Her pain, my greatest weakness—as Alice had shown me it would be. I hated to see her frightened. It broke me to know how much I deserved that fear, but more than either of those burdens, I could not bear to see her grief. It stripped me of my ability to make anything close to a good decision.
“Don’t be afraid,” I begged in a whisper. “I promise—” No, that had become too casual a word. “I swear not to hurt you. Don’t be afraid.”
I moved closer to her slowly, making no movement that she would not have time to anticipate. I sat gradually, in deliberate stages, so that I was once again where we’d begun. I slouched down a bit so that my face was level with hers.
The pace of her heart eased. Her lids relaxed back into their usual place. It was as if my proximity calmed her.
“Please forgive me,” I pleaded. “I can control myself. You caught me off guard, but I’m on my best behavior now.” What a pathetic apology. Still, it brought a hint of a smile to the corner of her lips. And like a fool, I fell back into my immature efforts to be amusing. “I’m not thirsty today, honestly.”
I actually winked at her. One would think I was thirteen instead of a hundred and four.
But she laughed. A little out of breath, a little wobbly, but still a real laugh, with real mirth and relief. Her eyes warmed, her shoulders loosened, and her hands opened again.
It felt so right to gently place my hand back inside hers. It shouldn’t, but it did.
“Are you all right?”
She stared at our hands, then glanced up to meet my gaze for a moment, and finally looked down again. She started to trace the lines across my palm with the tip of her finger, just as she had been doing before my frenzy. Her eyes returned to mine and a smile slowly spread across her face till the little dimple appeared in her chin. There was no judgment and no regret in that smile.
I smiled back, feeling as though I could only just now appreciate the beauty of this place. The sun and the flowers and the gilded air, they were suddenly there for me, joyous and merciful. I felt the gift of her mercy, and my stone heart swelled with gratitude.
The relief, the confusion of joy and guilt, suddenly reminded me of the day I’d come home, so many decades ago.
I hadn’t been ready then, either. I’d planned to wait. I wanted my eyes to be golden again before Carlisle saw me. But they were still a strange orange, an amber that tended more toward red. I was having difficulty adapting to my former diet. It had never been so hard before. I was afraid that if I didn’t have Carlisle’s help, I wouldn’t be able to keep going. That I would fall back into my old ways.
It worried me, having that evidence so clear in my eyes. I wondered what was the worst reception I could expect? Would he just send me away? Would he find it difficult to look at me, to see what a disappointment I had become? Was there a penance he would demand? I would do it, whatever he asked. Would my efforts to improve move him at all, or would he just see my failure?
It was simple enough to find them; they hadn’t moved far from the place I’d left them. Maybe to make it easier for me to return?
Their house was the only one in this high, wild spot. The winter sun was glinting off the windows as I approached from below, so I couldn’t tell if anyone was home. Rather than take the shorter route through the trees, I paced toward them through an empty field, blanketed in snow, where—even bundled up against the sun’s glare—I would be easy to spot. I moved slowly. I didn’t want to run. It might alarm them.
It was Esme who saw me first.
“Edward!” I heard her cry, though I was still a mile out.
In less than a second I saw her figure dart through a side door, racing through the rocks surrounding the mountain ledge and stirring up a thick cloud of snow crystals behind her.
Edward! He’s come home!
It was not the mindset I’d been expecting. But then, she hadn’t seen my eyes clearly.
Edward? Can it be?
My father was following close behind her now, catching up with his longer stride.
There was nothing but a desperate hope in his thoughts. No judgment. Not yet.
“Edward!” Esme shouted with an unmistakable ring of joy in her voice.
And then she was upon me, her arms wrapped tight around my neck, her lips kissing my cheek over and over again. Please don’t go away again.
Only a second later, Carlisle’s arms encircled us both.
Thank you, he thought, his mind fervent with sincerity. Thank you for coming back to us.
“Carlisle… Esme… I’m so sorry. I’m so—”
“Shush, now,” Esme whispered, tucking her head against my neck and breathing in my scent. My boy.
I looked up into Carlisle’s face, leaving my eyes open wide. Hiding nothing.
You’re here.Carlisle stared back at my face with only happiness in his mind. Though he had to know what the color of my eyes meant, there was no off note to his delight. There’s nothing to apologize for.
Slowly, hardly able to trust that it could be so simple, I raised my arms and returned my family’s embrace.
