I FELT THE SUN, WARM AGAINST MY SKIN, AND I WAS GLAD I COULDN’T see that, either. I didn’t want to look at myself now. For the longest half second I’d ever lived through, everything was silent. And then Bella screamed.
“Edward!”My eyes flashed open, and I fully expected to see her running away from all I had just revealed myself to be.But she was running right at me in a collision course, her mouth open in distress. Her hands were half-extended toward me, and she tripped and stumbled her way through the long grass. Her expression wasn’t frightened, but it was desperate. I didn’t understand what she was doing.I couldn’t let her crash into me, whatever she was intending. I needed her to keep her distance. I raised my hand again, palm forward.She faltered, then wobbled in place for a moment, exuding anxiety.As I stared into her eyes, saw my reflection there, I thought perhaps I understood. Mirrored in her eyes, what I resembled most was a man on fire. Though I’d debunked her myths, she must have held on to them subconsciously.Because she was worried. Frightened for the monster rather than of it.She took a step toward me, and then hesitated when I moved a half step back.“Does that hurt you?” she whispered.Yes, I’d been right. She wasn’t afraid for herself, not even now.“No,” I whispered back.She stepped another foot closer, careful now. I let my hand fall.She still wanted to be closer to me.Her expression shifted as she approached. Her head cocked to the side, and her eyes first narrowed, then grew huge. Even with this much space between us, I could see the effects of the light refracting off my skin shining prism-like against her own. She moved another step and then another, keeping the same distance away as she slowly circled around me. I stayed completely motionless, feeling her eyes touch my skin as she moved out of my sight. Her breath came more quickly than usual, her heart pumped faster.She reappeared on my right, and now there was a tiny smile beginning to form around the edges of her lips as she completed her circle and faced me again.How could she smile?She walked closer, stopping when she was only ten inches away. Her hand was raised, curled close to her chest, as if she wanted to reach out and touch me but was afraid to. The sunlight shattered off my arm and whirled against her face.“Edward,” she breathed. There was wonder in her voice.“Are you frightened now?” I asked quietly.It was as if my question was totally unexpected, as if it shocked her. “No.”I stared into her eyes, unable to stop myself from fruitlessly trying—again—to hear her.She reached toward me, very slowly, watching my face. I thought perhaps she was waiting for me to tell her to stop. I didn’t. Her warm fingers grazed the back of my wrist. She stared intently at the light that danced from my skin to hers.“What are you thinking?” I whispered. In this moment, the constant mystery was once again acutely painful.She shook her head slightly, and seemed to struggle for the words. “I am…” She stared up into my eyes. “I didn’t know.…” She took a deep breath. “I’ve never seen anything more beautiful—never imagined something so beautiful could exist.”I stared back at her in shock.My skin was blazing with the most flagrant symptom of my disease. In the sun, I was less human than at any other time. And she thought I was… beautiful.My hand lifted automatically, turning to take hers, but I forced myself to make it drop, not to touch her.“It’s very strange, though,” I said. Surely she could understand that this was part of the horror.“Amazing,” she corrected.“You aren’t repulsed by my flagrant lack of humanity?”Though I was fairly sure now what her answer would be, it was still astonishing to me.She half smiled. “Not repulsed.”“You should be.”Her smile widened. “I’m feeling like humanity is pretty overrated.”Carefully, I pulled my arm out from underneath her warm fingertips, hiding it behind my back. She valued humanity so lightly. She didn’t realize the depths of what its loss would mean.Bella took another half step forward, her body so close that its warmth became more pronounced, more present than the sun’s. She lifted her face toward mine, and the light gilded her throat, the play of shadows emphasizing the coursing of her blood through the artery just behind the corner of her jaw.My body reacted instinctively—venom welling, muscles coiling, thoughts scattering.How quickly it surfaced! We’d been in this arena of visions mere seconds.I stopped breathing and took a long step away from her, raising my hand again in warning.She didn’t try to follow. “I’m… sorry,” she whispered, the sound of the words lilting up, turning them into a question. She didn’t know what she was apologizing for.I carefully loosed my lungs, and took a controlled breath. Her scent was no more painful than usual—not overwhelming, the way I was half-afraid I would suddenly find it.