Still back in time. Time jumps are coming soon, but not yet!

Let's lighten things up this chapter, yes?!

Remember when

the sound of little feet was the music

we danced to week to week

When it came to being a husband to a pregnant wife, I wish I could say that I caught on quickly. To everything – the mood swings, the cravings, the appointments, the hot flashes – but I failed miserably.

Not according to Bella, of course. She would always make sure I knew that she appreciated all of my efforts to make this easier for her, but I thought she was holding back the truth just to make me happy.

The truth was that I didn't catch on nearly as fast as I thought I could. Or should have.

Understanding my wife, being attuned to her needs and wants, was something that I had devoted myself to ever since I got her back. Losing her and letting her go all those years ago had taught me a very valuable lesson, one that I never wanted to repeat ever again, so I had spent the last few years learning everything about her for the second time in my life. That first year back with her, discovering her all over again, was absolutely magical. I made sure I noticed everything about her, even the little things, so it would be easy to see if things were to ever become amiss. Strained. Tense.

Different.

Bella had gotten pregnant the week after Benjamin had left us, and because we were both riding those waves of grief, it was hard for me to distinguish the changes in Bella in the beginning. Losing Benjamin and gaining a baby happened at the same time, within a week of each other, so it was easy to assume Bella's waves of exhaustion or loss of appetite in the first few weeks without Benjamin were side effects of loss and grief. She would tire easily, opting to skip out on events we had at The Rec to spend long mornings or early evenings in bed, sleeping the weariness out of her bones in hopes to wake up feeling refreshed.

I couldn't keep up with her changing moods at first, often finding myself in confusing situations where I, unfortunately, remained as clueless as ever.

"Hmm," Bella had said one Saturday morning as we got ourselves ready to open The Rec for the weekend rush. "That's weird."

"What's weird?" I answered her, tossing a Rec tee over my shoulders before slipping my head through the correct spot. Benjamin had been gone for a little over a month at that point, and Saturday mornings had been when him and I would go off on our own together. I found that I needed to occupy myself earlier and earlier with each passing Saturday in hopes to break up the depressing thought of him not being here with us anymore.

"Remember those new bras I got for Christmas?"

"Pshh," I dismissed her like she was crazy because there was no way in hell that I could forget those bad boys. "Yeah, I remember. What about them?"

"They don't fit anymore," she responded, a slight question of confusion in her voice. "No idea why."

"Is that normal?"

"There's probably a reason for it," Bella shrugged it off, still circling and pivoting in the mirror in front of her reflection.

"Whatever you say." I said, looking around for a hat to throw on over my head. The beauty of males getting ready in the morning: I was changed, dressed, hat on my head to avoid actually doing my hair, and Bella was still wearing nothing but a pair of jeans.

"Do they look bigger to you?" She turned to look at me, her hands dropping to her sides so I could see firsthand what she was referring to. "Do they feel bigger to you?"

I looked at her strangely as she walked over to where I was standing, her arms outreached towards my hands so she could place them where she wanted them to go.

Under normal circumstances, I would never turn down an opportunity as blatant and awesome as this, but something about it felt completely different.

I hesitated. "I….feel like this is a trick."

"I'm serious," Bella insisted with a laugh, reaching for my hand again. "They're all of a sudden too big for these new bras."

After copping a few feels, and then a little more at Bella's allowance, she sent me off on my sated and pleasant way, and I didn't think anything of it.

Not even when she threw up her favorite tacos I made for her a few weeks later.

She loved my tacos.

It wasn't until I had seen the positive result, the two lines on the pregnancy test staring up at me in finality, that everything crashed down onto me. All the little signs that I had attributed to other causes, all the tiny aspects of her life had been changing before my very eyes and I didn't notice.

Grief does that to you; I had concentrated so much on trying to find ways to fill the hole Benji had left behind that I had lost focus on our day to day lives.

Which no longer included just me and Bella.

We were having a baby.

"Ten weeks to be exact," her doctor said as we sat in a tiny room surrounded by plastic models of Fallopian Tubes and posters of different stages of birth. "How have you been feeling?"

"Tired," Bella answered, with a sigh. She sat up from her place on the examination table. "Exhausted, really. Nauseous most of the time. I was driving home from work last week and I vomited into my own hand while driving."

"Impressive," Dr. Alistair noted. "And completely normal."

"Normal?" I questioned, thinking back to when Bella had told me that she had to actually toss the vomit outside of her car window as she drove down the highway. I scratched my head. "I thought morning sickness only happened in the morning?"

Dr. Alistair chuckled and reached over to hand us a pile of information that I would later memorize verbatim. "Let me fill you in on some other things you'll learn, Daddy."

