A/N: I wasn't able to get a chapter up last weekend, but I'm going to try for a double upload this weekend. The next chapter is nearly done so hopefully it will be up later today or tomorrow. Thanks for your patience! (and there will be plenty of Jareth next chapter, I swear)
Sleep came easily that night, as hard to believe as that was for Sarah. True, it had taken her a long time to actually get into bed after Jareth's disappearance considering Edward seemed to be in no hurry to leave. That much, she supposed, was to be expected, but all Sarah wanted to do was to eat her sandwich and go to bed. Any more conversations with magical beings about magical beings and she might really lose it. Edward seemed reluctant to move from his defensive crouch in front of her, and Sarah ultimately was all but trying to push him out of her way so she could get back to the counter, futile as her efforts might have been.
"I thought you said…." Edward began, after finally shifting so she could get by him, though not looking like he was dropping his alert any. Sarah could already tell what he was going to say before he began, so she had no trouble answering him before he'd even finished his question.
"I was wrong," Sarah admitted, though not sounding apologetic or unnerved by that fact. Her tone was flat, perhaps because none of this was any great surprise. No matter what she'd told Edward, Sarah always expected Jareth to show up at the least opportune times. Edward looked frustrated once more, but Sarah moved to the table to focus on finishing her sandwich. It wasn't like there was anything she could really do, was there? Edward was painfully easy to frustrate and Jareth was singularly frustrating, between the two of them nothing good was ever going to happen, with or without Sarah in the mix. She could already tell that it would be impossible to bring any kind of peace to their relationship… and, oddly enough, Sarah didn't even want to try.
"He's not going to come back," Sarah finally added as she finished her sandwich but noticed that Edward was making no moves to leave. "He said what he wanted to say already so we probably won't see him for a… well, not right now anyway." She could make no promises that Jareth would be gone for too long, Sarah realized quickly. In the past he had visited her every morning without fail, so she supposed that it wouldn't have been a leap to assume he'd be back tomorrow. Her words were obviously no great comfort to Edward.
"You can't know that for certain," Edward argued, though Sarah supposed it would have been too much for him to realize how wrong about that he was. Sure, Sarah didn't often know what Jareth would do and found herself surprised by him most times, but now she definitely was certain that she wouldn't see Jareth until at least tomorrow. Whatever else he might have been, he was probably considerate enough to let her sleep.
"Edward just… trust me? Please?" Despite her words, Edward still looked skeptical, and for good reason, Sarah had to admit—though she definitely didn't want to. Almost immediately after she'd made the promise before, Jareth had come. She knew why her words seemed wholly unreliable now. "I'm not going to tell you that he won't come back—he definitely will—but it won't be tonight. This is just sort of how he is. He comes, says what he wants to say and then disappears until he has something else to say." She paused. "He's really not a fan of letting other people have the last word." The familiarity with which she spoke about the Goblin King was only making the situation worse, something Sarah was still struggling to recognize and, even worse, couldn't make herself stop.
"But you've said yourself that he's unpredictable," Edward continued, not giving in. It wasn't like this was particularly unusual. It had become apparent very early on that the two of them both had highly stubborn personalities which was only made worse by the fact that their personalities clearly clashed in a few places.
"He is, but I know how to deal with him. I've dealt with him every day since the Labyrinth. You didn't even know he existed until today," Sarah argued back, shaking her head. Maybe it was wrong of her to assume that she was far more equipped to deal with Jareth than Edward ever could be simply based on her own experience, but Sarah had always struggled with the idea of being told what to do or that she wasn't capable. Or perhaps it was the suggestion that maybe she wasn't special; maybe she was just an ordinary girl who just so happened to stumble her way through an extraordinary situation.
