Chapter 14:
To Trust Her Heart
Edward must have despised her.
She said the name so many times, over and over again in her head.
Carlisle.
Carlisle.
Carlisle.
And when she was not saying it consciously, it was still there, thrumming like a somber song in the back of her mind.
She even dared to whisper it aloud when she had the spare moment outside, alone, before Edward caught her.
All at once the singing of the birds was loftier, the breeze that rustled the leaves was softer, and the very air around her warmed as though blushing. All of nature was affected by his name.
Each time she said it, it became more and more forbidden. More and more beautiful. More exotic, more saintly, more clean and clear and delightful on her lips.
It was difficult saying it with the sole intention to address him. Esme was made frightfully nervous by the fact that saying Carlisle's name in his presence would impress a weight of expectancy upon her. He would be waiting for her to ask him something, to tell him something. His name was not a free piece of vocabulary she could simply say whenever she pleased.
She used every excuse to be near him, so long as she was not pressured to speak with him. When she expressed an interest in the impressive library that spanned the walls of his study, he warmly invited her to come explore the books in his collection. Esme had her own smaller library upstairs, but it was filled with contemporary works, scholarly texts, and philosophical anthologies that better served Edward's interests.
While there were as many encylopedic works in the doctor's study, there were so many more strange, provocative, ancient books as well. There was something incredibly romantic about the eclectic collection, because it could be replicated nowhere else. Many of the books he owned had been handwritten, and these she felt unworthy to even touch. Esme was shocked that Carlisle trusted her with every one of them. Heavens, if she had owned such a valuable library, she would have never let anyone touch a single book. Doctor Cullen was so generous that he had no qualms about sharing every last item he owned with anyone who passed his path. He made her want to be more like him.
She would gaze at him from the corner of her eye as she feigned absorption with some brittle journal of medicine, her nose snug between the musty pages.
He worked sedulously at his desk, one hand upon his brow as the other looped his signature in peacock blue ink on the front of another envelope. He set the fine fountain pen down beside the paper and sat back in his chair to take an unnecessary glance over what he had written. His hand then went to the wax ladle, spilled a dollop of the blue liquid onto the paper and firmly pressed his stamp into the seal. He repeated the perfectly mundane action over and over, without so much as a sigh, as diligently as she was watching him repeat this action (though she was not immune to the occasional sigh).
With every passing moment he politely ignored her, she admired every bit of him: the dusty gold of his soft blond hair, the noble shadow cast by his nose against his cheek, the pearl-like sheen of his skin in the cloudy sunlight.
There was such preposterous elegance to the way his fingers moved; she wondered how the humans he encountered daily did not immediately declare that there was something anomalous about him. Just the way he folded the letter into thirds – the fluidity of every finger, the gracefulness, the endearing preciseness of it all – it softly screamed that he was not an ordinary man by any means.
Once all of his mail was read and replied to, he would read to himself from large gilded texts which she assumed were gospels. If there ever arrived a moment in a man's life when he had consumed as much as there was to have from either the Old or New Testament alike, Carlisle had proved that moment either did not exist even in the life of an immortal, or simply that it was worth prolonging, even with a perfect memory.
He held the gem-studded Carolingian gospel books between his seamless palms and read silently while Esme watched him from across the room.
His eyes were dim and sensual as they swept over the pages. There was something so sensitively seductive in the subtle way his small lips curved up on the right when he found something of enlightenment in the word of his fellow evangelists. He was not thinking of sinful things – in fact his thoughts were of just the opposite – but the faux-luxuriation of his expression suggested sin.
Innocent men should not have been made to look like him. Only the wicked were so tempting to the gaze. His was a face made for sin, as was his body. His flesh. His eyes. But his heart was so forceful an essence about him that it brushed against her sleeve when they accidentally crossed paths. Carlisle was holy on every facet, and his righteousness was blinding when it was added to the already crippling level of his attractiveness. There was no singular way to describe him. He was such an anomaly, such a strange specimen. He was like nothing else she'd ever heard of, much less seen.
Some days Esme would sit on the sill of a window looking out at the sky and wonder if he was actually real.
