Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight

Chapter 15 - Confessions

I inhale another mouthful of Lynn's intoxicating pheromones, unless she shops for cosmetics in Paris, and instinctively lean closer to her. And just like that, she's gone. In front of me there is nothing but air. I look around, a little rattled, and see her at the edge of the meadow, in the shadow of a tree. I can't read her expression from here.

"I'm sorry." She says, barely loud enough for me to hear.

"I am too," I mumble. "I just wanted to be closer to you…. You smell so good." She can tell I'm upset.

"I know. I am really and truly sorry," she says, walking slowly toward me.

"What did I do?" My tone of voice is a little shaky.

"You didn't do anything wrong," she says quickly. "You just surprised me, that's all. I haven't spent this much time close to a human since I was one. It's… not easy. It's becoming more manageable, but I need to be careful…." She says in a pleading tone. "I swear I will not hurt you. I want to be with you, believe me. I just have to take things slow and make sure I stay in control."

"Okay," I understand her reasons, and her caution. Something weighs heavily on my heart, but I hope I can manage to hide it. She sits next to me, her face level with mine again but a little farther apart. She still looks contrite. "I upset you, Brandon. I feel really bad about it."

"No, it's okay. It makes sense. It's just, you know, I couldn't help it. The gravitational pull you exert is hard to withstand." Looking at her, I have a sudden intuition.

"There is something else, isn't there?"

She narrows her eyes, seeing something in mines maybe.

"I mean, this whole excursion wasn't just about showing me what you look like in the sun…. There is something else you want to tell me… Is it really that hard for you to be close to me?"

She looks shocked for a second, and then smiles ruefully.

"Once again you are very perceptive. Brandon, I'm a vampire…" She stands up and looks down at me. "I'm a natural predator of humans. All of my instincts are drawn to your blood; nature only meant for you to be a source of sustenance for the likes of me, nothing more. And that is not all… I'm not just a hunter; I'm a deadly one. My looks, my voice, even my scent, draw you in." Her smile turns sour, sorrowful.

"As if I even needed any of that."

She suddenly jumps over thirty feet, to the other side of the meadow, and runs around it and back so quickly I can barely see her.

"As if you could outrun me."

She walks toward a tree, grabs a bough, pulls it off with one easy yank and throws it at a fir thirty feet from us.

"As if you could fight me off."

She looks at the ground, eyes as cold and sharp as steel.

"Now you know what you are really dealing with, the kind of monster I am. Now you know why you should run away… Why I won't blame you if you do." She says, her voice filled with barely disguised bitterness.

I should be scared, and admittedly dating a girl who could rip my heart out literally rather than just metaphorically will take some getting used to. But I'm not frightened at all, only awed. She's magnificent. I smile and clap my hands as if I was at a rock show.

"And you said you're not a superhero… This is all so cool."

A look of utter amazement crosses her face and then turns into wind-chime laughter. She sits next to me again, still trying to stifle her hilarity.

"Are you even human?" She manages to utter in between chuckles. "Aren't you ever afraid at all? Are you one of those people who were born without a self-preservation reflex?"

I roll my eyes, eliciting more laughter.

"Please. I'm afraid of a lot of things. When I have to talk to a pretty girl I'm so scared I can barely retain control of my bladder. I also have an allergy to guns and knife-wielding lunatics."

She cocks her head and turns serious.

"You seem to be able to talk to me just fine. Does that mean you don't find me appealing?" She's just joking around, I think, but there is something sinister in her eyes. No, some kind of sadness.

"I find you extremely, absolutely, totally gorgeous. I think you're hotter than the sun, really, despite your body temperature. And I was really shy around you the first time we met. Of course, the fact that you looked at me like you hated me didn't help. The next time I saw you, when we actually talked, at first I was so nervous I could just stammer inane replies, but you kept asking me questions nobody else ever uttered or cared to find out an answer for. I started feeling comfortable, like I could just discuss anything with you, like you would listen to me without judgment. You wouldn't let me stall or clam up and you seemed more interested in me than anybody else had ever been. I had never had a conversation quite like it." I pause for an instant, gathering my thoughts.

