re he's already heard.  There are no secrets in Forks."  She said the name
of the town with distinct distaste.
I laughed at her words.  No secrets, indeed.  "Have fun at the beach."  I glanced at
the pouring rain, knowing it would not last, and wishing more strongly than usual that it
could.  "Good weather for sunbathing."  Well, it would be by Saturday.  She would enjoy
that.
"Won't I see you tomorrow?"
The worry in her tone pleased me.
"No.  Emmett and I are starting the weekend early."  I was mad at myself now for
having made the plans.  I could break them...but there was no such thing as too much
hunting at this point, and my family was going to be concerned enough about my
behavior without me revealing how obsessive I was turning.
"What are you going to do?" she asked, not sounded happy with my revelation.
Good.
"We're going to be hiking in the Goat Rocks Wilderness, just south of Rainier."
Emmett was eager for bear season.
"Oh, well, have fun," she said halfheartedly.  Her lack of enthusiasm pleased me
again.
As I stared at her, I began to feel almost agonized at the thought of saying even a
temporary goodbye.  She was just so soft and vulnerable.  It seemed foolhardy to let her
© 2008 Stephenie Meyer
  
139
out of my sight, where anything could happen to her.  And yet, the worst things that could
happen to her would result from being with me.
"Will you do something for me this weekend?" I asked seriously.
She nodded, her eyes wide and bewildered by my intensity.
Keep it light.
"Don't be offended, but you seem to be one of those people who just attract
accidents like a magnet.  So...try not to fall into the ocean or get run over or anything, all
right?"
I smiled ruefully at her, hoping she couldn't see the sadness in my eyes.  How
much I wished that she wasn't so much better off away from me, no matter what might
happen to her there.
Run, Bella, run.  I love you too much, for your good or mine.
She was offended by my teasing.  She glared at me.  "I'll see what I can do," she
snapped, jumping out into the rain and slamming the door as hard as she could behind
her.
Just like an angry kitten that believes it's a tiger.
I curled my hand around the key I'd just picked from her jacket pocket, and
smiled as I drove away.
© 2008 Stephenie Meyer
  
140
7.  Melody
I had to wait when I got back to school.  The final hour wasn't out yet.  That was good,
because I had things to think about and I needed the alone time.
Her scent lingered in the car.  I kept the windows up, letting it assault me, trying
to get used to the feel of intentionally torching my throat.
Attraction.
It was a problematic thing to contemplate.  So many sides to it, so many different
meanings and levels.  Not the same thing as love, but tied up in it inextricably.
I had no idea if Bella was attracted to me.  (Would her mental silence somehow
continue to get more and more frustrating until I went mad?  Or was there a limit that I
would eventually reach?)
I tried to compare her physical responses to others, like the secretary and Jessica
Stanley, but the comparison was inconclusive.  The same markers-changes in heart rate
and breathing patterns-could just as easily mean fear or shock or anxiety as they did
interest.  It seemed unlikely that Bella could be entertaining the same kinds of thoughts
that Jessica Stanley used to have.  After all, Bella knew very well that there was
something wrong with me, even if she didn't know what exactly it was.  She had touched
my icy skin, and then yanked her hand away from the chill.
And yet...as I remembered those fantasies that used to repulse me, but
remembered them with Bella in Jessica's place...
I was breathing more quickly, the fire clawing up and down my throat.
What if it had been
Bella
imagining me with my arms wrapped around her fragile
body?  Feeling me pull her tightly against my chest and then cupping my hand under her
chin?  Brushing the heavy curtain of her hair back from her blushing face?  Tracing the
shape of her full lips with my fingertips?  Leaning my face closer to hers, where I could
feel the heat of her breath on my mouth?  Moving closer still...
But then I flinched away from the daydream, knowing, as I had known when
Jessica had imagined these things, what would happen if I got that close to her.
© 2008 Stephenie Meyer
  
