Midnight Sun (Twilight #1.5)

But, all afternoon, I was gritting my teeth against the urge that had me yearning ditch, too-in order to go find the girl again. Like a stalker. An obsessed stalker. An obsessed, vampire stalker.

I was full of so many conflicting emotions as I stalked out of the room.

I stalked out of the room.

Rosalie stalked past me without a glance.

She got to her feet and stalked out of the room.

"You're unbelievable!" she said through her teeth, and then she turned away from me and stalked furiously toward the parking lot.

Her haste made her clumsy-she tripped and stumbled forward, almost falling into the girl seated in front of me. Vulnerable, weak. Even more than usual for a human.

I was surprised, watching her stumble through the day-tripping over cracks in the sidewalk, stray books, and, most often, her own feet-that the people I eavesdropped on thought of Bella as clumsy.

It was true that she often had trouble staying upright. I remembered her stumbling into the desk that first day, sliding around on the ice before the accident, falling over the low lip of the doorframe yesterday... How odd, they were right. She was clumsy.

"I'm absolutely ordinary," she explained. "Well, except for the bad things like all the near death experiences and being so clumsy that I'm almost disabled. And look at you."

How ironic that I'd wanted to protect this human girl from the paltry, toothless threat of Jessica Stanley's snide thoughts. I was the last person who would ever stand as a protector for Isabella Swan. She would never need protection from anything more than she needed it from me.

Hadn't I wanted, instinctively, to protect her, too? Before I'd wanted to kill her, that is...

Somewhere during that short thoughtless second when I'd sprinted across the icy lot, I had transformed from killer to protector.

I was not Bella's protector.

For the moment, I could be her unlikely protector.

I would not trespass on her privacy the way the peeping tom would have. I was here for her protection...

The pretty blouse she wore looked too thin to protect her adequately (lolllll)

She was too vulnerable for this world. She needed a protector.

How was I supposed to protect someone so...so...so determined to be unprotected? (double lollll)

This girl looked more fragile than her new classmates. Her skin was so translucent it was hard to believe it offered her much defense from the outside world.

I was vividly aware of her fragile, breakable body.

Alice, smiling, with her icy white arm around the girl's warm, fragile shoulders.

Her delicate fingers, her fragile wrist.

I would always love this fragile human girl, for the rest of my limitless existence.

She couldn't love me the way I loved her-such an overpowering, all-consuming, crushing love would probably break her fragile body.

I imagined how it would feel to touch the delicate skin that stretched over her cheekbones-silky, warm...so fragile.

Bella was like a soap bubble-fragile and ephemeral. Temporary. (HAH!)

As gently as if she were made of the thinnest glass, as if she were fragile as a bubble, my fingers stroked the warm skin that covered her cheekbone.