"But it's more than that. When I'm with you I feel emotions I'd never even dreamed of. Like… we belong together." Blushing-time in a remote alpine meadow. Great, I think, now I talk like a women's magazine. I knew I shouldn't have read the ones my mom left scattered all over the place.

"Oh Brandon…. You know I feel the same. But before we talk about this, I have some confessions to make. For one, you are looking at a killer." She gazes right at me, trying to gauge my reactions. Her lips tremble.

"I'm sure you had your reasons." Her laugh is a sprinkle of fairy dust.

"You are always full of surprises. But you are not wrong, in a sense. Carlisle made me a vampire and taught me the vegetarian way of vampirism, as we call it. It's our inside joke. Over time we met other vampires that had different ideas. Many of them swore human blood was so much better, so much more fulfilling, like a religious experience even. I started wondering about it, and decided to venture out on my own. I wanted to feed on humans, but I still didn't want to be evil. So I only stalked murderers, or worst. I rationalized it by telling myself that I could truly quench my thirst and do some good. I hoped that the souls I saved by removing killers from society would balance the lives I took."

"But eventually you went back to your family." I peer at her closely.

"Yes. I really missed them. It was only Carlisle and Esme at that time, but they were my parents. They were everything to me. Also, drinking human blood wasn't the deeply moving experience other vampires had described. It wasn't worth it. I made too many memories I wish I hadn't. They still crowd my thoughts at times, grotesque gargoyles indelibly carved in the frosty permanence of my vampire mind." She looks anguished now, but happy to get all of this off her chest, out in the open. We shouldn't have any secrets, not if we want to be together, not after everything we already laid bare.

"But," she continues, casting a mortified side-glance at me before staring at the flowers around us. "I have one more burden weighing on my conscience. One more confession. Maybe the most hideous, the most repulsive. Your accident wasn't the first time you were dangerously close to dying. You remember your first day in school? Our French class?"

"How could I forget? You really looked like you loathed me. I couldn't imagine what I had done to deserve it, if it was really about me. Sure, in Phoenix I was a bit of a chick-repellent. My lack of ambition didn't sit well with most of the girls in my school…. But I had never even said hi to you…"

She looks pained, but she forces herself to meet my stare with her eyes.

"This will be hard to explain… but your blood is uniquely appetizing to me. The fact that you were bleeding that day didn't help. Still, it would have been bad regardless. It had never really happened to me before. To be honest, every fiber in my body wanted to feed on you, right there, right then. I ran through my mind a hundred scenarios that would have allowed me to do so, everything around me shrouded in a blurry, crimson haze. I'm ashamed to say that some of those twisted plans involved ruthlessly slaughtering the whole class. You were like a demon that had been sent to Earth with the sole purpose of damning me and my family to hell."

She closes her eyes for a moment, remembering that day.

"Somehow, my years of training, of denying my basest impulses, allowed me to resist those urges. If I had given in, we would have been discovered, and that would have been bad in ways I cannot fully disclose to you yet. Let's just say, for now, that we have many reasons to keep our existence a secret."

"Was it really that hard for you?" And yet, I'm still not scared. I'm gambling my life on this, but I do so willingly.

"The hardest thing I've ever done."

"How about the rest of your family? Have they ever met somebody whose smell was so appealing, so irresistible?"

"As far as I know, only Emmet experienced something similar."

"What happened then?"

Her eyes give me the answer.

"He gave in to temptation, didn't he?" I can't avoid scoffing.

"Yes. He wasn't happy about it, but he couldn't help himself."

"If you want permission to take my life you already have it, Lynn. That's why I'm here." My forced smile feels rather brittle, but the sentiment behind it is sincere. If her rescue only bought me a few extra weeks on Earth I have no right to complain; the last few days have been the best of my life.

