"I'll give you a few minutes, shall I?" Carlisle eyed both Bella and Edward, waiting to receive Bella's nod before leaving. She'd seen nothing in his expression to indicate that anything out of the ordinary had just occurred. Could she have misheard?

Edward was still staring at her. She was trying to wrap her now drug-addled head around what he'd said. He'd heard her thoughts? Her eyes were blinking heavily. She wondered absently if it was his venom or the medication she'd been given that had made her sleepy.

"Bella, do you still love me?" he whispered, his tone and expression incredulous.

What?

She stared at him, her exhaustion sucking at her consciousness.

"Do you?" He looked so anxious.

He should know the truth, she thought, her senses crumbling under the pull of sleep. It was better to give him this truth, and let him see how much better it would be if he left her for good. This would free him to do so.

But while she wanted to tell him the truth, her eyes were so heavy, it was like lifting lead, and after they closed, they didn't open again for some time. When consciousness gave her enough energy to actually blink her eyes open and see, the room's windows were dark, the space dimly illuminated by the low light of the bedside lamp. It cast Edward's face in uncertain shadows.

He was still there.

She checked herself this time, making sure it wasn't a dream. Her body ached in what had become all the regular places: groin, thighs, chest, arms. Sore. Check. She was awake.

Edward hadn't left. He may have heard her thinking about how she still loved him, and he hadn't left. Her esteem for his noble instincts rose again, and it made her hurt, thinking of how much he was ruled by his sense of duty.

God, he'd heard her thoughts? How? Of all the times for him to hear her! She made herself look at him. He wasn't reading this time, instead watching her in a way that made her deeply uncomfortable. It was a kind of intentness that roused wariness—like a predator and its prey. She shivered. He wouldn't hurt her.

Right?

Not with all the Cullens nearby. Not if they were nearby.

Edward held out a glass of water, which she took, carefully avoiding his touch, and then sipped at it. The IV needle was still in her arm, but her mouth was very, very dry. While she needed to pee, her body was free of the ache that she now understood came from the withdrawal. She swept her feet over the edge of the bed, sitting up without dizziness.

"I heard you," Edward said. "Your thoughts. I can't hear them now, but . . . I'd very much like to know if I was correct in what I heard." His jaw was a tight line.

Now she wasn't so sure of the wisdom of telling him the truth. She had clearly underestimated his sense of moral obligation. So it was with no small amount of guilt and shame that she spoke her evasive lie: "I'm not sure what you heard or even if it was me."

Edward stood abruptly, moving to the window and staring outside, his head cocked a tiny bit to the right. The posture was familiar. He looked to Bella as if he were listening for other voices, other conversations.

When he turned around, his features were calmer somehow. "It was your voice, Bella. And you were very clear. Your thoughts were clear. You said you loved me and that you wished you'd been able to apologize for . . . something."

Bella decided that humiliation was indeed the predominant emotion she was experiencing.

"Is that correct?"

"Yes." Then she wished for the carpet to swallow her up.

In the long silence that followed, the room was so quiet that all she could hear was the hum of the IV unit beside her. She found herself tensing as she anticipated his ridicule or disgust. When he finally spoke, she was unprepared for what she heard.

"You owe me nothing. I lied to you," he said.

The anticipated, "I hate you" or "I loathe you" or "I'm only doing this out of a sense of obligation" didn't sound like the assertion she had expected. And because she knew she deserved to hear in Edward's own words his many reasons for wanting to be rid of her, she said, "Pardon?"

"In the woods, the day I left. Everything I said was a lie." He was looking at her now.

She stared at him, blinking, trying to recall what he could have lied about.

"I said that I didn't love you, Bella. It wasn't true. It was never true."

She shook her head. It was like trying to solve a math problem with someone giving her the answer but not being able to follow the steps to its solution.

Was she dreaming? She began to doubt her initial assessment. Then she looked at the IV needle in her arm. Oh, good grief, it was the morphine. She exhaled in relief, rubbing her hands over her face, letting out a laugh. "Of course."

"Of course what, Bella?" He moved closer, sitting on the bed but still some distance away.

"I'm seeing and hearing things. Morphine messes with my head."

Edward's eyebrows inched together, and he shook his head. "You're not on any morphine right now." He lifted his chin to the wall where a bag clearly labelled, "Saline" hung from the hook.

Bella stared at the bag. "I'm—"

"Awake and lucid, I assure you. Carlisle will be happy to verify this."

She couldn't think of anything else to say to explain what he had just told her. She couldn't quite accept that what she was experiencing was real either. Didn't withdrawal sometimes cause delusions? If it was a delusion, she knew she should fight it and struggle to find what was real. And yet, part of her wanted to ask this delusion-induced Edward some very hard questions.

