A/N: With thanks again to Bells, duskwatcher, katmom and valelf for their auction bid! Thanks too to everyone who is reading and sharing and reviewing this story! I have so enjoyed creating it.

We left Bella and Carlisle on her porch…just after she found out he sparkled.

Chapter Four: "Everything"

Bella POV

"I never meant to tell you," Carlisle murmured, pacing awkwardly in front of the flat screen.

"I'm not a dentist," I muttered, trying and failing to get even marginally comfortable on the broken-down sofa. I was too short to rest my support-cast on the back of the cushions and too tall to rest it on the arm. Seeing my difficulty, Carlisle swept in and – with speed I had only been introduced to that afternoon – stacked pillows up on the arm to make me more comfortable. I caught at him with my free hand, managing to hook a finger in his suspenders. I felt my insides quicken when he noticed and flashed a glance at me with eyes that were suddenly black. Black and dangerous and somehow hungry.

"Dentist. What do you mean?" His words had a flailing feel to them. As if he were trying to distract himself by any means necessary.

"Getting you to tell me is like pulling teeth," I elaborated. "And I'm not a dentist...?" I left that dangling, hoping to make him smile. No one was as beautiful as Carlisle when he smiled at me.

"No, you're not. You're studying to be a doctor and you've got the tenacious mind and determination required to succeed." Rather than retreat to the television set, he tilted my head gently. His eyes were no longer black, but a dark golden amber. "All right." He folded himself to sit at my knees, on the floor with his legs crossed in front of him as if he were a child in a library story-hour. My fingers itched to pass through his hair, but I didn't let them. "I am not precisely human, Bella. Not anymore."

My heart double-thumped. Not. Precisely. Human. Okay... "But you were."

A nod. "I was. That changed for me utterly against my will, but I have tried to do my best with the – the gifts I was given."

"So, you've got super powers?" I was whispering, though we were alone in the house and would be until Charlie got back from the station in an hour. "Or something?"

"Or something," he murmured with a wry cast to his expression as he looked up at me. "Knowing what I am is against the law for humans, Bella. That's why I was – am – frightened. Not on my behalf, but yours. I – I don't want you to be...to be hurt in any way. To suffer any consequences from knowing me."

Too late. I was already "suffering consequences." "Please?"

"I – I'm a –." I had never until that afternoon seen Dr. Cullen lose his composure, but he did then. He growled and tugged angrily at his hair and hit his head on his knees. I could hear a muted thudding of what sounded like rock on rock even as his unique sweet-spicy aroma danced around me with his near-violent motion. "Vampire," he told his knees.

Disbelief never occurred to me, even though he didn't come complete with fangs and a black cloak and coffin. "Vampire."

After his banging and tugging, his sudden stillness was unsettling. "Vampire. I drink blood."

A horrible thought slid like slime through my brain. "Is that why – is that why you're...?" I couldn't say it.

He knew anyway and jerked so that he was looking at me and covering my hand with his. "No. Not at all. To be honest, Isabella, yours is the only blood I've ever even noticed in hundreds of years."

Hundreds. He said hundreds of years. My mouth felt dry with shock and I needed a drink. Not a beer, but a Cherry Coke would be great. Sugar. Yes. "So you're a doctor. And a vampire. And your family...?"

"All of us."

I had to ask, since his voice sounded tortured. His eyes seemed to beg me to ask him to clarify. "Was your wife a – a vampire, too?" He'd said she had died in an auto accident, but what had happened? Was that true or a lie or...?

His eyes closed in obvious pain. "Esme. I – I met her and, and fell in love with her while she was still human, Bella. She was my mate. I changed her when she was on the brink of death."

"The accident?"

"No. Back in the 1920's. The accident... Took place on a foggy morning in Tennessee. There aren't too many ways for us to cease to exist," he went on, his voice becoming clinical. I guessed he was hurting and was distancing himself from his pain. I didn't blame him; I had tended to think of my mother's cancer in that way. "One way is to...burn." His voice dropped to the barest audible brushing of sound on my ear. "There was a heavy fog and the mountain road was narrow. Esme was on her way to a client's house and promised to be safe, since Alice told her there'd be fog. A gasoline tanker was coming up the other side of the mountain. Alice had not foreseen an accident and none of us were worried at all until Alice started shrieking at the top of her voice. Glass shattered from the sound and I knew...I knew..."

