Chapter Text
It seemed criminal that a couple of mere hours should feel so unbearably arduous.
I already knew how it felt to exist in a virtually frozen form for nearly a century. I knew how it felt to imagine countless centuries of the same static future stretching out before me. From the beginning of my second life in 1918, I knew exactly how everything about my self-perception was recontextualized by my access to a limitless supply of time.
With that mindset, it should feel like nothing to allow a few meaningless hours to slip by me each afternoon. Why should I be concerned with hours when I could count on millenia ahead of me?
If only. Though my body remained an unchanging mechanism of stone, my heart was no longer so stolid. It was just as ephemeral as the warm and soft human girl who had captured it from me one year ago, whose sweet blood and silent mind had drawn me into the wonders of loving her until my future and her future were inexorably tangled together.
Isabella Swan did not have an eternal supply of time. Not yet. As long as she was mortal, so would I be susceptible to the confines of mortality.
Each passing hour of her life – of our lives – was hugely significant precisely because they were so numbered. Grains of sand in an hourglass. Finite, even as the number fluctuated due to my own poor decision-making.
At my most optimistic, I once thought I would have a few years of happiness by her side. At my worst, in the blackest moments of my despair, I believed that time had already run out.
I shuddered at the memory of that despair. If I had somehow made it through those long hours of torture – of believing she was dead, and that I would soon follow (including a few disorienting seconds where I convinced myself that I was already dead) – surely I could survive a few hours of separation from her now, when I knew she was perfectly safe in her home, her heart still beating.
Regardless, this brief daily period of separation was my own fault. It was a matter of discipline put in place by Bella’s father, prompted by her recent three-day disappearance, when she had abruptly decided to race to Italy in order to stop me from getting myself killed. Another consequence of my mistakes, another grain of sand lost to time.
She’s doing fine, Edward.
I looked to the internal sound of my sister’s confident affirmation. Alice and Jasper were both sitting across from me on the couch in our living room, gazing at me with commiseration. Jasper, thanks to his peculiar gift of sensing and influencing emotions, had felt the full force of my agony in the split-second when I had remembered it. He had prompted Alice to assuage my fears.
Since my return, everyone in my family had taken it upon themselves to keep a close eye on my unstable emotional state. It was perfectly understandable behavior for them, given the hell I had put everyone through in recent months, but I couldn’t help feeling slightly smothered by it. I was always working hard to be better; I was not going to fall back into that hellish despair.
Still, I was grateful that my own gift of reading thoughts granted me direct access to Alice’s prophetic visions. She showed me the proof of her assertion in her mind, and of course there was nothing to cause me any worry. In only a few moments, Bella would still be safe and sound, seated at the dinner table with her father, her nose stuck in her disintegrating copy of Wuthering Heights.
My mouth twitched into a smile. Perhaps I was not the biggest fan of Bella’s preferred reading material, but at least I did not have to worry that this pastime would put her in any more danger than usual.
Of course, she was never fully free from danger. Despite her perfect innocence, it seemed Bella would constantly attract all kinds of danger to herself, unconsciously and unforgivingly. If my presence in her life was not enough to prove that fact alone, then there were certainly plenty of other dangerous forces to add to the tally.
“Another homicide,” Jasper murmured, his tawny eyes suddenly fixed on the newscast on our television. “Sloppy work again. I’m sure it’s a newborn.” The situation is already too conspicuous, if you ask me.
I frowned, turning my focus to the reporter on the screen. Jasper’s assessment certainly seemed accurate. This was the fifth murder in Seattle that followed the same pattern, a nighttime disappearance with minimal effort to disguise the evidence of the killing. Definitely conspicuous, and much too close to home.
Jasper tensed, thinking through his own history with the chaos caused by newborn vampires, and the whole room tensed with him.
I couldn’t help but wonder if this was yet another cosmic result of Bella’s magnetic draw towards danger. Thankfully, Seattle was too far away from Forks for this neophyte to have any effect on her daily life, but it was just close enough that it would be foolish for us to ignore it.
“Alice, have you seen anything new from the Volturi? Will they step in?” Carlisle asked.
My father and mother were standing statue-still behind the couch, each with an arm around the other, their thoughts full of concern. I watched as Bella’s face flickered in each of their minds, followed by my own face.
Carlisle did not share the same disdain for the Italian vampire elite that I did, but he was not oblivious to the complications their proximity would cause our family. Bella knew things that humans were forbidden to know, and so had only been allowed to leave Volterra alive under the guarantee that she would not stay human much longer. I had my own plans to evade their investigation for as long as possible, but the involvement of the Volturi in Seattle would be a significant hindrance.
Each risk to Bella’s life simply snowballed into the next. Each one of them was my fault.
Alice’s mind pushed into the future. She would be able to see the consequences of the Volturi’s decisions once they were made, but nothing would appear definite before then. For this moment, it seemed Aro, Marcus, and Caius would remain in Italy along with their standard guard. I suppressed a sigh of relief.
“They haven’t decided to come yet,” Alice confirmed. “I’m keeping a close watch, though. It could change at any minute.” Her tiny features hardened with sharp concentration, as if waiting for a new version of the future to burst into focus.
Jasper’s agitation was still radiating across our gathering as he recalled his memories from his time with the former newborn armies of the South. He was more disturbed by the apparent lack of involvement from the Volturi, having firsthand knowledge of the effectiveness of their methods. He was rather hopeful that they would take responsibility in Seattle.
“It won’t be long,” he said. “These kinds of situations escalate very quickly.”
