As always, big thanks to Liz, Alby & Annette – they give the best advice and make it all better.

Stephenie Meyer owns all of it.

~~~ Bella ~~~

The ocean wind whips off the water and onto the beach, spraying sand into my tangled hair and stinging my eyes. Angela and I huddle deeper into our jackets, squinting at the three figures way out on the choppy swell.

It's a miserable day for surfing, and I wonder that Jessica, Mike and Ben don't admit defeat and paddle in. They've been out there for nearly an hour without a breaker in sight, bobbing on the endless gray sea. Angela and I give up and climb into my warm truck, chewing on red licorice while she talks about graduation and college. I make all the right noises, listening half-heartedly, but the greater part of my mind is far away.

The struggle to fight off the fear is constant and exhausting, a dogged shadow that trails after me everywhere I go. I can't shake it no matter how hard I try, but it's the nagging sensation that I'm mostly afraid of the wrong things that's even harder to shake. Grainy images of coffins and dark dungeons underground, of murderous fangs on white throated maidens and bed sheets stained with red linger at the edges of my thoughts, but I don't allow them in. He is not that, at least not to me.

Not yet, anyway.

I brush those thoughts away, reminding myself that his intentions have been made clear over and over, every single night at my window. He appears there, like an apparition in the darkness, silent and solemn, and with painstaking care, has opened that window a little wider each night. I have to believe that these aren't the actions of one who means me harm, and I do not wish him away. The opposite, in fact, is what I fear the most. Every night when he disappears, whether to coffin or dungeon or hole in the ground, I am desperately afraid that he will never return.

Angela catches my attention, and I'm thrown for a moment as the thoughts in my head come out of her mouth. "I'll wait for him, of course," she's saying. "I'd wait for him forever, but I really hope it doesn't come to that." She chews on a fingernail, her eyebrows drawn together. "I really hope we can get into the same college."

"You love him, don't you?" I ask. "I mean really love him."

She smiles broadly. "I do. I really do."

This is not something we've ever talked about before, but the warm intimacy of this small space makes it somehow easier to ask. "How does it feel, to love someone like that?"

She smiles widely. "Oh, Bella, it's the most wonderful thing. I just like him so much, as well as loving him." She shrugs. "It's just easy. Uncomplicated." She narrows her eyes, gazing beyond the windshield to the rolling ocean beyond. "We studied space in Mr Banner's class last year. The universe is constantly expanding, he told us, and I couldn't comprehend it, no matter how he tried to explain it. How can something that's endless and limitless get bigger?"

She takes her glasses off, wipes the lenses on her jacket, and puts them back on. "Ben was in the seat behind me, and he leaned over and whispered in my ear. "Like love", he said, and I understood then. I think there can't be anymore space left in me to love him anymore than I already do, but then every day, all the time, I love him more. That's how it feels to me anyway." She stares out the window for a moment longer, pensive and serene, and then laughs quietly. "Romance for nerds," she says, with a pretty blush. "I don't know how to explain it, Bella, I just know it's the most wonderful thing ever."

She chatters away happily, talking of their plans for the future, and I drift away again.

I want to talk to you.

I cling to that phrase, to the message that he sent me the first night at my window. I've staked everything on those words. I try to apply logic to a situation that defies it at every turn, applying sense and reason to this strange reality when it's far beyond the realms of both. Surely if he wanted to kill me, he'd have done it by now. It's cold comfort though, when there are other dark deeds that may be on his mind. Will I be like the girls I've seen on those shows on TV, with scarves wrapped around their anaemic throats to hide the bite marks?

No.

No.

He wants to talk.

I don't know why or what he wants to say or if that's even the truth. There has been no more conversation through the window, just a strange game of silent waiting as the inches slowly open up between us. I know, of course, that there can be no future for us together, certainly not the kind that Angela speaks of, anyway. Maybe if he climbs through my bedroom window tonight, I'll have no future at all.

But still, he said it.

He said it.

He wants to talk to me.

And he's the only one who does.

Angela leans over, searching for the switch to the windshield wipers, her hands groping blindly at the dashboard. It's raining now, a misty drizzle that colors the world a dull, leaden gray. I flick the switch for her and the salty raindrops are wiped away, revealing the three forlorn figures on the choppy sea.

The horizon has disappeared into the watery sky, but a few bands of white appear nearer to the shore now. The long awaited breakers form from the shapeless swell, and Ben is on his feet, riding one in. Angela sits upright, clutching my arm, and then hangs out the door whistling and hooting with glee as Ben makes it almost to the shoreline. She shoves the bag of candy into my hand and sprints to the beach, throws herself into Ben's arms as he staggers ashore and they collapse together, a mass of tangled limbs and wet sand and happiness in the rain.

Last night, for the first time, Edward Cullen opened the window the whole way and nothing but the cold night air stood between us. I waited breathless, certain that his ritual leave-taking would surely follow. Every night it's the same; his jaw clenches and his eyes darken, and then those eyes drop to my throat, and he is gone. But last night was different. He stayed for long, breathless minutes once that window was open, his face framed by the dark leaves and then, suddenly, he breathed.

He didn't stay for long after that, but before he left he uttered the first words he's spoken to me since that afternoon at Newton's.

"Tomorrow," he said. "I'm ready now."

I've fought the ambiguity of those words all day. I pull my cell phone out of my pocket and read his message from that first night, one more time.

He said it. He did.

I want to talk to you.

Jessica and Mike have made it out of the water now too, the four figures barely visible in the misty gray world. I lean on the horn, a short, sharp blast, and when they look up, I point over my shoulder and wave. The afternoon is wearing on and there's something I need to do before night falls.

I've seen those shows on TV.

I'll stop in at Newtons on the way home and buy a long, red scarf, just in case.