He was quiet and I shifted to touch him. I had to. Vampire or no, he was – he was Carlisle. And he was remembering what was possibly the hardest day of his life and so of course I squeezed his hand and then bent over to press my cheek to his hair. "I'm sorry." Then, I asked, "Alice? Is she...one of you? A vampire?" I could get that word out. Sure I could.

"Yes."

"And she foretells things? Like a, a seer?"

"Yes, based upon what people have decided to do. What she didn't see until the very last moment was that the trucker's daughter – a girl of about five – decided suddenly to call her father because she didn't want to eat her breakfast. Alice saw it – all of it. How the driver, hearing his daughter's ringtone, answered even though he was going through a fog bank. How he got distracted and how –"

"Oh, Carlisle," I whispered, my cheek still on his hair. I was awkwardly positioned, but it didn't matter. "I am sorry. Truly."

"The tanker exploded with the force and friction of the collision and Esme...my indestructible wife...was lost in the fire." His voice all but vanished into a misty whisper. "Based upon the...the ashes...we think she was decapitated first."

I didn't have any words for him, so I just pressed a light kiss to his head and pushed my unbalanced way back up to rest my shoulder-construction on the pillows Carlisle had arranged for me.

Carlisle POV

Her silence was a blessing to me, as my brain was processing things at twice the usual speed. How to reconcile the upwelling of emotion that had come close to pouring out this afternoon with my ever-present mourning? I was not being unfaithful to Esme. I never thought that. I just wondered if I would be being fair to myself and to Isabella Swan if I allowed anything to surface from my depths. It was a near-relentless tug-of-war in my spirit.

A struggle that all but ceased when I felt her lips press gently to my hair. It was as if my mind flew through places it would have gone in a less expeditious manner under other circumstances. Her silence allowed this; her willingness to wait for me.

Indescribably valuable.

"I said I'd tell you everything." The heat of her hand was still wrapped about with the chill of my own but she hadn't said anything. She was extraordinary. Her heart was not beating with a fearful cadence. She was a woman at peace. Expectant, but calm too. I inhaled and looked her in the eyes again; their brown depths welcomed my return. "Alice, as you said, is our seer. She has limited sight into the future. She is mated to Jasper, an empath. For the purposes of our stay here in Forks, Jasper is my brother and Alice is my sister-in-law – if, indeed, you think that would be advisable at this juncture."

Bella cocked her head. "Alice and Jasper. How are they related to you?"

I had to chuckle. "We live very differently from most of our kind." At her prompting look, I continued. "None of my family is related to me in any biologically human way. We do not have the same genes. Alice and Jasper were created by different people, decades apart, and found each other before they found us. Alice had been looking for us, you see." I proceeded to tell Isabella the family stories. Edward's creation, Rosalie's desperate rescue, Emmett's transformation...and Esme's. I didn't have to move or fidget to get comfortable, but I found myself leaning into Bella's bare legs, feeling the heat of her precious humanity seep into my body. It was a reminder I needed apparently, as my imagination kept wandering, wondering if someday, Bella's story would be added to ours...

"And you? I've heard of everyone but you," she said eventually. Her voice was playful. "Like I said, I'm not a dentist and pulling indestructible vampire teeth isn't my thing."

I moved away from her and rose to my feet, keeping her hand in mine because it felt – well, it felt like the right place for it. "I'm afraid you'll be...dismayed, Bella."

The weight of her body was temporarily entirely in my hand as she pulled herself up to stand in front of me. So closely that I could feel, once again, the heat of her. It was welcome. It was...more welcome than I was entirely comfortable with, but I couldn't seem to move either. After she steadied herself, she said, "Dismayed? I don't think so. It's not as if I'm unprepared, is it? What I already know about you hasn't dismayed me. I mean, you're not going to sprout wings or turn into a bat, are you?"

