Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight

He was so warm and always smelled so good. I breathed in deep and sighed as I woke up trying to squeeze him tighter, only to find that I was practically suffocating myself with my own pillow. I jerked upright and let the pain wash over me like it had for the last year, two months, thirteen days and glancing at my clock, twelve hours. I pulled the hem of the ugly giant purple sweatshirt over my knees and dropped my head down and sobbed quietly until I had to get out of bed.

The screeching sound of my alarm brought me back to reality. I slid out of bed and grabbed my clothes for the day. I closed the door on the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. My brown hair was in one huge tangle, and the purple circles under my eyes had grown overnight causing my usual pale skin to look almost translucent.

I yanked the purple sweatshirt over my head, folded it carefully and set it on the counter by the sink. As ugly as it was, this sweatshirt was one of my two most prized possessions. The other was the silver ring that I wore on a long thin chain around my neck. I lifted the chain over my head and let it pool onto the sweatshirt before I started the water for my shower.

I thought back to the day that this sweatshirt had come into my life and smiled at the memory.

It was June in California and a beautiful eighty-five degrees outside. School had just ended for the summer a few weeks prior, and Edward had promised that we would do something to celebrate. He had just turned sixteen and had gotten his driver's license. His parents had gotten him a new silver Volvo for his birthday. He came to pick me up at mine and my parent's apartment in Canoga Park, he said that he didn't mind the drive from his home in Westlake Village to get me, even though it would take over a half an hour to travel the 16 miles between our homes.

He had insisted that where we were going be a surprise, and until we turned into the parking lot at the San Pedro harbor I was completely mystified. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees from my home to the waterfront. I didn't have a jacket so Edward insisted on buying me the sweatshirt at the kiosk inside the terminal. There wasn't much to choose from in the way of warmth since it was summer, so we ended up getting the least hideous thing we could, which happened to be the ugliest most wonderful thing that I owned. Moments later, we boarded the 'Catalina Express' and set out to sea.

I wiped the fog off of the mirror to find myself smiling, an expression that I had not seen on my face for 439 days.

Downstairs I found Charlie reading the newspaper and sipping his coffee. I poured a bowl of cereal and ate quietly at the kitchen counter. Besides the fact that he was my dad, Charlie and I didn't have anything in common. I barely knew anything about him. Granted I had only met him 437 days ago. To me my parents were Renee and Phil Dwyer. Renee worked as a hairstylist at a salon in Northridge and Phil was a minor league baseball player trying to make it big. Renee was my biological mother and Phil was my step-father. Phil had adopted me when I was five, because Charlie had given up his parental rights after Renee's request, and he had given me his name. To everyone I knew and loved I was Bella Dwyer, now, however, I was known to the small town of Forks, Washington as Isabella Swan, the Chief of Police's long lost daughter returned home. I was born in Forks and had lived here for nearly a year before my mother left town and left Charlie.

"Ready to go?" Charlie asked while buckling up his gun belt.

I nodded my head and gathered up my school bag. Ten minutes later we were at Forks High School and I was trudging my way to my first class. Creative Writing. It was the only outlet that I had to relay my feelings. I wrote about love but it always had a tragic ending, I wrote about death and it being about freedom. I know that teachers and students alike thought that I was strange. My grades were good and I didn't miss class. They had nothing to complain about.

At lunch I sat alone at a table near the window. I watched the rain form puddles on the walkways and splash against the window pane. Even though it was December, I knew that it would have been sunny and at least seventy degrees at my home in California, here in Forks it was a miserable forty-two and rainy. I laid my head down on my arms and closed my eyes and daydreamed about Edward.

Edward Masen was the most handsome boy I had ever laid eyes on. He was tall and thin when I first met him, but he grew into his lanky body. His eyes were a brilliant green and his untamable hair was brown with natural reddish highlights. What got my attention, though, was his mischievous smile that was higher on one side than the other.

My thoughts went back to when we were fourteen, and were walking hand in hand in the mall where we had just finished sharing a pretzel in the food court. We had only met the weekend before at this same mall and had hit it off immediately. He was funny and smart. At fourteen, I already knew that I was completely in love with him.