Across the room, Emmett’s hulking frame paced back and forth restlessly. “Why don’t we go look into it ourselves?” he suggested. “It’s not like I have anything better to do.”
It’s been too long since I’ve seen any real action. He smiled suddenly, fondly remembering how it had felt when he ripped the limbs off of the tracker in the ballet studio last year. I felt my own vicarious surge of satisfaction, pleased that at least one loathsome threat to Bella’s life had successfully been destroyed.
Leaning against the wall beside him, Rosalie rolled her eyes at her husband’s eagerness. She was mostly bored of this conversation, unbothered by a situation she doubted would ever have any effect on herself personally. She was only paying attention at all now because of Emmett’s interest.
“We aren’t the Volturi,” Carlisle reminded him. “I don’t think it would be wise to insert ourselves in a situation for which we are not responsible.” He frowned. “Although, it is unfortunate that other lives may be lost in the meantime.”
Though Carlisle and I were both conflicted over this conundrum in similar ways, I knew that my own motivations were so much more selfish than his. His thoughts were pure, concerned for the undeserving human victims in the news. But I could only focus on the survival of one human. What was the best way to protect her?
In a way, I knew that Emmett’s suggestion made perfectly legitimate sense. Truly, I wanted to agree with him. I ached to destroy anything that put Bella in harm’s way, to mutilate and sever and burn. The impediment came when I considered just how many threats to Bella’s life were out there at this given moment, and the list was frighteningly numerous.
One such monster currently occupied the top of the list. My eyes locked with Alice’s again, the image in her mind mirroring the face in my own thoughts.
The pale-white, immortal face wore a brutal expression, its sharp features fierce and feline, surrounded by a tangled mane of vividly red hair. A searing flash of anger burned behind my eyes, and my hands clenched into fists automatically.
Victoria.
Yet another vampire intent on killing my Bella, this time compelled only by a desire for revenge after the death of James. A mate for a mate, so her logic would seem. Bella would always be the target of Victoria’s wrath. That would always be my fault.
“Carlisle is right,” Alice agreed. “We have other things to worry about for now. I will keep watching, but I think it’s best if we stay in Forks.”
Emmett’s expression crumpled with disappointment for one second before it broke back into a grin, a new idea occurring to him. “You think the redhead is coming back?”
Alice and I exchanged a glance again. She had not yet seen any news of Victoria’s return, but it seemed an inevitable thing. There was no way that Victoria had given up on her plot. She must be biding her time, strategizing, hoping to catch us off guard.
I looked at Emmett seriously. “I want us to be prepared for that possibility.”
Emmett frowned again. Patience did not come easily for him. “So, what do we do for now?”
“We wait,” Alice said. “At least, that’s what I suggest.”
Carlisle nodded in assent. “That seems like a sensible course of action.”
I was able to relax somewhat then, seeing that this particular evening would not entail anything out of the ordinary. We all trusted Alice’s judgment well enough. Only I could watch with her as the future continued to whirl with possibilities, none of them concrete. There were still so many unanswered questions, so much that could still change.
But Alice’s visions quickly strayed back towards a more immediate future. Myself, just a few minutes from now, racing down the driveway in my Volvo. My spirits lifted automatically, realizing now that the worst part of my day was nearly over.
The room shifted out of the tense atmosphere from before. Emmett joined Jasper on the couch, planning on goading him into a wrestling match. Alice could already see that Jasper would win the first round, which meant that Emmett would immediately demand a rematch. While those two were occupied, she wanted to show Rosalie a fashion design project she’d been working on. Carlisle would be off to his late shift at the hospital.
Only Esme turned her attention to me as I prepared to leave for Bella’s house.
Don’t worry too much, Edward. You know I believe that everything will work out for you. She caught my gaze and smiled at me meaningfully. It won’t be long before Bella will officially be in the family, and all of this will be behind us.
I smiled softly back at her before ducking out of the room. It would hurt Esme to know just how her words of reassurance actually affected me, how her hopeful imaginings of the fast-approaching future only provoked new bouts of my anxiety.
I quickly gathered my supplies for the evening – paperwork stuffed into a manilla envelope and a roll of stamps – before heading out to the garage. I doubted Bella would be excited at the prospect of filling out any more college applications, but I had not given up on my hopes to sell her on the idea of college. Despite my mother’s words of encouragement, I was not quite so ready for Bella to join my family officially. At least, not in the way she meant.
Esme’s wishes were certainly in alignment with Bella’s, though. Bella had been begging to secure her own immortality for so many months now, so eager to join me in my soulless eternity. She shared my awareness of the hourglass that ruled both of our lives, but she was desperate to get out from under its governance.
I could not see things the same way. As much as I feared the hourglass, I knew it was a natural thing, the way life was supposed to be. Infinite time with me was not a worthy trade for her to become a monster, even if it was motivated by her inexplicable love for me.
It seemed most likely now that Bella would get what she wanted. Carlisle had promised to change her in just a matter of weeks, as soon as she graduated high school. It was an arrangement they had made following my stunt in Italy. My fault.
Still, I had not given up entirely. College was just one method I could use to tempt her into accepting more human time, and certainly not the most effective. I had one primary hope to achieve compromise, one lure that would both delay her turning and give me the thing I wanted most in the universe – the one thing that would make the pain of turning Bella a little bit more bearable.
The first time that I proposed to Bella, it had been impulsive and ultimately unsuccessful. Not my finest moment. She’d thought that I was joking. But now she knew the complete terms of my deal. I would concede and give her what she wanted most – I would personally be the one to grant her a future as a vampire – as long as she married me first. We would be bound in every way that mattered, human and nonhuman.