"I would have. If you'd told me." There was something heavy to the words, Sarah blinking at him and not knowing what to say. Of course part of her recognized it was unfair to keep Edward in the dark after he'd come clean about being a vampire, but in her mind she was always quick to justify that she hadn't had enough time after learning about his secret to consider exposing hers. If she'd had more time…. Even in her mind Sarah couldn't have finished that thought since she always knew it was a lie. If Jareth hadn't shown up, Sarah would have taken her secrets to the grave.
"Edward, think about it. Goblins, other worlds, talking worms…. You would have thought I was insane." Of that, Sarah had no doubt. She'd made the mistake before of talking about her adventure to her father and Karen one time in the first month after coming back, but the way they'd looked at her, Sarah knew exactly what they'd been thinking. She never wanted anyone else to look at her that way again. If it hadn't been for Jareth coming to visit her like he had, Sarah might have even believed she'd imagined the whole thing herself.
Edward looked like he wanted to argue that point, but he didn't. It was a hard one to refute with any kind of certainty. In the end she didn't blame Edward for not immediately disagreeing the same way she didn't think she'd blamed her father or step-mother for their reactions. If she really thought about it, Sarah knew that what had happened to her was too strange to be believed, no matter how real it had been.
"I'll really be fine," Sarah assured Edward once more, shaking her head as she gestured vaguely to the door. "I promise." Even so, he still didn't move, looking at her with a hard to read expression, one that Sarah decided not to put much effort into trying to decipher either. She was a little too worried about what Edward actually thought about all of this.
"Why do you trust him so much?" Of all the questions Edward could have asked, that one just left Sarah chuckling. Trust Jareth? Sure her relationship with the Goblin King was complicated, but she definitely wasn't foolish enough to trust him.
"I don't trust him," she told Edward when she realized her laughter could be taken with much more offensive than she ever meant. The gaze she was met with in return caused the amusement in her to fade quickly. Edward didn't share in her amusement and the look he was giving her almost seemed to imply that she was in denial.
"But you're defending him." Yet again Sarah wasn't exactly sure where that had come from. Sure, maybe she wouldn't demonize Jareth in the way that Edward seemed quick to do, but that was because she knew the Goblin King better than Edward did. She'd simply been correcting Edward's misapprehensions about Jareth, that was all.
"I'm not defending him! I know he's dangerous, but I really think you've got him all wron—."
"You had to run away from him," Edward growled in return. The tone and volume of his voice shocked Sarah for a moment, any rebuttal she could have made dying on her tongue in that moment. Even if Edward wasn't technically wrong in what he said, something about the words felt inaccurate to her. Yes, she supposed she had run away from Jareth, but it had never been out of fear for her life or that he'd put her into danger. On the subject of Jareth, Sarah felt afraid of a great many things, but—after beating the Labyrinth—harm had never been one of them. So, with those thoughts in her head but no clear way to express them to Edward, the two simply stared at each other as though waiting for the other to back down first. It was only when they heard a sound from upstairs that both their eyes travelled up to the ceiling and broke their hold on each other.
"That… this and that are two completely different things," Sarah finally said, earning another look of skepticism from Edward, but she'd always known it would have been too hard to explain. "And I don't have time to explain it right now," she added, as always seeing the beginnings of an argument and more questions forming on his lips and hastily coming up with something to stop him. "It's been a really, really long day and I need to get some sleep." Finally Edward nodded, if reluctantly.
"Can we talk tomorrow?" By now Sarah was willing to agree with whatever as long as it got him out of the door and enabled her to go to bed, so she nodded without really listening.
"Sure, sure." That, at least, was enough for Edward to wish her good night, even if he was slow in actually moving through the door and leaving her on her own, but at least he eventually did and Sarah could finally eat her sandwich in relative peace. It was well past midnight by the time Sarah finally managed to fall into bed but, once she did, Sarah fell into the most peaceful sleep she'd had in what felt like a long, long time.