~~~ O ~~~

Dinner is finished early tonight, and the kitchen is cleared away. I flick the light off as I pass by, a futile gesture to try and hurry the darkness along. Renee and Charlie are curled up in front of the television, settled under a halo of lamplight, eating ice cream. I go upstairs to wash the sand out of my hair and finish my homework.

The ticking of the clock on my nightstand is the only music I listen to anymore, the metronome beat the perfect soundtrack for waiting. The ticking soothes me, proving that time is not, in fact, standing still. I know it's too early, but still I listen for that other sound, for that scratch upon my window. I finish my homework and dry my hair, and then I sit on my bed, looking around.

"Just like a Forks sunset,"Charlie said the day we painted my bedroom, and he was right. I flick the switch and the twinkle lights glow above my bed, a scattering of muted stars against the mellow orange wall. I've spent the loneliest hours of my life in this room, this place caught perpetually between the stars and sunset - forever twilight - but it's not a lonely place to me anymore.

I throw the window open and take a long look outside, breathing deeply of the humid air. Through the trees, the world outside darkens, green to gray to black. Twilight passes quietly by and, with the lengthening of every shadow, nightfall inches nearer. All I have to do now is wait for it to come.

I crouch near the foot of my bed, testing the floor. The loose floorboard creaks under my hand, and I pull it up, revealing the store of treasures underneath. I begin with the first, as I do every night, unrolling the thick white paper and smoothing it carefully on the floor. This drawing of a prettier version of me, the delicate pencil lines and light shading generous in their placement, was on the seat of my truck in the school parking lot, the day after he first came to my window. On the page, I'm leaning on my windowsill, gazing through the leaves with eyes lit by awe and wonder, the ghost of a smile playing at my lips.

Every day now, there's something waiting for me on the seat of my truck after school. I take the other things out one by one and lay them on the floor next to the drawing, listening all the while for a footfall on the stairs. It's an odd collection; a small brown river stone, a soft white feather, an Indian head penny, a papery dried flower that must be many years old and a piece of rosy pink glass that must have lain underwater somewhere for a very long time to be so smooth. They look pretty against the hardwood floor next to the face that isn't quite mine, this collection of found things and old things that are precious as gold to me.

Soft murmurs and slow footsteps come up the stairs, and I quickly put my treasures back and replace the floorboard. Charlie and Renee say a quick goodnight and my heart races. It won't be long now, any second, and I wait on the bed, legs bouncing, breathing deeply. The howl of the wolf comes first, close by, and then, finally, there it is.

The scratch-scratch scratch-scratch on my window.

I move slowly, pulling the curtain back, expecting the silent inching open of the window to begin, but it's apparent immediately that he's in no mood to take things slowly tonight. The window is swiftly opened and there he is, right in front of me, his golden eyes intense and commanding.

