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.

This explanation would be as difficult as any of the others, with many words I hated to say, but there were also words I very much wanted to speak to her.

“Isabella… Bella.” It was a pleasure just to say her name. It felt like a kind of avowal. This is the name to which I belong.

I carefully loosed one hand and stroked her soft hair, warm from the sun. The joy of the simple touch, the knowledge that I was free to reach out to her this way, was overwhelming. I grasped her hands again.

“I couldn’t live with myself if I ever hurt you. You don’t know how it’s tortured me.” I hated to look away from her sympathetic expression, but it was too hard to see her other face, the one from Alice’s vision, in the same frame. “The thought of you, still, white, cold… to never see you blush scarlet again, to never see that flash of intuition in your eyes when you see through my pretenses… it would be unendurable.” That word did nothing to convey the anguish behind the thought. But I was through the ugly part now, and I could say the things I’d wanted to tell her for so long. I met her eyes again, rejoicing in this confession.

“You are the most important thing to me now. The most important thing to me ever.”

Just as the word unendurable was not enough, so were these words weak echoes of the feelings they tried to describe. I hoped she could see in my eyes exactly how inadequate they were. She was always better at knowing my mind than I was at reading hers.

She held my exultant gaze for just a moment, pink creeping into her cheeks, but then her eyes fell to our hands. I thrilled to the beauty of her complexion, seeing only the loveliness and nothing else.

“You already know how I feel, of course,” she said, her voice not much louder than a whisper. “I’m here… which, roughly translated, means I would rather die than stay away from you.”

I wouldn’t have thought it possible to feel such euphoria and such regret at the same time. She wanted me—bliss. She was risking her very life for me—unacceptable.

She scowled, her eyes still lowered. “I’m an idiot.”

I laughed at her conclusion. From a certain angle, she had a point. Any species that ran so headlong into the arms of its most dangerous predator wouldn’t survive long. It was a good thing she was an outlier.

“You are an idiot,” I teased gently. And I would never stop being grateful for it.

Bella glanced up with a puckish grin, and we both laughed together. It was such a relief to laugh after my grueling revelations that my laugh shifted from humor to sheer joy. I was sure she felt the same. We were utterly in sync for one perfect moment.

Though it was impossible, we belonged together. Everything was wrong with this picture—a killer and an innocent leaning close, each basking in the presence of the other, totally at peace. It was as if we’d somehow ascended to a better world, where such impossibilities could exist.

I was suddenly reminded of a painting I’d seen many years ago.

Whenever we canvassed the countryside for likely towns in which to settle, Carlisle would frequently make side trips to duck into old parish churches. He seemed unable to stop himself. Something about the simple wooden structures, usually dark for lack of good windows, the floorboards and pew backs all worn smooth and smelling of layer upon layer of human touches, brought him a reflective kind of calm. Thoughts of his father and his childhood were brought to the fore, but the violent end seemed far away in those moments. He remembered only pleasant things.

On one such diversion, we found an old Quaker meetinghouse around thirty miles north of Philadelphia. It was a small building, no bigger than a farmhouse, with a stone exterior and a very Spartan arrangement inside. So plain were the knotty floors and straight-backed pews that I was almost shocked to see an adornment on the far wall. Carlisle’s interest was piqued as well, and we both examined it.

It was quite a small painting, no more than fifteen inches square. I guessed that it was older than the stone church that housed it. The artist was clearly untrained, his style amateurish. And yet, there was something in the simple, poorly wrought image that managed to convey an emotion. There was a warm vulnerability to the animals depicted, an aching kind of tenderness. I was strangely moved by this kinder universe the artist had envisioned.

A better world, Carlisle had thought to himself.

The sort of world where this present moment could exist, I thought now, and felt that aching tenderness again.

“And so the lion fell in love with the lamb…,” I whispered.

Her eyes were so open and accessible for one second, and then she flushed again and looked down. She steadied her breath for a moment, and her impish smile returned.

“What a stupid lamb,” she teased, stretching out the joke.

“What a sick, masochistic lion,” I countered.

I wasn’t sure that was a true statement, though. In one light, yes, I was deliberately causing myself unnecessary pain and enjoying it, the textbook definition of masochism. But the pain was the price… and the reward was so much more than the pain. Really, the price was negligible. I would pay it ten times over.

“Why…?” she murmured, hesitant.

I smiled at her, eager to know her mind. “Yes?”

A hint of the forehead crease began to form. “Tell me why you ran from me before.”

Her words hit me physically, lodging in the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t understand why she would want to rehash a moment so loathsome.

“You know why.”

She shook her head, and her brows pulled down. “No, I mean, exactly what did I do wrong?” She spoke intently, serious now. “I’ll have to be on my guard, you see, so I better start learning what I shouldn’t do. This, for example”—she stroked her fingertips slowly up the back of my hand to my wrist, leaving a trail of painless fire—“seems to be all right.”

How like her to take the responsibility on herself.

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Bella. It was my fault.”

Her chin lifted. It would have implied stubbornness if her eyes were not so pleading.

“But I want to help, if I can, to not make this harder for you.”

My first instinct was to continue insisting that this was my problem and not something for her to worry about. Yet I knew that she was simply trying to understand me, with all my strange and monstrous quirks. She would be happier if I just answered her question as clearly as possible.

How to explain bloodlust, though? So shameful.

“Well… it was just how close you were. Most humans instinctively shy away from us, are repelled by our alienness.… I wasn’t expecting you to come so close. And the smell of your throat—”

I broke off, hoping I had not disgusted her.

Her mouth was pursed as if fighting off a smile.

“Okay, then, no throat exposure.” She made a show of tucking her chin against her right collarbone.

It was clearly her intention to ease my anxiety, and it worked. I had to laugh at her expression.

“No, really,” I reassured her. “It was more the surprise than anything else.”

I lifted my hand again and rested it lightly against her neck, feeling the incredible softness of her skin there, the warm give of it. My thumb grazed her jawline. The electric pulse that only she could awaken started to thrum through my body.

“You see,” I whispered. “Perfectly fine.”

Her pulse began to race as well. I could feel it under my hand and hear her galloping heart. Pink flooded her face from her chin to her hairline. The sound and sight of her response, rather than awakening my thirst again, seemed only to speed the rush of my more human reactions. I couldn’t remember ever feeling this alive; I doubted I ever had, even when I’d been alive.

“The blush on your cheeks is lovely,” I murmured.

I gently extracted my left hand from hers, and arranged it so that I was cradling her face between my palms. Her pupils dilated and her heartbeat increased.