Morning came abruptly. Peacefully dozing, Sarah had completely missed the sounds of Charlie leaving, birds cheerfully chattering away in the morning sun and the scattered noise of traffic that occasionally could be heard outside the house. Normally any one of those things would have woken her up at least for a moment, but Sarah's mind was exhausted enough to allow her to sleep through almost anything. In fact, when she finally jolted awake suddenly, her mind was too foggy to even register what it was that had woken her up. Bleary-eyed, Sarah glanced around the room for a moment as she waited for some sign that something was amiss, but quickly her head fell back to her pillow again. She was very nearly asleep again when the sound came again, though this time Sarah was awake enough to recognize it as the doorbell. It didn't take her more than ten seconds to decide that it wasn't worth going to answer it.
Of course, that decision ultimately was overruled as Sarah's phone buzzed a few times and the doorbell rang again, causing Sarah to resign herself to the fact that sleep wasn't in her future anymore. Reaching for her phone, Sarah's hand bumped into something on her nightstand which rolled out from her grasp and landed onto her floor with a few light clinks. In the end it was what really woke Sarah up, watching the crystal as it rolled across her floor; just one more thing that Sarah didn't want to deal with. She left it alone. It took a significant amount of energy to drag herself out of bed and down the stairs—tripping a few times, but she didn't have much energy to lift her feet. By the time she pulled open the door, Sarah wasn't surprised to see Edward standing on the other side looking fresh-faced and neat as ever. It definitely was a stark contrast to Sarah's baggy pajamas and wild hair, but in that moment she really couldn't bring herself to care.
"Don't you ever sleep?" she asked him by way of greeting, one hand holding the door for support as she squinted into the all too bright day. Though she hadn't looked at the time, Sarah had to guess that it was already well past noon.
"No," Edward responded, a bit of amusement in his tone. For a moment Sarah was left squinting at him, not sure if he was being facetious or if that was a genuine vampire thing. In that moment, Sarah decided not to ask.
"Well I do. I was," she informed him, despite the fact that it was plainly obvious by her appearance. Edward seemed not to be put off in the slightest, but that was one more thing that Sarah had come to expect from him. For a moment she waited for him to answer the heavily implied question about what he was doing there, but it almost seemed like he wasn't going to. Sarah looked at him pointedly, still not moving to let him inside the house.
"You said we could talk," he reminded her, making Sarah partially regret not putting up more of a fight, but she supposed that in the end they really did need to talk. If they just went on like this without any kind of explanation between them, it would end badly. That much was certain.
"Right," Eventually she sighed and stepped back from the door so that he could come inside, gesturing him to the table. Edward seemed to hesitate for a moment.
"Would you like to go back to my house?" Sarah quirked an eyebrow at his question. Part of her knew that it was mostly because he—as well as the rest of the Cullen clan—still had questions, and that Edward didn't seem keen to leave her by herself anymore, but then again, was that such a bad thing? Hadn't she run this far specifically to avoid being alone with Jareth anymore? "I never had the chance to give you a tour and you still haven't properly met Esme," Edward added, though Sarah was still pretty certain that was more of an excuse than anything else. Still, he said the words with a winning smile, the one that always made Sarah remember just how Edward had become as popular as he was. Even if she didn't fall over herself for him the way so many girls in their school did, she wasn't completely immune either. Her grudging soft spot for Edward was still there.
"Give me twenty minutes?"
It was closer to thirty or even forty by the time Sarah did finally come back downstairs, but considering the night she'd had, Sarah figured she was entitled to be as slow as she liked. Yet, despite the time she took, the effort wasn't really there, so by the time she came back she was presentable but definitely not put together very well. As soon as he saw her, Edward stood from the table and strode over, a paper cup of still hot coffee in his hand bearing the logo of a local coffee shop. For just a moment Sarah looked at it with envy before it was being gently pushed into her hands.
