The Ties of Trauma

by ForeverUnknownOooooh

In the summer of 1955, eighteen year old Esme Masen began an affair with her teacher. In the summer of 1955, Doctor Carlisle Cullen began an affair with his student. Told through a series of disjointed snapshot events, piece together the forbidden life cycle of their love affair and discover how it is often the Ties of Trauma that bind us. AU/AH

1. The Prom- July 1955

Hello,

Welcome to the Ties of Trauma.

Over the course of it's lifespan it will likely undergo name changes such as The Knitting of Trauma (it's first name), The Pieces of Trauma and *Insert name Here*

This is an idea conceived many -a-year ago in how one tale of forbidden love will fight it's way through the wreathes to not be not suffer a forbidden fate.

It will likely be told as a serious of 'events'- i.e. One-shots and they may be sporadic and time-jumpy.

But- part of the fun is the piecing together.

Eventually, I will try to migrate this story to AO3 (Mostly to save my ego as some of the previous stories written on this account I am 100000% tied to no matter how poorly they might have once been written.

Forgive me.

And more importantly, please enjoy this...

---

Late July 1955

The chaperoning sense of this evening does not do well to assail Doctor Cullen's boredom. Despite the permission to go looking for trouble, his position demands that he finds it and eradicate it as soon as it is discovered.

Trouble in this sense of the words left little to the imagination.

It was either destruction of property, again, a preference that might at least keep his sombre mood from wandering. Or at its worst, it would be some mischievous teenagers.

He considers letting Eleazar take the bulk of the responsibility, or at least asking. Despite his longstanding patience with youths, he feels that today he isn't in the most forgivable moods. And after all, Eleazar is the long standing staff member. If it wasn't for his dearest friend, he would be far on the otherside of the country. Practising. In theory.

Instead he is in an affluent school in an old farm town village on a summer's evening. His suit is uncomfortably ill-fitting, his friend is busied with thoughts to his fiancé and Carlisle… Carlisle is wallowing.

He should not be wallowing.

He should be grateful the dates are coming nearer. For the eventual leave and start of the new academic year.

Likewise, he should be grateful that he will come to start that new year no longer tied to a woman he once held neutral feelings for. And yet he wishes their courtship had not ended so explosively…

The flip-flop of his decisions batter him over again. Because really, did he even throw thought to her threats after the two most fulfilling weeks of his years on Earth? Did he mind about the cruelty of her words when he had discovered a feeling so precise, so without description that its essence still left him in withers.

No. He couldn't find it within himself to didn't regret hosting Esme Masen for those two weeks.

Or the gradual closeness that grew between them.

He did regret that his ex-girlfriend came to remind him about the dangers of his indiscretion- and so dramatically, too. That desire he had buried so dark within his chest, he wouldn't dare acknowledge it, even if his guest would.

Perhaps he will leave early.

He doesn't wish to be here. Not for the music nor the students.

He wishes to be at home.

And he wishes not to face…

His friend tilts his chin to capture another entry of students. Students dressed in fashions gifted amongst richer parents. Dazzled in jewels and painted in colours, they mark their entry into the hall with their chaperone, rush to meet their fellow classmates in choruses of delight.

This aspect of prom, he has little patience for.

The excess and triumph of money and family names and other frivolous matters.

Eleazar is still looking behind him. His dark features making such an appeal to the fashion that several of his pupils have commented on his attire. The Spaniard had grinned, managed to enjoy the compliments without too salacious a grin.

The blonde had not managed this.

One student had called him 'handsome,' and he took the praise to be a curse upon his soul. Handsome- how inappropriate of them to say. How wrong of him to dress as such let alone be dare regarded in such high favours.

High favour that Irina had attempted to threaten him for, he seemed to remember.

'Doctor Cullen?'

Oh to hell with this. His countenance. His patience. When every move was haunted by the Masen's footsteps. Every single second in this blasted hall considering where she had been. How she had been- how sincerely he did not regret an ounce of his immoral actions.

Eleazar hasn't so much as dragged his focus away from over his shoulder and so Carlisle turns, preparing to acknowledge the chaperone's cheery greetings.

But he does not see Emmett.

He hears him. In the peripheral vision of his blue eyes, he even accommodates the College student's posh suit, the sharpness of his stance, the grin threatening anyone from getting close. His hand is being shook, fairly viscerally but as the boy talks, Carlisle feels his focus slide even further from those chaperone duties.

Because Emmett's sister is standing but a foot away, her hand curled on the crook of his arm. The few similarities between them seem bolder under the dark light of the hall. The similar palettes of hair and complexion reflect the glow of the thousand candles. Their smiles are emanating warmth regardless of how wide- Emmett- or how small- Esme- they have been employed.

But he does not see them. He does not see Emmett at all.

He sees only Esme.

Her long rich hair has been styled and combed to perfect waves over her right shoulder, adjusted in the same design of an actress. In fact, the makeup she wears is similarly pieced together. A dewy pink blush over her cheeks, pinker lips harbouring that open mouthed-smile…

She is easily the most beautiful woman here. But she has not relied on the excess of fabric to achieve it.

Her skirt for example, a delicate pink chiffon with pleats folded from a trained hand encircles her petite waist before slipping to her mid calves. She is wearing a simple silk black blouse with it, one that almost showcases her shoulders though not quite, the sleeves cutting to her forearms.

He dares himself not to look at her shoes.

After all, she is noticeably taller. She stands to her brother's chin with confidence and to him, to Carlisle… well should he dare, he could quite easily kiss her nose.

He has the urgency to take her hand and kiss that instead. Just the back of her smooth wrist where her bracelet is hanging with a charm. Perhaps it is meant to be an image of rosary beads because he is affronted at the temptation and wishes the prayers to come.