“I need some time,” I explained.“Okay.” Still a whisper.I moved around her, slow deliberate steps, and walked to the center of the meadow. I sat down in a patch of low grass, and locked my muscles in place, as I had done before. I breathed carefully in and out, listening as her hesitant footsteps crossed the same distance, tasting her fragrance as she sat down next to me.“Is this all right?” she asked, uncertain.I nodded. “Just… let me concentrate.”Her eyes were huge with confusion, with concern. I didn’t want to explain. I closed my own.Not in cowardice, I told myself. Or not just in cowardice. I did need to concentrate.I focused on her scent, on the sound of the blood gushing through the chambers of her heart. Only my lungs were allowed motion. Every other part of me I imprisoned into rigid immobility.Bella’s heart, I reminded myself as my involuntary systems reacted to the stimuli. Bella’s life.I was always so careful to not think about her blood—the scent I couldn’t avoid, but the fluid, the movement, the pulse, the hot liquidity of it—these were things I could not dwell on. But now I let it fill my mind, invade my system, attack my controls. The gushing and throbbing of it, the pounding and sloshing. The surge through the biggest arteries, the ripple through the smallest vein. The heat of it, heat that washed in waves across my exposed skin despite the distance between us. The taste of it burning on my tongue and aching in my throat.I held myself captive, and observed. A small part of my brain was able to stay detached, to think through the onslaught. With that small bit of rationality, I examined my every reaction minutely. I calculated the amount of strength needed to curb each response, and weighed the strength I possessed against that tally. It was a near calculation, but I believed that my will was stronger than my bestial nature. Slightly.Was this Alice’s knot? It didn’t feel… complete.All the while, Bella sat almost as still as I was, thinking her private thoughts. Could she imagine any part of the turmoil inside my mind? How did she explain this strange, silent standoff to herself? Whatever she thought of it, her body was calm.Time seemed to slow with her pulse. The sound of the birds in distant trees turned sleepy. The cascade of the little stream grew somehow more languid. My body relaxed, and even my mouth stopped watering eventually.Two thousand three hundred sixty-four of her heartbeats later, I felt more in control than I had in many days. Facing things was the key, as Alice had predicted. Was I ready? How could I be sure? How would I ever be sure?And how did I break this long hush I’d imposed? It was starting to feel awkward to me; it must have felt so to her for a while.I unlocked my pose and lay back in the grass, one hand casually behind my head. Feigning the physical sign of emotion was old habit. Perhaps if I portrayed relaxation, she would believe it.She only sighed quietly.I waited to see if she would speak, but she sat silent as before, thinking whatever it was she might be thinking, alone in this remote place with a monster who reflected the sun like a million prisms. I could feel her eyes on my skin, but I didn’t imagine her revolted anymore. The imaginary weight of her gaze—now that I knew it was admiring, that she found me beautiful regardless of everything—brought back that electric current I’d felt with her in the dark, an imitation of life running through my veins.I let myself get lost in the rhythms of her body, let the sound and the warmth and the smell comingle, and I found that I could still master my inhuman desires, even while the phantom current moved under my skin.This took most of my attention, though. And inevitably, this quiet waiting period would end. She would have so many questions—much more pointed now, I imagined. I owed her a thousand different explanations. Could I handle everything at once?I decided to try to juggle a few more tasks while still tuning in to the flow and ebb of her blood. I would see if the distraction was too much.First, I gathered information. I triangulated the exact location of the birds I could hear, and then by their calls identified each one’s genus and species. I analyzed the irregular splash that revealed life in the stream, and after equating the water displaced with the size of the fish, deduced the most likely variety. Categorized the nearby insects—unlike the more developed species, insects ignored my kind as they would a stone—by the speed of their wing movements and the elevation of their flight, or the tiny clicking sounds of their legs against the soil.As I continued to classify, I added calculation. If there were currently 4,913 insects in the area of the meadow, which was roughly 11,035 square feet, how many insects on average would exist in