"I looked that bad, huh?" was her response to the drink after taking a sip, deciding it was better to try and go back to their more light-hearted banter than to make anything about today all too serious. Edward had his usual amused twinkle in his eye, making Sarah feel that she'd done the right thing. No matter what, she didn't want to lose her friendship with Edward. What had frightened her the most before coming to Forks was the concept of having no one and not being able to make relationships with anyone beyond sparkling Goblin Kings. At least having Edward as a friend gave her some kind of peace in that respect.
"Thanks," Sarah tacked on as they moved to Edward's Volvo, waiting as usual for Edward to open the door for her before getting in. The drive itself was companionable with Edward keeping the conversation about school and his family and not once venturing to a subject that he knew Sarah didn't want to talk about. She doubted it would last, but for the moment it was definitely a welcome change.
When they pulled up to the house, Sarah expected to be met by all the Cullens as she had last time, so it was both surprising and a bit of a relief that only Alice and Carlisle came to greet her with Esme calling out to her from the kitchen. Though she had the suspicion that the others were purposefully absent so as not to overwhelm her, Sarah was thankful nonetheless. Alice was quick to grab her hand to pull her to the living room cheerfully, Carlisle and Edward following behind. As before whenever she touched any of the Cullens, Sarah felt that peculiar spark of something familiar, but now that she knew what it was, it bothered her less. At least she didn't instinctively flinch away as she had done many other times. Then again, she was much more used to them by this point too.
If she was being honest, Sarah had to admit that she was surprised at how casual the conversation was between the four of them. Alice was, as always, almost overwhelmingly friendly and upbeat while Carlisle remained polite and approachable as ever. Between the two of them, Sarah supposed she should have expected things to go well. Edward himself seemed to flit in and out of the room, making Sarah wonder what ever happened to the idea of them talking, but with Alice's bright chatter, Sarah found herself pleasantly distracted regardless.
"Actually," Alice eventually said after about twenty minutes, "there was a reason I wanted you to come over today. I wanted to ask you about something." And, there it was. While she had been trying to focus on enjoying the conversation for what it was, Sarah had always figured that it was all building up to something, and now, it seemed, they'd reached it. Sarah knew there was no escaping questions about Jareth.
"What was it?" Not able to keep eye contact with either Alice or Carlisle, Sarah cast her glance around the room, trying to seem as casual about it as she possibly could… which was how she caught her reflection in a mirror. Everything about her posture was rigid and tensed as though braced for some kind of impact. Did she always look like this when Jareth was brought up? That might have explained why they were taking so much time in trying to warm her up to the subject. Alice seemed to pause, Sarah guessing that she'd noticed the body language as well. What was going to come next seemed obvious to Sarah.
"The Labyrinth… what was it like?"
Except that the question Alice actually asked was nothing like what Sarah feared. Edward had been very focused on Jareth and Jareth only, and she had assumed that all the rest of the Cullens would be the same. After all, Jareth's sudden appearance made it hard to spare a thought for much else, didn't it? In all honesty, Sarah couldn't imagine why she'd ever be asked a question like this. She couldn't see the way her entire expression lit up, but if she had it likely would have amused and frightened her in equal measure.
"It was… it was like nothing you could ever imagine," she finally said, voice dreamy and a bit of a smile actually rising to her face as she remembered. "It really seemed like it went on forever, like you could spend your whole life lost in it and never find your way out." Jareth was… complicated. Jareth would always be complicated; however, to Sarah the Labyrinth as a whole was much less so. Even if she didn't always want to admit it, Sarah couldn't hide the fact that she loved the Labyrinth. As horrible as parts of her adventure had been, they'd always been memorable: something unique in the place of a world that had always seemed bland to Sarah.
"It's that big?" Alice prompted, though Sarah had really almost forgotten that she was there at all. All of her hesitation to talk about her situation had fallen away almost immediately in favor of her burning desire to finally tell the story of her adventure to someone that might actually believe her.