Stubborn as always, Bella had not yet accepted my terms. But she had never outright rejected them either.
I parked in front of the Swan’s house at precisely seven o’clock so as not to let a single grain of sand go to waste. I would be allowed inside the house until nine-thirty, as per Charlie’s orders. Unbeknownst to Charlie, I would sneak back through Bella’s bedroom window just a few minutes after that.
As I traipsed through the rain towards the front door, I caught the sound of Bella’s heartbeat through the walls. Electricity pulsed through me in response, my body imitating the sign of life. Routine familiarity had never made the thrill of her presence any less potent.
I could also hear Charlie’s gruff voice. His thoughts, though not completely inaccessible to me like his daughter’s, were cloudy enough that I had to concentrate more closely to interpret them. At the moment, they were predictably contemptuous.
“Just wondering what… Edward’s plans are for next year?” he asked.
I smiled and rapped on the door three times. It seemed I had chosen a relevant task for Bella’s and my evening.
“Coming!” Bella yelled.
At the same time, Charlie mumbled, “Go away.”
Her footsteps were hurried and clumsy as she clambered for the door, yanking it open with unabashed enthusiasm. As always, the sight of her face, beaming up at me with more love and adoration than I could ever deserve, was like a miraculous antidote for all of my fears and worries. My angel, saving me under impossible circumstances time and time again.
She inhaled once and her deep brown eyes met mine. For a long moment, I simply drowned in the sight of her, savoring all of her lovely and delicate features, her apricot skin and flowing mahogany hair, her rosy blush and enchanting lips. So beautiful and precious and familiar to me, yet constantly changing with the time that passed. What had I missed in my hours away?
She blinked once and exhaled again. Bella had never gotten over her habit of forgetting to breathe when she was near me, which both charmed and concerned me. She reached for my hand, and I closed my fingers around hers, gratified by the painless fire brought on by her skin.
“Hey,” she breathed.
I reached up to brush her silky cheekbone with the back of my hand, keeping her fingers interlaced with mine. The simple contact was unbelievably soothing, easing the lingering ache of our earlier separation.
The ache could not be erased entirely, however. Although the painful hours were behind us, they could not be replaced. Those were grains of sand that had already slipped away.
If it was impossible for me to share those lost hours with her, I would have to settle for her recap of them. “How was your afternoon?” I asked.
“Slow,” she murmured.
I smiled. “For me, as well.”
I pulled our twined hands back towards my own face, closing my eyes as I inhaled the scent at her wrist. The scent of her blood was just as intoxicating as ever, lusciously floral and sweet, but it did not torture me the way it had so long ago.
The very first time I smelled Bella’s blood, I thought that it would destroy me. I thought the temptation it posed would turn me into a savage, that it would obliterate any scraps of decency I had left and cement me as an irredeemable monster.
For all my faults, I had managed to overcome this much. Her scent no longer caused me any conscious pain, nor did it pose any temptation. As long as her scent signified that she was alive, I could not be destroyed by it or anything else.
I opened my eyes and lowered our hands as I heard Charlie’s purposefully noisy approach. Even if I could not read his thoughts clearly, it was no secret that Police Chief Swan would prefer it if I never came within one hundred yards of his house or his daughter ever again. Bella had fiercely defended me just so that I could gain this limited access under his supervision. Still, if he could not ban me from his property outright, he was going to make sure I was as uncomfortable as possible while I was there.
It was not a situation I felt I had the right to complain about. Charlie was only angry with me for all of the same reasons I was angry with myself. I had hurt Bella so much when I left her last September. Charlie knew what Bella should have known – that my behavior was inexcusable and unforgivable. I was beyond lucky that Bella did not share her father’s ability to hold a grudge.
“Good evening, Charlie.” I nodded politely in his direction, though he refused to ever look at me directly. He only grunted and folded his arms over his chest.
Although I could not argue with any of Charlie’s reasons for despising me, the truth was that I was far from being his greatest admirer either. I could respect his authority as Bella’s father, and I could understand that he always did what he thought was in Bella’s best interest, but I couldn’t stop myself from criticizing some of his methods. Namely, I thought he could do more to listen to what Bella thought was in her own best interest, even if it did not align with his personal wishes for her.
I turned my face back to Bella, lifting the envelope and stamps I held in my other hand. “I brought another set of applications.”
Just as I had suspected she would, she groaned at the sight. I had to smile.
“There are still a few open deadlines,” I told her. I knew she was worried about how late it was in the year and how her grades had suffered during my absence last fall – also my fault. “And a few places willing to make exceptions.”
Her expression soured. She knew she could not win this argument.
I laughed. “Shall we?”
She followed me to the kitchen table, Charlie grudgingly on our trail. He was disappointed that he could not complain about the evening’s activities, but I could sense that there was something else on his mind, some internal debate. He seemed annoyed by it, whatever it was.
I began to organize the set of applications as Bella quickly cleared the table of the dishes. I gave her a pointed look as she removed Wuthering Heights from its spot, just where Alice had envisioned it before. Truly, I could not understand Bella’s fascination with the book. Some parts of her silent mind would forever remain a mystery.
Before I could comment, Charlie decided to voice his vague annoyance from before. Ah, he had been working himself up to the unpleasant task of speaking to me.
“Speaking of college applications, Edward. Bella and I were just talking about next year. Have you decided where you’re going to school?”