"This can't be real, but let's just pretend it is. If you"—she could barely say it—"loved me, then why did you leave?"

"To protect you." She didn't miss his little scoff after he said it. Even he understood how ludicrous a statement it was. "It was the worst kind of blasphemy to say what I did."

She laughed again more loudly, immediately regretting it. The movement made her bruises ache.

"I left to protect you from my kind and from my world." He stood and paced again, looking profoundly unhappy.

"Well, that plan didn't work very well," she said, recalling Laurent and Victoria. And then Volterra.

"It was working just fine until you arrived in Italy." Now he was scowling.

She felt her face flush with anger, too. "What did you expect, for me to let you kill yourself out of guilt?"

In her roused and angry state, she realized that everything was feeling a bit too real and explicit to be a delusion, but accepting that meant she needed to acknowledge what she was hearing from Edward. He'd lied about not loving her? Had he really said that just now? As she questioned the recollection, the words began to percolate through the filter of her consciousness.

"I thought you were dead, Bella. I was told you jumped off a cliff. What in the world were you doing?" His voice had risen with each word. He'd stopped pacing, facing her now, hands clenched briefly in his hair before he dropped them to his sides again.

There was no way she was going to tell him about the hallucinations she'd had after he left or that she'd sought to encourage them. She stabbed at his hypocrisy instead. "What? Only you're allowed to commit suicide?"

"I would hope that neither of us would choose such a fate." His features hardened as he looked at her. "At least not if the other of us is still alive."

She thought of her plan and the pills in Volterra and how he'd interrupted her. She supposed that she didn't really have any high ground upon which to stand concerning suicide.

"And yes, I was foolish not to verify the information beyond a brief phone conversation with a total stranger, but if you were dead now, Bella, I would make the same decision as I did then. I didn't want to kill myself out of guilt for leaving you, nor would I. I wanted to kill myself because I thought you were dead, and I can't be in a world where you are not."

Can't. That one word snagged in her thoughts. Present tense. Edward was not one to be imprecise with his speech.

"Can't," she repeated. "Why not?" She listed for herself all the horrible things he'd endured at the hands of the Volturi because of her. He should have taken the first opportunity to be away from her.

"Because I love you. I never stopped loving you."

That equation of things again that refused to reconcile itself made her head hurt. How could he possibly still think he loved her?

"You can't," she said. "You should hate me after what I did."

He tilted his head. "Why would you think that?"

The shame flared up. She had been so selfish in making that bargain even when he was screaming at her not to. "I couldn't let you die, and I made a bargain with a monster to keep you alive. But I saw what they did to you. They tortured you."

Then Edward had lashed out at her for it. That wasn't love. She thought of what Demetri had done with Edward's assistance. He couldn't claim to love her when he had betrayed her. Her gaze dropped to the floor.

She felt the mattress dip slightly and knew that he had settled again on the end of the bed. His tone was softer.

"I'll admit it was torture for me to be there and witness what you went through, but that didn't change what I felt for you. What happened was not your fault. I could never hate you. I love you. I will never stop loving you."

She didn't dare look at him. It would be too painful. But she needed to correct his delusion, and quickly, before she weakened and fell into it. "People who love each other don't try to hurt each other, Edward. Maybe you needed to tell yourself that you loved me to get through the last few months, but what you felt wasn't love. If it was, you wouldn't have left me or helped Demetri the way you did." She couldn't bring herself to list the intimacies he'd shared with Demetri or speak aloud the final brutality to which that information had led. Edward obviously knew that she'd been raped and that she'd wanted to kill herself. She hoped not to have to stab him again with these truths.

"I didn't—I did not share that information freely."

She couldn't help the small snort of disbelief that escaped her. She knew he'd heard it when he stood up again at vampire speed. She recognized the agitation in his movement.

"How could I choose to share anything about you when I was not permitted to even think of you!" he said fiercely. "I had no thoughts that were mine alone. Aro sees everything with one touch. He takes whatever he wishes. I was told—ordered—not to speak to you, not to think about you. When I tried to see you through the eyes of others, you were punished for even that."

She closed her eyes for a moment. Could any part of what he was saying be true? Had Demetri lied when he said Edward did not want to see her? She realized that had never occurred to her. It had made more sense to her that Edward would hate her for damning him to service in the Volturi guard.

"I refused to tell Demetri anything at first." She opened her eyes again and watched Edward pace as he continued speaking, his feet leaving shadows in the carpet. "But then Aro answered him when I didn't, giving him a hideously twisted version of you, of us, ideas which he wanted to see Demetri use purely for Aro's own entertainment."