"No, no," she shakes her mane of her, "I won't hurt you. I swear. I can't. That day, though, I truly thought I would. It was agonizing, at first, to keep my innate thirst in check, but I'm getting inured to your scent now. I just need a little more time. This is helping. Emmet was younger, in vampire years. He hadn't had as much training as we do now. It was only once…." Her voice tapers off, embarrassed.

"So, this smell… Are you saying that my blood is your own personal brand of heroin?" I try to lighten the mood and it seems to work.

"Yes, you're exactly like my personal brand of heroin. In so many ways. Denying my thirst was agony, but I'm so happy I did. My family doesn't deserve what would have befallen us if I had lost control. And of course I could never forgive myself if I were to hurt you."

"You were absent for a whole week afterward. I wondered whether it was because of me but it seemed absurd."

"Yes. That day, after school I dropped off my family near our home and then drove straight to Carlisle's hospital; I knew that if I went to our place Esme would ask me to stay and I couldn't bear the thought of hurting her. I told my father everything and he gave me his car. I immediately left for Alaska. We have some friends there who have a similar lifestyle. At first I thought I wasn't coming back, well, at least not until you graduated. After a few days, though, breathing the clean air of the mountains, it all seemed so absurd, ridiculous even. That day at school I was already very thirsty. I had been fasting for weeks. After some hunting, the remembered allure of your blood wasn't so overwhelming anymore. And of course I was homesick. I missed my family."

"And so you came back…" I can't help smiling.

"I did," she looks sad, but hints of amusement tug at the corners of her eyes. "I was determined to treat you like any other high school student. I was confident; I couldn't let a puny human chase me away. The fact that I couldn't read your mind was a major inconvenience of course, but I embraced the challenge. I figured I could just talk to you and observe your reactions." She sighs and shakes her head.

"But then, the unthinkable happened. I got caught up in your answers, your intuitions, your way of looking at the world, the way you surprised me at every turn. Little by little, everything around us drained of a little color, a litle substance, until it was just a faded photograph of no real interest. I was completely lost in the nuances of your expressions, your gestures, your perceptions… I had never really felt that way. You don't know how long I'd been sure I would never, ever feel anything like it. Years and years of contented solitude, aside from my family's company, and you blew my world to bits in the course of one class…. Or maybe not, maybe I'm deluding myself. Maybe I was already falling for you and I just didn't know it yet. While I was away, still angry with you and with myself, I kept thinking of your gentle green eyes and your lovely blushes…."

She takes a deep breath, sighs again, looks up at me. Strong emotions swirl in her bottomless, smoldering eyes.

"And then, of course, there was the accident. As a rule we try not to interfere in the affairs of humans. It would attract too much unwanted attention. And yet, when I saw that van skidding toward you all I could think was: 'not him'. After the fact, I wracked my brains in search of justifications, and even came up with a good one; if your blood had been spilled in that parking lot I would have certainly given away our true nature. But I never used it, not even with my family. It wasn't the real reason I saved you. You already know Rosalie was very upset. We had an argument, maybe the worst I ever had with any of them. Fortunately, Carlisle, Esme and Alice backed me up."

She shakes her head and I watch mesmerized as red flames writhe in her hair.

"I told them I would leave, but they demanded I stay. With my mind reading I could make sure that you kept our secret. None of us were optimistic about it, but our only contingency plan was another sudden departure. If you had blabbed, we would have left for a long time…" A wry smile punctuates a pause in her speech.

"I'm not convinced I could have left you alone, or forgotten you, but fortunately I never had to find out. Surprisingly, you never told anyone what had really transpired and I was extremely glad to report the good news to my family. They don't know you as much as I do now, but your silence really impressed them. You really never do what people expect; you live by your own code…."