I smiled at him, hearing his hopefulness that I would say something like as far away from Bella as possible. His dislike of me was often childish. “Not yet. I’ve received a few acceptance letters, but I’m still weighing my options.”
My very unspecific answer aggravated him further. “Where have you been accepted?”
I gave him the careful answers, the places where I knew it would at least be possible for Bella to attend with me. “Syracuse… Harvard… Dartmouth… and I just got accepted to the University of Alaska Southeast today.”
I turned my face slightly to throw Bella a wink. Alice had shown me a week ago that Bella would receive that same acceptance letter today. Bella pursed her lips to restrain a laugh.
“Harvard? Dartmouth? Well that’s pretty… that’s something” Charlie was conflicted at this revelation. He liked the potential for me to move to the opposite coast, but did not want to reveal that he was impressed by anything I might have accomplished. Carlisle’s face flickered in his mind briefly. “Yeah, but the University of Alaska… you wouldn’t really consider that when you could go Ivy League. I mean, your father would want you to…”
“Carlisle’s always fine with whatever I choose to do,” I said simply. I refrained from asking him why he, as a father, struggled to be similarly considerate of Bella’s choices.
Charlie huffed.
“Guess what, Edward?” Bella looked at me with a playful gleam in her eye.
I was eager to play along. “What, Bella?”
She pointed to a familiar envelope that sat on the countertop. “I just got my acceptance to the University of Alaska!”
I grinned back. “Congratulations! What a coincidence.”
I felt no remorse for Charlie’s frustration as he glared at both of us. It seemed to wear off after a minute. “Fine,” he muttered. “I’m going to go watch the game, Bella. Nine-thirty.”
“Er, Dad? Remember the very recent discussion about my freedom…?”
What was this? I concentrated on Charlie’s mind as he thought through his response. It seemed that Alice and I had missed out on a new development, perhaps a very recent decision.
“Right,” he sighed. “Okay, ten-thirty. You still have a curfew on school nights.”
I couldn’t help my excitement, realizing that my limited time with Bella had increased. Still, I wondered at the reasoning behind Charlie’s seemingly abrupt change of heart. “Bella’s no longer grounded?” I asked.
“Conditionally,” he retorted. “What’s it to you?”
As he spoke, he thought of a very specific face, and I stifled my sense of dread as I understood exactly what his conditions would entail. Perhaps this was the reason Alice had not seen this change coming.
I worked to compose myself, quickly formulating my own plan in response. Charlie wanted Bella to spend more of her free time apart from me. Though they were unpleasant conditions, I could agree to them, but they would have to meet my own set of conditions as well.
“It’s just good to know,” I said. “Alice has been itching for a shopping partner, and I’m sure Bella would love to see some city lights.” I smiled at Bella, guessing that Alice was already rejoicing with the news of Bella’s liberation.
“No!” Charlie growled.
“Dad! What’s the problem?” Bella whined, but I already understood Charlie’s outrage. We were definitely in agreement on this point.
“I don’t want you going to Seattle right now,” Charlie explained.
“Huh?”
“I told you about that story in the paper – there’s some kind of gang on a killing spree in Seattle and I want you to steer clear, okay?”
Bella rolled her eyes and started to protest. I reached for the newspaper on the counter, wondering if there was any new information my family had not caught earlier. I interrupted her needless fretting as I skimmed the page.
“No, that’s fine Charlie. I didn’t mean Seattle.” Honestly, it really was dangerous for Bella to be in such a large city, even under normal human circumstances. However, she would be safe enough with Alice. “I was thinking Portland, actually. I wouldn’t have Bella in Seattle, either. Of course not.”
Nothing bothered Charlie more than for me to agree with him. “Fine,” he said, stalking off toward the living room. It seemed he had exhausted his patience with me for one night.
I turned my attention back to the news while I heard the television click on in the other room.
“What –” Bella started to ask.
“Hold on,” I murmured. Charlie was not sufficiently distracted yet. I pushed one of the applications towards her across the table without looking up from the paper. “I think you can recycle your essays for this one. Same questions.”
She sighed and started scratching her pen across the page while I read. The news did not hold any information we hadn’t already run across. As Charlie had said, the humans speculated that the killings were a result of gang activity. Of course, it was possible that they were right – just unaware of what species of gang they were dealing with.
I set the paper down and turned to stare out the window, the drizzling rain painting patterns on the glass. I couldn’t stop my thoughts from wandering down the long list of troubles that occupied my mind. An unexplained and violent force in Seattle, a domineering threat in Italy, and a vengeful menace with a talent for escape who lurked always just out of our reach.
Even closer was Charlie Swan and the face he had thought of before, the face he most fervently hoped that Bella would choose to spend time with.
That was a situation I was always very mindful not to let myself worry about. No matter what Charlie hoped for or what conditions he layed out, there was no chance I would allow Bella to return to La Push to spend time with that individual or his pack of brothers.
Bella snorted abruptly and pushed the stack of paper away from her, recapturing my attention.
“Bella?”
“Be serious, Edward. Dartmouth?”
I set my worries aside again, amused by the incredulity on her face. I placed the application back in front of her. “I think you’d like New Hampshire. There’s a full complement of night courses for me, and the forests are very conveniently located for the avid hiker. Plentiful wildlife.” I smirked at her knowingly as she took a deep breath. “I’ll let you pay me back, if that makes you happy. If you want, I can charge you interest.”
In all honesty, I did not have any sort of preference about where Bella chose to go to school, so long as she chose that over the alternative. I just hated to see her limit her own options, especially over anything as trivial as money. I would be more than thrilled to fund her education, even if she only agreed to it by drawing up some ridiculous contract to repay me over the next century.