I felt that same undeserved acceptance now, and I could barely believe that all of it—my bad behavior, both voluntary and involuntary—was suddenly behind us. But her forgiveness seemed to wash the darkness away.
“So where were we, before I behaved so rudely?” I remembered where I had been. Just inches from her parted lips. Enraptured by the mystery of her mind.
She blinked twice. “I honestly can’t remember.”
That was understandable. I breathed in fire and blew it back out, wishing it would do some actual damage to me.
“I think we were talking about why you were afraid, besides the obvious reason.” The obvious fear had probably driven the other out of her mind completely.
But she smiled and looked down at my hand again. “Oh, right.”
Nothing more.
“Well?” I prompted.
Rather than meet my gaze, she started tracing patterns across my palm. I tried to read their sequences, hoping for a picture or even letters—E-D-W-A-R-D-P-L-E-A-S-E-G-O-A-W-A-Y—but I could find no meaning in them. Just more mysteries. Another question she would never answer. I didn’t deserve answers.
I sighed. “How easily frustrated I am.”
She looked up then, her eyes probing mine. We stared at each other for a few seconds, and I was surprised at the intensity of her gaze. I felt that she was reading me more successfully than I was ever able to read her.
“I was afraid,” she began, and I realized gratefully that she was answering my question after all. “Because… for, well, obvious reasons, I can’t stay with you.” Her eyes dropped again as she said the word stay. I understood her clearly, for once. I could hear that when she said stay, she didn’t mean for this moment in the sunshine, for the afternoon or the week. She meant it the way I wanted to say it to her. Stay always. Stay forever. “And I’m afraid that I’d like to stay with you, much more than I should.”
I thought of all that would entail if, after all, I forced her to do exactly as she described. If I made her stay forever. Every sacrifice she would bear, every loss she would mourn, every stinging regret, every aching, tearless stare.
“Yes.” It was hard to agree with her, even with all that pain fresh in my imagination. I wanted it so much. “That is something to be afraid of, indeed. Wanting to be with me.” Selfish me. “That’s really not in your best interest.”
She scowled at my hand as if she didn’t like my acknowledgment any more than I did.
This was a dangerous path to even hint at. Hades and his pomegranate. How many toxic seeds had I already infected her with? Enough that Alice had seen her pale and grieving in my absence. Though it felt as though I, also, had been corrupted. Hooked. Addicted with no hope of recovery. I couldn’t fully form the picture in my head. Leaving her. How would I survive? Alice had shown me Bella’s anguish in my absence, but what would she see of me in that version of the future, if she looked? I couldn’t believe I would be anything more than a broken shadow, useless, crumpled, empty.
I spoke the thought aloud, but mostly to myself. “I should have left long ago. I should leave now. But I don’t know if I can.”
She still stared at our hands, but her cheeks warmed. “I don’t want you to leave,” she mumbled.
She wanted me to stay with her. I tried to fight the happiness, the surrender it pulled me toward. Was the choice even mine, or was it hers alone now? Would I stay until she told me to go? Her words seemed to echo in the faint breeze. I don’t want you to leave.
“Which is exactly why I should.” Surely the more time we were together, the harder it would grow to be apart. “But don’t worry. I’m essentially a selfish creature. I crave your company too much to do what I should.”
“I’m glad.” She said the words simply, as if this was an obvious thing. As if every girl would be pleased that her favorite monster was too selfish to put her before himself.
My temper flared, anger pointed only at myself. With rigid control, I removed my hand from hers.
“Don’t be! It’s not only your company I crave! Never forget that. Never forget I am more dangerous to you than I am to anyone else.”
She looked at me quizzically. There was no fear anywhere in her eyes now. Her head cocked slightly to the left.
“I don’t think I understand exactly what you mean—by that last part anyway,” she said, her tone analytical. It reminded me of our conversation in the cafeteria, when she had asked about hunting. She sounded as if she were gathering data for a report—one she was vitally interested in, but still, no more than an academic inquiry.
I couldn’t help but smile at her expression. My anger vanished as quickly as it had come. Why waste time with ire when there were so many more pleasant emotions available?
“How do I explain?” I murmured. Naturally she had no idea what I was talking about. I had not been terribly specific when it came to my reaction to her scent. Of course I hadn’t; it was an ugly thing, something I was deeply ashamed of. Not to mention the overt horror of the subject. How to explain, indeed. “And without frightening you again… hmmmm.”