141
Attraction was an impossible dilemma, because I was already too attracted to
Bella in the worst way.
Did I want Bella to be attracted to me, a woman to a man?
That was the wrong question.  The right question was
should
I want Bella to be
attracted to me that way, and that answer was no.  Because I was not a human man, and
that wasn't fair to her.
With every fiber of my being, I ached to be a normal man, so that I could hold her
in my arms without risking her life.  So that I could be free to spin my own fantasies,
fantasies that didn't end in with her blood on my hands, her blood glowing in my eyes.
My pursuit of her was indefensible.  What kind of relationship could I offer her,
when I couldn't risk touching her?
I hung my head in my hands.
It was all the more confusing because I had never felt so human in my whole
life-not even when I
was
human, as far as I could recall.  When I had been human, my
thoughts had all been turned to a soldier's glory.  The Great War had raged through most
of my adolescence, and I'd been only nine months away from my eighteenth birthday
when the influenza had struck...  I had just vague impressions of those human years,
murky memories that faded more with every passing decade.  I remembered my mother
most clearly, and felt an ancient ache when I thought of her face.  I recalled dimly how
much she had hated the future I'd raced eagerly toward, praying every night when she
said grace at dinner that the "horrid war" would end...  I had no memories of another
kind of yearning.  Besides my mother's love, there was no other love that had made me
wish to stay...
This was entirely new to me.  I had no parallels to draw, no comparisons to make.
The love I felt for Bella had come purely, but now the waters were muddied.  I
wanted very much to be able to touch her.  Did she feel the same way?
That didn't matter, I tried to convince myself.
I stared at my white hands, hating their hardness, their coldness, their inhuman
strength...
I jumped when the passenger door opened.
© 2008 Stephenie Meyer
  
142
Ha.  Caught you by surprise.  There's a first,
Emmett thought as he slid into the
seat.  "I'll bet Mrs. Goff thinks you're on drugs, you've been so erratic lately.  Where
were you today?"
"I was...doing good deeds."
Huh?
I chuckled.  "Caring for the sick, that kind of thing."
That confused him more, but then he inhaled and caught the scent in the car.
"Oh.  The girl again?"
I grimaced.
This is getting weird.
"Tell me about it," I mumbled.
He inhaled again.  "Hmm, she does have a quite a flavor, doesn't she?"
The snarl broke through my lips before his words had even registered all the way,
an automatic response.
"Easy, kid, I'm just sayin.'"
The others arrived then.  Rosalie noticed the scent at once and glowered at me,
still not over her irritation.  I wondered what her problem was, but all I could hear from
her were insults.
I didn't like Jasper's reaction, either.  Like Emmett, he noticed Bella's appeal.
Not that the scent had, for either of them, a thousandth portion of the draw it had for me.
I was still upset me that her blood was sweet to them.  Jasper had poor control...
Alice skipped to my side of the car and held her hand out for Bella's truck key.
"I only saw that I was," she said-obscurely, as was her habit.  "You'll have to
tell me the whys."
"This doesn't mean-"
"I know, I know.  I'll wait.  It won't be long."
I sighed and gave her the key.
I followed her to Bella's house.  The rain was pounding down like a million tiny
hammers, so loud that maybe Bella's human ears couldn't hear the thunder of the truck's
engine.  I watched her window, but she didn't come to look out.  Maybe she wasn't there.
There were no thoughts to hear.
© 2008 Stephenie Meyer
  
143
It made me sad that I couldn't hear enough even to check on her-to make sure
she was happy, or safe, at the least.
Alice climbed in the back and we sped home.  The roads were empty, and so it
only took a few minutes.  We trooped into the house, and then went to our various
pastimes.
Emmett and Jasper were in the middle of an elaborate game of chess, utilizing
eight joined boards-spread out along the glass back wall-and their own complicated
set of rules.  They wouldn't let me play; only Alice would play games with me anymore.
Alice went to her computer just around the corner from them and I could hear her
monitors sing to life.  Alice was working on a fashion design project for Rosalie's
wardrobe, but Rosalie did not join her today, to stand behind her and direct cut and color
as Alice's hand traced over the touch sensitive screens (Carlisle and I had had to tweak
that system a bit, given that most such screens responded to temperature).  Instead, today
Rosalie sprawled sullenly on the sofa and started flipping through twenty channels a
second on the flat screen, never pausing.  I could hear her trying to decide whether or not
to go out to the garage and tune her BMW again.
Esme was upstairs, humming over a new set of blue prints.
Alice leaned her head around the wall after a moment and started mouthing
Emmett's next moves-Emmett sat on the floor with his back to her-to Jasper, who
kept his expression very smooth as he cut off Emmett's favorite knight.
And I, for the first time in so long that I felt ashamed, went to sit at the exquisite
grand piano stationed just off the entryway.
I ran my hand gently up the scales, testing the pitch.  The tuning was still perfect.
Upstairs, Esme paused what she was doing and cocked 