playfulness between us. Three years tumble in front of me like a silent film; no words are needed to convey the truth between us.

It may have taken me three years to see it, but it's always been there. Time is not a measure of love. I say it to myself once and say it again when he pulls back from our embrace to place his finger on my chin so he can kiss me properly.

When we're breathless and have to come up for air, he wraps his arms around me again and I fall into his lap where I've always belonged. With my legs wrapped around his waist and his arms caging me in against him, I feel his lips brush against the top of my hair.

"When?" He asks, and I know what he's referring to.

"I don't think there was one specific moment," I answer, running gentle streaks along his back with my fingertips. "It just kind of hit me all at once. But it's always been like this for us. It was like I knew how easy it was to be your friend and I guess that made it easier for me to realize that this was just as easy."

"You are pretty easy," he quips with a soft laugh against my neck. "You let me get it in on the first date."

I lean back and jokingly push him away from me in disgust. "You know what? I take it all back." Our laughter is soon swallowed by a kiss. He sighs and nestles his lips against my shoulder.

"It was when I saw you with Newton."

I move back so I can see his face. Newton who? When it comes to Edward, everyone else just fades away. I shake my head in disbelief, the question unmistakable in my voice. "Newton? When?"

"The night right after our second session."

I think back to it and remember it was the day after our first planned session. Our second ended up being unplanned on account of my freaking out which ended up being the first of many broken rules.

"Oh, the first time we broke the rules?"

"That would be the one." I can feel him laugh softly against me. "I don't know, maybe I was still on a high from being with you earlier that day, but you came into that Uber later that night and sat next to Mike and it kind of hit me that there was nothing stopping you from being able to do that. You were free to meet anyone and do whatever you wanted with them. You weren't mine."

"And that bothered you?"

"I didn't realize it yet, but yeah. Plus, you looked so fucking hot that I went home and jerked off to one of our videos."

I cackle loudly at this admission, slapping him on the chest. "You did not!"

He laughs with me, "Like I said, you really gave me no choice." Once he's done laughing, Edward looks me in the eyes, his fingers moving to push a strand of hair behind my ear and out of my face. "You still don't. I have no choice but to make you mine."

I get it. The only choice I have is him. That is the only option I'll ever accept.

"I've always been yours."

There's still so much to discuss but we're content for now, digesting our words and what they mean.

"What do we tell everyone?" I ask a little while later.

Edward moans against my shoulder. "Do we have to?"

I shrug. "Eventually. Is it okay if I want to keep this between us for a little longer?"

"Of course. Let's just get through next week with finals and graduation and then we'll think about how we want to tell them."

Later, when drifting hands and trickling kisses aren't enough, filming isn't even a thought in our minds.

In the last four weeks, he's been behind me, beneath me, upright while I'm flat down on my back, but tonight is my favorite. Now, he's above me, his lips leaving mine for only brief reprieve, my legs wrapped around his waist or resting on his shoulders, I'm lost in the words coming from his mouth. That mouth, the one that just weeks ago made me dizzy with the dirty words that fell from it, now speaks words so pure that I wonder if I'll ever let him leave this room.

"I'll never finish," he says, punctuating each word with a thrust that drives me further off the bed and further into a place my body never wants to leave.

"Finish what?" I manage, pushing him further into me with my hands.

"Falling in love with you."

-ptp-

The next day, we all end up leaving the hotel at the last possible minute, all of us in varying levels of sleep deprivation. Edward and I have no complaints about our lack of sleep, without a doubt our yawns being beyond worth it. With nothing on our agenda except to prepare for the upcoming week, we all end up spending Sunday in and out of consciousness. With our last week of finals, graduation approaching and Edward's family coming in Monday and my Dad coming in next weekend to help with the move, we all need as much sleep as we can get.

I try to act as normal as possible but it's hard when I find myself filled with such happiness. It's hard to contain the screams I want to shout. Being right next to my best friends and not being able to share the reason for my uncontrollable joy with them is torture, so I throw myself into studying all morning and afternoon on Monday. After four weeks, almost five weeks now of these feelings towards Edward building and building, I feel like I may explode if I don't tell my friends soon. I know Edward and I agreed to wait so we could focus on finals this week, but I can't get him out of my head and I need to tell someone about him. About us.

I'm almost tempted to tell it all when Alice reminds me Monday morning that it's time for us to head to the Brazilian store downtown again soon, but I somehow restrain myself and turn back to my laptop in a flurry of awaiting essays. My phone buzzing on my desk next to me stops my progress.