It turned out I had a lot to learn.

-tr-

To some, forty weeks may seem like a lifetime.

I know it did to Bella, especially towards the end when she felt like she was "five thousand weeks pregnant". Her words, not mine.

Renee and Charlie told the news to anyone who would listen, and I admit it was amusing to see the whole town count down to the arrival of their respected Chief's first grandchild.

Rose and Alice were thrilled to add another baby to our mix. Jasper and Emmett were worried their wives would get hit with another round of Baby Fever when the newest Cullen made his or her appearance.

To me, forty weeks felt way too soon for me to learn everything there was to know about being a dad.

I didn't know how to take care of a newborn, for starters. Bella and Rose had straight up laughed in my face when I said that newborns wouldn't need more than five diaper changes a day and that he or she would be born twenty-nine inches long.

The worst part was that I was one hundred and ten percent serious.

I started my stockpile the next day. When Bella said that certain diapers may work differently than others, I rectified that by buying the next brand in the same size. Our hall closet was officially off limits to her and her growing belly as I was afraid that all my purchases would one day fall on top of her at the twist of the door handle.

We were given a due date of mid-January, right after one of the most busiest times of year at The Rec. Contingency plans were already put into place, our holiday party being moved a week earlier in the beginning of the month of December in case baby came early. We had given everyone in the town advanced notice of The Rec being closed for at least a month after, and staff was planned and accounted to take on additional hours and responsibilities as Bella and I would be otherwise preoccupied for the rest of our lives.

These days I often found myself overexaggerating to compensate for my feelings of inadequacies.

"I didn't have a father to look up to when I was growing up," I said to Bella one night in October as we tried to fall asleep. It was close to Halloween and the seasonal festivities at The Rec were starting to increase in stamina and frequency. Whichever the reason, the excitement of the day made Baby Cullen sure to let Bella know of his or her presence. My hand was pressed lightly against her stomach as kicks from the inside made my hand rise up and down as he or she made their nightly twists and turns. "I didn't have anyone to tell me stories about what I was like when I was a baby or what Daddy did when I did something crazy that kids would do."

Bella rolled over onto her side as best as she could, her belly settling between us beneath the cool sheets. Did I mention that we slept with a window open in fall because of Bella always being hot? "You wanna know how I know you're going to be a great Daddy?"

My hands found the baby again, and I felt the familiar nudge in response. I closed my eyes and used the movements coming from beneath my fingers to lull me into a relaxed peace. "Mmm."

"Because you're already trying to be the best one there is."

There was another person, besides Bella, that already knew the kind of Dad I was going to be.

Benjamin.

I valued his opinion more than he knew.

"I bet you'll let him use the lawnmower machines like I did," he said as the two of us took down the orange and purple lights of Halloween and replaced them with orange and yellow and brown lights of Thanksgiving. We were outside, the bitter air staining our cheeks pink as we undecorated and redecorated the posts lining the driveway leading up to The Rec.

I smiled at him, a laugh leaving my lungs in a giant heap. "How do you know it's a him?"

Benji shrugged his shoulders like it was obvious we were having a boy. "Because I know."

"Hmm. Well, at least one of us knows. Bella and I don't want to know until it's time," I acknowledged, enjoying the sight of a shocked look cross his features.

"Mommy Bella doesn't know, either?!" He laughed and shook his head as he continued to help me with the lights. "She's definitely going to let him eat uncooked batter off the spoon. I just know it!"

We worked together for the rest of the afternoon, decorating and preparing the property for the next couple of weeks. There was a lot to do before the baby came, and I took advantage of any time I could to knock it off of my list of things to do. We worked as if there had been no time lost between the two of us, which was something that my mind kept going back to while we worked.

I never had such permanency in my life when I was growing up, even though we were both foster children. I never visited the same house twice, never had anyone remember things I liked or anyone who went out of their way to spend time with me other than those I had met at The Rec growing up. As we finished the work on the outside and made our way over to the front porch, freeing our feet of the mud we had accumulated throughout the day's work, it dawned on me that having Benjamin in this capacity was a gift.

Benjamin and Heidi were spending the day here at The Rec. It wasn't the first time that they had visited over the last few months; summer had proven to be difficult for Benjamin as school was no longer in session and he had more time to think about the life he had last summer when he was with me and Bella.

Maggie, his social worker, had arranged for visits like these to happen, and being that Heidi and I were friendly and familiar with one another, it had been as easy as breathing to welcome them both here. They came as often as they could, sometimes with Maggie, sometimes without, and they were always greeted with opened arms and warm smiles.

