This was definitely not my happy place.

I was in the perfect little meadow—our meadow. The wildflowers were all around me, each singing their own fragrant song that somehow didn't even come close to the aromatic perfection of the pale boy at my side. I sighed, taking in his flawless white skin once more. Then the sun escaped from behind the sparse cloud cover again, and his skin suddenly gleamed with a million pinpoints of light. I wondered silently if I would still be rendered so breathless by this sight in a few weeks. I hoped so with all my heart.

The day was oddly warm. The clouds had graciously parted, allowing the sun a vain attempt to take back some of the moisture that fell on the Olympic Peninsula almost without ceasing. The meadow had taken on a happy yellow green, as opposed to the permanent dark tinges that seemed to cover everything else in our tiny corner of the world. The scene had all of the elements to become my happy place, but the perfect surroundings weren't enough today. Today, Edward had other things in mind.

The dreaded conversation.

He had been building it up for days now, insisting that if I was willing to risk my soul to be with him, then he needed to be absolutely sure that I understood every harsh reality that it entailed. I had agreed, of course—who could disagree with a vampire when they truly wanted something—but under the condition that it occur in the place where he had first revealed to me his true nature. The meadow had, more often than not, been my happy place, and I was sure that I could fight off all of his attempts to change my mind if I was in my own territory.

Big mistake. In my dread of the impossibility of a battle of wills with someone who had been getting what he wanted for a century, I had forgotten that the meadow was over five miles into untamed wilderness without even the benefit of a trail. Whatever battle I had been preparing to give was lost immediately as I clung like an idiot to his icy neck, feeling the trees pass by us at frightening speed, and praying that I would at least be able to let him go without help when the run finally ended. So much for a dignified front.

His smooth, unnecessary breath brought me back. He had been brooding, no doubt contemplating how to begin. His furrowed brow caused my lips to twitch into a sympathetic smile. I was determined. This was one day that his beauty and charm would not prevail. I looked away in preparation, absolutely certain that one look into his caramel eyes would devastate my argument.

His first words caught me off guard. "I'm not going to attempt to convince you to wait any longer," he said gravely. I looked up at him in surprise. His expression was regretful, but gentle. "You are capable of making your own decisions now. Your intuition is one of the features I find most appealing in you, and I must learn to trust it." His mouth turned up in a playful smirk. "And, after all, you are an adult now."

"Ugh! Don't remind me," I moaned, falling back a little too hard into the grass. The back of my head hit a bare patch of ground with a resonating thump. Edward was there even before the dull throbbing began, curling his fingers into my hair, looking for a sign of injury.

"Are you alright?" he asked with a slight smile. I rolled my eyes. My clumsy mistakes were a daily occurrence…possibly even an hourly one.

"I think I like where this conversation is going," I said. "Continue."

His lips thinned. "I asked to be prepared to be completely honest with me today, and to think of anything about the next few…months…" he said the last word through clenched teeth. "that might being worrying you. Did you?"

I nodded.

He suddenly looked nervous. The expression did not seem natural. No one as beautiful as him should ever have to be nervous. "And?" he asked.

I hesitated. I had been thinking about the things that worried me the most. Most of my preoccupations had already been discussed to some point—the pain of the transformation…the inevitable lust for blood…my inability to be anywhere near my friends or family. Edward knew all of these things. But then there were my own tiny, shallow fears, and these were what he was asking for today.

"You first," I insisted.

He exhaled forcefully. There was a moment of silence as he contemplated his thoughts, and then continued. "Of course I'm afraid that you haven't lived long enough to understand the enormity of the sacrifice you're making."

"Not negotiable," I replied quickly. "Move on."

He glared at me, but obeyed. "And there is the question of the loss of your soul…"

"Also not an arguable point," I pushed. "We've agreed to disagree on that."

"Bella, you are truly the most frustrating person I have ever met!" His eyes smoldered, and I struggled to maintain my stubborn glare in the wake of such dark beauty. After a moment that seemed like so much longer, he continued, nervous again.

"I am struggling to admit this," and I could tell that he truly was. "The way you look at me, Bella—the way you can't turn away, and the way that sometimes I am absolutely certain that I have you in a trance. My scent…my voice…my ability to…dazzle you…"

I smiled at him. I was dazzled now.

"They're all a part of being…what I am. I'm designed to lure you in and take your life. But what attracts you to me so strongly now could simply be the weapons that I possess to feed." I frowned. I could tell where this was heading.

"This is a first for me. I don't know what to expect any more than you do. What will happen if the desire you have to become what I am disappears when my natural…gifts…lose their effect on you? What will you do if you discover that the choice you've made was based on nothing more than a chemical reaction, and you suddenly find yourself faced with an eternity based on nothing more than the deception of hormones?"

I stared at him, shocked. I was able to understand to a point the struggle inside him between the lust for my blood, and the need to keep me safe, but I had been so convinced that his reluctance to turn me had been due to a lack of attraction on his part that I had not even begun to consider that he may be worried about my attraction in the future for him. I found myself laughing, great bursts of freeing laughter. He looked at me confused and almost hurt. His radiance stopped the laughter in my lungs.

