Part 3: The Confession. 1921.

I watched her moving about the room, glancing up over the pages of my book. If she noticed my repeated gazes, she did not expose it. I was supposed to be reading, but I found her wonderfully distracting. She seemed quite content to be dusting the furniture, fussing over the way the curtains hung around the windows. It was daylight and, though we had moved outside of town in our new home, she kept the ivory lace pulled over the panes. The hazy light filtered through them, casting the shadow of the pattern in the fabric across her skin. The light that filtered through the tiny spaces in the fabric glinted off her skin.

She moved at a relaxed human pace, biting her lip at one point as she pushed herself up onto her toes to fuss with the valance. Reaching down, she pulled at the collar of her dress, brushing long, loose curls over her delicate shoulder. I could see the varying colors of the strands—blonde, light red, brown—that blended together beautifully. Smiling, she turned to face me, her fingers still running down one curl. It bounced back up, sliding around the tips of her slender fingers.

"What are you reading?" she asked me sweetly, noticing no doubt that I was not looking at the page at all. Instead, I found my eyes locked on the small hollow between her collar bones, the pale skin of her slender neck.

"A medical journal," I replied, disinterested in both the book and discussing it with her. I hadn't read any of it anyway for watching her. I'm reading your every move, I thought, every flutter of your eyelashes, every soft fall of your feet on the floor, every nuance of your voice, the rich, fluid golden color of your irises, every curve of your body.

My thoughts drifted back to the night I had found her; she was being sent to the morgue, considered as good as dead. But I had heard it, felt it—the vague, fading beat of her heart. Before I had made the difficult decision to try to turn Edward, I had felt the obligation to his mother, the pity and sympathy for a young life being snuffed out so soon. I had felt the need for a companion, someone who I could share more truth about my existence than I could with others, even of our kind. I saw something behind the fading light in Edward's eyes that called to me. Edward was made for something more than this—something more than this sick young man who was wasting away in a hospital bed alone.

Esme though, Esme had been something completely different. The sheet had been pulled over her as if she was already dead. I contained my anger that someone had given up on her as hopeless. The faint pulsing of her blood through her veins had sent something like a shudder through me. I was not thirsty. I was not sensually tempted by the sight or smell of her blood which soaked through the white shroud. I was not desensitized to human blood; my disgust for murder simply overrode my lust for human blood somehow. It always had. Yet, I craved something about her. I would have died myself if it was possible, if it would strengthen that weak pulse of hers; for, when I pulled the sheet back from her face, I recognized her immediately.

I caught myself licking my lips, both in my memory and in the present. She was bent forward now, lips slightly parted, tucking her hair behind her ear as she reached forward to wipe off the table in front of me, but her eyes were locked on me. I was still baffled at times by my subconscious human reactions. I hadn't felt so human since I'd been turned than I did around Esme. The preservation, protection, and respect of life, of humanity had been the driving force of my ability to persevere for nearly three centuries, but this was different.

I remembered her in the hospital, how her face had been swollen, scratched, bruised. I had known without any further inspection that many of her bones were broken, shattered completely even. The internal bleeding was likely massive, with possible severe brain trauma. She didn't even know she was alive at the time, I had thought then. But I had seen beneath that, a face I remembered with a sad, determined smile. I saw the teenage girl sitting on the examination table, gritting her teeth as I set her broken leg. She had tears of pain in her eyes when she thanked me for taking care of her. Her face had matured. She had grown taller and more curvaceous, with the body of a woman, but her lips were the same, her long, delicate light brown eyelashes fell onto her cheeks the same way. She smelled the same.

I remembered her well. Columbus, Ohio. Esme Anne Platt, age sixteen. Admitted at 9:07 pm, August third, nineteen hundred and eleven. Transverse fracture of the left tibia. Other minor contusions and abrasions. Slightly accelerated heart rate but vitals normal. Alert, soft-spoken but talkative. Agreeable patient. Beautiful eyes.

And she had been lying before me dying then. I could still hear her speak in my mind, the way she lowered her voice and eyes when she had thanked me for doing my job. She hadn't complained; she had been a strong, adventurous, spirited girl. Yet, there she had lain with her body mangled, her life fading away—a suicide victim. It did not make sense. I could not imagine that sweet young girl, so full of life, that I had met wanting to die. What happened to you, Esme? I wondered. I knew that she had not taken her own life—someone else had. Her heart was fighting to keep her alive. Her spirit was still thriving. I wanted nothing more than to make her suffering go away, to help her, heal her, save her.

"Esme," I said, leaning over her, wheeling her into the morgue. I saw a faint movement behind her eyelids. I knew she could hear me. I knew that she was trapped somewhere inside of her broken body, barely hanging onto life, in anguish.

