“You spoke so clearly,” I continued, my voice just a breath. “At first I thought you’d woken. But you rolled over restlessly and mumbled my name once more, and sighed. The feeling that coursed through me then was unnerving, staggering. And I knew I couldn’t ignore you any longer.”
Her heart beat more quickly.
“But jealousy… it’s a strange thing. So much more powerful than I would have thought. And irrational! Just now, when Charlie asked you about that vile Mike Newton—”
I didn’t finish, remembering that I should probably not reveal exactly how strong my feelings about the hapless boy had become.
“I should have known you’d be listening,” she muttered.
It wasn’t really an option to not hear anything that happened so close. “Of course.”
“That made you feel jealous, though, really?” Her tone changed from annoyance to disbelief.
“I’m new at this,” I reminded her. “You’re resurrecting the human in me, and everything feels stronger because it’s fresh.”
Unexpectedly, a smug little smile puckered her lips. “But honestly, for that to bother you, after I have to hear that Rosalie—Rosalie, the incarnation of pure beauty, Rosalie—was meant for you. Emmett or no Emmett, how can I compete with that?”
She said the words as though she was playing her trump card. As if jealousy were rational enough to weigh out the physical attractiveness of the third parties, and then be felt in direct proportion.
“There’s no competition,” I promised her.
Gently and slowly, I used her imprisoned wrists to pull her closer to me, until her head rested just under my chin. Her cheek seared against my skin.
“I know there’s no competition. That’s the problem,” she grumbled.
“Of course Rosalie is beautiful in her way.…” It wasn’t as if I could deny Rosalie’s exquisiteness, but it was an unnatural, heightened thing—sometimes more disturbing than attracting. “But even if she wasn’t like a sister to me, even if Emmett didn’t belong with her, she could never have one tenth, no, one hundredth of the attraction you hold for me. For almost ninety years I’ve walked among my kind, and yours… all the time thinking I was complete in myself, not realizing what I was seeking. And not finding anything… because you weren’t alive yet.”
I felt her breath against my skin as she whispered her response. “It hardly seems fair. I haven’t had to wait at all. Why should I get off so easily?”
No one had ever had more sympathy for the devil. Still, I wondered that she could count her own sacrifices so lightly.
“You’re right. I should make this harder for you, definitely.” I gathered both of her wrists into my left hand so that my right was free, then brushed lightly down the length of her dripping hair. Its texture, slippery like this, wasn’t so far from the seaweed I’d imagined before. I twisted a strand between my fingers as I listed her forfeitures. “You only have to risk your life every second you spend with me, that’s surely not much. You only have to turn your back on nature, on humanity… what’s that worth?”
“Very little,” she breathed into my skin. “I don’t feel deprived of anything.”
Perhaps it was not surprising that Rosalie’s face flickered behind my eyelids. In the last seven decades, she had taught me a thousand different aspects of humanity to mourn.
Something in my voice had her tugging against my hold, pulling back from my chest as she tried to see my face. I was about to free her when something outside our intense moment intruded.
Doubt. Awkwardness. Worry. The words were no clearer than usual, and there wasn’t much time for conjecture.
“What—?” she began, but before she could voice her question, I was on the move. She caught herself against the mattress as I darted to the dark corner where I habitually spent my nights.
“Lie down,” I whispered just loud enough for her to hear the urgency in my voice. I was surprised that she hadn’t noticed Charlie’s footsteps coming up the stairs. To be fair, it sounded like he was trying to be furtive.
She reacted immediately, diving under her quilt and curling into a ball. Charlie’s hand was already turning the knob. As the door cracked open, Bella took a deep breath and then slowly exhaled. The motion was overdone, slightly theatrical.
Huh, was the only reaction I could read from Charlie. As Bella performed her next sleeping breath, Charlie eased the door closed. I waited until his own bedroom door was closed and I’d heard the creak of mattress springs before I returned to Bella.
She must have been waiting for the all clear, still curled in a rigid ball, still amplifying her slow and even breathing. If Charlie had really watched her for a few seconds, he probably would have known she was pretending. Bella wasn’t particularly good at deception.
Following these strange new instincts—they’d yet to lead me astray—I lowered myself onto the bed beside her and then slid under her quilt and put my arm around her.