She had guessed he was born some inconceivably long time ago, lived for an insignificant amount of time as a human being, then was bitten against his will and transformed into a creature of the damned. He was granted immortality against his will. He was made inhumanely beautiful against his will.
That was the most fascinating part, perhaps even the reason why she was so smitten with his every word and every action.
All the while, he had seemed so unnatural to her because he so clearly had no idea how to behave in a body that was made to make the female species ache and a face that was fashioned to make the angels weep. Carlisle was immaculate because he sought absolutely no usage of the attractiveness he had been granted. He simply accepted it against his will. It was not his fault he looked that way. It was not his fault he was a vampire who had to drink blood and shimmer in the sunlight and break the sound barrier when he sprinted through the forest and all of the ridiculously wonderful things vampires did. And no matter how kind and compassionate and caring and generous and innocent he was, there would always be the unfortunate side-effect of making every vulnerable young woman he encountered weak in the knees with lust.
He could not help it. He barely recognized it, because he was that innocent.
Esme was always wondering how well this quiet doctor knew himself, how much time a day he spent pondering his wills and duties, his limits and goals, his sins and blessings.
She wondered endlessly what he found so engrossing in those Gospel books. She wondered about everything he did.
Something about him disturbed her. Something about him was scandalous. Something about him reminded her of terrors and insecurity and loss. Something about him was Jesus Christ.
He was perfect from every angle, in every kind of lighting; every crevice of his heart shone as brightly as the stars in the summer sky, and she had not even to look anywhere but his eyes to know these things.
He was irrationally beautiful, both inside and out, and this frightened her deeply. Esme had never been with a man so pure, so holy, so steadfast in his faith. And the irony lay where Carlisle was not a man, but a creature of the damned.
They all were damned. She, Edward, and the doctor. They made up a melancholy trinity, living off of each others' half-hearted optimism and the blood of animals which God so lovingly created for this incomplete world.
Sometimes Esme thought back on the little terrors she still remembered from her humanity, and it felt like a more painful bite to her throat. Why were the memories still so distant? She knew she had been abused, and she knew her only son had died at his birth, and she knew that these were the sorts of things that led to suicide. So why did a part of her still refuse to believe these things had once been real?
It was almost as if looking at Carlisle lessened their realness; as if each time she met his eyes, he was taking one morbid memory at a time, plucking them from her brain and dropping them into the fire. She watched them burn, and she could feel him watching from behind her...
Carlisle hurt her. He hurt her just by not looking at her with his gorgeous gaze, just by filling his lungs with the air he did not need – just by being present. Yet Esme craved the pain of his presence, because of that something. That something about him that she never could pinpoint in the drab chaos of her oppressed mind.
Oh, how he terrified her.
Yes, terrified. This was the perfect word. Not completely was she consumed by fear, but a sense of sickening wonder and delightful confusion regarding his past, his motives. He was an enigma to her, even if he claimed to share his every thought and every emotion with her. She felt that he knew so much more than he let her see; he knew so much more about her that she could not see. And there was something hidden inside of him – something he did not even see. She wanted it. She wanted to cradle it in her arms like the breathing child she lost and take it with her everywhere she went.
Esme longed to love. And perhaps loving the man who destroyed her mortality was appealing in some macabre way.
This love was not to be confused with the love for material securities. It was not a mere appreciation, or even a deep fondness like that which she felt for his son. All the while Esme knew she had not exhausted every option. She knew there was another kind of love, a love that was too frightening to even name. A love that hid itself inside satin pillowcases and smelled like springtime and tasted like life and churned in the pit of her stomach. But this was not the love she felt for Carlisle Cullen. It couldn't have been.
After so much time spent thinking up ways to get closer to him, Esme suddenly wanted to put distance between them whenever possible. Distance was good. Distance was healthy and wise and safe. Esme was happy with this distance. She was also furious with it.
Step by step, inch by inch, across the floor that stretched between them, his foot resting on the carpet pointed towards hers, and he didn't even notice. He showed no care that it forced an invisible line from him to her. He had no interest in the way it subtly connected them. But she noticed those kinds of things. Goodness knows, she noticed how thrilling it was.