I chastised myself for even thinking it now, but I could still feel the soft skin of her neck beneath my lips, the merest resistance it provided in vain, being no obstacle for razor sharp vampire teeth. It had been punctured so easily, almost like it wanted to be broken. I had tried to focus on the task at hand. This was not a pursuit of pleasure, I had reminded myself, trying to focus on her weak heartbeat and subtle breathing. But the taste of her blood flooded my mouth, and though she was dying, it was warm and rich and unique and intoxicating.

It was only the second time in the almost three hundred years of my vampire existence that I had tasted human blood, and suddenly I knew what it was that drove others to madness and made them beasts. I craved more of her wildly. I was surprised by the deep growl in my throat that emerged as the taste of her filled me, rushing straight into every cell of my body, possessing and sating me fully. It was my single most sensual and satisfying experience to date—killing this beautiful woman. But I knew she would reawaken. I justified my thoughts by telling myself I was saving her.

I pulled myself away for a moment, questioningly. She had begun to stir though, and I knew the venom had entered her bloodstream. There was no going back now, no time for second guesses or regrets.

Yet, when her life finally faded, I found myself coming to some new state of awareness. Had I really given into my nature that deeply, I had questioned, cursing myself. I found the fingers of one hand tangled in her damp, blood-stained hair, the other crushing her slim shoulder under my grip. Her body, lifeless, breathless, silent beneath mine. For a brief moment, I hated myself.

Then, she moved beneath me, her back arching, head falling back, mouth open, eyes closed tightly. She didn't gasp or breathe. Her heart wasn't beating, but it was not quiet in her body. I could hear it working, the subtle cracking of bone going back into place, skin suturing itself back together. I knew the intensity of her pain; I remembered it well, but she didn't cry out. After a moment, she relaxed fully as if completely exhausted, looking up at me with her brown eyes, now flooding with red, full of pain, helpless, afraid.

"Don't worry, Esme," I said, taking her into my arms to carry her out of the hospital, to take her home and let the changes transform her broken body into something whole and strong. "You are going to be just fine," I promised.

"Dr. Cullen?" she asked weakly, her head falling against my shoulder. I knew what the change would do to her. I'd seen it before, but it baffled me how she could possibly ever be any more beautiful than she already was.

I wasn't sure what exactly drove the craving I still had for her. Her heart was not beating, no blood flowed in her veins, but my desire to taste her had somehow been amplified after she was drained of blood. I had tried to deny it, questioned it, pushed it away, but I knew that wanting her was something more than a lingering human desire for companionship or emotional attachment.

We developed a closeness very quickly that was something more than her simply seeing me as her tutor in her new experience and her as my protégée. We didn't simply agree with each other on any given topic: our discussions actually challenged each other, increased our understanding, brought something additional for the other to consider. She expressed a gentle kind of love in everything that she did unlike any I ever known. I had been many things, but never the object of the kind of tender affection she showed me. We made good partners—accomplishing together what neither of us alone could do. And we had already made it clear that we were mutually in love. She left no doubt about the fact that she was attracted to me, and I had never wanted anyone with the depth and capacity of desire I harbored for her.

I knew vampires who had mates, spouses, intimate partners, but the details, the experience of the complex entanglement of motivations and drives for such an exclusive emotional and physical bond had evaded me. I realized that I, like some physician who had never himself suffered real pain or sickness or the death of one close to him, knew all the mechanics but understood nothing about how it actually felt.

Now though, as she smiled sweetly at me, sitting down beside of me, her body brushing mine slightly in places—her thigh against mine, her shoulder against my arm—I felt I was beginning to grasp both my ignorance and longing to be enlightened. I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye. I had been twenty-three when I was turned—attacked one night by surprise by a rogue vampire who abandoned me to whatever fate. I had been well old enough to understand the fight against the deadly sin of lust.

My father was a minister, and I was to follow his path. My calling in life was to fight the evils that lured men into damnation. I tried to please my father, set a good example in the community we ministered to, but I realized now that I was still only beginning to understand myself and establish my individual beliefs when my human life had been snatched from me. I found my physical cravings easy to curb, as compared with the wild, almost incontrollable temptation my peers seemed so victimized by. Did this make me truly a man of God, I had questioned then, looking for validation and guidance down a path that my heart had never been set on. It seemed almost laughable in ways now. It was easy to do without something you never really wanted that badly anyway, something I had never had to come to terms with as a human.

My youth had been consumed with chasing after evils, not the girls in the village. I was studious and hungry for knowledge. My father had been a selfish man who was more interested in grooming me to carry on his legacy. He knew I was smart and thought I could salvage his reputation, even in the days when witch hunting was falling out of favor. The Cullens were devoted to purifying society, or so he wanted people to think. Finding a wife for his son was the least of his concerns, and this had not bothered me, even long after I left my father's side and abandoned his ways, and long after his death, never had I been in love—until Esme.