“Like I could even get in without some enormous bribe,” she griped. “Or was that part of the loan? The new Cullen wing of the library? Ugh. Why are we having this discussion again?”
I kept my face carefully neutral. I didn’t want to admit to the bribe she spoke of, knowing how vehemently she opposed it. She wouldn’t understand that it was simply an attempt on my part to rectify my mistakes again.
“Will you just fill out the application, please, Bella?” I asked gently. “It won’t hurt you to apply.”
Her jaw set with a stubbornness I could recognize all too easily. “You know what? I don’t think I will.”
She reached to grab the papers again, but I beat her to it, tucking them safely away in my jacket. Bella would always be stubborn, but I was getting to be more clever about working around her obstinance.
She blinked in confusion. “What are you doing?”
My face was probably too smug for my own good. “I sign your name better than you do yourself. You’ve already written the essays.”
She shot me an exasperated look, then leaned towards me across the table conspiratorially. “You’re going way overboard with this, you know,” she whispered. “I really don’t need to apply anywhere else. I’ve been accepted in Alaska. I can almost afford the first semester’s tuition. It’s as good an alibi as any. There’s no need to throw away a bunch of money, no matter whose it is.”
My smugness evaporated. “Bella –”
“Don’t start,” she interrupted. “I agree that I need to go through the motions for Charlie’s sake, but we both know I’m not going to be in any condition to go to school next fall. To be anywhere near people.”
I grimaced. “I thought the timing was still undecided. You might enjoy a semester or two of college. There are a lot of human experiences you’ve never had.”
She rested back into her seat dismissively. “I’ll get to those afterward.”
I fought with the tightening in my chest, the imaginary weight of time running out. How could she miss the point so entirely? Human time and immortal time did not bear the same significance. “They won't be human experiences afterward. You don’t get a second chance at humanity, Bella.”
“You’ve got to be reasonable about the timing, Edward. It’s just too dangerous to mess around with.”
Did she think I wasn’t aware? I couldn’t blame her for fearing the Volturi. I hated that she had ever been exposed to the horror of their institution. Of course I would not risk exposing her to that again. I was confident that I could keep her safe.
“There’s no danger yet.”
She glared at me with outraged disbelief for a long moment. I could not read her mind, but I was sure that she was thinking of all the same things I had been thinking of a few minutes ago, the seemingly ever-growing list of threats to her life. Of undeniable danger.
The Volturi. Victoria. She didn’t even know about the situation in Seattle yet.
Then there was the mounting tension with the werewolves in La Push, who were carefully waiting to see if we vampires would break our long-held treaty. Thanks to a recent encounter, they were aware of Bella’s plans to become a vampire herself. Doing so would be grounds for starting a war.
Yes, it was dangerous to leave Bella human. It was also dangerous to turn her. There were no easy answers to be found anywhere. There was so little time.
Bella’s fierce glare twisted into distress, and I knew she had come to the same conclusion that I had. It all came back to the hourglass. No matter the choices any of us made, the grains of sand would simply continue to slip by, unstoppable.
“Bella.” I wanted to comfort her so badly. I wanted to give her the easy answer that didn’t exist. But I could only make promises about what little I could control. “There’s no hurry. I won’t let anyone hurt you. You can take all the time you need.”
She smiled weakly, and I sensed her desire to lighten the tension, to make a joke. “I want to hurry,” she whispered. “I want to be a monster, too.”
My teeth clamped together in anger, her joke sounding more like a warning to me. I thought that she would understand by now, considering all the monsters she had met, what it would mean for her to become one herself. Perhaps she needed another example.
I flung the newspaper back onto the table between us, pointing to the relevant headline.
She stared down in confusion, a stress mark puckering between her eyebrows. “What does that have to do with anything?”
I worked to collect myself. “Monsters are not a joke, Bella.”
She looked back up at me, her eyes widening in recognition. “A… a vampire is doing this?”
I smiled at her bleakly. “You’d be surprised, Bella, at how often my kind are the source behind the horrors in your human news. It’s easy to recognize, when you know what to look for.” I did not wish to frighten her, but she needed to understand. I made my voice graver. “The information here indicates a newborn vampire is loose in Seattle. Bloodthirsty, wild, out of control. The way we all were.”
She looked back down at the newspaper. I wondered if she heard the part that I hadn’t said. The way you will be.
I moved on, trying to give her more practical information. I gave her the highlights from my family’s earlier discussion. She needed to be aware, in case things took a turn and some of us went to Seattle to deal with this ourselves.
“The existence of monsters results in monstrous consequences,” I concluded.
She kept staring at the paper. Her expression was somber enough that I could feel both the hope and the dread that I was getting through to her, that perhaps she was reconsidering what she actually wanted for herself.
“It won’t be like that for me,” she said solemnly. “You won’t let me be like that. We’ll live in Antarctica.”
Though I doubted Bella had been joking, a harsh-sounding laugh escaped my lips in response to her strange thoughts. Even in such a serious situation, of course Bella would amuse me by drawing the most outlandish conclusion. Antarctica. No, she wouldn’t be in danger of hunting humans there.
“Penguins,” I groaned. “Lovely.”
She laughed warily and pushed the newspaper aside again, letting it fall to the floor. “Alaska, then, as planned,” she said. “Only somewhere much more remote than Juneau – somewhere with grizzlies galore.”