There was no mistaking the disgust in his tone now. There was also an indisputable ring of truth in his words, and the unresolvable equation began to untangle itself ever so slightly. Yes, there had been some conflict between the things Demetri seemed to think she would enjoy and what Edward would know to be true. Others, though . . .

"He asked about your interests first, what music you liked, what books. I didn't want to tell him anything. How could I after what he proposed to do? His experiment—" He grimaced. "So, I didn't answer him. Then Aro listed all the books and music I knew would remind you of me. He could see how much it would potentially distress you and that it might give Demetri an opportunity to comfort you. From what I knew of Demetri, I could see that was not the case." He snorted in derision. "The idea of his offering comfort to anyone is absurd. But I didn't want you to be miserable there, as much as I could prevent it, so I told him."

She recalled the books on her shelf in Volterra. No, they had not offended or distressed her.

"He didn't just ask about books," she said, voice trembling. She hated to shove these ugly truths at him, but if he loved her—no, he couldn't, not after what had happened.

"No, he didn't." Edward paused. "I tried to keep my more . . . intimate memories about us from Aro but his power is . . . overwhelming. I attempted to steer Demetri away whenever I could, and when I failed . . ." His voice began to shake. "I'm so sorry, Bella. I tried to stop him. That last day, when he . . . I physically tried, but Aro used Jane and Alec to keep me under control, and then he threatened to let Demetri bite you if I didn't stop fighting them. I couldn't let him—not after . . ." He stopped, his face contorting. "I'm so sorry."

It was like feeling Demetri's lips at her neck and shoulder again, her hand fingering the mottled bruise.

He didn't want Demetri to bite her, then? "Why not? I mean, weren't they planning on that anyway?"

"Because he had no plans to stop what he was doing even after biting you. And if he had bitten you, he was so—I didn't think he could stop. Aro showed me that Demetri had . . . failed with other human women. I was sure he would kill you," Edward said.

"That wouldn't have been so bad either," she said, wincing as she threw this final knife at his noble delusion. She saw that she had hit her mark by the stricken look on his face.

She thought of Edward's refusal to turn her or to even entertain the idea in the past. Even if she accepted what he was telling her about what had happened in Italy, even if what he was saying about when he left was the truth, it could not have been a real, enduring love. No, surely the cognitive dissonance that held together his actions and his ideals was keeping him from acknowledging the truth, even to himself.

The sob and then tears came of their own volition. It wouldn't serve him to hear it, but she couldn't hold it in anymore. "I'm so sorry, Edward. I'm so sorry for what they did to you because of me, for how selfish it was of me, for how it's made you need to say that you love me. But you need to let go of that. You should hate me for making that bargain. I give you permission to hate me. You don't love me—you don't owe me that—and you need to move on. Your family can help you, I'm sure. I'll go as soon as I can, but you shouldn't have to be near me—"

Her gaze had sunk to the carpet again, but now Edward obstructed her view as he knelt before her, his eyes soft and focused intently on hers. "Bella Swan, I don't need to convince myself of anything. I am a vampire. I cannot experience delusion or trauma—at least, not the way a human would. The only thing that can change a vampire is meeting their mate, and I have already experienced that. I am looking at her, and I love her. The woman I love saved my life. The only question here is whether she loves me or wants me, because I have not done anything to deserve that love, and have done so much to damage it."

Oh, Edward. Her heart ached for him. She would not hurt him further by playing into this fallacy he had created for himself—that she was his mate. Thinking of how he'd reacted to the false news of her death, she knew she still needed to find a way to protect him. "You can't live your life like this. And when I die, you can't try to kill yourself." Surely he could see how illogical his thinking was.

Like a shade drawn, his face slackened, the earnestness gone. "You won't die, Bella." He looked away.

She exhaled, exhausted. "I'm human, remember?"

"For now." His gaze seemed glued somewhere to the carpet.

And because she couldn't quite let her mind leap from his words to the natural conclusion they suggested, she studied the same patch of carpet, too.

"For now?" she finally dared ask.

"The Volturi released us, but I was given a choice to either change you there or promise to do so after we returned home. And like you, I made the selfish choice—I want you to be human for as long as you can."

Be calm, be calm, be calm, she told herself. Be calm.

The shaking and the blackness that came next were welcome distractions from Edward's revelation, and she accepted the void of unconsciousness into which she fell.

A/N for 2020-08-21: Chayasara and Eeyorefan12 are both amazing betas, and they are a complete and total trip to work with (and for you young people, that's old people slang for 'really cool'). Many, many thanks to them for putting their wits to work on this story.

- Erin

DISCLAIMER: S. Meyer owns Twilight. No copyright infringement intended.