I laughed lightly. "No. No wings, bat or otherwise." She amazed me. "So, you're not uncomfortable with...all of this?"

She moved her head slowly from side to side, looking up at me through the partial shielding of her lashes. "No. You've always only inspired...trust, Carlisle. Ever since I first heard your voice."

In spite of my concerns over this, I had to smile and draw her that scant inch closer. I couldn't seem to help myself, nor did I wish to. "Your voice caught my attention, too. Or maybe it was the request for chocolate in bed," I teased. My voice roughened a little, but I didn't think she'd mind. No, I could feel her favorable response as she pressed herself more tangibly against me. "Bella..." Careful, I wanted to tell her. Run.

Stay. I think that's the message that she saw in my eyes, where honesty was all I could give her. The message that parted her lips.

Yes. That's the message I saw in her heated look. The one that lowered my head.

Time is relatively meaningless to an immortal when one is content. I had managed to find ways to personal contentment in the centuries before I met my mate. My Esme. With her, I had had completion and pure satisfaction of every sort. The three years, seven months and four days since her final demise had been a direct contrast to all those other years. When I tasted Bella Swan's lips for the first time, I felt as if a new calendar had been started in my existence. A new epoch of time. A calendar filled with intimate humanity, each day to be accounted for and used to its fullest, for I knew far too well how quickly those days flew and the days marking a life could end. Until then, I had her in my arms. Tasting the sweetness of her skin, the heat of her lips as they parted for me.

"Careful," I murmured. "Sharp teeth."

"Vampire. I got it," she responded, her breath rushing to fill my mouth. She didn't protest, inviting me to enter with the least invasive of caresses with her lips and tongue. I had never kissed a human before, a strange thing for someone of my long existence perhaps, but true. The newness of the experience, the incredible warmth and heat-amplified scents, the rushing of her heartbeat and the audible flow of her blood were incredibly erotic. Careful, always, of her awkwardly repaired shoulder, I lifted her gently from the floor and maneuvered us to the worn-cushioned comfort of the faded sofa.

"Nice," she laughed in approval as I settled her half across my lap so that her arm was resting on the back of the sofa past my shoulder. "Very smooth."

I was about to reply when I heard the distinctive sounds of Charlie Swan's police cruiser coming up the street. A burst of near-human panic at first had me freezing and then made me laugh at myself.

"What?"

"Your father. He's almost home."

Her blush inflamed my senses. "Oh! Um. Yeah. Help?"

Thus began a period of time for me in which I felt extremely young. I relished this feeling with every part of myself.

"Doctor, you certainly look like spring today," Noelle, the Head Nurse on the floor, said to me one morning in the middle of May. "I sense a romance in that smile somewhere..." Her smile was entirely of the well-wishing variety. "I'm happy for you if that's the case, Doctor."

"That obvious?" I wondered. Romance. Yes. I guessed the relationship I was developing with Isabella Swan was of the romantic variety. "I, ah, thank you." If I could have blushed, I would have rivaled Bella.

Noelle was pulling charts for the day, letting me recover my equilibrium without her scrutiny. "I see that Bella Swan is getting her brace off today. You've got x-ray reserved for her appointment. Need an extra set of hands?"

Memories of the past week or so flashed through my mind in a breath and I suppressed a smile with some difficulty "No. I think the tech and I can maneuver her well enough. I'll try a restrictive sling if she's knitting together properly."

"And I see that Mr. McCann is here for his follow-up." Together, we previewed the scheduled appointments of the day, knowing always that an emergency could interrupt everything. In a small town like Forks, though, it was understood by patients and staff alike. I preferred to work in small hospitals like this. The highly specialized segregation of the larger hospitals was far less pleasant for me.

"Are you sure you can't be in charge of the PT?" Bella whispered after our final official appointment in terms of post-surgical recovery. "I'd be very cooperative, I promise." Her tiny smile and highly pronounced cheekbones only accented the aroma of her deepest femininity as she promised. I was relieved that no one else provoked such a response from her.

