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My good humor vanished. "Stay away from her," I growled through my teeth. "Touchy, touchy."
I sighed. Emmett came to sit beside me on the rock.
"Sorry. I know you're going through a tough spot. I really am trying to not be too much of an insensitive jerk, but, since that's sort of my natural state..." He waited for me to laugh at his joke, and then made a face.
So serious all the time. What's bugging you now?
"Thinking about her. Well, worrying, really."
"What's there to worry about? You are here." He laughed loudly.
I ignored his joke again, but answered his question. "Have you ever thought about how fragile they all are? How many bad things there are that can happen to a mortal?"
"Not really. I guess I see what you mean, though. I wasn't much match for a bear that first time around, was I?"
"Bears," I muttered, adding a new fear to the pile. "That would be just her luck, wouldn't it? Stray bear in town. Of course it would head straight for Bella."
Emmett chuckled. "You sound like a crazy person, do you know that?" "Just imagine for one minute that Rosalie was human, Emmett. And she could run into a bear...or get hit by a car...or lightening...or fall down stairs...or get sick - get a disease!" The words burst from me stormily. It was a relief to let them out - they'd been festering inside me all weekend. "Fires and earthquakes and tornados! Ugh!
When's the last time you watched the news? Have you seen the kinds of things that happen to them? Burglaries and homicides..." My teeth clenched together, and I was abruptly so infuriated by the idea of another human hurting her that I couldn't breathe. "Whoa, whoa! Hold up, there, kid. She lives in Forks, remember? So she gets rained on." He shrugged.
"I think she has some serious bad luck, Emmett, I really do. Look at the evidence. Of all the places in the world she could go, she ends up in a town where vampires make up a significant portion of the population."
"Yeah, but we're vegetarians. So isn't that good luck, not bad?"
"With the way she smells? Definitely bad. And then, more bad luck, the way she smells to me." I glowered at my hands, hating them again.
"Except that you have more self-control than just about anyone but Carlisle. Good luck again."
"The van?"
"That was just an accident."
"You should have seen it coming for her, Em, again and again. I swear, it was like she had some kind of magnetic pull."
"But you were there. That was good luck."
"Was it? Isn't this the worst luck any human could ever possibly have - to have a vampire fall in love with them?"
Emmett considered that quietly for a moment. He pictured the girl in his head, and found the image uninteresting. Honestly, I can't really see the draw.
"Well, I can't really see Rosalie's allure, either," I said rudely. "Honestly, she seems like more work than any pretty face is worth."
Emmett chuckled. "I don't suppose you'd tell me..."
"I don't know what her problem is, Emmett," I lied with a sudden, wide grin. I saw his intent in time to brace myself. He tried to shove me off the rock, and there was a loud cracking sound as a fissure opened in the stone between us. "Cheater," he muttered.
I waited for him to try another time, but his thoughts took a different direction. He was picturing Bella's face again, but imagining it whiter, imagining her eyes bright red...
"No," I said, my voice strangled.
"It solves your worries about mortality, doesn't it? And then you wouldn't want to kill her, either. Isn't that the best way?"
"For me? Or for her?"
"For you," he answered easily. His tone added the of course.
I laughed humorlessly. "Wrong answer."
"I didn't mind so much," he reminded me.
"Rosalie did."
He sighed. We both knew that Rosalie would do anything, give up anything, if it meant she could be human again. Even Emmett.
"Yeah, Rose did," he acquiesced quietly.
"I can't... I shouldn't... I'm not going to ruin Bella's life. Wouldn't you feel the same, if it were Rosalie?"
Emmett thought about that for a moment. You really...love her?
"I can't even describe it, Emmett. All of a sudden, this girl's the whole world to me. I don't see the point of the rest of the world without her anymore."
But you won't change her? She won't last forever, Edward.
"I know that," I groaned.
And, as you've pointed out, she's sort of breakable.
"Trust me - that I know, too."
Emmett was not a tactful person, and delicate discussions were not his forte. He struggled now, wanting very much not to be offensive.
Can you even touch her? I mean, if you love her...wouldn't you want to, well touch her...?
Emmett and Rosalie shared an intensely physical love. He had a hard time understanding how one could love, without that aspect.
I sighed. "I can't even think of that, Emmett."
Wow. So what are your options, then?
"I don't know," I whispered. "I'm trying to figure out a way to...to leave her. I just can't fathom how to make myself stay away..."
With a deep sense of gratification, I suddenly realized that it was right for me to stay - at least for now, with Peter and Charlotte on their way. She was safer with me here, temporarily, than she would be if I were gone. For the moment, I could be her unlikely protector.
The thought made me anxious; I itched to be back so that I could fill that role for as long as possible.
Emmett noticed the change in my expression. What are you thinking about?
"Right now," I admitted a bit sheepishly, "I'm dying to run back to Forks and check on her. I don't know if I'll make it till Sunday night."
"Uh-uh! You are not going home early. Let Rosalie cool down a little bit.
Please! For my sake."
"I'll try to stay," I said doubtfully.