Our worries for him would never fully go away, and though we weren't privy to any information regarding his well-being, we were happy to be able to have the opportunity to see him and spend any amount of time with him.

Benjamin was ecstatic at the news of the baby, his hands never being far from Bella's belly as it stretched further towards the final weeks until our due date in January. Wherever Bella was, Benjamin was buzzing nearby, as if an invisible pull had tethered him to the tiny person waiting to greet us all. I watched as he kept an eye on Bella as often as he could, and as amusing as it was to me in the beginning when his visits had first started, it occurred to me that maybe his watching and hovering had something to do with his role at home.

I thought of those conversations we would have at bedtime, when we were tucking him beneath his blankets in the bedroom made just for him, and he would ask things that adults would ask. He would ask if the stoves or the oven were turned off, if the doors and windows were locked and that the heat or air was at a respectable level. He was a caretaker at his house, at just eight years old now, and I wondered if it had become second nature for him to take on that role so easily.

I tried to put those kinds of thoughts on the back burner while he was present, focusing on spending time with him as opposed to entertaining the rambling thoughts in my head. Heidi and Benjamin joined in to the activities offered at The Rec today, each of them making a turkey craft to hang on our activity wall near the entrance on the front wall. They hung theirs next to one another, smiling at each other as they compared their turkeys.

Once the crowd began to dissipate, parents picking their children and friends up for the evening, we all disappeared upstairs like we always did when the guests dwindled. I had two staffers downstairs in case anyone else came in, and I oversaw everything going on downstairs on the security cameras I had installed around our upstairs house.

Bella, with the assistance of Heidi and Benjamin, started to prepare dinner in the kitchen when Jasper and Alice's car appeared on the security cameras. Excusing myself to greet them downstairs and to help with bringing anything in, I bounced down the stairs to meet them outside.

"Sam can't wait to see him," Jasper said when I met them at the car. Alice was busy taking Sam out of the car seat. "All day long, 'I see Benji?' 'Benji there?'"

I laughed and helped them gather some of their things. Although Sam would be turning three in June, he still required a lot of stuff. I guess it would be something I would have to learn along the way. "Benji set up all of his cars for Sam to play with in his room."

We held back a few steps as Alice and Sam made their way up the steps to The Rec.

"Bella still won't take his room down?" Jasper asked, trailing a few steps behind. "What about the baby?"

Still stuck in a phase of mourning that only Bella could separate herself from, Benjamin's room had remained untouched, the door closed to any person except for him. She went in there on rare occasions, when she was up to the task, but wasn't ready to dismantle anything just yet. I respected her position on his bedroom, knowing we all handled grief differently than the next, and told her I would be there for her when she was ready to do what she had to do.

"She knows she has to," I answered. "She's just not ready yet. She says the baby will sleep in our room for a while, so it'll give her some time to switch the rooms."

"Speaking of Bella, everyone upstairs?" Alice asked as we entered The Rec and made our way towards the back corner towards the stairs that lead to our place.

I nodded. "Yep. Just follow the path of freezing cold air and you'll find her."

Jasper laughed. "Still freezing you out?"

"I told you to dress in layers for a reason," I warned him, opening our door as a whoosh of cold air washed over us. "I wasn't kidding."

I kept an extra sweatshirt at the bottom of the stairs on a coat rack for a reason.

We found it was easier for me to layer in warmth than it was for Bella to disrobe in a fit of heat, hot flashes becoming a norm here in our house.

Swapping my jacket for my sweatshirt, I joined them upstairs with a gallop in my step and a beaming smile on my face as I heard my family gathering in the kitchen. All of us, now threads woven together to form a blanket of warmth, made all of my cold years without any at all completely worth it.

We ate dinner together in open companionship, Benjamin and Sam running around from one corner of the house to the next, Bella looking on with a soft smile on her face and comforting hands running circles over her belly. We had a baby shower for Bella last week here at The Rec, and our house was starting to become filled with more and more things like I had seen at Emmett and Rose's house. There was a bassinet in one corner near one end of the couch, a swing placed on the other, and a bouncy seat of some kind placed and propped near the entrance of the kitchen. There was more to be delivered over the coming weeks, I was told.

Great.

I think this baby had more things than I did.

"What's for dessert?" Benjamin asked a little after dinner, taking a water break from his antics with Sam. His hair was mopped with sweat, panting as he gobbled his water down as fast as he could. "Hot chocolate?"

"I brought a pumpkin pie," Heidi offered and disappeared into the kitchen to retrieve it for us. Alice followed behind her, gathering mugs and dessert plates out of the cabinet.