We went to different schools and had completely different lives. He lived among the rich and famous and I lived in a small everyday apartment. His parents were Edward Sr. and Elizabeth Masen. His mother stayed at home while his father was a very successful lawyer. I had only met them once and they were anything but thrilled with me. They felt that I was a distraction. They had planned out every move of Edward's life before he was even born, and it didn't include me. My parents met Edward once also. They were nice to him, nicer than his parents were to me, but my mother was obviously not happy with the fact that I was fourteen and had myself my first boyfriend. Renee didn't want me to 'turn out' like her. She had gotten married at eighteen and had me a year later. She didn't want me to get stuck with a husband and a baby, or just a baby. She wanted me to go to college and make something of myself. I did too, but that didn't mean I couldn't do it if Edward was with me.

The bell signaling the end of lunch sounded and I completed my day at school. The rest of my afternoon consisted of homework and laundry. Charlie wouldn't be home until after seven, so I made a small dinner for myself, wrapped saran wrap over the plate I made for Charlie and stuck it in the fridge.

I headed upstairs with an overflowing basket of clean clothes. Suddenly, I tripped on the edge of one of the steps and tumbled backwards towards the floor. My head hit the railing at least three times before I came to a stop at the bottom. I groaned at the pain in my head before everything went black.

I cracked my eyes open slowly to the blinding light that was overhead. I looked around the room to see where I was. There was a curtain to my left and a wall to my right. People were walking fast back and forth past the foot of my bed. I moved to sit up but found my right arm to be weak. My arm had several pieces of tape on it covering the tube that led up to a clear bag on a post. I let my body drop back down to the bed and felt my chest for my 'security blanket'. It wasn't there, my chain, my ring, they weren't there. I felt the panic rise in my chest as I pulled the thin hospital gown I was wearing down away from my neck. The monitors in the room started beeping rapidly as I searched the blankets and the bed for my ring. I couldn't have lost it! Besides the sweatshirt, it was all I had left of him.

He gave it to me on our last day together. Of course, we didn't think it would be our last day. It wasn't an engagement ring, nor was it a promise ring. Edward wasn't sappy like that. We were only sixteen. It was just a ring from Edward to me on my birthday.

He had taken me to dinner at the Melting Pot, and had made me giggle repeatedly when he tried to feed me the chocolate fondue. We went back to his house because his parents were at a party that was hosted by one of his father's biggest clients.

Edward and I went out to the pool house where he was allowed by his parents to keep his stereo, TV and gaming consoles. He gave me the silver ring and placed it on my right hand. We watched part of a movie, but got distracted when we started kissing and messing around a little bit. He pulled back from my lips and looked intently in my eyes. My eyes never straying from his, I reached out and brushed back a lock of his unruly hair from his forehead.

It wasn't planned. We had talked about sex before and had both decided that when the time was right we would both know.

We had taken our time exploring each other's bodies, his kisses and touches made me feel beautiful and loved. The act itself, the connecting of our bodies in the most intimate way, was one of the most emotional experiences of my life. I held him to me as he rested his head in the crook of my neck. Our breathing had just barely slowed when he was ripped from my arms by his angry father and taken from the room.

I waited for two hours in the formal living room of the Masen house for Edward's and my parent's discussion about the end of our relationship. The drive home was quiet except for my angry mother informing me that I would never see Edward again. They just didn't understand how in love we were. They would eventually get over it and Edward and I would be together again.

I couldn't have been more wrong. Once we were home, my room was ransacked. All of the pictures of us, cards, Edward's t-shirt that I slept in, and everything else that connected the two of us were removed from my room. I had slipped off my new ring and stuffed it in my jeans pocket before it was noticed. The Catalina sweatshirt that had not been worn since the day it was purchased had been crammed into the very back of my closet and was overlooked as something that connected me to Edward. That is the only reason that I still owned it.

Two days later I was on a plane to Washington. Edward's cell phone had been disconnected and I didn't have the number to his unlisted house phone. Charlie didn't own a computer so I used the one at the high school on my first day but found that Edward's email address had been cancelled. All of my emails were returned unsendable. I wrote him letters everyday until the mailman brought them to our door marked 'return to sender'. I did everything I could to get in contact with him, but it seemed that he had been removed from the face of the earth.

Edward didn't know about Charlie or about Forks. He certainly didn't know that my last name was changed back to Swan several days after my arrival here. He had no way of knowing to look for me here. I feared that I had lost him forever.