Still, I had to decline. "No. You should work with a licensed therapist. Besides," I went on, busying my hands by adjusting the straps of the canvas sling she had buckled around her torso, "a good physical therapist has to be a sadist, to a certain extent, and I don't know that I could purposefully ever cause you pain." I turned her to face me fully. "Sorry?"

Her face was the image of understanding. "Thank you."

Since the semester was nearly over, Bella's professors at school had allowed her to finish out her classes online, including her finals. She no longer required my tutelage, but our relationship had progressed past the point of requiring an excuse to get together.

I stood at Bella's door on a Friday evening and was about to knock when my phone vibrated. Stepping off the porch and closer to my car, I answered.

It was Jasper. "Carlisle! Sorry, I had to just do the manly shoulder-punch before Alice saw you knocking. She told me you looked nervous." I heard the smile in his voice, but as our resident empath, Jasper understood emotions better than any of us, even if he couldn't feel mine at the moment.

"Would you believe I am? I've never done this, you know. It's an entirely new experience for me."

I heard him laugh. "Yeah..." he drawled, "I've heard you've been getting a few entirely new experiences in, lately. Oh, just a sec, here's Edward."

"Carlisle. You're sure about this?"

"About what, Edward?"

"She's human. And she's not – not –." I heard my eldest "son" fumble for words. "You said that Emmett would be the last human you would change, Carlisle. I just wondered if you were setting yourself up for more pain, that's all."

I closed my eyes and held very still, feeling the slice of Edward's comment. "I know. But life is pleasure and pain intermingled, Edward. I can't shut myself from one to avoid the other. I won't. Not any more."

"You know I wish you all the best. I am truly happy for you. Alice's visions have been... encouraging." I could hear the smile in his voice. "What will you do about the law?"

"Avoid Italy," I snapped immediately. "Keep a low profile for the next sixty years..." Sixty years. All I could reasonably expect, but I refused to dwell on the end of that time. I swallowed back a silent welling of emotion in my throat. "She'll keep our secret. When you meet her this summer, Edward, you can poke in her mind, I'm sure, and find that out for yourself."

"Looking forward to it."

"Hey!" Emmett's voice was next in my ear. "Asking her out on a real date and doing the official Meet the Dad moment! Awesome."

"Emmett, good evening. I will be, as soon as my wonderful brothers allow me to get off the phone..."

"Yeah, yeah. Just be careful with the teeth and stuff. I guess I don't have to tell you to stay safe?"

"Emmett!" Exasperation and amusement came through equally. "Good night!"

Strange, but I really did feel far less nervous having talked to them. I was the only one in the family who had had to go through this courtship ritual. Alice found Jasper and Emmett had been found by Rosalie. Edward had never expressed an interest in any female, vampire or human, so this was not something he had done himself. Nor had I, before.

Clearing my throat unnecessarily, I raised my hand to knock on the door and experience the "picking up my date" moment.

"Carlisle," Charlie Swan said with a smile quirking under his thick mustache. "Good to see you. Bella will be down in a minute."

"Thanks, Chief."

"Charlie. How many times do we have to go through this?"

I went along with the urge to rub at the back of my neck. I'd been, of course, a frequent visitor at the Swan house since Isabella's release from the hospital, but I had been – perhaps in error – operating under the assumption that Bella and I were still "in the closet," as the saying went these days. "Sorry, Charlie. I just didn't want to –" In my head, I kept chanting, I'm twenty-eight. I'm twenty-eight.

The Chief of Police laughed out loud. "I'm not blind. Come on, have a seat, Carlisle."

Unsettled, I still felt a strange sort of delicious humanity burning in my chest as I complied. "Everything all right?"

"Look. I didn't worry about it when my daughter's surgeon started tutoring her. I didn't worry about it when she started looking all goofy in the face when she was expecting you, either. And that was when you were her doc. You're really not anymore, so what the hell are you so nervous about? Hell, Carlisle, you're practically sweating!"

