Esme stood feeling jittery outside of his closed office door. She had lifted her hand three times, but hadn't knocked and she loathed herself for it.

Knock on the door, her brain ordered her hand.

Finally, the hand listed and she lightly tapped her closed fist against the two inch piece of wood that separated them.

Carlisle opened the door and waved her in. He immediately felt flustered and all of the preparing he had done in his office had gone out the window. He tried to keep his thoughts in check, but he couldn't. He resented himself for feeling the way he did, as he looked at her.

"Come in," he managed to say, keeping a cool ring to his voice that even shocked him.

I suppose nearly three hundred years of pretending to be something I'm not is working to my favor.

"Thank you," Esme said politely with a nod. She felt self-conscious, but giddy at the same time. The blanket covered nearly to her ankles, but she couldn't keep the thought away that she had no clothes on.

Carlisle offered her a seat on a comfortable chair across from his desk, deciding the desk would ultimately be the perfect barrier he needed to keep the atmosphere professional in nature.

Esme sat and he positioned himself on the other side, folding his hands together on top of the desk as he spoke.

"I just want to officially and openly apologize for the decision I made," he told her, "You had no choice in the matter, and it was wrong for me to decide your fate the way I did."

She shook her head and couldn't help but speak the truth, "I don't mind. I mean, I'm happy you did."

He looked down for a moment and then back up. "This... life..." he began with a sigh, "It's eternal for most of us."

Esme was a little confused, "How so?"

"Unless extreme measures are reached, we won't die."

"We can't die?"

"Well... there are ways, but it has to be from another of our kind. If one vampire wanted to kill another, they could. Only other immortals can do this."

"How? And how many others are there?"

Carlisle wanted to sugarcoat his explanation of immortal death, but decided she needed to know everything. "The only way one of our kind could die is if another ripped us to pieces and then burned the remains."

Esme made a face, but didn't seem completely overwhelmed. If this was the only way for a vampire to die then humans had it way worse. She had read of gruesome things in the newspapers, so the description wasn't something she couldn't handle.

"And there are many others," Carlisle went on, "There are covens all over this country and others. There aren't many who live humanely; hardly any in fact. Most live off the blood of humans and don't attempt to blend in with society; though I have befriended some of them in my years of traveling, and being alone."

"How long were you alone for? When did you meet Edward?"

He cleared his throat and decided on answer the second question, "Edward was dying of the Spanish Influenza in 1918. His mother also fell victim to the illness and just before her death she came to me and asked me to save him by an means necessary. She knew I was different, and didn't want her son to die at the age of seventeen. She thought I could help him."

"And you did."

"I... brought him into this life." He balked at the question, not knowing if the words 'help' or 'save' were accurate.

"You saved him."

"I kept him from leaving the earth completely." Again, Carlisle couldn't completely say he saved Edward.

"So Edward was seventeen, so that makes him..." She counted silently, "Twenty-one."

"I suppose."

Esme felt confusion sink in from his responses.

Carlisle sensed how she was feeling and elaborated. "Once you're changed into this you don't age, I mean the years go by but you'll never look any older than you do now."

"What?"

"I don't know if that's a uplifting or extremely depressing."

Forever youth. How depressing can that be? No wonder he didn't look any different after ten years.

"How old are you?" she asked him.

Carlisle cleared his throat and knew she wouldn't stop there. "Um... well, I suppose I'm twenty-three."

"So you were thirteen when we first met?" she teased, "Wow. You were awfully smart for your age."

He chuckled lightly, but quickly brought himself back into the serious nature of their conversation. "I'm, uh, I've been alive for over two-hundred-and-fifty years."

Esme looked at him, knowing her eyebrows had raised. She wanted to laugh, but she knew he was serious. There were no contemplations anymore. Everything the man said was true, and she knew it.

"I know it seems like a long time, but there are others who are much older than I am." His thoughts traced back to his stay in Italy. The faces of Aro, Caius, Marcus and the rest of them popped into his head. They were images he hadn't thought of if awhile.

"How much older?"

"A thousand years..." He shrugged, "Some longer."

What was this world like a thousand years ago? Or two-hundred-and-fifty years ago.

"I came from England," Carlisle explained, "I was bitten by a nomad vampire in the sewers of London. My father was a vampire hunter to some extent, though no one ever found a real one until that night."

"Is your father..."

"I never saw him again following that night... that night I was bitten."

