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“She stayed with me at first, but she missed him. It made her unhappy… so I decided it was time to spend some quality time with Charlie.” My voice was glum by the time I finished. “But now you’re unhappy,” he pointed out. “And?” I challenged. “That doesn’t seem fair.”
Mike skipped quickly to my side and picked up my books for me. I imagined him with a wagging tail.
I wondered to myself why no one else had seen him standing so far away, before he was suddenly, impossibly saving my life. With chagrin, I realized the probable cause—no one else was as aware of Edward as I always was. No one else watched him the way I did. How pitiful.
“I can’t keep up with you. I thought you didn’t want to be my friend.” “I said it would be better if we weren’t friends, not that I didn’t want to be.” “Oh, thanks, now that’s all cleared up.”
“It would be more… prudent for you not to be my friend,” he explained. “But I’m tired of trying to stay away from you, Bella.” His eyes were gloriously intense as he uttered that last sentence, his voice smoldering. I couldn’t remember how to breathe. “Will you go with me to Seattle?” he asked, still intense. I couldn’t speak yet, so I just nodded. He smiled briefly, and then his face became serious. “You really should stay away from me,” he warned. “I’ll see you in class.” He turned abruptly and walked back the way we’d come.
“I decided as long as I was going to hell, I might as well do it thoroughly.”
“What if I’m not a superhero? What if I’m the bad guy?”
It was relaxing to sit with Angela; she was a restful kind of person to be around—she didn’t feel the need to fill every silence with chatter.
You’re not a magnet for accidents—that’s not a broad enough classification. You are a magnet for trouble. If there is anything dangerous within a ten-mile radius, it will invariably find you.”
“I followed you to Port Angeles,” he admitted, speaking in a rush. “I’ve never tried to keep a specific person alive before, and it’s much more troublesome than I would have believed. But that’s probably just because it’s you. Ordinary people seem to make it through the day without so many catastrophes.” He paused. I wondered if it should bother me that he was following me; instead I felt a strange surge of pleasure. He stared, maybe wondering why my lips were curving into an involuntary smile. “Did you ever think that maybe my number was up the first time, with the van, and that you’ve been
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“I hear voices in my mind and you’re worried that you’re the freak,” he laughed.
“How old are you?” “Seventeen,” he answered promptly. “And how long have you been seventeen?” His lips twitched as he stared at the road. “A while,” he admitted at last.
About three things I was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was part of him—and I didn’t know how potent that part might be—that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.
The fog had almost dissolved by the end of the second hour, but the day was still dark with low, oppressing clouds. I smiled up at the sky.
I had to remind myself that we were in a crowded lunchroom, with probably many curious eyes on us. It was too easy to get wrapped up in our own private, tense little bubble.
“I can’t be sure—I don’t know how to read minds—but sometimes it seems like you’re trying to say goodbye when you’re saying something else.”
“I don’t like it,” he muttered anyway. “You don’t have to,” I snapped. “He looks at you like… like you’re something to eat,” he continued, ignoring me.
His words made me feel like a science experiment. I wanted to laugh at myself for expecting anything else.
“And you try to be safe, please.” “Safe in Forks—what a challenge.” “For you it is a challenge.” His jaw hardened. “Promise.” “I promise to try to be safe,” I recited. “I’ll do the laundry tonight—that ought to be fraught with peril.” “Don’t fall in,” he mocked. “I’ll do my best.”
Besides, since I’d come to Forks, it really seemed like my life was about him.
“Were you planning to make it out of Forks before nightfall?” “This truck is old enough to be your car’s grandfather—have some respect,” I retorted.
I’m essentially a selfish creature. I crave your company too much to do what I should.”
“So what you’re saying is, I’m your brand of heroin?” I teased, trying to lighten the mood. He smiled swiftly, seeming to appreciate my effort. “Yes, you are exactly my brand of heroin.”
“It took everything I had not to jump up in the middle of that class full of children and—”
“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.” He lifted his glorious, agonized eyes to mine. “You are the most important thing to me now. The most important thing to me ever.”
“And so the lion fell in love with the lamb…,” he murmured. I looked away, hiding my eyes as I thrilled to the word. “What a stupid lamb,” I sighed. “What a sick, masochistic lion.”
“I wish,” he whispered, “I wish you could feel the… complexity… the confusion… I feel. That you could understand.”
“No, and that is a mystery. Alice doesn’t remember her human life at all. And she doesn’t know who created her. She awoke alone. Whoever made her walked away, and none of us understand why, or how, he could.
“You spied on me?” But somehow I couldn’t infuse my voice with the proper outrage. I was flattered. He was unrepentant. “What else is there to do at night?”
He sat up slowly, so as not to startle me again. Then he leaned forward and reached out with his long arms to pick me up, gripping the tops of my arms like I was a toddler. He sat me on the bed beside him.
“So did Alice see me coming?” His reaction was strange. “Something like that,” he said uncomfortably, turning away so I couldn’t see his eyes.
“But he will need some explanation for why I’m around here so much. I don’t want Chief Swan getting a restraining order put on me.”
A moment of wordless communication passed between us. He realized that I knew he was keeping something from me. I realized that he wasn’t going to give anything away. Not now.
“That’s probably best. Be careful, though. The child has no idea.” I bridled a little at the word child. “Jacob is not that much younger than I am,” I reminded him. He looked at me then, his anger abruptly fading. “Oh, I know,” he assured me with a grin.
“I love you,” he said. “It’s a poor excuse for what I’m doing, but it’s still true.” It was the first time he’d said he loved me—in so many words. He might not realize it, but I certainly did.
“You sound like my mom,” I laughed, surprised. She laughed, too. “Well, I do think of them as my children in most ways. I never could get over my mothering instincts—did Edward tell you I had lost a child?” “No,” I murmured, stunned, scrambling to understand what lifetime she was remembering. “Yes, my first and only baby. He died just a few days after he was born, the poor tiny thing,” she sighed. “It broke my heart—that’s why I jumped off the cliff, you know,” she added matter-of-factly. “Edward just said you f-fell,” I stammered. “Always the gentleman.” She smiled.
“I can feel what you’re feeling now—and you are worth it.”
“He never leaves, does he?” she mumbled to herself.
“It’s possible to take bravery to the point where it becomes insanity.”
“That’s the beautiful thing about being human,” he told me. “Things change.”
“Stay.” The word was slurred. “I will,” he promised. His voice was beautiful, like a lullaby. “Like I said, as long as it makes you happy… as long as it’s what’s best for you.”
He gestured to his tuxedo. “Honestly, Bella, what did you think we were doing?”
He put my arms around his neck and lifted me to slide his feet under mine. And then we were whirling, too. “I feel like I’m five years old,” I laughed after a few minutes of effortless waltzing. “You don’t look five,” he murmured, pulling me closer for a second, so that my feet were briefly a foot from the ground.