Her fingers uncurled, stretching toward my own. And I couldn’t resist. I placed my hand gently back inside hers. The willingness of her touch, the eager way she wrapped her fingers tightly around mine, helped to calm my nerves. I knew I was about to tell her everything—I could feel the truth churning inside me, ready to erupt. But I had no idea how she would process it, even as generous as she always was toward me. I savored this moment of her acceptance, knowing it could end abruptly.
I sighed. “That’s amazingly pleasant, the warmth.”
She smiled and looked down at our hands, too, fascination in her eyes.
There was no help for it. I was going to have to be obscenely graphic. Dancing around the facts would only confuse her, and she needed to know this. I took a deep breath.
“You know how everyone enjoys different flavors? Some people love chocolate ice cream, others prefer strawberry?”
Ugh. It sounded worse out loud than I would have thought for such a weak beginning. Bella nodded in what looked like polite agreement, but otherwise her expression was smooth. Perhaps it would take a minute to sink in.
“Sorry about the food analogy,” I apologized. “I couldn’t think of another way to explain.”
She grinned—a smile with real humor and affinity; the dimple sprang into existence. Her grin made me feel as though we were in this ludicrous situation together, not as opponents but as partners, working side by side to find a solution. I couldn’t think of anything I would wish for more—besides, of course, the impossible. That I could be human, too. I grinned back at her, but I knew my smile was neither as genuine nor as guiltless as hers.
Her hands tightened around mine, prompting me to continue.
I spoke the words slowly, trying to use the best analogy possible, knowing even as I did that I was failing. “You see, every person smells different, has a different essence. If you locked an alcoholic in a room full of stale beer, he’d gladly drink it. But he could resist, if he wished to… if he were a recovering alcoholic. Now let’s say you placed in that room a glass of hundred-year-old brandy, the rarest, finest cognac—and filled the room with its warm aroma—how do you think he would fare then?”
Was I painting too sympathetic a picture of myself? Describing a tragic victim rather than a true villain?
She stared into my eyes, and while I automatically tried to hear her internal reaction, I got the feeling that she was trying to read mine as well.
I thought through my words and wondered whether the analogy was strong enough.
“Maybe that’s not the right comparison.” I mused. “Maybe it would be too easy to turn down the brandy. Perhaps I should have made our alcoholic a heroin addict instead.”
She smiled, not as widely as before, but with a cheeky twist to her pursed lips. “So what you’re saying is, I’m your brand of heroin?”
I almost laughed with surprise. She was doing what I was always trying to do—make a joke, lighten the mood, deescalate—only she was successful.
“Yes, you are exactly my brand of heroin.”
It was surely a horrific admission, and yet, somehow, I felt relief. It was all her doing, her support and understanding. It made my head spin that she could somehow forgive all of this. How?
But she was back to researcher mode.
“Does that happen often?” she asked, her head tilting curiously to one side.
Even with my unique ability to hear thought, it was hard to make exact comparisons. I didn’t truly feel the sensations of the person I listened to; I only knew their thoughts about those feelings.
How I interpreted thirst wasn’t even exactly the way the rest of my family did. To me, the thirst was a fire burning. Jasper described it as a burning, too, but to him it was like acid rather than flame, chemical and saturating. Rosalie thought of it as profound dryness, a screaming lack rather than an outside force. Emmett tended to evaluate his thirst in the same way; I supposed that was natural, as Rosalie had been the first and most frequent influence in his second life.
So I knew of the times the others had had difficulty resisting, and when they had not been able to resist, but I couldn’t know exactly how potent their temptation had been. I could make an educated guess, however, based on their standard level of control. It was an imperfect technique, but I thought it should answer her curiosity.
This was more horror. I couldn’t look her in the eye while I answered. I stared at the sun instead as it slipped closer to the edge of the trees. Every second gone hurt me more than they ever had—seconds I could never have with her again. I wished we didn’t need to spend these precious seconds on something so distasteful.
“I spoke to my brothers about it.… To Jasper, every one of you is much the same. He’s the most recent to join our family. It’s a struggle for him to abstain at all. He hasn’t had time to grow sensitive to the differences in smell, in flavor—” I flinched, realizing too late where my rambling had taken me. “Sorry,” I added quickly.
She gave an exasperated little huff. “I don’t mind. Please don’t worry about offending me, or frightening me, or whichever. That’s the way you think. I can understand, or I can try to at least. Just explain however you can.”