"Yeah… but it's not just that. It's so alive." Words felt almost insufficient for Sarah to describe the Labyrinth, but she had no other option but to try. Even as she spoke, she knew that she could never properly make Alice or Carlisle or even Edward understand the Labyrinth or her love for it. "It doesn't look that way at first, but if you're really looking for it, every turn has something interesting."
And so, it continued. Sarah eagerly spoke about every detail she could come up with surrounding her trip to the Labyrinth and even when she considering slowing or stopping she was met with a politely prompting question from Carlisle or Alice which set her off even more enthusiastically. The only breaks came when Esme repeatedly brought in snacks for Sarah to politely nibble on, though Sarah couldn't bring herself to stop her stories for very long. Occasionally Esme or Edward would stop in to listen to what she was saying for a time before wandering back out, but the audience didn't matter to Sarah. She wasn't saying any of it for the Cullens' benefit, it had all been for her own.
Ironically, the fact that Sarah was only speaking for her own satisfaction actually helped the Cullens much more than it helped her. Though most of her tales were harmless—meeting Ludo, the Bog of Eternal Stench, the fireys—it couldn't be helped that Jareth came up from time to time. He was a key figure in the Labyrinth, after all, so Sarah couldn't have avoided mentioning him even if she'd kept her usual hesitation about her. As it was, Sarah found herself so caught up in telling that she let information about him slip out much more easily than she ever had before. It was several hours before she'd reached the end, but by then she had no hesitation in talking about the Goblin King himself.
"And then he was standing in front of me with one of those crystals, still trying to tempt me with one of his deals," she explained, going on a little more to describe a bit about the magical location itself, but Alice seemed to have keyed in on a particular word.
"Deals?" Sarah nodded.
"He's a sore loser, claiming that he was being generous." The words came with a roll of her eyes and a chuckle. "He thought that he could reel me in with an underhanded trick right at the end, saying something about offering me my dreams. 'Fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave'." Sarah quoted, shaking her head. "Like he thought that I'd stick around and hand him the win after everything I'd gone through." Sarah found herself brushing all of Jareth's words off as amusing attempts at trickery and nothing more. Maybe that's just what she needed them to be. If the offer had been real or if she hadn't needed to turn him down like she had in order to win, would she still feel the same pride in herself? Yes, she'd still won either way, but that final showdown with Jareth held the dramatic punch that she would have wanted from the end of an adventure.
"He asked you to stay?" Alice sounded surprised, but no more so than Sarah who looked up and blinked at the girl. Having it broken down so simply both made no sense and too much sense all at once. Sarah hadn't ever thought about her encounter with Jareth like that. Quickly Sarah shook her head.
"No, no," she refuted quickly, perhaps a little too quickly, though she was certain that Alice just hadn't understood. "He was just trying to trick me. He wanted me to give in so that I'd waste my time and he'd be able to keep my brother. All of it was just a trick."
"But… hadn't you already won?" Now it was Carlisle's turn to surprise Sarah and she turned to him, not sure how even he had been confused by the situation.
"What?"
"You said he gave you thirteen hours to reach the castle at the center of the Labyrinth… hadn't you already done that?" A deep crease found its way to Sarah's brow as her brain tried to process what he'd said, though instinctively she was searching for the flaw in his logic. All the while she'd been running through the castle to catch up to Toby, she'd never considered the exact stipulations of winning. Was reaching the castle really all she'd had to do? The thought must have been evident on her face, but in the end Sarah had to shake her head.
"You weren't there. I know he was just trying to trick me," Sarah decided firmly, refusing to consider what Carlisle was saying. At least for now, but there was no saying that the thought wouldn't worm its way back into her mind and cast doubt. "You can't take things for granted in the Labyrinth. It's… hard to explain to anyone that hasn't been there."
"In that case, I really do wish I could have…." That was as far as Carlisle got before Sarah was desperately cutting him off with a string of loud but unintelligible vowel sounds. Though she wasn't anywhere near actual words, her meaning was clear enough in that she was cutting him off from speaking in the most painfully obvious way that she could. Enough so that Carlisle and Alice both looked at her with confusion and Edward reentered the room again, making Sarah even more certain that he was always listening. "Bella?" Carlisle asked, a note of measured concern coloring his voice.