Bella's laugh exploded from upstairs and both Charlie and myself exchanged smile-filled glances. "Sorry. I just haven't done this in a while."

The humor fled his face. "I know it, son. And I won't say I'm not a little worried about that. But I trust her judgment and I figure I trust yours, too. Gotta. You put her back together and put a smile on her face and as her dad I can't argue with that. Just be careful, okay?"

I understood his concern. I had known humans for too many centuries not to comprehend his worry about Bella's emotional state. "I'm not, er, rebounding, Chief – Charlie. I genuinely enjoy Isabella. She's always surprising me."

He laughed softly. "Yeah. Me too. It was real hard on Bells, moving up here for middle school after Renée died, but she pulled it together and managed to come and make a new life for herself. I'm real proud of her."

"You should be. She's remarkable."

"All right! Enough talking about me! Sheesh! Dad? Are you done with the interrogation?" Her words were perhaps harsh, but I could see her affection for her father in her eyes and hear it in her voice. "Because Carlisle is taking me to dinner and a movie and I'm really wanting to celebrate my freedom of movement and ability to sit in a theater without braining some poor kid!"

I rose to meet her at the foot of the stairs. "Then let's not delay. We've got reservations."

She rolled her eyes. "Great. Reservations. Promise me you aren't being...excessive?"

Charlie interrupted with a hand clapped firmly on my shoulder and the back of the other one brushing Bella's cheek with silent caring. "Bells, let the man be a little excessive. It's like giving a gift back to him, okay?"

Surprise widened Bella's eyes as well as my own. "Thank you, Charlie," I murmured. "I'll have to remember that."

Bella sighed. "Great. Okay. Let's go. Bye, Dad. Don't wait up." As we left the house, she muttered something about how her dad and boyfriend were ganging up on her.

Boyfriend. I paused for a moment and let that sink in without remarking upon it just yet. Later. I had things I wanted to discuss with her and I hoped that this evening would be conducive to it.

I inwardly acknowledged that strange, nearly human nervousness for the third time that evening as I opened her door for her. She smiled up at me, her expression playful as she smoothed the khaki skirt down over her knees. "So," she said after I'd started driving to our destination, "who called? Alice? Was she warning you about Charlie's third degree?"

"You were spying on me!" I laughed. "No. It was Jasper, followed by Edward and Emmett. They are all, by the way, looking forward to meeting you."

I could feel her trepidation. "When?"

"This summer. Not tonight."

"Whew! Good. So where are we going tonight?"

I offered her a playful leer as I reached the highway. "Vampire's lair work for you?"

"Seriously? You know, I've kind of wondered..." She blushed and adjusted the collar of her deep blue blouse. "I just didn't want to put you out or anything. I mean, I've never been to a vampire's house before so..."

I took her hand in mine as I sped along. "I live in the woods," I began slowly, purposefully teasing her. Then, I stopped and thought about it. Really, I was being selfish in courting her. Sixty years... Maybe. Her mother had died young from breast cancer. I had the resources to monitor that certainly, but that malady did tend to run in families. I could assist with that even if she did decide to retain her humanity and avoid any connection with the vampire world. She was human and deserved all the blessings of that state...

Perhaps I needed to remind her of the reasons she shouldn't be with me. She had called me her boyfriend under her breath – nothing we had spoken of, but it didn't seem like enough either, so I wasn't sure how to address that. Yes, there were a few things it was likely time to discuss.

We took the turn-off on the property I had purchased along with the house. Three miles of drive under a canopy of trees that had been old when my family had lived here seventy-odd years ago. "The woods, huh?" Bella murmured, leaning forward and craning her neck to see the trees overhead. "You weren't kidding."

"No, I wasn't."

I saw the surreptitious glance she sent over my trousers, shirt and braces – suspenders. I had noticed that the last item had garnered an extremely favorable reaction from her on more than one occasion, so I opted for them this evening. She bit her lip as she considered her own skirt and shoes, I could see. Ah. "You look perfect," I told her.

She jumped a little. "Wait. You told me that your brother Edward was the mind-reader."

