"Edward."
"Bella."
Both of our voices were too formal, too stiff, compared to how we usually spoke to each other. But, then again, the circumstances weren't exactly what you would call conventional. By no means were we a typical pair in any way, shape, or form, making every moment we spent together different from other teen couples. But, even for us, this was… awkward, for lack of a better word. Luckily this situation would only divide us once. After this, there would be no need for it to happen again.
I stared into the beautiful, golden eyes that smoldered down at me and smiled. A cool, Alaskan breeze blew passed me, swirling my loose, dark hair around my face. I shivered a little, being used to winters back in Phoenix where it never got below forty and the constantly wet, rainy winters I had experienced in Forks.
I didn't know exactly where we were, but I knew it was far north, and I knew it was basically deserted; both were requirements considering the state I would be in not long from that moment. It had to be just warmer than forty degrees outside; just cooler than the average winter temperatures in Arizona. Not really ideal conditions, but at that moment it didn't really matter.
I wondered if being one of them meant feeling cold all the time, too, as his fingers traced their way from my ear, down my jaw line, then around my lips. I closed my eyes. There was no way, as I was now, I would ever get used to the way even his touch showed he loved me. Yet, once I was one of them, I couldn't think of a way in which I could just accept it, either.
As his marble skin traced my features, I remembered my original thought and came to the conclusion that when you don't have a heartbeat, your body temperature is probably the last thing on your mind.
"Bella, please," his velvet voice begged of me. I took his cold, strong hands in my own small, pale ones and looked daringly into his liquid topaz eyes. I knew he heard my sharp intake of breath, the one I could never help but hold back when he released the full power of his beauty upon me.
Do
I dazzle you? Frequently.
The scene replayed itself in my head as I tried to gather my thoughts and remember to breathe at the same time. This may seem like an easy task, but it's actually quite the opposite when you have someone like Edward Cullen staring at you like you're the only person in the world.
I remembered the small booth in the back of the crowded restaurant; the way the waitress had tried her hardest to act as if I wasn't there, and the way Edward had never moved his eyes from me. I remembered why we were there in the first place, but didn't dwell on that. I remembered the question, and his oblivious face as he turned it around so it was directed at me. I couldn't lie under his intense glare. That one word had been so brutally honest…
Then, afterward, there had been the car ride…
I shivered again, but not because of the temperature this time. It was at the memory. Edward mistook that action, as he often did, and started to pull his hands from mine. I held on to them and almost laughed at the effort I was putting in to keeping a hold of his hands when I knew he was at least, if not more than, ten times stronger than me.
"Edward, listen to me," I begged back, finally pulled into reality. "I'm done arguing with you. We both know I'm not backing out, and you agreed, Edward. I kept my end of the deal…" I looked down at our intertwined hands.
A ring, mine silver with a diamond, and his, a simple, gold band, graced the fourth finger of each of our left hands. Blood rushed to my cheeks, tinting them the slightest shade of pink as I reminded myself, once again, that I was no longer Isabella Swan. I was officially Mrs. Edward Cullen, and I couldn't have been happier… Except for one considerably important fact. That detail happened to be the one that Edward was currently trying to talk me out of. But it wasn't going to work, and we both knew it.
When he didn't respond I found words rolling out of my mouth, simply trying to fill the silence. "We've gone through all the motions, Edward. We got married," I said, addressing the fact out loud and brushing his wedding band with my thumb. "I told Charlie and Renée that you and I would be going to college in Alaska with you… Here,"—I gestured to the area around me as another mild breeze came through—"I told them we'd be living together… That I probably wouldn't get to come see them very often… We've done everything. Just… Just do it, Edward."
I squeezed his hand tightly. We'd been over this numerous times and, even though he had promised, he was still trying to get me to reconsider. I knew that there, at the spot I was standing on at that moment, a promise would be kept and I would get what I had been asking for since the day I had known what he really was.
The boy before me nodded and pulled me close to him, wrapping his stone arms around me, feeling me one last time before I was changed forever. I closed my eyes as my head rested against his chest and thought about what was going to happen in just a matter of minutes, allowing the word, once so dreaded due to the fact that in normal minds it was a thing of nightmares, to enter my head.