It's Edward, and me being as paranoid as I am, I actually look over my shoulder to make sure Alice isn't close enough to read the message.

What time are you going to Liam's?

About an hour. Why?

My parents will be here around 7. Don't think I'll be able to see you until after they leave for their hotel.

With Edward's family coming in later tonight, I have to stop and think for a minute, wondering if it would be possible to somehow sneak out and see him tonight after his parents leave for their hotel for the evening. Between both of our exam schedules and me watching Liam in the late afternoons, we find our time limited. It was easier to sneak around when we had Thursday's to ourselves, but now that we're so far beyond our once a week temptation, it's become more of a challenge literally overnight.

I sigh loudly before responding to him. Tomorrow before they come to get you? I should be out of my final by 11.

Edward's family wants to spend as much time with him as they can before graduation comes and goes and they have to head back to Chicago, so their days are filled with plans and preparations. Edward mentions that his dad wants to take him to a dealership nearby and I smile when I think that besides Edward and I being together, other good things have come out of our proposition.

With a promise from Edward that he would figure something out, I get back to my laptop to pass the hour before I have to head over to Liam's.

I call my dad on the way over to finalize his plans.

"So you'll be in Saturday morning?" I'm finally out of the congested parking lot on campus and onto the main road.

"Yeah, I wanted to get there Friday but I just couldn't arrange things at work." I hear the regret in his voice and I squash it immediately. My dad unnecessarily shoulders guilt that he could have and should always be doing something more for me. Maybe it's his way of making it up to me for all the years my mom had let me down, I don't know, but I'll always make sure he knows that he's always been exactly what I needed.

I put my blinker on and turn into the left lane to enter Liam's neighboring town. "Saturday's fine, Dad. I'll make sure everything's covered at our place before I meet you at the airport." I feel giddy when I think about the bungalow officially being our place. We're dropping off the deposit and first month's rent sometime this week.

"I can always rent a car, Bella. That way I don't pull you away from moving."

"I don't have as much as you think. Furniture is being delivered to the house so I really only have my clothes and other random stuff from my room."

I can hear him snort a laugh through the phone. "Your clothes are reason enough to hire a moving company."

I can't tell him that I've recently begun spending a lot of time out of my clothes rather than in them so I keep that one to myself.

"What time are you landing?" I ask, changing the subject and turning onto Liam's street.

"Sometime around two," he says, and I can hear him ruffle through some papers. I already know he's misplaced it. "I'll find it later and let you know."

Given the later hour in the afternoon, and the barrage of texts I receive one after another on our group chat, I gather that everyone is done with their finals for the day. As a general rule of mine, I never have my phone out when I'm with Liam, but because the vibrating is endless as they all fill our chat with memes and GIFs and other random messages, I take the phone out of my back pocket and put it on the island in the center of the kitchen.

When Liam tells me he's hungry and pulls up a tall stool, I look at the time and see that even though he always eats dinner with his dad when he gets home, a little snack won't hurt him. I know his favorites, and when he tells me he wants Ants on a Log, I ruffle his hair and turn around to gather all of the ingredients. The peanut butter is front and center in the cabinet, and the celery is visible to the eye as soon as the refrigerator door is opened, but the raisins have a mind of their own and are almost invisible. I dig and raid the cabinets, knowing I had seen them somewhere, leaving Liam and my phone undisturbed on the island behind me.

I turn around and see Liam looking at me and touching the screen on my phone with a smile on his face bigger than I have ever seen. It's a mischievous smile, a knowing smile since he knows he's not allowed to have anything to do with phones, and he is so pleased with himself that he doesn't even look at what he's doing.

With a yelp, I reach for the phone and put it safely back into my back pocket.

Unbeknownst to me, the damage is done.

The only reason I know something is up is when my phone starts vibrating even more than before, and a long vibration comes through signaling a phone call. I pull the phone out of my back pocket, puzzled when I see Edward's name pop up on the screen.

He knows my phone rule when it comes to babysitting; he would only call me if it's an absolute emergency.

I pick up, and before I can even say hello, I hear a cacophony of sound followed by Edward's muffled voice.

"Are you fucking serious, Bella!"

-ptp-

You remember what's still on her phone, right?

Two more chapters and a short epilogue to go!

Thank you all for everything : )