“Better.” I smiled softly. I still struggled to picture how Bella would hunt alongside my family one day, should it ever come to that. Even imagining her as a ferocious and indestructible force, it was funny to think of her wrestling any of the beasts I had once hunted in the Alaskan wilderness. “There are polar bears, too. Very fierce. And the wolves get quite large.”
Abruptly, all humor vanished from her face, and she exhaled sharply, horrified.
I blurted out the words before I could make the obvious connection. “What’s wrong?”
But I knew what was wrong.
As daunting as our list of troubles currently seemed, I could at least be relieved that Bella seemed to understand the danger posed by each item. She knew that it was wise and healthy to fear the Volturi, to be wary of Victoria, and now to keep watch of the newborn in Seattle.
She seemed to think the werewolves in La Push were a major exception to this.
It required more strategy on my part, more thoughtfulness, to protect her from something that she had such affection for. From someone I knew that she missed dearly. I could not openly express my disdain without hurting her feelings. Generally, I preferred to pretend that the issue did not exist. It was certainly less painful for me that way.
My body stiffened in the split-second that I realized my mistake, and I forced myself to speak quickly and carefully. I was already anxious to move on from this topic of conversation. “Oh. Never mind the wolves, then, if the idea is offensive to you.”
“He was my best friend, Edward,” she muttered, her face still contorted with anguish. “Of course the idea offends me.”
“Please forgive my thoughtlessness. I shouldn’t have suggested that.”
“Don’t worry about it.” She stared at her hands, clenched into fists on the tabletop.
She said nothing else, and I felt my self-imposed rigidness start to melt away. It wasn’t enough for me simply to protect her from this conversation. I owed her so much more. She was hurting, and I needed to comfort her, no matter how uncomfortable it was for me.
Gently, I reached across the table to lift her chin with one finger, always so desperate to read her eyes. “Sorry,” I murmured, allowing my sincerity to be transparent. “Really.”
She searched my face carefully for a moment. “I know,” she said. “I know it’s not the same thing. I shouldn’t have reacted that way. It’s just that… well, I was already thinking about Jacob before you came over.”
I did better to anticipate my own reaction this time, to prevent my face from revealing the anxiety that his name caused me. But I was sure my efforts were not entirely successful.
The pack of wolves in La Push represented one danger to Bella, but Jacob Black was another kind of danger on his own. His presence thoroughly complicated everything. I was forced to be as grateful to him as I was appalled by him, since he had unintentionally saved my life this spring in the process of rescuing Bella. The fact that I owed him such a debt made me vulnerable in a way that I had never experienced before.
I had seized the opportunity to express my gratitude to Jacob Black on the one occasion where we had spoken since my return to Forks. I had offered to do anything in my power to settle the debt, to no avail. The only thing he wanted from me was the only thing I couldn’t live without. And, thank heaven, it was not something within my power to command.
I kept steady focus on Bella’s eyes as they stared back into mine. This fragile girl held such an immense power, and she didn’t even seem to know it.
When she spoke again, her voice was pleading. “Charlie says Jake is having a hard time. He’s hurting right now, and… it’s my fault.”
I flinched internally. Her fault? Impossible. My mind raced through the list again. All my fault – even Jacob Black’s pain. Bella’s pain in response to his pain. My fault.
I spoke softly and sincerely again. “You’ve done nothing wrong, Bella.”
She took a deep breath. “I need to make it better, Edward. I owe him that. And it’s one of Charlie’s conditions, anyway –”
My face returned to its rigid mask abruptly at her reminder. Charlie’s ridiculous conditions for Bella’s supposed freedom. Was she really free, if she was still expected to be in a certain place with a certain person? It was no different than forcing her to stay home.
Except that it was completely different, in a way that Charlie could not understand, that Bella didn’t seem to understand. Bella was safe in her home. Even when I was not with her, I was never too far away to protect her from any potential harm. Conversely, for Bella to be in La Push – a place from which I was forbidden – surrounded by emotionally volatile adolescent werewolves…
Even worse was knowing that Alice lost all sight of a future where the werewolves were involved. Whenever Bella was near a wolf, her future disappeared – something that, historically, provoked an extreme reaction from me. If Bella had no future, then I had no future.
“You know it’s out of the question for you to be around a werewolf unprotected, Bella. And it would break the treaty if any of us cross over onto their land. Do you want us to start a war?” My tone was firm again. Formal and final. I wasn’t saying anything she didn’t already know.
“Of course not!”
“Then there’s really no point in discussing the matter further.”
I dropped my hand from her face, returning to my earlier desperation to change the subject. I smiled as my eyes landed back on Wuthering Heights. I could always count on Bella’s strange and hidden thought processes to distract me.
“I’m glad Charlie has decided to let you out – you’re sadly in need of a visit to the bookstore. I can’t believe you’re reading Wuthering Heights again. Don’t you know it by heart yet?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Not all of us have photographic memories.”
I shook my head. “Photographic memory or not, I don’t understand why you like it. The characters are ghastly people who ruin each others’ lives. I don’t know how Heathcliff and Cathy ended up being ranked with couples like Romeo and Juliet or Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. It isn’t a love story, it’s a hate story.”
“You have some serious issues with the classics,” she snapped.
I smiled. “Perhaps it’s because I’m not impressed by antiquity.”
I thought over my words again, searching for the connection between my interpretation of the story and everything I knew about Bella. Bella, who had a well-documented affection for monsters. Bella, who was so quick to blame herself for the unfairness that I had practically forced upon her. Bella, whose backwards instincts caused her to love all the wrong things.