His shoes were meticulous, just like the rest of him, and it seemed an impossible chore that he managed to keep himself looking so fixed and immaculate all the time. Everything that could have imposed a dent in his perfection suddenly became perfect as well. He was like a wild infection that contaminated everything in his path. He soiled things with his beauty.
To touch a piece of paper with his finger made it glow, to rest his body within an armchair made the cushions look twice as inviting. There was an aura that surrounded him, brushing everything in a radius of however many significant degrees from his center of gravity. It was a profound and perplexing mystery that deserved great studying.
And so Esme studied her doctor from this healthy, safe distance as he partook in some lively discussion with Edward in their usual seats by the drawing room fireplace. As she sat admiring every fine detail of his face as she had countless times before without shame, she found herself pleasantly crippled by his beauty, at a loss for any word that would not come up short when used as an adequate descriptor for him.
In her dumbfounded state of mind, Esme's thoughts seemed to consistently settle on the same idle word over and over: handsome.
The word was so innocent in her mind, but the cognitive connection to what sat before her tore that word to shreds, watered it down to the bare bones of a useless adjective. Such a word was nearly demeaning when it came to this man. Carlisle was not handsome, if she was going to be critical. Whatever ancient soul had thought up the word in the first place had never encountered Carlisle before, then or else he might have had a separate set of standards by which to make his sorry dictionary definition fit the catalogue.
Because anything remotely appealing could be called "handsome". It was just a category. Houses were handsome, furniture was handsome, paintings were handsome.
No, Carlisle was not handsome. He was obscenely ravishing.
It happened so fast.
She was made painfully aware of it – the precise moment when it slapped her suddenly and unforgivingly across the cheek.
Something Edward said – bless the boy – had made him laugh.
It had not started out so terribly, not much more than a pleasant prickle beneath her ribs as she watched the precious joy flicker across his exquisite face.
Carlisle was laughing.
For once, succumbing to true, full, rich laughter. It was a sound Esme suspected was rare for him, something that should be savored like the last sweet drop of blood itself. And so she greedily drank in every tender timbre, every ounce of flawless fluidity in the enthralling sound. Every rapid blink of his eyelashes was mysteriously beguiling. Every line or dimple that flitted across his face was silently begging for her touch. Every miniscule tremble of his chest in his strain for breath was like a tiny miracle.
He was laughing, and she adored the sound of his laughter. But her adoration was all too swiftly replaced with something else. Something dark and bright and lethal.
First a prick, then a stab. In the matter of an instant.
His heavenly eyes met hers and all at once, gravity let up; the galaxy curled itself inward in startled defense. Through that single gaze her heart had been painfully magnetized to his, and he was killing her, plunging the weightless dagger of his perfection into her ghost of a soul – hard and fast and deep – much harsher than the forceful fist of her former husband had ever been upon her flesh.
And that was the moment. Agápē to Eros.
Esme was in love with Carlisle Cullen.
God in heaven... Had it really happened that fast?
Of course it hadn't. It was but a cruel illusion. The feelings had never needed to develop – they had been there all along, germinating and fermenting feverishly just beneath her skin. It took nothing more than his innocent laughter to crackle the pressure, to send the barricades crumbling down, burying her in a sea of dust.
And it was not even the subtle kind of realization that creeped up behind her. It was like bathing in wine, like breathing in fire. It was a devastating, penetrating, tearing apart of the heartstrings sort of culmination, as if in that moment she knew she would never, could never love another after him. The thought of her well-kept affection rushing toward any other man disgusted her. This innocent doctor had unwittingly trampled any hope Esme had of finding love anywhere but the tender gleam of his warming gaze, the ache-inducing fragility of his every sensitive smile, the hurdling pressure she felt within her heart from one breath of his unmistakable scent. The slightest twitch of his arm or the smallest tilt of his chin grabbed something deep inside of her, and she was overwhelmed by the unexplainable need to throw herself violently against his body and never let go lest she be damned.
Because he was agonizing – just sitting there, just breathing and speaking and blinking. Just being. And she could not be without him.
Oh, had he only known the dying damsel he had awoken in his reckless rescue would have rather perished upon that bed than live a thousand lifetimes in his presence without his passionate adoration. If he had only possessed the clairvoyance to see that she would have been better off in hell if he could not give her anything but this kind, impersonal torture...
