Sorry for the wait... I went to Florida about 5 days after coming back from Minnesota... it was FUN! Anyway, I hope you like this chapter, and I'm sorry if you don't understand it... it should make more sense later, just review if you don't know, say you don't know what happened, and I'll reply to it! :D


"Stand up, Rachel," my mother, Ruth McCarty, commanded as she prepared to put a small but beautiful necklace around my neck.

I stood up and lifted my hair so it would be easier for my mother to accomplish her task. "There," she said. "Beautiful, just beautiful," my mother said.

I turned around to look in the tall mirror that stood on the floor and gasped. The satin navy blue gown fit perfectly on me. The gown practically floated. It had an empire-waist that tied in the back, yet no puffy sleeves since I wasn't particularly fond of the current fashion.

However the things that caught my attention were my eyes and the tone of my skin. My eyes were a dark brown, yet I could have sworn that I had topaz eyes. My skin was slightly darker too. It wasn't very tan, but it wasn't the chalky white that I had grown accustomed to either.

I glanced out the window next to my mirror and found a Chicago view. This, too, felt different.

"I know," my mother replied to my gasp, obviously thinking I was stunned at my beauty. She put her hands on my shoulders and kissed the top of my head. "And to think we did it all on our own, without the help of maids!"

"Yes," I murmured, still trying to figure out why everything felt unusual. I looked at the reflection of my mother and myself; I realized that it felt as if I hadn't seen my mother in years.

"I really think tonight is the night, Rachel. It has to be! He's been courting you for about a year now and it's obvious he loves you. The way he looks at you, it's like he's longing for you," my mother said excitedly.

My mother's last sentence shocked me. 'Like he's longing for me…' There was something ominous about the word longing, but I ignored it, thinking my nerves were getting the better of me.

"Well, we'd better get down there. He could be here any minute!" My mother was always so excited and normally I would sigh, thinking she could get over-excited, but not tonight. Tonight, I was probably more excited that my mother.

"Wait," I said, an idea popping into my mind. "I want to bring something of Emmett's with me," I said in a soft voice. Emmett's death had hit all of us very hard, and the fact that we would never get his body back was even more devastating.

"Of course," my mother replied, wiping a tear from her eye. "Well, maybe you could bring a handkerchief. You could put it in your handbag," she added. I smiled and slowly exited my room and entered the vacant room across from mine.

Emmett's room looked the same, just as it had two years ago when we found out there had been an accident. The bed was made up neatly and everything was put away. I had refused to let mother and father throw anything out. I wanted to keep everything that would remind me of the person closest to me ever since birth.

I walked over to the dresser and sat down on the bed that Emmett hadn't slept in for two years.

The first few months without Emmett were the hardest for me and occasionally I would come into his room and sleep in his bed like I did when I was five and he was ten. I used to be scared of storms, so at night, Emmett was always there to comfort me, and sometimes sing me to sleep.

I opened the top drawer on the right and pulled out a pure white handkerchief that had the initials E.M. I quickly used it to remove a tear from my eye and then hurried out of the room and down the stairs.

When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I smiled. Laurent quickly finished speaking to my father and turned to face me, a large grin appeared on his beautiful face. He was wearing a fancy black Palm Beach suit.

He held out his hand to me and I took it gently.

"Have a wonderful night, my dear," my father said as he walked over and kissed my forehead. He walked back over to where my mother was standing and placed her hand in his.

Laurent nodded to both my parents and then we were out of the house, walking towards Laurent's black Lincoln car. He opened the door for me and before he closed it he said with a smile, "I think tonight is going to be a wonderful night."

"I think you're right," I replied with a smile. I could feel my heartbeat increasing, as Laurent's smile grew bigger. There was something peculiar about his smile, almost evil, but I ignored it, thinking my nerves were acting up again.

By the time we were at the restaurant, Laurent and I were deep in conversation. Something about our conversation was familiar, like déjà vu, but I went along with it anyway.

On the way to our table, we accidentally bumped into a tall, handsome young man with reddish-bronze hair, sparkling topaz eyes, and extremely pale skin. He seemed familiar somehow, but I didn't have the chance to talk to him because he walked over to an even taller man.

This man, too, seemed familiar, only he seemed much, much more familiar.

"Emmett?" I whispered as I opened my small handbag and looked at the handkerchief I had taken earlier. The man looked at me with sad eyes, and I realized his eyes were topaz, just like the other man's eyes. It couldn't have been Emmett; Emmett's eyes were blue, not golden. The man also had pale skin just like his friend.

Laurent put his arm around my waist and spoke to me. "I'm sure that he's happy where ever he is." He smiled and my heart felt like it was melting

We were seated and handed our menus quickly and our orders came quickly as well. I ordered a salad, as did Laurent, claiming he wasn't very hungry.