“Honestly, though, why do you read it over and over?” I reached across the table again to hold her face in my hand, suddenly desperate for her answer. How could she be so enamored with these foolish characters? Did the answer have anything to do with the explanation for why she might love me? “What is it that appeals to you?”
“I’m not sure.” Her eyelids fluttered and her cheeks warmed as she fought to maintain my intense gaze. “I think it’s something about the inevitability. How nothing can keep them apart – not her selfishness, or his evil, or even death, in the end…”
I considered her words. I could see how she might find comfort in inevitability. Inevitability was the concept that ruled my imaginary hourglass, the personal metaphor I used to both spark and calm my anxiety. No matter the specifics of all my fears, I knew it was inevitable for the sand to run out eventually.
I could not fully prevent our inevitable conclusion, but I would do everything in my power to be worthy of the time that I had left.
I smiled at her teasingly. “I still think it would be a better story if either of them had one redeeming quality.”
She was quick to disagree. “I think that may be the point. Their love is their only redeeming quality.”
Her words rang true in one sense, at least. I had long been aware that my love for Bella was my only redeeming quality. But she had much better prospects. “I hope you have better sense than that – to fall in love with someone so… malignant.”
Her expression became warm, her eyes melting softly. “It’s a bit late to worry about who I fall in love with,” she murmured. “But even without the warning, I seem to have managed fairly well.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
She pursed her lips. “Well, I hope you’re smart enough to stay away from someone so selfish,” she said with put-on superiority. “Catherine is really the source of all the trouble, not Heathcliff.”
I refrained from rolling my eyes. Bella was too pure, too kind, too selfless to be the cause of any such turmoil. Surely her life would be perfectly peaceful if not for the selfish forces who insisted on complicating it for her.
“I’ll be on my guard.”
She exhaled a long sigh and placed her hand over mine, holding it to her face. “I need to see Jacob.”
I closed my eyes, my muscles tightening again. My distraction had failed. “No.”
“It’s truly not dangerous at all,” she said pleadingly. “I used to spend all day in La Push with the whole lot of them, and nothing ever happened.”
For my inability to read Bella’s mind, it was fortunate that she was such an inept liar. Her voice faltered at the end of her sentence and her heart rate accelerated slightly, confirming what I already suspected. I could not be sure of exactly what Bella had witnessed at La Push in the past, but surely some of it had managed to frighten her. It was only by some miracle that she ever made it home unscathed.
It was my fault that she ever needed to spend time there in the first place. I would not repeat my mistakes by exposing her in that way again.
“Werewolves are unstable,” I reminded her. “Sometimes, the people near them get hurt. Sometimes, they get killed.”
For a moment, I fought again with the encroaching blackness of my most awful memories. I knew how agonizing it was for me when Bella got hurt. I knew even better how excruciating it was when Bella died. And that pain had been in response to an untrue claim, a false alarm. For Bella’s life to truly be lost forever… there were no words to describe what that would do to me. It would actually kill me.
“You don’t know them,” she whispered.
I sighed. I knew a fellow monster when I saw one.
“I know them better than you think, Bella. I was here the last time.”
She blinked in surprise. “The last time?”
Jacob Black’s pack of dogs were not my family’s first exposure to the Quileute wolves. That first encounter had told me everything I needed to know about them, though. They were aggressive, volatile, impulsive – not good company for anyone as fragile as Bella.
“We started crossing paths with the wolves about seventy years ago,” I explained. “We had just settled near Hoquiam. That was before Alice and Jasper were with us. We outnumbered them, but that wouldn’t have stopped it from turning into a fight if not for Carlisle.”
I recalled the violent thoughts that erupted on our first meeting with the wolves, both from the Quileutes and from my family. The wolves instinctually saw us as an unmanageable threat to their land, to their tribe. It never even occurred to them that we may be capable of showing an ounce of civility. It was just as instinctive for us to respond with equal hostility.
Of course, Carlisle would be the one to keep a level head during such high tensions.
“He managed to convince Ephraim Black that coexisting was possible,” I continued, “and eventually we made the truce.”
It had been surprisingly easy to maintain peace after the treaty was drawn up. Neither clan ever had any more reason to interact with the other, and the conditions of the treaty were simple enough for us to follow. In time, my family moved on, just as we always did.
All these decades later, the lines were much more blurry. The Quileutes’ commitment to protecting all human life conflicted with Bella’s plans, placing her in the crossfire of a war that she had not asked for. Again, my fault.
But how could we have known that the wolves would still be here, seventy years later?
“We thought the line had died out with Ephraim. That the genetic quirk which allowed the transmutation had been lost…”
I supposed none of that actually made my mistakes any more defensible. Perhaps this was simply more inevitability. The product of my own thoughtlessness and Bella’s unconscious habit of beckoning danger to come near her.
I shot her an accusatory look, unable to resist teasing her again. “Your bad luck seems to get more potent every day. Do you realize that your insatiable pull for all things deadly was strong enough to recover a pack of mutant canines from extinction? If we could bottle your luck, we’d have a weapon of mass destruction on our hands.”
Her brow wrinkled in confusion. “But I didn’t bring them back,” she said matter-of-factly. “Don’t you know?”
I was disarmed by her seriousness. “Know what?”
“My bad luck had nothing to do with it. The werewolves came back because the vampires did.”
Oh, really?
“Jacob told me that your family being here set things in motion. I thought you would already know…”
I was unable to mask my annoyance this time, my eyes narrowing as I digested her words. The Quileutes were quick to blame us for everything, even their own monstrous qualities. They had no sense of responsibility for themselves. “Is that what they think?”