“You are a terrible actress,” I said conversationally, as if it were a perfectly routine thing for me to lie with her this way. “I’d say that career path is out for you.”
Her heart drummed loudly again, but her voice was as casual as mine. “Darn it.”
She nestled herself against me, closer than before, then lay still and sighed with contentment. I wondered if she would fall asleep like this, in my arms. It seemed unlikely, given the pace of her heart, but she didn’t speak again.
Unbidden, the notes of her song came into my head. I started to hum along almost automatically. The music seemed to belong here, in the place where it had been inspired. Bella didn’t comment, but her body tensed, as if she were listening carefully.
I paused to ask, “Should I sing you to sleep?”
I was surprised when she laughed quietly. “Right, like I could sleep with you here!”
“You do it all the time.”
Her tone hardened. “But I didn’t know you were here.”
I was glad that she still seemed upset by my transgressions. I knew I deserved some kind of punishment, that she should hold me accountable. However, she didn’t move away from me. I couldn’t imagine a punishment that would carry any weight while she allowed me to hold her.
“So if you don’t want to sleep…?” I asked. Was this like food? Was I selfishly keeping her from something vital? But how could I leave when she wanted me to stay?
“If I don’t want to sleep…?” she echoed.
“What do you want to do then?” Would she tell me if she was exhausted? Or would she pretend she was fine?
It took her a long moment to answer. “I’m not sure,” she said at last, and I couldn’t help but wonder what options she had run through in her deliberations. I’d been very forward in joining her like this, but it felt oddly natural. Did it feel that way to her? Or just presumptuous? Did it make her, like me, imagine more? Is that what she’d thought through for so long?
“Tell me when you decide.” I would make no suggestions. I would let her lead.
Easier said than done. In her silence, I found myself leaning closer to her, letting my face brush along the length of her jaw, breathing in both her scent and her warmth. The fire was such a part of me now that it was easy to notice other things. I’d always thought of her scent with fear and desire. But there were so many layers to its beauty that I hadn’t been able to appreciate before.
“I thought you were desensitized,” she murmured.
I returned to my earlier metaphor to explain. “Just because I’m resisting the wine doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the bouquet. You have a very floral smell, like lavender… or freesia.” I laughed once. “It’s mouthwatering.”
She swallowed loudly, then spoke with an assumed nonchalance. “Yeah, it’s an off day when I don’t get somebody telling me how edible I smell.”
I laughed again, and then sighed. I would always regret this part of my response to her, but it wasn’t such a weighty thing anymore. One small thorn, so irrelevant in the face of the rose’s beauty.
“I’ve decided what I want to do,” she announced.
I waited eagerly.
“I want to hear more about you.”
Well, not as interesting for me, but she could have whatever she wanted. “Ask me anything.”
“Why do you do it?” she breathed, quieter than before. “I still don’t understand how you can work so hard to resist what you… are. Please don’t misunderstand, of course I’m glad that you do. I just don’t see why you would bother in the first place.”
I was glad she asked this. It was important. I tried to find the best way to explain, but my words faltered in a few places. “That’s a good question, and you are not the first one to ask it. The others—the majority of our kind who are quite content with our lot—they, too, wonder at how we live. But you see, just because we’ve been… dealt a certain hand… it doesn’t mean that we can’t choose to rise above—to conquer the boundaries of a destiny that none of us wanted. To try to retain whatever essential humanity we can.”
Was that clear? Would she understand what I meant?
She didn’t comment, and she didn’t move.
“Did you fall asleep?” I whispered so quietly that it couldn’t possibly wake her if that were the case.
“No,” she said quickly. And added nothing more.
It was frustrating and hilarious how much nothing had changed despite everything changing. I would always be driven frantic by her silent thoughts.
“Is that all you were curious about?” I encouraged.
“Not quite.” I couldn’t see her face, but I knew she was smiling.
“What else do you want to know?”
“Why can you read minds—why only you?” she demanded. “And Alice, seeing the future… why does that happen?”
I wished I had a better answer. I shrugged and admitted, “We don’t really know. Carlisle has a theory—he believes that we all bring something of our strongest human traits with us into the next life, where they are intensified, like our minds, and our senses. He thinks that I must have already been very sensitive to the thoughts of those around me. And that Alice had some precognition, wherever she was.”