Emmett tapped the phone in my pocket. "Alice would call if there were any basis for your panic attack. She's as weird about this girl as you are."
I grimaced at that. "Fine. But I'm not staying past Sunday."
"There's no point in hurrying back - it's going to be sunny, anyway. Alice said we were free from school until Wednesday."
I shook my head rigidly.
"Peter and Charlotte know how to behave themselves."
"I really don't care, Emmett. With Bella's luck, she'll go wandering off into the woods at exactly the wrong moment and - " I flinched. "Peter isn't known for his selfcontrol. I'm going back Sunday."
Emmett sighed. Exactly like a crazy person.
Bella was sleeping peacefully when I climbed up to her bedroom window early Monday morning. I'd remembered oil this time, and the window now moved silently out of my way.
I could tell by the way her hair lay smooth across the pillow that she'd had a less restless night than the last time I was here. She had her hands folded under her cheek like a small child, and her mouth was slightly open. I could hear her breath moving slowly in and out between her lips.
It was an amazing relief to be here, to be able to see her again. I realized that I wasn't truly at ease unless that was the case. Nothing was right when I was away from her.
Not that all was right when I was with her, either, though. I sighed, letting the thirst fire rake through my throat. I'd been away from it too long. The time spent without pain and temptation made it all the more forceful now. It was bad enough that I was afraid to go kneel beside her bed so that I could read the titles of her books. I wanted to know the stories in her head, but I was afraid of more than my thirst, afraid that if I let myself get that close to her, I would want to be closer still...
Her lips looked very soft and warm. I could imagine touching them with the tip of my finger. Just lightly...
That was exactly the kind of mistake that I had to avoid.
My eyes ran over her face again and again, examining it for changes. Mortals changed all the time - I was sad at the thought of missing anything...
I thought she looked...tired. Like she hadn't gotten enough sleep this weekend.
Had she gone out?
I laughed silently and wryly at how much that upset me. So what if she had? I didn't own her. She wasn't mine.
No, she wasn't mine - and I was sad again.
One of her hands twitched, and I noticed that there were shallow, barely healed scrapes across the heel of her palm. She'd been hurt? Even though it was obviously not a serious injury, it still disturbed me. I considered the location, and decided she must have tripped. That seemed a reasonable explanation, all things considered.
It was comforting to think that I wouldn't have to puzzle over either of these small mysteries forever. We were friends now - or, at least, trying to be friends. I could ask her about her weekend - about the beach, and whatever late night activity had made her look so weary. I could ask what had happened to her hands. And I could laugh a little when she confirmed my theory about them.
I smiled gently as I wondered whether or not she had fallen in the ocean. I wondered if she'd had a pleasant time on the outing. I wondered if she'd thought about me at all. If she'd missed me even the tiniest portion of the amount that I'd missed her. I tried to picture her in the sun on the beach. The picture was incomplete, though, because I'd never been to First Beach myself. I only knew how it looked in pictures... I felt a tiny qualm of unease as I thought about the reason why I'd never once been to the pretty beach located just a few minutes run from my home. Bella had spent the day at La Push - a place where I was forbidden, by treaty, to go. A place where a few old men still remembered the stories about the Cullens, remembered and believed them. A place where our secret was known...
I shook my head. I had nothing to worry about there. The Quileutes were bound by treaty, too. Even had Bella run into one of those aging sages, they could reveal nothing. And why would the subject ever be broached? Why would Bella think to voice her curiosity there? No - the Quileutes were perhaps the one thing I did not have to worry about.
I was angry with the sun when it began to rise. It reminded me that I could not satisfy my curiosity for days to come. Why did it choose to shine now?
With a sigh, I ducked out her window before it was light enough for anyone to see me here. I meant to stay in the thick forest by her house and see her off to school, but when I got into the trees, I was surprised to find the trace of her scent lingering on the trail there.
I followed it quickly, curiously, becoming more and more worried as it led deeper into the darkness. What had Bella been doing out here?
The trail stopped abruptly, in the middle of nowhere in particular. She'd gone just a few steps off the trail, into the ferns, where she'd touched the trunk of a fallen tree. Perhaps sat there...
I sat where she had, and looked around. All she would have been able to see was ferns and forest. It had probably been raining - the scent was washed out, having never set deeply into the tree.
Why would Bella have come to sit here alone - and she had been alone, no doubt about that - in the middle of the wet, murky forest?
It made no sense, and, unlike those other points of curiosity, I could hardly bring this up in casual conversation.
So, Bella, I was following your scent through the woods after I left your room where I'd been watching you sleep... Yes, that would be quite the ice breaker. I would never know what she'd been thinking and doing here, and that had my teeth grinding together in frustration. Worse, this was far too much like the scenario I'd imagined for Emmett - Bella wandering alone in the woods, where her scent would call to anyone who had the senses to track it...
I groaned. Not only did she have bad luck, but she courted it.
Well, for this moment she had a protector. I would watch over her, keep her from harm, for as long as I could justify it.
I suddenly found myself wishing that Peter and Charlotte would make an extended stay.