"Go to the bed," he says, and I take a step back. No, oh God no, not like that. The color drains from my face but he shakes his head minutely.

"No," he says, "not… that. Just sit. I just need you to be still. You mustn't move, Bella."

I nod, backing away slowly from the window until the backs of my knees hit the bed and I sit, my hands gripping the mattress on either side of my legs. He waits a moment and then climbs through the window, graceful as a cat until he is standing just inside, and he moves no closer.

There have been moments beyond counting already in my young life, each one barely distinguishable from the next, and then there is this moment, this single drop in an ocean of time. I have never known a moment to be so still and so full.

The look on his face is unbearable to me and I grip the mattress tighter. The pain it causes him to be this close to me, to be in this room, is clear in every line and shadow on his face. The guilty paradox is that it's his pain that soothes me. He's fighting, I know, to resist and it's this fight in him, this determination to deny his nature, which allows me to breathe a little easier.

There are a thousand things I want to know, a thousand questions I want to ask, but there is one more important to me than all others, and it must be asked first. I take a deep breath for courage, and begin.

"Are you OK?" I ask. My whisper in the silence startles him and it's all there in his eyes, pain and danger and warning. I know I should be more afraid than I am but his beauty, too, reassures me. He stands against the wall, his lean frame tall and strong, and that face, seraphic in the dim light; it's hard to believe that something so beautiful could hurt me.

"Not really," he says. "You?"

I shrug. "You tell me."

"You're OK," he says, "for now."

Silence falls again, the ticking clock and the rustle of leaves against the breeze marking out the minutes until, finally, he speaks again.

"Tell me one thing," he says. "Don't think about it. Just answer. What are you thinking right this second?"

I blurt it out, just as he wants me to. "I'm wondering if this is what Angela was talking about, and I'm thinking that maybe it is."

He scowls. "You know I have no idea what that means, don't you?"

"I'm counting on it," I reply. He leans against the wall, relaxing his stance a little.

"You can't imagine how strange this is for me," he says.

"For me, too," I murmur, and he stares a little harder. "Am I safe?"

"No," he says. "Most definitely not. I warned you, Bella. "

"I know, I just – I don't know what you want from me."

His eyes darken, a heaving sigh, and he swallows heavily. "Probably not what you're thinking."

"You don't want my… blood?"

I knew it would happen as soon as I said the word. The last trace of golden light evaporates from his eyes as he answers. "Oh, I want it, Bella, you can't imagine how much." He raises his chin and holds my gaze, steady and unblinking. "But I won't have it."

It's impossible to feel relieved when he's looking at me like that, the craving burning in those eyes, but at least he sounds convincing. "What is it you want from me?" he asks. "Why do you allow me in?"

"I want to know," I say.

"What?" he says. "What is it that you want to know?"

"Everything," I whisper. "I want to know everything about you, all of your secrets, and I want you to know mine."

"Intimacy," he breathes. "You want intimacy. Such a dangerous thing to want from me."

