But he wasn’t finished.
“Bella, think of Charlie and Renee. Think of Jessica and Mike and Angela…even Jacob.” His eyes narrowed only slightly when he said this last name. “They’re all going to grow older and die in front of your eyes. The age that you feel weighing down on you so harshly now will get them all. It’s one thing to accept this when you know that it will happen to you as well, but when you become an exception…” he paused and his eyes went blank as if he were remembering. “It’s difficult to watch everything you love fade away in time. It’s difficult to watch the world advance and change before your eyes while you play on the margins just trying to avoid detection. Do you understand?”
I was staring into his eyes again, trying to understand the melancholy in his expression. “Not entirely,” I said honestly. “But something tells me that no one could unless they’ve lived as long as you.”
His face broke into a nostalgic smile as he stared at what I hoped was an expression of understanding.
“If I had a million years with you, I don’t think I would be able to understand the mystery in a single one of your expressions,” he whispered, leaning over slowly to brush his cool lips against my warm ones. He traced the line of my jaw down cautiously to my throat and, slower still to the base of my neck. My heart announced my pleasure to anyone near us. It seemed as if it were beating loud enough to hear in Forks. He pressed his cheek against my heart and listened carefully, running his hand down slowly down the side of my body, tracing the line of my shoulder…the inside of my arm…my waist, finally coming to a stop in the curve of my hip. He seemed to be enjoying the changes in the rhythm of my heartbeat that his explorations produced.
After a moment, he moved his eyes to my level once again and kissed me, stronger this time than before, letting his fingers slide through my hair and inviting me to push into the folds of his chiseled frame. I obliged, losing my resolve in an instant, and suddenly, my hands were in his copper hair, pulling him toward me even as he stiffened and pushed me gently away. I drew a sharp intake of breath as he disappeared suddenly, reappearing about ten yards away with his back turned toward me. I sat back, unmoving. It had been a while since he had needed to escape so far away from me. I remembered our conversation.
“Painful?” I asked.
“In more ways than you can know.” His voice seemed deeper somehow.
“And it never goes away?” I asked, though I already knew the answer. Edward had been resisting human blood for over eighty years, and yet here he was ten yards away from me in physical pain, trying to avoid committing murder. I shivered. He noticed and came to sit next to me again, settling down a few feet away.
“Never completely, though you already know that it is so much more difficult because it’s you.”
“What’s it like, I wonder?”
“I’m glad you are curious, because that’s the last thing I wanted to speak about…the craving.” He moved gracefully near enough to grab both of my hands and hold them in his lap. They were trembling and I knew that it would do no good to try to hide that fact. Edward’s face was severe. He looked out away from me across the meadow as he began.
“I’m very sorry for this analogy. I know that it will cause you pain, but I have been thinking for a long time about how to explain the power behind the need for blood, and this is the only thing that I believe even comes close for you.” I shifted nervously, grasping one of his wrists in anticipation.
“How do you feel for me, Bella?”
Shocked into silence before it even began. That was never a good sign.
“Uh…I…” I was certain that, had I been a vampire already, my mind and voice would be able to coincide enough to be able to form some understandable language. However, as I was still only human, Edward was forced to wait patiently while my mouth caught up with the rest of me. “You’re everything I ever want to live for. I don’t even know how to think about facing the world without you in my life.”
A small smile creased his lips only for a fraction of a second, and then his tone was grave—more than serious as he contemplated his next words.
“And how did it feel for you,” he gulped. He gulped…“when I left.”
Oh. My heart fell into my stomach. Just the simple memory of his face set in stone the afternoon that he had left me alone in the woods caused an echo of the painful hole inside of me to begin to ache. I pulled my hands away from him and wrapped them around my waist. The expression on his face told me that he was living something just as horrifying. His eyes closed for a moment, obviously in pain. Then he turned to look into my eyes again.
“I will never ask you about it again,” he promised, taking my hands once again in his and staring at me with an intensity that left no doubt that he meant it. “You don’t understand how much it hurts me now to bring it up, but it is the only way that you can understand the pain you will endure every day that you try to resist your desire for human blood.”
I held my breath. It couldn’t be that bad. Edward couldn’t face that pain every time that he was near me. That kind of pain for so long would drive anyone insane. He seemed to read something like that in my expression.