Our dinner went by rather quickly since we didn't have much to eat. Laurent paid for the food and then we were off.

For a moment, I thought that I saw the man who looked like Emmett and the man who had reddish hair standing across the street, but when I looked back, they had vanished. Laurent must have seen them too, because he frowned and immediately secured his arm around my waist and guided me along the street and into his car.

"There is somewhere that I want to show you," he said with a smile as he started driving in the opposite direction of my house.

We drove for a while until we were at the end of the town, right next to an abandoned brick building on a hill that overlooked a small yet lovely lake with trees scattered around it. He helped me out of the car as I gazed at the lovely view.

"It's a beautiful night," I commented as I gazed at the sun, which had almost disappeared from the horizon.

"It is," Laurent agreed. "The colors are beautiful too," he added as we watched the sun set in the west.

Before I had time to protest, he gently pressed me against the back of the brick building so I was trapped between the building and his unnaturally cold body, with his mouth was on mine, kissing me passionately. I kissed him back and we stayed like that for a few moments before he moved his mouth slowly along my cheek and then to my chin. He continued all the way down to the base of my neck where he stopped and rubbed his nose along the middle of my collarbone to the base of my neck where he stopped.

Next I felt his lips part and icy cold teeth touch my skin. He bit down and my breath caught in my throat.

I felt pain. I felt nothing but pain and the coldness of Laurent's body holding me close to him. But even Laurent's body couldn't dull the fiery pain that dwelled in my neck and slowly started spreading.

"I've been waiting a long time for this," he purred in my ear as he pulled back and smashed my skull into the side of the building. He brought me back to look me straight in the eyes. For the first time since I had met him, I saw the evil fire in his eyes that corrupted his beautiful face. The blood started falling into my eyes, turning everything around me a deep crimson.

"Your blood has the most intoxicating smell I've ever encountered. I could have attacked you right then on that night we met at the party, but I restrained myself. I commanded myself to wait and save you for a… special occasion. Well, this is one special occasion… you and your parents believed I was going to propose tonight… you were just a little off the mark," he smirked and lowered his head again to drink the warm blood that was gushing from the bite in my neck.

The sound that came next was so loud that not even the burning of my blood and the pounding in my ears could dull it.

A thunderous roar came and Laurent's body was thrown away from me. I fell to the ground with a thud and the back of my head hit the brick wall for the second time.

Though the blood was obscuring my view, I could just see two men attacking the beast that had just attacked me. One man had reddish-bronze hair and the other was the Emmett look-alike. They wrestled him to the ground, but somehow he seemed to escape. The two men started to go after him, but a moan escaped my lips involuntarily, and they rushed to my side.

"Rachel!" I heard Emmett's voice call out to me from the Emmett look-alike.

"Emmett?" I whispered shakily.

"It's okay, Rachel. Edward and I are going to help you," he told me.

"You'll be alright, Rachel," the man named Edward told me. "I promise it will be over soon."

"Rachel! Rachel! Rachel, wake up! It's just a dream, Rachel," I heard Emmett's voice call, yet it didn't come from either Edward or Emmett. "Rachel, come on," his bodiless voice called again.

I closed my eyes for a moment. When I reopened them, I was ten years into the future, looking up at my brother who was violently shaking me.

"I'm up Emmett," I said, almost shouting. He stopped shaking me and embraced me in a tight hug.

"Everything's alright, Rachel. I won't ever let him hurt you again," Emmett cried as he pulled away from me. He looked very distressed and probably would have been crying if vampires could cry.

"What?" I asked rather confusedly.

"You were talking in your sleep," he explained, hugging me again. "I was watching you to make sure you were alright, and then you started murmuring a few things, and they were all things that happened on your last day of humanity."

"Yeah," I sighed as he pulled away again to look me in the eye. I looked down in sadness and tried to look anywhere but directly at Emmett, but he pulled my face back to look at him.

He pulled me back into a hug for the third time and rested my head on his shoulder before he started singing the song he used to sing to me when I was little to get me to fall asleep during bad weather. I had almost forgotten how amazed I was that he had taken Psalm 13 and added notes to it to make a song.

"How long will you forget me Lord? Forever? How long will you look the other way when I am in need? How long must I be hiding daily anguish in my heart? How long shall my enemy have the upper hand? Answer me, O Lord my God; give me light in my darkness lest I die. Don't let my enemies say, 'We have conquered him!' Don't let them gloat that I am down.

"But I will always trust in you and in your mercy and shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord because he has blessed me so richly," he ended softly.

I sighed again. "Thanks, Em," I said using the nickname I had given him when I was little.

"No problem," he replied as he kissed the top of my head and hugged me tighter.

'At least now I get to spend the rest of eternity with people that I love,' I thought to myself as I hugged him back.


Hope you liked it! Reviews make me happy :D