"To use your words, you're utterly absurd!" I replied. His expression did not change. I took his hand and marveled at its cold beauty. "You think that I'm only attracted to your scent? To your beauty? Edward, I've told you this before…or I told Jessica knowing that you were listening, which is the same thing. Everything that I love the most about you is behind your…gifts, as you call them. All of your quirks and conflicts…all of your imperfections…the things that don't change."

He grinned fascinated. "Imperfections?"

"Yeah," I continued. "Your tendency to overreact, for example."

"Overreact?" His smirk was painfully enticing.

"Really, Edward! Four-thousand pounds of body armor? Missile-proof glass?"

He chuckled lightly. "I see your point." Then his expression turned serious again. "Your turn."

I sighed. My worries seemed so poorly thought out after his sweet soliloquy. "Well," I began. "Speaking of being attracted to scent."

His eyebrows lowered. "Yes?" he said gloomily.

"I was thinking about the way you react to me. About how you are always fighting against the smell of my blood." I paused, gauging his reaction. He continued to glower.

"Go on."

"I was thinking that maybe you stay around me—only partly, I mean—because you think that you deserve to suffer like that…and maybe when I'm like you, and my blood doesn't smell as…"

"Irresistible?" he suggested.

"Yes," I continued, struggling to make my thoughts as eloquent as his were. "And when I'm not quite as…breakable…that maybe you won't be as…drawn to me as you are now."

His reaction was the exact same as mine had been. There was a moment to think of what had just been said, and then musical gales of laughter as he pulled me to his chest in a swift, natural gesture.

"Beautiful Bella," he began, a radiant smile lighting up his perfect face. "You think I keep you near me to create my own personal purgatory!" And spoken like that, in his incredulous tone, it sounded completely idiotic. I grinned helplessly, but his face had turned contemplative. "You'll understand this when you…later, but my desire for your blood…it's painful every second. I do not bear that pain as a penance for my past, but only out of the greatest desire to be as close as I can to you."

He kissed my hair and breathed in the scent of it. I felt the chills begin in my spine. "I'll miss the beat of your heart, and the stunning blush of your cheeks, but the selfish part of me is waiting for the day when I can kiss you passionately without worrying about controlling my instinct to drink your blood."

We held each other in silence for a few moments, him, no doubt savoring the warmth of my skin against his, and me reveling in the last image he had left in my mind…kissing him passionately without restraints. My stomach was still tight when he pushed me gently away and held me at arms length, staring seriously into my eyes.

"Is there anything else?" he asked, looking at me as if he were trying to pick my thoughts out of my head. Good luck.

"Not that we haven't already discussed," I reassured him. He seemed satisfied. He let me go, and I moved to his side once again. It was clear by the look on his face that the most important part of the conversation was about to begin. Great. This is where he goes back on his word and tries to make me hold out until twenty.

"I wonder if you've thought much about what it is like to be immortal," he began pensively.

"Sure I have," I said cheerfully, attempting to avoid the dark turn that the conversation was threatening to take. "You don't sweat, you don't bleed, and you don't trip all over your own feet. Sounds like heaven to me."

A hint of my favorite crooked smile flashed on his face, but it was gone too quickly. I waited to hear whatever he had thought was so important that he had to schedule the conversation.

"You don't sweat, that's right…or cry, or eat, or even breathe if you don't feel like it. You don't do anything remotely human anymore, and that includes sleep, Bella. Have you thought of all of the hours that you pass in untroubled sleep?" I shrugged. Sleep had been somewhat elusive ever since I had agreed to marry Edward directly out of high school. "What will you do with the hours of the night that you can no longer use to unwind in unconsciousness?"

"Catch up on my reading," I said simply. "I've been dying for a chance to read Wuthering Heights." It was intended to be a joke, but Edward plunged on.

"And while all of the people you know are busy dreaming, you will be completely unable to do so. Are you willing to give up your dreams for an eternity?"

I brushed the back of his hand with my fingertips. "You are my dream," I said.

His expression softened as I gazed into his eyes, but the frustration was still easily visible as he continued, taking my hand in both of his. I listened dutifully. "It's not only the termination of all human necessities. It's the overwriting of all human weaknesses. You'll be stronger than you understand…stronger than me…stronger than Emmett!"

"It's impossible to gauge your strength and speed as a neophyte. It takes constant self-control not to crush things to dust or to react with instinctive speed at any given moment."

I smiled, remembering how he had always seemed to be by my side that first year to surprise me, or to catch something that I had dropped. He misread my expression.

"You think of it in terms of freedom. You've been so limited by what you must do to avoid personal injury that the thought of being invincible seems wonderful, but it is a constant chore that must be done to avoid detection. What happens one day if you shake a man's hand and crush it to shreds?"

I shivered. Would I be able to do that?

"That's what I've had to worry about for ninety years now. I have to keep complete control at all times around humans." He flinched. "That is why your…last request is so difficult for me to grant."

I blushed profusely and my heartbeat seemed to skip a beat. He noticed, of course, and his topaz eyes met mine again for a moment before I looked away, embarrassed. I saw him smile knowingly from the corner of my eye. I may have been the only one whose thoughts he couldn't read, but my heart gave everything away just the same. Stupid beating heart!

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 her 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 waste. 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?