When I woke, the sun hadn’t fully risen yet, and the light spilling across the curtains was soft and golden the kind of light that made you believe, just for a moment, that everything could begin again.
Edward’s arm was still draped across my waist, his hand gently resting just above where my body had begun to change so subtly that only I could feel it, like a secret the universe had tucked beneath my skin before I was ready to say it aloud.
He didn’t stir right away.
He was breathing slow, deep, steady, like someone who had stopped fighting something only in his sleep, and the warmth of him behind me solid, familiar, terrifying was the only thing in this house that didn’t feel like a battlefield.
I didn’t move.
Not because I was afraid to wake him.
But because this stillness, this s
