It's never that simple. And it is. He's older now, and still new enough to Edward not to know how much it is true. How little (and by that much) it would take to twist all of this to what he'd asked for.

Edward's fingers dug into the cloth of the jean around his knee, even when his eyes didn't move from that face. "We keep saying that." He pressed, regardless, he gave up not turning himself inside out on this more than half a century ago. "And now that you constantly seem to return?"