"No hot chocolate tonight, bud." I said once he was done with his water. "But I think we have some apple cider."

"Mmmm, hot chocolate sounds great right now!" Bella agreed, the desire in her voice unmistakable.

Sam went over and tried to share a seat with Bella the best he could, given that her belly took up most of the space between the back of the chair and the table in front of her. He smiled and drummed his hands on the table in beat with his chants. "Hot choc-late! Hot choc-late!"

Sam saw what his idol Benjamin was doing, and he joined in. "Hot whoc-wit! Hot whoc-wit!"

I couldn't say no to both Bella and Benjamin.

They used it to their advantage.

I looked over at Jasper who was already reaching for his keys. "You wanna go for a ride?"

"Yeah," he answered, following me towards the door. "It'll give me a chance to dust the ice crystals off my feet."

-tr-

Benjamin and Heidi came over again two weeks later.

It was one of those wet and rainy nights in the late fall, Thanksgiving fast approaching on the calendar. The days were shorter, the sun choosing to escape the world a little more each day. It grew colder outside and inside with Bella's hormones always in the on and hot position, so it was no surprise that most of us huddled next to the fireplace downstairs at The Rec.

Bella was upstairs with her feet up after another long day at work had done some significant damage to her feet. I had left her with her feet elevated above her heart with plenty of pillows for her "Shrek Feet", as she called it. Again, her words, not mine. I'm smart enough to know not to repeat them.

Benjamin had a book and his Reading Log homework next to him, content to sit between Heidi and I as he finished his homework.

"How is everything, Heidi?" I could tell by the way she nervously tugged on the hem of her sleeve around her wrist that something was bothering her.

"Marcus quit his job today."

"Oh, Heidi," I reached out to squeeze her arm to calm her movements on her shirt sleeve. "Does Maggie know?"

She nodded her head quickly, her eyes never leaving the ground. "I have to call her again later to see what she can do."

"The house is really cold." Benjamin added, not looking up from his homework. I tried to hide my intake of breath at his words.

Their proximity to the fireplace broke my heart even more.

The house being cold and Marcus quitting another job today made me wonder how long they had been trying to stay afloat before it all collapsed.

"Maggie will help us!" Heidi reminded him, scooting closer to him from her position on the couch. Her eyes remained on the floor.

One look at the way Benjamin's eyes looked when they met mine told me to start praying for a solution, and fast.

-tr-

It happened two days before Christmas.

Earlier than planned, yet we were all ready.

Doctors had monitored everything throughout the entire pregnancy, and all was well.

We just had a baby eager to meet us all.

Bella's water had broken when we were downstairs by the Christmas tree in The Rec. We were sitting by the fire, trying to find the energy to move upstairs after we had spent the day and evening with the kids celebrating their last day of school before winter break.

It was just the two of us, lounging on the couch in front of the fireplace, dozing peacefully to the crackles of fire and sparks and the blinking lights from the Christmas tree next to us. She had woken me up with a start, not speaking any words for none would come, but she looked down at her lap and I knew just by her reaction that something big was happening.

We would never be the same again.

It was true. We would never be.

And we were completely and utterly okay with that.

"How you guys doing?" Emmett asked through the phone early the next morning when we were well into labor.

Let me rephrase that.

We had arrived at the hospital hours before when her water had broken, and we were resting in the delivery room between contractions. We were playing the waiting game, even though we were a few weeks early than our due date, and no one seemed to be in any rush.

Baby especially.

We were well into labor in terms of hours spent waiting, not so much as progressing.

"We're okay. Tired. You have no idea how bad my back hurts right now."

I had tried to catch a couple of hours of sleep on this tiny little chair offered for people like me. One look at the face Bella shot me when I mentioned 'back pain' and it had me hanging up the phone really quick. "I gotta go."

It remained that way for a few more hours. I would watch the monitor to see what was coming ahead, and we would breathe her way through them until, eventually, she could no longer talk through the pain.

I held her hand when it became too much for her to bear by herself. I kept my eye on the clock to let her know when her next dose of relief would be. I scooped my arm beneath her leg when she was too weak to stay in the safest position for her and our baby. I brushed the hair away from her face when she wanted it all to be over with. I counted to ten with her when her chin was pressed to her chest, her knees bent, begging to any deity that would listen to let me absorb her pain for her.

And then it all stopped.

The only sound I heard was from her, no longer from Bella. Her cries announced her entrance into the world, and though they were small and healthy cries, I would soon learn that they would be strong enough to bring me to my knees, no matter her age.

When Bella handed our daughter to me for the first time, I couldn't stop the tears from falling.