"That's…. It's just that I think it would be for the best if we all try to avoid that word," Sarah finally said, trying to choose her words carefully, but knowing she'd been far too desperate to make him stop.
"What word?" Alice asked. The question almost confused Sarah for a moment as—in her mind—it was obvious what word she meant and why it was a terrible idea to ever say it. Sarah gestured vaguely to Carlisle.
"Wish. Right now, wishing for things probably isn't the best idea, even if you don't really mean it. Especially if you don't really mean it," Sarah told them all, realizing that even if she'd mentioned her whole situation with the Labyrinth had started with an ill-conceived wish, she'd never clarified that all wishes were dangerous. "That's what he does. He answers wishes."
"Who does?" Alice's question seemed almost laughable at the moment as Sarah figured comments about a magical wish-granting him could only really be one person.
"Him. Jareth." Even so, Sarah did clarify, shrugging her shoulders. "That's how he found me again, Edward wished to see a goblin and…." That was as far as Sarah got before she was cut off.
"What?" The voice came from behind her and Sarah wasn't too surprised to hear Edward there again. No matter how often he was in and out of the room, of course he was listening. He hadn't contributed until now so Sarah had kept her attention mostly off of him, but finally she looked behind her towards him. Though she opened her mouth to say something, eventually all Sarah could do was shrug. It was Edward's words that had brought all of this upon them. Not that she didn't imagine Jareth wouldn't have found her anyway, but there was no denying that this was, at least in part, Edward's fault.
The conversation died off a little bit then, a note of hesitation back in Sarah's body language concerning Jareth once again as she found herself more on guard. Edward didn't leave the room again after that, looking like he wanted to say more as he always did, but Alice picked up the conversation again to discuss the differences between the play and the reality of the Labyrinth, something Sarah was more than happy to explore. She only realized that most of the day had gone by when Esme entered the room again.
"As long as you're here, why don't you stay for dinner?" The invitation was warm and in any other circumstance Sarah wouldn't have had much to hesitate about. Regardless of how she ought to have felt, Sarah really had no fear around the Cullens or saw them as anything other than a more interesting version of normal humans. However, Sarah's eyes fell to the plates of mostly uneaten snacks that had been given to her all day and she was quickly smiling and shaking her head.
"I really don't want to be any trouble," Sarah said, keeping her tone friendly, though that wasn't hard to do around the Cullens, at least not the ones around her at the moment. Jasper and Rosalie were still something of a question to Sarah. Edward was, occasionally, a special case, but at the moment she didn't see a need to feel guarded or annoyed with him either. This whole day had been far better than she'd been expecting.
"It's really no trouble." Even with the words—and seeing the look of disappointment crossing Esme's face—Sarah was shaking her head again, though still trying her best to be as polite as possible.
"I should get home anyway, before Ch—dad worries," Sarah almost cringed at the slip-up again, but it wasn't as though they didn't already know her secrets anyway. She hardly knew why she was still keeping up the act.
"Are you sure you…?" Edward trailed off in the middle of his question, making Sarah glance over at him in surprise, but he was shooting an intense look at Alice, one mirrored back to him by her. For a long moment Sarah looked between them before she nodded.
"I promised I'd make him dinner." Esme was clearly disappointed as Sarah stood and held firm on her decision to go home, but her expression brightened considerably as Sarah walked over and—though with some small hesitation—gave the woman a friendly hug. She gave Alice the same and traded a handshake with Carlisle before leaving with Edward and getting into the car. It was hard not to notice his glances as they pulled away.
"What?" she asked him, raising an eyebrow.
"Did you really promise to make dinner?" The way he said the question clearly implied that he didn't believe it, making Sarah lean her head back into the seat and sigh.