I tried to settle myself. I needed to accept that through some miracle, Bella was able to know the darkest things about me and not be terror-stricken. Able not to hate me for it. If she was strong enough to hear this, I needed to be strong enough to speak the words. I looked back at the sun, feeling the deadline in its slow descent.
“So…,” I began again slowly, “Jasper wasn’t sure if he’d ever come across someone who was as… appealing as you are to me. Which makes me think not. Emmett has been on the wagon longer, so to speak, and he understood what I meant. He says twice, for him, once stronger than the other.”
I finally met her gaze. Her eyes were narrowed just slightly, her focus intent. “And for you?” she asked.
That was an easy answer, with no guesswork needed. “Never.”
She seemed to consider that word for a long moment. I wished I knew what it meant to her. Then her face relaxed a bit.
“What did Emmett do?” she asked in a conversational tone.
As if this were just some storybook fairy tale I was sharing with her, as if good always won the day and—though the road might get dark at points—nothing truly evil or permanently cruel was allowed to happen.
How could I tell her about these two innocent victims? Humans with hopes and fears, people with families and friends who loved them, imperfect beings who deserved the chance to improve, to try. A man and a woman with names now inscribed on simple headstones in obscure graveyards.
Would she think better or worse of us if she knew that Carlisle had required our attendance at their funerals? Not just these two, but every victim of our mistakes and lapses. Were we a tiny bit less damned because we had listened to those who knew them best describe their shortened lives? Because we bore witness to the tears and cries of pain? The monetary aid we’d anonymously provided to make sure there was no unnecessary physical suffering seemed crass in retrospect. Such a weak recompense.
She gave up waiting for an answer. “I guess I know.”
Her expression was mournful now. Did she condemn Emmett while she gave me so much mercy? His crimes, though much greater than two, were less in total than mine. It pained me that she would think badly of him. Was this—the specificity of two victims—the offense she would balk at?
“Even the strongest of us fall off the wagon, don’t we?” I asked weakly.
Could this be forgiven, too?
Perhaps not.
She winced, flinching away from me. No more than an inch, but it felt like a yard. Her lips pulled into a frown.
“What are you asking? My permission?” The hard edge in her voice sounded like sarcasm.
So here was her limit. I’d thought she’d been extraordinarily kind and merciful, too forgiving, in truth. But actually, she’d simply underestimated my depravity. She must have thought that, for all my warnings, I’d only ever been tempted. That I’d always made the better choice, as I had in Port Angeles, driving away from bloodshed.
I’d told her that same night how, despite our best efforts, my family made mistakes. Had she not realized that I’d been confessing to murder? No wonder she accepted things so easily; she thought I was always strong, that I only had near misses on my conscience. Well, it wasn’t her fault. I’d never explicitly admitted to killing anyone. I’d never given her the body count.
Her expression softened while I spiraled. I tried to think of how to say goodbye in such a way that she would know how much I loved her, but not feel threatened by that love.
“I mean,” she explained suddenly, no edge in her tone, “is there no hope, then?”
In a fraction of a second I replayed our last exchange in my head, and realized how I’d misinterpreted her reaction. When I had begged pardon for past sins, she’d thought I was excusing a future, but imminent, crime. That I meant to—
“No, no!” I had to fight to slow my words down to human speed—I was in such a hurry to have her hear them. “Of course there’s hope! I mean, of course I won’t—”
Kill you.I couldn’t finish the sentence. Those words were agony to me, imagining her gone. My eyes bored into hers, trying to communicate everything I couldn’t say. “It’s different for us,” I promised. “Emmett… these were strangers he happened across. It was a long time ago, and he wasn’t as… practiced, as careful, as he is now.”
She sifted through my words, heard the parts I hadn’t said.
“So if we’d met…” She paused, searching for the right scenario. “Oh, in a dark alley or something…?”
Ah, here was a bitter truth.
“It took everything I had not to jump up in the middle of that class full of children and—”
Kill you.My eyes fell from hers. So much shame.
Still, I couldn’t leave her any flattering illusions about me.
“When you walked past me,” I admitted, “I could have ruined everything Carlisle has built for us, right then and there. If I hadn’t been denying my thirst for the last, well, too many years, I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself.”
I could see the classroom so clearly in my mind. Perfect recall was more a curse than a gift. Did I need to remember with such precision every second of that hour? The fear that had dilated her eyes, the reflection of my monstrous countenance in them? The way her scent had destroyed every good thing about me?