But I don't care. In this moment, while he's in this room with me, even though his eyes are black and gleaming bright with danger, it feels worth the risk.

~~~ O ~~~

In the nights that follow, it seems to become easier for him but still I'm haunted by the image of Angela and Ben, carefree on the beach. The air in my bedroom seems to crackle and spark, alive with promise and clandestine whispers, overshadowed always by the thrill and the threat of dark desires straining to be unleashed. Everything seems just out of reach or barely held at bay. It's a heady mix, this thing that draws us one to the other, but there is yet to be any joy in it. I wonder if I'll ever see him smile.

My promise of patience is pushed to breaking point many times in the nights that follow, but I hold fast. He has questions, so many questions, and I answer them all. In a strange, unexpected way, I get to know myself better at the same time as he gets to know me. I want there to be nothing but truth between us, and even the simplest question – what's your favorite color, Bella? - is given a considered and thoughtful answer.

His curiosity is insatiable, but on his fourth night in my bedroom I finally break, pleading for respite and satisfaction. "It's my turn," I say. "Please?"

He folds his arms, leaning back against the wall. I can never tell from one night to the next how close he'll come. Sometimes he makes it almost to the bed and then, for no reason I can discern, he'll back away slowly until he reaches the wall again, inching closer once more when he's feeling stronger. It's a dangerous game to play, this high stakes game of cat and mouse, but every night here we are, ready and willing to ante up and play again.

"I won't answer everything, Bella. I promised I wouldn't lie to you, and I won't, but there are things that are not mine to tell."

He's taught me this much already without ever saying a word, and I'm grateful for it. I would no sooner expect him to tell me the secret my father harbors, if he even knows, than I'd expect him to tell Charlie of this strange, secret world I inhabit now. I understand them a little better now, my mother and father, and bridges I thought to be burned forever are slowly being rebuilt. Every day I conceal him from them, and very day I understand and forgive their lies to me a little more.

I lead off with the question that's plagued me from the moment I first realised what he is. Images of pharaohs and Tudor houses and ancient, creaking sailing ships flood my mind, and I dread the answer.

"How old are you?"

"I was changed in 1917," he says, without hesitation, obviously expecting this question, and I exhale, failing to stop the smile from breaking through. He is incredulous.

"You're smiling?" I nod, beaming. This is nothing like what I feared. He's from a past I can understand. I know what it looks like, how people dressed and spoke, how they lived. It's possible there is even a person - a human – who is alive today who is the same age as him. I fire questions at him, liberated and giddy.

"The sun?"

No answer.

"Mirrors, garlic, crosses?"

"Myths."

"You're immortal?"

"We can be killed. It's not easily done but we can die, just not of illness or old age." I can't process this, can't even begin to comprehend the forever he speaks of, and I'm thrown for a long moment. Angela's words come to me again, and I see the universe spread over a space I can't imagine, occupying time beyond measure, and Edward there in it, always and forever. He interrupts these impossible thoughts, perhaps knowing that it's too much for me, with a question of his own.

"How did you know about me?" He has moved closer as we've talked. He's halfway across the room now, almost close enough for me to reach out and touch.

"A book," I reply. "You gave me plenty of clues, but it was a book on the Quileute that clinched it. Do you want to see it?" He waves a hand, no. "The Quileute," I say, "are wolves." Stony silence from Edward, but I know I'm right about this. "I think if the book is right about you, and it is, it must be right about them, too. Besides, I've heard them."

"You've heard them?"

"Every night, right before you come to my window." It wasn't until the third night that I realised it, but they're as much a part of this strange, new nightly routine as that scratching on my window is. Renee and Charlie say goodnight, a wolf howls, and Edward appears; every night is the same. "The book says you're mortal enemies. Is that true?" He shrugs. "I think that sound is a warning. I think they're out there watching and waiting in case you hurt me."

"You know more than I thought you did," he says, "but there's still one thing you don't know."

My stomach rolls, and I stare at the floor, tears pricking my eyes. I don't want to ask. I don't want to know. It was hard to ask him how old he is, hard to hear that he'll live for all eternity. Forever scares me out of my head, but this question, this is the one that will change everything.

"Come on, Bella," he urges. "Ask me?"

I raise my head and wipe a tear away, and look him in the eye.

"What do you eat?"

"Animals," he says. "We live on the blood of animals."

And finally, there it is; a smile that begins at one corner of his mouth and spreads across his face. It lights up the room, a beautiful thing, and I watch closely. His teeth are white and even, and there are no fangs no fangs no fangs and suddenly anything, everything seems possible. I smile too, overjoyed and relieved beyond reason, sitting on my hands to stop myself from reaching out to touch him.

There's one more question I have to ask.

"Why me?"

The smile vanishes in a heartbeat and his eyes begin to darken. I don't think he'll answer, but instead of moving away, he moves closer. He crosses the distance between us, his lean frame loose and easy, at odds with the dark expression on his face. He stops just inches away, and I breathe deeply as he leans in to whisper in my ear, closer than he has been since that day in Port Angeles.

"You're a very unlucky girl, Bella. The gods have finally taken pity on me. They've designed you exactly for me," he whispers, his cool breath like a winter chill on my skin. "Everything about you invites me in. I am bewitched and bewildered." He pulls away slightly, far enough that I can see his eyes, gleaming black, hypnotic and wild. "I know how this ends for you, Bella, and still I cannot stay away."

~ O ~

Thanks so much for reading. This story is really as much Alby, Liz and Annette's as it's mine, so if you liked this chapter and you're of a mind to review, maybe blow them some kisses?