"Was I that obvious?" Denying things like that to Edward now seemed almost silly, especially when he sounded as confident in his doubt as he did. Edward hadn't been the one she wanted to believe her anyway as she figured he would take her home regardless.
"I don't think anyone else noticed," Edward said, though quickly pausing as a frown crossed over his face. "Maybe Alice." Sarah wasn't sure why Edward would frown as he mentioned Alice's name, but she figured it had something to do with their intense expressions from earlier. Part of her really wanted to ask.
"You didn't want to stay that badly?" Edward beat her to the punch and Sarah was quick in shaking her head to refute his words before she stopped for a moment and then nodded. The gestures were contradictory, but she felt that he didn't exactly understand what she meant.
"Esme… hasn't cooked for a human before, right?" she surmised, since it didn't seem as though the Cullens ever got very close to humans. Really Sarah supposed she was an exception only because her connection with the Labyrinth made her stand out to them in the way that it made them stand out to her. Magic was a powerful thing, after all.
"Not since she was turned," Edward confirmed her assumption, though it didn't look as though he'd fully caught on to what Sarah was implying, perhaps because it was so long since he'd eaten food that it was a foreign topic for him at this point.
"I had a feeling. From the snacks." Edward, it seemed, caught on to what she meant finally and a look of surprise crossed his face before he immediately began to laugh. "I didn't want to be rude, but all of you would have been watching me while I ate and I wasn't sure I could control my expression." Sarah was surprised at how hard Edward seemed to be laughing, not sure what to make of it. Nothing about it seemed particularly that funny to her, but there had to be something else happening in his head. She'd only noticed that they'd reached Charlie's house as Edward turned fully to face her.
"You really are like no one else," he finally said as his laughter died down. The words themselves were softly spoken, but the true affection in his eyes and the way he was looking at her in that moment left Sarah feeling her cheeks heating up slightly. She'd spent so much time with most of the people around her only looking at her with disdain or disinterest, that she didn't know what to make of Edward's expression. Friendship was something that she'd had some experience with, but anything more was a mystery. Even so, it wasn't as though she didn't know what he was going to do as he started to lean in, even if the pounding of her heart made it hard to really think about what any of it meant.
"Bella…." She could feel the light breath of the whisper against her face and she watched as his eyes began to close, but the word itself felt like it was echoing in her mind. It wasn't as though she wasn't used to hearing people call her by that name—she was—but after hearing Jareth remind her of her real name, Sarah almost felt shocked by Edward's use of her alias. In that moment it just felt… wrong.
Sarah's hand rose quickly, the fingers gently but firmly pressing over his mouth. She knew that he'd be shocked by her action and maybe even hurt, but she didn't know what else to do in that moment. "Sorry," she mumbled, and she meant it. Despite the way her eyes shifted away from him for a moment and the blush on her cheeks, she really did mean her apology. It wasn't that she didn't like him—she did—but…. Sarah didn't even have a compelling reason for why she'd done it, just knowing it wasn't the time for it.
"Don't apologize," came the response, Edward gently brushing some hair behind her ear but taking her rejection without argument. Slowly Sarah smiled at him. Edward was a good person, Sarah had known that for a long time, and this felt like more confirmation of that. Sure, he could be obnoxious and pig-headed about things, but he wasn't cruel.
"I do like you, " Sarah told him, the words far more comfortable to say than Sarah would have expected. "But…."
"You need time?" The words came out understanding and Sarah slowly found herself nodding at him. Time… that felt like the thing Sarah treasured the most these days. As brash as she could still be, maybe she had learned the virtue of not rushing into decisions, no matter what her emotions.
"You should really be thankful you can't read my thoughts. Everything inside my head is a complete mess," she joked lightly before—with some hesitation—reaching over to grab his hand and give it a light squeeze. It was no more than a moment before she dropped it gently and reached for the car door. "Good night, Edward."