“Oh, it’s not so piercing for long. It fades, as I’m sure all pain does, but it is always there. It is always deep inside, causing you to create tiny fantasies and insane scenarios in your mind…anything to ease it for just one day. Do you understand?”
I thought of my motorcycle as it ran into a tree at thirty miles an hour. I thought of approaching the men who had wanted so much to attack me in Port Angeles. I thought of the sudden sensation of falling…no, jumping, off the cliffs outside of LaPush, and I believed I could understand the concept of doing something insane to end the pain. I nodded. He continued in a voice that was utterly calm.
“And when you’re newly turned, you will be a slave to instinct. The only thing that you will understand when you come upon a human is the pain that they are causing you. You won’t even stop to formulate a plan on how you can cause them to stop hurting you. You will simply react, and before you even understand what has happened, you’ll kill them and drink their blood and quench the thirst that will take away the pain for that one moment.” He was looking off again. It was clear to me that every word he was speaking now caused him to ache. I didn’t dare to move.
“For the first few months, you won’t have time to make a choice between who lives and who dies. All you’ll understand is that there is blood nearby. It could be your best friend…a mother…a child.” He paused and looked down again gravely. “It could be Charlie. And you’ll feel it only after you have murdered your own father and feasted on his blood. But by then, it will be too late to repent. That is the force of the need inside you.”
He paused and looked down at our intertwined hands. I realized then that I had been gradually tightening my grip on his wrist until my knuckles were white. My nails would have been digging into his skin had it not been impenetrable. He gently unfolded my fingers, his eyes fixed hesitantly on my wavering expression. “I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he whispered, and his voice was truly repentant as he pulled me slowly to him. “I just needed you to understand the life that you are about to embrace…and the life that you are giving up.”
His arms formed a protective barrier around me. His cold hand stroked my spine as the image of my father, white and cold with his throat slit by my own hands echoed in the confines of my mind. It seemed to take a very long time to fade. Edward sat motionless with me tracing the curve of my spine and waiting for a signal that it had all sunk in.
Finally, I pushed away from him to look at his face. I didn’t feel like smiling at all, but his angelic features brought one to my lips briefly. He ran his hand across my cheek.
“Do you still want to be a vampire?” he asked. He kept his voice stoically free of hope for one answer or the other.
Later, I was very proud of myself for keeping the tremble out of my voice as I answered him.
“Only if you promise that you will be there to make sure that what you describe will never happen.”
Edward looked down darkly. “Bella, I can promise to keep you away from Charlie, but I cannot keep you away from all of humanity, nor can I guarantee that you will never slip up.” He took my hand again. “It’s happened to the best of us.” A flash of humor lit his face. “Jasper’s betting against it, remember?”
I exhaled loudly and rolled my eyes. “Just promise me that I’ll never find my father…or my mother for that matter, dead in my hands.”
“Done,” he agreed, but there was enough regret in his voice that I realized he had hoped for a different reaction. This brought up another very important issue.
“I want you to promise me one more thing,” I insisted. His eyes narrowed.
“What?”
“Well, I seem to be the only one who can keep you out of their head, and I don’t think I’m going to be able to read your thoughts anytime soon…”
“You’re worrying me, Bella. What do you propose?”
“If we’re going to be husband and wife, it seems only fair to me that there be no secrets between us,” I finished.
He looked relieved. “Also done,” he said, but I wasn’t satisfied.
“That means no withholding of any kind of information…like rogue vampires on their way to kill me, or a secret society of ancient vampires in possession of their own city in Italy.”
He chuckled under his breath. “All right. You win.” He flashed his gleaming smile, and I was momentarily dazed.
“Really?” I asked through the haze. “Then answer me. Did you truly expect me to change my mind about my turning today?”
He sighed. “No.” He picked a purple wildflower and placed it behind my ear, brushing my hair back from my face as well. “But I had hoped. A man can hope.” There was a hint of a smile in his eyes. “Even a vampire can hope.”
I tried again. “Where are we going on our honeymoon?” I asked.
His crooked smile was suddenly in place, and his hands appeared on either side of my face as he leaned in slowly to graze my lips again. I inhaled the sweet scent all around me, and when he pulled away, all the resolve had left me. I sat back, overcome.
“That doesn’t fall under our promise. The arrangements were made weeks ago.”
I didn’t argue. Who could argue with a vampire?