Vampire…
That is what I would be. That is what I had wanted to be since the day I knew I was in love with one. I had irreversibly fallen in love with Edward Cullen, and being with him forever meant I couldn't be myself. From the moment I had seen the Cullen family, sitting as still as stone, not eating any of the food on their full trays across the cafeteria my first day at Forks High School, I had known something was different about them. How ironically right I had been.
I felt Edward's lips kiss the top of my head, his fingers gently tangled in my hair. He moved from there to my forehead, then to each of my closed eyes. I savored each kiss, valuing every last moment my human emotions were still with me. I knew they would still be there, once the transformation was complete, but I wasn't sure how buried they would be meaning every second I had them was something to cherish.
His lips touched each of my cheeks, both of which were pink with the familiar blush I had stopped trying to hide.
… To never see you blush scarlet again… it would be unendurable…
I remembered the words he had spoken to me as the two of us sat in our meadow. I thought of the sun against his skin and how it had made it seem as if thousands of tiny diamonds had been set into it. Mostly I my mind swirled with thoughts of Edward, but that was nothing new.
Then his hands moved to hold my face and his lips, always surprisingly gentle, met mine. As always, I lost myself. I forgot that I was cold, dressed in heavy jeans, a long sleeved shirt, and a windbreaker in the middle of Alaska. I forgot that Carlisle was standing by somewhere, out of site, in case things… Went wrong. I forgot that there was a possibility of things going wrong. I forgot what was going to happen in which things could go wrong at all. I forgot that it was the last time my heart would accelerate noticeably as his lips moved with mine, cautious, as always, and that this was the last time Edward would be able to smirk against my lips as he heard the uncontrollable beating in my chest.
Do
you think I'll ever get better at this? That my heart might someday
stop trying to jump out of my chest whenever you touch me? I
really hope not.
I don't know how long he kissed me for and it really didn't matter. All that mattered at that moment was the simple fact that he was kissing me. Edward loved me, and it showed in every ounce of his being. The way he moved around me, the way he touched me, the way he looked at me, the way he spoke to me… Every little, almost inconsequential detail let me know that there was no one else in the world. And here I was, an average human. His love was utterly unreasonable, but I had stopped questioning it. My only concern was that he knew how much I loved him in return.
"Bella…" He breathed my name as his lips released mine, his scent washing over me. Only his hands, still against my cheeks, kept me from falling over.
I opened my eyes to look at his face, only inches from mine. It was as dazzling as ever. His golden eyes shone delicately, yet burned with a fire as understanding and something I recognized as regret washed over his face. They way the sharp edges of his cheek bones and jaw seemed smooth in that moment as a weakness, his biggest of very few weaknesses, overtook him I felt enormously guilty. I knew that then, as I had always been, I was Edward's weakness.
But it wouldn't be that way for long.
A single ray of the setting sunlight broke through the clouds right then, landing on Edward's skin. On one side of me the sun was holding on to its last few moments, much like I was. On the other the stars were just starting to twinkle. I looked back to Edward where the light seemed to reflect back off of him, dancing across his white features as if diamonds facets covered his face. I smiled and touched his face with my trembling fingers, grazing his cheek. Then I closed my eyes, and he knew.
Though I couldn't see his actions, I could feel them. His head moved from in front of mine to my chest where he turned it, placing his ear against my skin. Listening to my heart as he had that day in the meadow. It dawned on me that that I wasn't the only one counting the seconds of my human life I had left.
Slowly I felt his head move from my chest. Then Edward's stone lips pressed against the hollow of my neck. I felt him part his mouth and his teeth touch my skin, hesitating. Then they took their claim just as the last few rays of light could no longer be seen through my eyelids.
Twilight...
Seconds later it was over. He pulled back away from me, his restraint as strong as ever, and I felt the venom begin to spread. It burnt, and, though I couldn't hear it, I imagined that I was screaming.
As the world turned to a black fire around me, an angel's face shone through the darkness of the flames and he spoke to me, his words gentle in my ear.
"Be strong, Bella. I love you."