It seemed that Bella had already accepted Jacob’s theory. Of course he would have tried to feed her such a lie. “Edward, look at the facts. Seventy years ago, you came here, and the werewolves showed up. You come back now, and the werewolves show up again. Do you think that’s a coincidence?”
I blinked, relaxing my features. There was no chance that I would agree to this, but it would do no good to argue with Bella about it now. “Carlisle will be interested in that theory,” I mumbled.
“Theory,” she scoffed.
I turned my face back to the window, collecting myself as I watched the rain trickle down the glass. As much as I disagreed with the possibility that I was responsible for the return of the wolves, I could not deny that it fit into the pattern of everything else on my mind. All my fault.
“Interesting,” I conceded, “but not exactly relevant. The situation remains the same.”
Bella gazed at me pensively for a moment before rising from her seat. I opened my arms for her automatically as she approached me, knowing I could not forfeit any chance to hold her close, but sensing that she was not about to say anything that would make my life any easier.
She settled onto my lap, staring down. “Please just listen for a minute,” she began. “This is so much more important than some whim to drop in on an old friend. Jacob is in pain. I can’t not try to help him – I can’t give up on him now, when he needs me.”
The memory of a familiar ache washed over me. I knew what it meant to need Bella. It was true for me in every imaginable sense of the word – I simply could not exist without her. I could be sympathetic if I wished to be generous, but I could not believe that Jacob Black’s need was anything like my own.
I was no fool. I had heard his mind, so I understood perfectly well that he wanted her. I couldn’t blame him for that. But need? It seemed extreme.
“Just because he’s not human all the time…” Bella pressed. “Well, he was there for me when I was… not so human myself. You don’t know what it was like…”
My hands balled into fists, the imaginary ache intensifying. My fault – Bella’s pain, past and present. Pain so severe, she didn’t believe that I could even understand it. How could she doubt that I couldn’t feel every stabbing bite of her pain, even now?
“If Jacob hadn’t helped me… I’m not sure what you would have come home to. I owe him better than this, Edward.”
I closed my eyes, working to contain myself. She felt that she owed something to him. She thought it was worth risking her safety to repay him. She refused to see that the debt was fully mine to pay. My fault.
“I’ll never forgive myself for leaving you,” I whispered. The words were something of a meditation, a mantra that would follow me for as long as I existed. “Not if I live a hundred thousand years.”
I felt her warm palms press against either side of my face. I sighed and opened my eyes. As before, the sight of her face was the antidote to my misery, the only way to heal the ache.
Her warm irises were filled with more unconditional mercy. “You were just trying to do the right thing. And I’m sure it would have worked with anyone less mental than me.” She smiled softly. “Besides, you’re here now. That’s the part that matters.”
She was always making excuses on my behalf. As if the fact that I came back erased her trouble, rather than added to it.
“If I’d never left you,” I muttered, “you wouldn’t feel the need to go risk your life to talk to a dog.”
She flinched slightly. I could hear the harsh edge to my own voice, and I hated to ever speak to her in any way that was less than pleasant. But it was clear that this conversation could not end with either distraction or compromise.
“I don’t know how to phrase this properly,” I began slowly. “It’s going to sound cruel, I suppose. But I’ve come too close to losing you in the past. I know what it feels like to think I have. I am not going to tolerate anything dangerous.”
She did not respond well to my finality. “You have to trust me on this,” she insisted. “I’ll be fine.”
I trusted Bella with many things. She held the very essence of my existence in the delicate palms of her hands. But one thing I could never trust her with was her own sense of safety.
“Please, Bella.” I was not so ashamed as to hide my desperation from her. I was sure she could see the panic burning in my eyes.
“Please what?” she whispered.
“Please, for me,” I begged. “Please make a conscious effort to keep yourself safe. I’ll do everything I can, but I would appreciate a little help.”
My begging seemed to soften her infinitesimally. “I’ll work on it.”
I hugged her closer to my chest, tucking her head under my chin. It felt like I could never quite hold her tightly enough. I delighted in the burn of her skin, the fire of her scent, the rhythm of her pulse.
“Do you really have any idea how important you are to me?” I murmured, mostly to myself. “Any concept at all of how much I love you?” How could she ever comprehend such a force? I could not conceptualize the gravity of it myself.
I felt her petal-soft lips press against the skin of my throat. “I know how much I love you,” she answered.
“You compare one small tree to the entire forest.” One small tree that I did not deserve.
“Impossible.”
I kissed the top of her head. Though it was impossible, Isabella Swan still loved me. I needed her love in the same crucial way that I needed each grain of sand that passed through the inevitable hourglass that contained our lives. There was nothing in the universe – nothing at all – that was worth the risk of losing a single second of whatever time was left.
“No werewolves.”
She sighed. “I’m not going along with that. I have to see Jacob.”
As if I hadn’t worked around her stubbornness before. “Then I’ll have to stop you.”
“We’ll see about that,” she bluffed, her face still tucked into my shoulder. “He’s still my friend.”
Knowing she wouldn’t see, I didn’t bother to disguise my grimace. Perhaps Jacob Black was still her friend, but he would never have her in the way I knew he wanted her. I would never again allow him to get close enough to even hope for such a thing.
I was willing to admit when something was my fault, when my selfishness resulted in disaster for myself or anyone else. I could be responsible. But I was not entirely unselfish, either.
If Bella Swan insisted on risking her life to be with a monster, then I wanted to be the monster whom she chose.