And now when he spoke to her, she could hear nothing but the desperate sighing of her heart. His voice was like walking through a meadow when the wind had just begun to settle. The long grass swayed and rippled and tickled her ankles, and that was what his voice felt like. It was like she could fall into it, swim within it. Even though it was only a sound – a sound so soft it almost hurt. Sometimes it sounded like he was breathless.
And that was ridiculous.
He started speaking to her, and it was so impossible to listen to the words he was saying. Because all Esme could hear were the beautiful sounds he was making with that voice.
That terrible, wonderful voice.
She knew it so well. She could imagine him saying anything, almost exactly how he would say it. She could replay the sounds over and over again in her head, but they never felt the same as when he was in front of her, speaking like he was right now. The very words that spilled forth from him settled inside of her, nesting themselves in her delicate heart.
Despite how deeply she was disturbed by him, despite all her misgivings, and all of his mysteriously complicated actions, she needed to love him. She needed to love him in the way she promised to never love a man.
It had nothing to do with his preposterous beauty, or the ethereal grace in his gait, or the inexplicable way he carried himself that brought a coy urge to blush beneath her frigid marble cheeks.
It was that something beneath it all, buried in the blessed brine of his very being.
It was because, on the outside, he was so clearly well-adjusted, confident, composed, and content. Yet Esme could see that a buried part of him was positively weeping to be taken under the wing of someone else. He had always been the provider of the wings. His wings were full. Carlisle was the shepherd of too many flocks. But even the one who takes care of everyone must be taken care of.
Esme had to wonder if Carlisle had truly never known the doting affections of a woman. How long had he gone without this kind of attention? Had he ever believed himself worthy of this attention? Had he no sense of his own irresistibility? Had he no concept of how broad a target he was for feminine obsession? For how many years had he gone denying himself the unspoken blessing in favor of solitude, and for what reasons?
He worked so well at hiding it, but she could sense it. The desire was there, neatly incarcerated within the burning helm of his heart, and she had no means to liberate it when he would not admit to it.
If only he were to give into that need.
She could take care of him. Oh, she would have given her world to take him under her wings.
She would fulfill every one of his unspoken needs until he begged her to spare him. She would damn the world that showed him no justice; she would seek revenge on those who gave him no mercy. She would love him in the way he deserved to be loved – in the way no other man on the face of the earth could withstand being loved. That was the kind of love Carlisle deserved. It was impossible for anyone but God to give this kind of love, but Esme would give everything of herself to gain at least a percentile of that unattainable quantity.
How deliciously taboo it was to imagine how Carlisle might love her in return.
How terrifying.
It was an almost impossible thing to imagine, but she tried. Oh, she tried. Every searing blister upon her mind was evidence to this.
She was in a constant state of alertness with him in the house, knowing at any time she must be prepared for him to walk into the room without warning. His entrances were always so unheralded. She couldn't explain how he did it, she knew only that he entered a room with this air of unsuspecting ceremony about him – the door flew open and there he would be, in all his glory – and the most fascinating part was that he didn't even realize his presence was such a cause for ceremony. It was like every moving particle in the room stood still when he entered. His scent would purge the room of all its clarity, dragging her into the dangerous realm of a delusional dimension. She treaded the currents of his aroma – a thrilling potpourri of love and lust. She breathed in the intoxicating essence of his being and she drowned, submitted, fell under.
He reminded her of tribulations and judgment and the importance of fidelity and all of the reasons good Christian women give up their faith. He was the personification of mercy. And Esme could not help but worship him when he was not watching.
Her heart was so sore, so reluctant to open for him, to take in the weight of his character, to make room for this impossible victim she sought to claim.
She wanted Carlisle to be hers. Because the thought of him belonging to anyone else turned her to fire.
She wanted to be his. Because the thought of him refusing her turned her to frost.
She wanted to be consumed by him, possessed by him – taken, owned, absorbed, exhausted, swallowed, filled, and immersed by all of him.
She wondered if these longings could even be real. Her heart was an inexperienced one, having never truly loved a man before. How was she to know if her feelings were true this time?
It was one thing to trust the feelings of a stranger, and even to trust herself. But to trust her own heart was perhaps the most profound and the most painful trust of all.