“What did he bring into the next life, and the others?”
This was an easier answer; I’d considered it many times before. “Carlisle brought his compassion. Esme brought her ability to love passionately. Emmett brought his strength, Rosalie…” Well, Rose had brought her beauty. But that seemed a less than tactful answer in light of our earlier discussion. If Bella’s jealousy was even a tiny bit as painful as my own, I didn’t want her to have a reason to feel it again. “Her… tenacity. Or you could call it pigheadedness.” Surely this was true as well. I laughed quietly, imagining how she must have been as a human girl. “Jasper is very interesting. He was quite charismatic in his first life, able to influence those around him to see things his way. Now he is able to manipulate the emotions of those around him—calm down a room of angry people, for example, or excite a lethargic crowd, conversely. It’s a very subtle gift.”
She was quiet again. I wasn’t surprised; it was a lot to process.
“So where did it all start?” she asked at last. “I mean, Carlisle changed you, and then someone must have changed him, and so on.…”
Another answer that was only conjecture. “Well, where did you come from? Evolution? Creation? Couldn’t we have evolved in the same way as other species, predator and prey? Or…” Though I didn’t always agree with Carlisle’s unshakable faith, his answers were just as likely as any others. Sometimes, perhaps because his mind was so firm, they felt most likely. “If you don’t believe that all this world could have just happened on its own, which is hard for me to accept myself, is it so hard to believe that the same force that created the delicate angelfish with the shark, the baby seal and the killer whale, could create both our kinds together?”
“Let me get this straight.” She was trying to sound as serious as before, but I could hear the joke coming. “I’m the baby seal, right?”
“Right,” I agreed, and then laughed. I closed my eyes and pressed my lips to the top of her head.
She twitched, shifted her weight. Was she uncomfortable? I prepared to free her, but she settled again, snug against my chest. Her breath seemed just slightly deeper than before. Her heart had relaxed into a steady rhythm.
“Are you ready to sleep?” I murmured. “Or do you have any more questions?”
“Only a million or two.”
“We have tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.…” It had been a powerful thought in the kitchen, the idea of many more evenings spent in her company. It was more powerful now, curled up together in the dark. If she wished it, there was actually very little time we needed to be separated. Less time apart than together. Did she feel the shattering joy, too?
“Are you sure you won’t vanish in the morning? You are mythical, after all.” She asked her question with no humor at all. It sounded like a serious concern.
“I won’t leave you,” I promised. It felt like a vow, a covenant. I hoped she could hear that.
“One more, then, tonight…”
I waited for her question, but she didn’t continue. I was mystified when her heart started to move jaggedly again. The air around me heated with the pulse of her blood.
“What is it?”
“No, forget it,” she said quickly. “I changed my mind.”
“Bella, you can ask me anything.”
She said nothing. I couldn’t imagine anything she would be frightened to ask at this point. Her heart sped again, and I groaned aloud. “I keep thinking it will get less frustrating, not hearing your thoughts. But it just gets worse and worse.”
“I’m glad you can’t read my thoughts,” she countered at once. “It’s bad enough that you eavesdrop on my sleep-talking.”
Strange that this would be her one objection to my stalking, but I was too eager for her missing question, the one that made her heart race, to worry about that now.
“Please?” I pleaded.
Her hair brushed back and forth across my chest as she shook her head.
“If you don’t tell me, I’ll just assume it’s something much worse than it is.” I waited, but that bluff didn’t move her. In truth, I had no ideas, either trivial or dark. I tried begging again. “Please?”
“Well…” She hesitated, but at least she was talking. Or not. Silence fell again.
“Yes?” I prompted.
“You said… that Rosalie and Emmett will get married soon.…” She trailed off, leaving me baffled again at her train of thought. Did she want an invitation?
“Is that… marriage… the same as it is for humans?”
Even as quickly as my brain worked, it took me a second to follow. It should have been more obvious. I needed to keep firmly in mind that nine times out of ten—in my experience with her, at least—whenever her heart started to race, it had nothing to do with fear. It was usually attraction. And should this train of thought be in any way shocking when I had just recently climbed into her bed with her?
I laughed at my own obtuseness. “Is that what you’re getting at?”