I held the whole world in my hands.

-tr-

And just four weeks later, when we were living on caffeine and falling asleep standing up, I received a phone call from Maggie.

Charlotte was asleep on my chest, both of our skin bare to create the deepest warmth, when I heard my phone vibrate from the coffee table in front of me on the couch.

Bella had disappeared into bed, taking advantage of an undisturbed nap while she had the chance.

Normally, phone calls were ignored when it came to catching up on a few minutes of invaluable sleep. The Queen of England could call my phone and I would let it go to voicemail if it meant I could remain unconscious for just a few minutes longer.

This time, something told me to pick up. Charlotte grunted against my chest as I moved, cradling her head into my body to protect her from waking. I was getting to know those little sounds she made, the faces she made when she was rooting for her next feed, the way she would stretch her little arms like she was the mightiest little thing in the world.

She was, though.

She came into this world rockin' and rollin', and her and I, we were already jammin' to a vibe that no one else could touch. Bella and Charlotte had all the hours of the day to bond together, but this time was reserved for Daddy.

I had gone back to work a few days before, and though I was grateful to be busy during the hours I was away, these were the moments that I thought of while I was gone.

Her smell.

The way her little outfits had me saying words like outfits.

The way Rose adorned her copper and chestnut hair with bows bigger than her head.

The way she snuggled into my arms like she knew who I was.

I would be content to never leave this spot for as long as I lived, however, the gut instinct I had to answer the phone was strong and couldn't be ignored.

It was the phone call that turned out to be the missing piece to our puzzle.

Early the next morning, the January sun inching its way upwards, Charlotte and I sat on the porch of The Rec. She was bundled within an inch of her life, her puffy cheeks and tiny nose and grayish-blue eyes the only parts of her visible beneath all of her layers.

"He's going to be your best friend," I told her, bouncing her in my arms as we waited for the car to pull up in the driveway. "He'll be your biggest protector. You can forget about bringing any boyfriends home, too; he'll never let that happen. Neither will I, actually."

Her eyes bounced around my face, a slow smile creeping up on her pink lips. She cooed at my words, already talking back at not even a month old. Must take after her mother.

"I don't even want to hear it," I told her. "You're staying here forever. You're never getting married. I'll build you a tower like Rapunzel if I have to. It's Rapunzel, right? Oh God, I'm going to have to learn all my Disney princesses, huh?"

I looked out over our property as the sun lit each acre in front of us. I imagined what types of celebrations and gatherings The Rec and our land would hold now that Bella and I had children of our own.

"We'll see," Bella answered from behind me. She held two steaming cups of coffee, my lifeline, in her hands. She was wrapped in a warm robe that Charlotte already preferred over others. "Maybe she'll hate Princesses. Maybe she'll dominate all you boys out there on the soccer field."

"That's what I'm talking about," I said, lifting Charlotte's hand for a gentle fist bump. "Destroy the enemy."

"Not all boys are bad," Bella reminded me, placing a kiss on my cheek as she handed me my coffee. I nodded and made room for her on the seat on the porch.

The sound of a car pulling onto the graveled driveway pulled my eyes away from my daughter.

They landed on my son sitting in the backseat of Maggie's car. I smiled back the tears that filled my eyes and clogged my throat.

"No," I said, agreeing with Bella. "Not all of us."

We were looking at one of the greatest.

Wow, this was a fun chapter to write!

I enjoyed rehashing my pregnancy woes. I combined some of my weird cravings and vomiting stories. My brand new bras that I had gotten for Christmas were literally overnight too small. I suspected I was pregnant on January 5th. I remained sweltering hot for the next forty weeks.

All one liners are true. Husband really did think we would only need five diapers a day and that our son would be born 29 inches long. He even called them "freshborns" instead of "newborns". And he was 100% serious.

My dad said Jasper's one liner about dusting the ice crystals off his feet. Still one of our favorite sayings now. In my defense, it was late August, I was having a baby in a few days, and it was a billion degrees in their house! Just sayin'.

Let's get ready for some time jumps coming ahead.

We're wrapping this up with three more chapters and a small epilogue, give or take. I may combine some chapters if I feel it flows better. I guess we'll find out once I write them.

In other news, I have finally titled my upcoming fic, The Muse in the Shadows. Join my Facebook group, Lily Jill Fics, for teasers. I'll be starting to post four "Meet the Characters" posts this weekend.

And as always, thanks for the reviews and recs! They make me keep going when I am just too tired to write.

See you all next week!

Here's your teaser for Chapter 9

Brought back the love

We found trust

Vowed we'd never give it up

Remember when