the 1,400 square miles of the Olympic National Park? What if insect populations dropped 1 percent for each 10 feet of elevation? I brought up in my head a topographic map of the park and started computing the numbers.Concurrently, I thought through the songs I’d heard most rarely in my century of life—nothing common that I’d heard played more than once. Tunes I’d heard walking past the open door of a bar, peculiar family lullabies lisped by children in their cradles as I ran by in the night, discarded attempts by the music students writing their theater projects in the buildings adjacent to my college classroom. I mouthed through the verses quickly, noting all the reasons each was doomed to failure.Her blood still pulsed, her heat still warmed, and I still burned. But I could keep my hold on myself. My grip did not loosen. I was in control. Just enough.“Did you say something?” she whispered.“Just… singing to myself,” I admitted. I didn’t know how to explain what I was doing more clearly, and she didn’t pursue the question further.I could feel that the silence was coming to an end, and this did not frighten me. I was growing almost comfortable with the situation, feeling strong and in control. Perhaps I was through the knot after all. Perhaps we were safe on the other side and all of Alice’s hopeful visions were now on their way to becoming real.When the change in her breathing telegraphed a new direction to her thoughts, I was intrigued rather than worried. I expected a question, but instead I heard the grass shift around her as she leaned toward me, and the sound of the pulse in her hand moved closer.One soft, warm fingertip traced slowly across the back of my hand. It was a very gentle touch, but the response in my skin was electric. A different kind of burning than that in my throat, and even more distracting. My calculations and audio recall stuttered and stalled, and she had all my attention, even as her heart throbbed wetly just a foot from my ear.I opened my eyes, eager to see her expression and guess at her thoughts. I was not disappointed. Her eyes were bright with wonder again, the corners of her lips turned up. She met my gaze and her smile grew more pronounced. I echoed it.“I don’t scare you?” I hadn’t scared her away. She wanted to be here, with me.Her tone was teasing when she answered. “No more than usual.”She leaned closer, and laid all of her hand against my forearm, slowly stroking down toward my wrist. Her skin felt fever-hot against mine, and though a tremor quivered through her fingers, there was no fear in that touch. My eyelids slipped closed again as I tried to contain my reaction. The electric current felt like an earthquake rocking through my core.“Do you mind?” she asked, and her hand paused in its progress.“No,” I responded quickly. And then, because I wanted her to know some little bit of my experience, I continued, “You can’t imagine how that feels.” I couldn’t have imagined it before this moment. It was beyond any pleasure I’d ever felt.Her fingers traced back up to the inside of my elbow, outlining patterns there. She shifted her weight and her other hand reached for mine. I felt her tug lightly and realized she wished to turn my hand over. As soon as I complied, though, both her hands froze and she gasped quietly.I glanced up, swiftly realizing my mistake—I’d moved like a vampire rather than a human.“Sorry,” I muttered. But, as our eyes met, I could already tell I’d done no real harm. She’d recovered from the surprise without the smile ever leaving her face. “It’s too easy to be myself with you,” I explained, and then I let my eyelids close again, so I could focus everything on the feel of her skin against mine.I felt the pressure as she started to try to lift my hand. I moved my hand in concert with her motion, knowing that it would take quite a bit of effort for her to heft even just my hand without my help. I was a little heavier than I looked.She held my hand close to her face. Warm breath seared against my palm. I helped her angle my hand this way and that as the pressure of her fingers indicated. I opened my eyes to see her staring intently, rainbow sparks dancing across her face as the light moved back and forth across my skin. The furrow was there again between her eyes. What question troubled her now?“Tell me what you’re thinking.” I said the words gently, but could she hear that I was begging? “It’s still so strange for me, not knowing.”Her mouth pursed just a little, and her left eyebrow rose a fraction of an inch. “You know, the rest of us feel that way all the time.”The rest of us. The vast family of humanity that did not include me. Her people, her kind.“It’s a hard life.” The words did not sound like the joke I meant them to be. “But you didn’t tell me.”She answered slowly. “I was wishing I could know what you were thinking.…