My question sounded light, but I could not help responding to the subject at hand. The electricity rioted through my body, and I had to resist the urge to reposition myself so that my lips could find hers. That wasn’t the right answer. It couldn’t be. Because there was an obvious second question following the first.
“Yes, I suppose it is much the same,” I answered. “I told you, most of those human desires are there, just hidden behind more powerful desires.”
“Oh.”
She didn’t continue. Maybe I was wrong.
“Was there a purpose behind your curiosity?”
She sighed. “Well, I did wonder… about you and me… someday.…”
No, not wrong. The sudden grief felt like a weight pressing against my chest. How I wished I had a different answer to give her.
“I don’t think that… that…”—I avoided the word sex because she did—“would be possible for us.”
“Because it would be too hard for you?” she whispered. “If I were that… close?”
It was hard not to imagine.… I refocused.
“That’s certainly a problem,” I said slowly. “But that’s not what I was thinking of. It’s just that you are so soft, so fragile. I have to mind my actions every moment that we’re together so that I don’t hurt you. I could kill you quite easily, Bella, simply by accident.” I reached up carefully to lay my hand against her cheek. “If I was too hasty… if for one second I wasn’t paying enough attention, I could reach out, meaning to touch your face, and crush your skull by mistake. You don’t realize how incredibly breakable you are. I can never, never afford to lose any kind of control when I’m with you.”
Admitting to this obstacle seemed less shameful than confessing my thirst. After all, my strength was simply part of what I was. Well, my thirst was, too, but the intensity of it around her was unnatural. That aspect of myself felt indefensible, disgraceful. Even now that it was under control, I was mortified it existed.
She thought over my answer for a long time. Perhaps my wording was more frightening than I’d intended. But how would she understand if I edited the truth too much?
“Are you scared?” I asked.
Another pause.
“No,” she said slowly. “I’m fine.”
We were silent for another pensive moment. I wasn’t thrilled with where my thoughts went in her silence. Even though she’d told me so much about her own past that didn’t align… even though she’d introduced the topic with such bashfulness… I couldn’t help but wonder. And I knew well enough by now that if I ignored my intrusive curiosity, it would only begin to fester.
I tried to sound indifferent. “I’m curious now, though.… Have you ever…?”
“Of course not,” she answered at once, not angrily, but incredulously. “I told you I’ve never felt like this about anyone before, not even close.”
Did she think I hadn’t been paying attention?
“I know,” I assured her. “It’s just that I know other people’s thoughts. I know love and lust don’t always keep the same company.”
“They do for me. Now, anyway, that they exist for me at all.”
Her use of the plural was a kind of acknowledgment. I knew that she loved me. The fact that we both also lusted was definitely going to complicate matters.
I decided to answer her next question before she could ask it. “That’s nice. We have that one thing in common, at least.”
She sighed, but it sounded like a pleased sigh.
“Your human instincts…,” she asked slowly. “Well, do you find me attractive, in that way, at all?”
I laughed out loud at that. Was there any way in which I did not want her? Mind and soul and body, body no less than either of the others. I smoothed her hair against her neck.
“I may not be a human, but I am a man.”
She yawned, and I suppressed another laugh. “I’ve answered your questions, now you should sleep.”
“I’m not sure if I can.”
“Do you want me to leave?” I suggested, though I was extremely loath to do so.
“No!” In her outrage, her answer was much louder than the whispers we’d been using all night. No harm done; Charlie’s snores didn’t even stutter.
I laughed again, then pulled myself closer to her. With my lips against her ear, I began humming her song again, so quietly it was little more than a breath.
I could feel the difference when she crossed over into unconsciousness. All the alertness escaped her muscles, until they were loose and languid. Her breathing slowed and her hands curled together against her chest, almost as if in prayer.
I felt no desire to move. Ever again, in fact. I knew eventually she would begin to toss, and I would have to get out of her way so as not to wake her, but for now, nothing could be more perfect. I was still unused to this joy, and it didn’t really feel like something a person could get used to. I would embrace it for as long as that was possible, and know that no matter what happened in the future, just having this one paradisiacal day was worth any pain that might follow.
“Edward,” Bella whispered in her sleep. “Edward… I love you.”