Her expression was far away. Maybe she was remembering, too.
“You must have thought I was possessed.”
She didn’t deny it.
“I couldn’t understand why,” she said in a fragile voice. “How you could hate me so quickly…”
She’d intuited the truth in that moment. She’d understood correctly that I had hated her. Almost as much as I’d desired her.
“To me, it was like you were some kind of demon, summoned straight from my own personal hell to ruin me.” It was painful to relive the emotion of it, to remember seeing her as prey. “The fragrance coming off your skin… I thought it would make me deranged that first day. In that one hour, I thought of a hundred different ways to lure you from the room with me, to get you alone. And I fought them each back, thinking of my family, what I could do to them. I had to run out, to get away before I could speak the words that would make you follow.… You would have come.”
What must it be like for her to know this? How did she align the opposing facts? Me, would-be murderer, and me, would-be lover? What did she think of my confidence, my certainty that she would have followed the murderer?
Her chin lifted a centimeter. “Without a doubt,” she agreed.
Our hands were still carefully intertwined. Hers were nearly as still as mine, aside from the blood pulsing through them. I wondered if she felt the same fear that I did—the fear that they might have to come apart, and she wouldn’t be able to find the courage and forgiveness necessary to bring them together again.
It was a little easier to confess when I wasn’t looking into her eyes.
“And then,” I continued, “as I tried to rearrange my schedule in a pointless attempt to avoid you, you were there—in that close, warm little room, the scent was maddening. I so very nearly took you then. There was only one other frail human there—so easily dealt with.”
I felt the shiver move down her arms to her hands. With every new attempt to explain, I found myself using more and more distressing words. They were the right words, the truthful words, and they were also so ugly.
There was no stopping them now, though, and she sat silent and nearly motionless as they gushed out of me, more confessions mixed up in explanations. I told her about my unsuccessful attempt to run away, and the arrogance that brought me back; how that arrogance had shaped our interactions, and how the frustration of her hidden thoughts had tormented me; how her scent had never stopped being both torture and temptation. My family wove in and out of the story and I wondered whether she could see how they influenced my actions at every turn. I told her how saving her from Tyler’s van had changed my perspective, had forced me to see that she was more to me than just a risk and an irritant.
“In the hospital?” she prompted when my words ran out. She studied my face with compassion, with eager, nonjudgmental desire for the next chapter. I was no longer shocked by her benevolence, but it would always be miraculous to me.
I explained my misgivings, not for saving her, but for exposing myself and consequently my family, so that she would understand my harshness that day in the empty corridor. This led naturally into my family’s varied reactions, and I wondered what she thought of the fact that some of them had wanted to silence her in the most permanent way possible. She didn’t shiver now, or betray any fear. How strange it must be for her, to learn the whole story, the dark now woven through the light she’d known.
I told her how I’d tried to feign total indifference to her after that, to protect us all, and how unsuccessful I’d been.
I wondered privately, not for the first time, where I would be now if I had not acted so instinctively that day in the school parking lot. If—as I’d just grotesquely described to her—I had stood by and let her die in a car accident, then revealed myself to the human witnesses in the most monstrous way possible. My family would have had to flee Forks immediately. I imagined their reactions to that version of events would have been… mostly the opposite. Rosalie and Jasper would not have been angry. A trifle smug, perhaps, but understanding. Carlisle would have been deeply disappointed, but still forgiving. Would Alice have mourned the friend she’d never gotten to meet? Only Esme and Emmett would have reacted in a manner nearly identical to their first reactions: Esme with concern for my well-being, Emmett with a shrug.
I knew that I would have had some small inkling of the disaster that had befallen me. Even that early, after just a few words exchanged, my fascination with her was strong. But could I have guessed the vastness of the tragedy? I thought not. I would have ached, certainly, and then gone about my empty half life never realizing how very much I had lost. Never knowing actual happiness.
It would have been easier to lose her then, I knew. Just as I would never have known joy, I wouldn’t have suffered the depths of pain I now knew to exist.
I contemplated her kind, sweet face, so dear to me now, so much the center of my world. The only thing I wanted to look at for the rest of time.
She gazed back, the same wonder in her eyes.
“And for all that,” I concluded my long confession, “I’d have fared better if I had exposed us all at that first moment, than if now, here—with no witnesses and nothing to stop me—I were to hurt you.”
Her eyes widened, not in fear or surprise. Fascination.
“Why?” she asked.