"He is. I'm just...observant."

"Oh? And what are you observing?"

"That you're worried about your clothes. Don't be. You look wonderful." I inhaled and, as I pulled into the garage, leaned to breathe deeply of Essence of Bella at her throat, where the pale skin met the rich color of her blouse. "Mmmm." I felt her shiver and smiled into her skin as her heart sped. "You smell..."

"Mouthwatering?" she guessed, her breath catching.

"Perfect. Believe it or not, I have absolutely no urge to bite to break skin."

"What about...about biting not to break skin?" she rasped, arching her neck to afford me greater access to the hollow of her throat. Her fingers were gripping the edge of the car's seat with restless sounds.

The image she suggested stilled me before I moved at my usual speed to tug her over between me and the steering wheel. She was small and slender enough to fit in a very close way. "That remains to be seen," I murmured.

She seized the initiative and slid her heated lips over my stone skin, smoothing my hair with her fingers before grazing my ear with her teeth. "Can't break your skin," she breathed and I swallowed. Hard. It was purely a reflex action to protect her. She wasn't strong enough to break my skin, but the pressure she was using was...provoking all sorts of responses in me.

"Bella... Careful."

"Why?" Another subtle motion of her head brought her teeth to my throat and, as she had done, I arched my own neck to grant her freedom to do as she wished. "You taste amazing, Carlisle." Heat...the wet heat of her mouth was so compelling.

I had to stop her. "Come. I promised you dinner." It was a struggle to draw air into my lungs. I felt like I had to, though breathing was no longer essential. It was, again, a reflex action on my part.

"A man of your word... I really adore that. Just so you know." She pulled back a little with a sultry smile. "So?" And then, she noticed where we were. "Wait! This is a garage!"

"Of course. What did you expect, a cave?"

Laughing, she awkwardly shifted herself back to her seat. "Um, I really hadn't tried to make too many assumptions, to be honest. I mean, you don't die in the sunlight and you don't turn into a bat..."

"Come on. I'll show you the house."

Holding hands, we came in from the garage into the laundry room and from there into the kitchen. I gave her the full tour, including the small lap pool in the basement all the way up the gently curving, oak-banistered staircase to the third floor. "Edward's room is up here."

"And yours...?" she asked, her skin heating predictably.

"Down on the second." I was nervous. It was not my intention to take Bella to bed at this point in our relationship, but I had been listening to young women for a long time and Edward of course had cast aspersions on the sexual mores of the day on an average of once a year since the 1950's. I had no way of knowing exactly what Isabella's expectations were.

Yet another thing that needed to be discussed. We reached my room, with its bed of dark cherry and matching accompanying pieces against a background of pale neutrals – Alice and Rosalie would no doubt redecorate this summer – and Bella peeked in.

"Nice," she whispered, her heart thudding almost painfully. "Um, dinner?"

One less thing to worry about. It was with great relief that I escorted Bella to my kitchen once again. I had been practicing, so we worked together to produce a quick chicken piccata dish with salad and fruit on the side.

"So, you keep a fully stocked kitchen? Feed humans often, Carlisle?" She was teasing, but she didn't meet my eyes as she chopped fresh fruit and arranged it in a small bowl for herself.

"No. Just part of the cover, Isabella. You've got good hands, you know. And a smooth rhythm with a knife. You could consider surgery as a specialty."

She snorted with laughter at my attempt to compliment her. "Me? Good with knives? Maybe good enough to cook dinner but not enough to trust someone's spleen under my hand, Carlisle. I don't want to tackle a specialty like that." Over the sound of the tap water running in the sink as she washed up, she elaborated. "I actually want to be a GP. It may sound really stupid, but my idea of being a doctor is – is being in some small town that needs a doc, you know? Someone who can help with babies and kids as well as the older folks. I – I don't want patients to be five minutes on a table while I sit with a computer in my hand, you know?" She shot me an embarrassed look over her shoulder as she dried her hands. "Maybe I watched too much Little House on the Prairie on Nick at Night or something as a child. I don't know. But it's what I want to do. If I can."