Esme noticed a far away pain in his eyes and felt her heart melt for him just a little. "I haven't seen my family for awhile."

Carlisle sat back and let her have the floor. He was interested in her life, and what had lead up to the event ten years after he had first come across the teenager that was so full of life.

She looked away, "I was married."

He tried not to show any emotion, but it felt like someone had sucker-punched him in the stomach.

"But, it was a terrible marriage. I was forced to marry this man, Charles, because of my family." Esme shook her head and relived her darkest days, telling Carlisle of every gruesome detail, every beating, every drunken binge and then the final blow that pushed her over the edge; the loss of her baby.

Carlisle had the urge to wrap Esme in his arms. He wanted to hug her and stroke her hair and tell her that her family was wrong; that her husband was a monster and that she didn't deserve to lose her baby.

He felt a burning in his chest, another new feeling that he was having trouble comprehending. Anger. True Anger. It washed over him like a wave and he had the urge to ask if Charles Evanson was still alive. He imagined in his mind what he could do to the man; how easily he could end his life, or make him twist in agony and pain on a level he could never forget. He wanted revenge and retribution for the man who had put his hands on Esme, beating her senseless year after year only to lead her to a place so dark that she felt there was no other way than to end her life.

Never in his life, in nearly three hundred years, had Carlisle truly felt the way he felt when she described the man she had been married to.

Jealous. Lust. Anger. What has gotten into me? He wondered.

Esme looked across the table, meeting Carlisle's conflicted stare. He looked like he had been mentally hit by a bus, and she could see that her words affected him deeply.

"Esme," he spoke softly, blocking out the words he wanted to speak, which were along the lines of: you can kill him now with your bare hands, or I could do it. Instead, he dug deep in his heart. "I'm sorry."

She looked across the table, and while she felt a little shaken up by reliving her recent past, she also felt as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She felt good opening up to him because again, as she had when she was sixteen, she felt as if he was actually listening. She could see that he cared about her well-being.

"It's okay," she told him, finding it in her to share a closed mouth, genuine smile. "It actually felt good to get that all out... to get it off my chest."

Carlisle didn't break eye contact as he stared at her, and then nodded. "You deserve better than that."

Esme wanted to confess all of her girlish fantasies, but couldn't. She wanted to tell him that he was the only one who ever truly listened to her, despite how brief their previous encounter had been while she was still human. She wanted to tell him that he saved her, and that she looked at him in ways that she had never looked at anyone, and that the feeling hadn't subsided even a little bit in the ten years he had been absent from her life.

Neither of them spoke for a moment, and then the front door opened and Edward made his presence known.

Carlisle stood up from his chair and Esme turned, smiling to Edward as he crossed though the door. She expected some witty, fun remark but saw the almost hurt expression that lingered in his eyes. She realized then that he must have been able to read her mind, or Carlisle's.

"Here," he said lightly, handing Esme a bag full of clothes. "If you don't like them, we can return them and get you some new things."

"Oh, don't be silly." She attempted to be as carefree as possible. The last thing she wanted was for the two men to be tiptoeing around her as if she was a piece of breakable glass. Esme looked in the bag and shuffled through the outfits. She then walked up to Edward and without hesitation, she kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you. Thank you, so much for getting these."

Edward raised his eyebrows, a little shocked by her gesture but smiled wide. "You're welcome." He looked at Carlisle, shoved his hands in his pockets and eyed the floor.

Oh, the seven deadly sins are getting the best of me today. He looked at Edward. Forgive me, son. I don't know what's come over me.

Edward shook his head and smiled with a shrug. He wanted to tell Carlisle that his jealousy was a waste of nerves and energy; that Esme's feelings were so deep and intense for him already that he had nothing to worry about as far as his relationship with the courteous young woman.

It was Esme's privacy that Edward didn't want to break, at least not at that moment. He acknowledged that Carlisle's thoughts were off, and had gone off on random tangents about the woman. He was jealous each time she interacted closely with Edward. He had passing, extremely brief thoughts of lust and there was a level of protection that he felt so desperately that it went off the charts as far as Edward was concerned.

In a nutshell, he could see that Carlisle cared deeply, and differently for Esme than he had for anyone else since they had known each other. However, his thoughts weren't so blatantly and openly love-struck the way Esme's were.

In time, Edward knew he could step in if their dance continued. From the intense nature of their first day together, he presumed it would, but he decided to keep the thoughts he had seen in both of their minds to himself for now.