"Yes, I've always been a bit of a freak, or untrendy if you prefer. It's strange, even the first time I saw you Cullens, so together and so united yet shunned by the other students, I almost thought my place was with you, not with the people I was sitting next to."

She looks astonished for a second, and then laughs a little, shaking her head again.

"At any rate, I decided I had to do my best to stay away from you. You already knew too much and I had already caused my family too much trouble. But it wasn't easy. Even while keeping up the pretense that I wanted nothing to do with you, I was reading all the minds around us just so I could look at you, try to figure out what drove you, what made you who you are, and maybe why you were safeguarding our secret. Despite appearances, I was only becoming more obsessed by the hour and my permanent sulk was driving my family crazy. They thought I was losing my mind. I cannot blame them."

"You looked at me, and even spoke to me a little, when I played Clair de Lune at school…."

"Yes. I couldn't help it. I have listened to a lot of music through the years, but that is my favorite piece. It always touched me, resonated with me. I was just so surprised when, out of so many possibilities, you ended up playing the one composition I wouldn't be able to turn a deaf ear to. It was really astounding. It was like we already shared a deeper connection than I imagined. You made ignoring you a lot harder for me, as if it wasn't excruciating enough already."

She pauses, a different expression taking shape, her face morphing into a tender smile. Her forehead creases a little with her effort to articulate her thoughts.

"But, having said all this, if I had killed you that first day, or if I hadn't saved you, my suffering would still be nothing compared to the nightmarish world of eternal torment I would be banished to if I were to hurt you today, in this very spot. Betraying your trust now would be unforgivable."

"What do you mean?"

Her eyes become more anxious even as they still smolder like a dying sun. She slowly lifts a hand and gently brushes my hair off my forehead.

"Brandon… I have come too close to you, got to know you too well, allowed feelings I'd never even conceived before to take hold. If I were to harm you I could never live with myself afterward. Never. You are the most important thing to me now. You are the most important thing ever. The prospect of life without you is nothing but an unbearable, joyless void."

Wait, I'm feeling a little dizzy; is this what I think it is? Weren't we just talking about the cheerful prospect of my imminent demise? It seems like we are confessing something entirely different now. Confused, I look down at her hands. I feel her eyes on me. She's waiting for me to say something but I'm temporarily at a loss, still scared of the L word.

"You know how I feel. I'm here. I trust you…. But that is really beside the point. I'd rather die than stay away from you. My life is yours. How crazy is that?" I manage to say, finally meeting her glorious smile.

"When it comes to relationships you really don't have the best judgment, no…" She says mock-seriously, and then we both laugh.

When we calm down, she looks at me with renewed intensity.

"And then the lion fell in love with the lamb…" she murmurs, her stare dreamy, contemplative, as if recalling something. A thrill jolts me. She used the L word, sort of. I keep looking into her eyes. It makes me feel all jittery and breathless.

"What a stupid lamb," I say, shaking my head, playing along.

"What a sick, masochistic lion." She replies with a pained expression, and then our bodies shake with laughter once again. The wind rustles the grass and laughs with us. I never felt so free, so light, but there is something else I have to tell her and I blurt out the words without thinking it through.

"When you smile, I feel like a stifling ceiling of clouds unravels and the moon shines through, bathing the scenery in pale luminescence. And then I can see that the long gloomy night of an empty life is no more, and the world around me is filled with beauty. You are my moonlight." I say, blushing and loudly cursing myself for being a total dork.

Her eyes are melting, crying without tears.

"No, don't say that. It's really very romantic. And in a way my long life was a night filled with distant stars, beautiful but cold, marooned in their remote corners of the universe, and the sunlight was mostly denied to me. But every time you come to me you bring some of it with you, like the moon reflects sunbeams and softens the darkness. Even in the dead of night, in your presence everything is brighter than it ever was. You're my moonlight too…."

We stare into each other's eyes for another immeasurable moment. I see far off constellations in her iris and dream of eternity.