"Just when I thought there were no surprises left," I whispered as I crossed the kitchen to pull her into my arms. "You show me I'm all wrong."

[+]

After dinner and some light conversation, I lit citronella candles on the back deck that overlooked a broad stream twenty-seven yards from the back door. Fireflies flickered occasionally in the gloaming, seen sporadically dancing among the trees. We could hear the stream as a delicate addition to the evening as we sat in the set of Adirondack chairs. No rain was falling at the moment, but there was a heavy cloud cover that did not bode well for later.

"This is a lovely home, Carlisle." She tossed me a smile. "Nothing like in the stories."

"Some things about my life are, though. Thought I should fill you in before the rest of the family came out and quizzed you."

"With you as my tutor, I'd pass without breaking a sweat."

"I thank you."

"So what do I need to know? Should I take notes?"

I shook my head, but didn't smile as I shifted in my chair so I could see her more fully. "You know we consider ourselves 'vegetarians,' right?" I said, using fingers to emphasize the silly term my family and others like us used to describe our somewhat deviant diet.

"You only drink from animals. You said it was like eating venison or something. I completely get that. Can't imagine why anyone would do otherwise, honestly."

"And you know that the majority of my kind do not. If you see anyone like me but with red or burgundy eyes, it's a problem."

"Ah. All right." Her heart skipped and stuttered, but she was outwardly very calm. This type of self-control would serve her well as a physician and my pride in her increased yet again. "Do you expect any, um, company with red eyes?"

"No. Absolutely not. I would never endanger you in that way. You – your blood – is very appealing, as I may have mentioned."

"Oh, once or twice," she drawled, leaning back in her chair and extending her limbs. I could hear the muscles tense and relax, her tendons popping and bones settling anew. This discussion was stressful for her. She sighed. "Why are you telling me all this now?"

"I wanted you to be...informed. You – you called me your boyfriend, earlier. Don't think I didn't hear that." Her heart jumped in her breast and I was quick to propel myself to her side, kneeling at the arm of her chair. "I was honored. I am honored. Don't misunderstand me. I'm just not sure you know what you're getting into with me."

Drawing herself up and a little away from me, she plowed her fingers through my hair once before pushing herself to her feet. She wobbled and winced as her right arm was much weaker than she remembered it being no doubt, but she stood on her own. "Let me see," she said, her voice uncharacteristically sharp. I realized I had offended her and rose to apologize but she waved me off and spoke to the night. "You're a vampire. You belong to a family of them. None of you drink from humans; you're all vegetarians," she went on, smiling a little over her shoulder at me and letting me know I was forgiven. "You have to keep that a secret, but you hang out with humans all the time. You especially. You're so good that you can work with blood all the time, which I'm guessing is unheard of. You are dating a human who smells really good but she is categorically not worried about you being near her." With an angled brow, she turned and continued. "You're worried about the human girlfriend and thinking that she might do better if she weren't involved with you at all. Your family probably has mentioned that, since you are all so secretive." Crossing her arms under her breasts, she asked, "So? How'm I doing, doc?"

I thrust my hands into my pockets. "Better than I could have imagined. Yes, I am worried. It's a dangerous world from where I stand, Bella." I pushed out a breath. "And there's so much out there for you. So much you could do. The small town practice. How could you be so accessible, living on the edge of the supernatural?"

"You do it. You're a good man, Carlisle. You are."

I shrugged and slowly moved to take her hands in mine. "I take lives all the time. Animal, but even so. It's not pretty."

"Show me?"

Shocked, I dropped her hands. "No. No. You have no idea what you're asking."

"How can I know if you won't show me?"

My argument died on my tongue. Maybe that was what she needed to see to understand. I puffed out a breath. "All right. Next time I go hunting...I'll take you with me." God, don't let me hurt her. Please...

The sun reappeared in her smile. I let the "dangerous vampire" discussion go for the time being. She wrapped her arms around me, so that her heat enveloped me like benevolent thoughts from a saint. "So, didn't you promise me a movie?"