'My, my,' Mr Garcia mumbles, pressing upon the young women with flattery. 'Miss Masen, don't you look awfully grown up?'

She giggles, puts her tongue to her teeth as she whispers 'gracias'.

Carlisle ought to say something now but he is unsure what is best to say when he craves a multitude of words. He firstly wishes to correct Eleazar's assumptions. Because that is half of Esme's problem. While she expressed an endearing immortal youthfulness, either in the dimples of rouged cheeks or the humoured glint in her eye and tone… she does look like a woman.

She is technically one after all. No longer a girl, should he even had seen her as such, he considers the beauty in front of her with words a-bundled.

He wishes to simply tell her that she is the sun and the stars and the light of the moon. She is the reflection of water on a hot summer's day and she is effortlessly the breeze of an overdue spring.

'You look…'

'Scrubbed up well?' Her brother interrupts, nudging her arm.

He wonders if she caught the fall of the word beautiful slipping from his lip but for safety he doesn't repeat it.

'What do you think of the hall?' she asks, perhaps a little nervously. The oil of her perfume comes forth now, spilling from the hollow in her throat like an overfilled fountain, swimming to his lips and seducing him closer.

'Marvellous,' Mr Garcia comments, nodding in satisfaction the walls around him.

'Another magnificent job, of course,' He commends her, deliberately and he wonders if Emmett will pick up on the suggestion and perhaps rightly, tell their father.

From what he was aware she was forbidden to step back on school property again after the events of her rogue, violent ex-courtship. Carlisle wonders which tactics she has used to escape this misdemeanour.

Unless she was doing as she did when with him, of course.

Lying.

Lying about where she was so that she could remain hidden to her heart's content.

That was before his siblings had come to stay. Before Irina and her flair for the dramatics.

'Thank you,' she says, sweetly and he hates how she manages to use the words to secure his attention while playing at the innocent. She parts her lips again, enslaving his attention as she prepares another conversational point.

Hurriedly, the blonde turns to the chaperone. He should hardly wish to acknowledge the student.

'Tell me Emmett, how are your studies? Is college treating you well?'

The rush of his words do not go unnoticed and smiling, she comes around the side to talk with Mr Garcia. Eleazar can compliment her as much as he likes of course. He is betrothed and happily so and any comment he bestows to this young girl is not said with dishonour. It is not meant with a line of intrigue.

It is just a fact.

Emmett is making general conversation to his lessons and Carlisle feels it appropriate to nod his head and muse at set times, even if his attention is split to the exposed feet of Esme Masen, her eyes dancing chaotically, her eyelashes thick, her hands fiddling. He can't tire of Emmett's conversation soon enough. The boy is already directing his sister to a line of mutual friends and while the teacher feels the desperation to feign a ridiculous excuse in hopes of keeping her here, he is willing to submit her to her own entertainments.

Submit her…

He shakes his head at himself, embittered by his own bitterness. Irrationally angry for reasons he cannot bear to forgive.

Being away from her was inducing misery direct into the vein, as Eleazar feels at liberty to infer.

'Como estas, Amigo?'

When he pulls his head up, he feigns surprise at the comment. In fact, his acting skills leave a lot to be desired and he comes across unnecessarily defensive.

'Hm?'

The teachers make a few necessary greeting expressions as several more students gather in, address the band on the stage, comment on the low mood of the music.

'Is Irina on your mind still?'

'No.' Again, the words are too hasty and Carlisle feels even guiltier that he is now expressing how little thought he has given to a dear friend of Eleazar's fiancé. 'No, what I mean is-'

'She just needs to cool off,' he reassures. 'She's had her blow up, she'll be fine now.'

He withholds the need to roll his eyes.

Particularly when such truths hadn't been made explicitly clear to his friend. If Eleazar knew, he did not acknowledge and while the selfish part of Carlisle was grateful, he hated that someone who claimed to care for him felt so willing to let his soul be damned.

'Bringing Rose and Jasper into it was… regretful,' he appraises her. Carlisle does not lift his eyes as such. Because the matter of his siblings was not the crux of his anger. Nor the break-up itself. 'But I suppose it was good to see them?'

'Yes,' the blonde murmurs. And then he shakes his head, forces himself into the world. 'Long overdue.'

'Not all bad then?'

Carlisle can feel his attention slipping back to the sway of the chiffon skirt across the hall. The giggle of delight as she plays host in such circumstance.

'No…'

Headmaster Forser makes their acquaintance then. The suit he is wearing though expensive stands in line to his status within the school. He is dolled up in tweed, a graduation gown hanging off his arms as he shakes both hands brusquely.

'Gentleman!' he greets and while he smiles at them, his gaze scrutinises the many present. 'How are we this evening?'

'Well,' they both reply.

'How is your home coming along, Cullen. Much settled, yet?'

The Doctor feels his cheeks warm.

'Yes, t-thank you Sir. It's wonderful.'

Perhaps there were some moral dilemmas in his proponent to move outside the boarding school walls. Most importantly since Edward Masen had returned home that previous term, he felt little need to host at the school anymore.

His dormitory had been a small one.

Those few boys who had lived under his watch he had hardly made much leeway with. And the one student he did get on well with, he found he struggled to evenly discipline.

For Christ sake, even Eleazar had ignored basic ruling for the sake of the younger boy's sister.

And Carlisle was much worse.

On several occasions he would prepare himself to threaten the girls should he catch them in Edward's room again. Esme Masen and Mary Brandon that was- detentions, phone calls home, letters to parents. But given the intentions of her worries, the very reason she would sneak into his room at night and warm him on memories of home, he could never bring himself to do it.

At worse he had prepared to reprimand them… and had ended up falling into conversation with the three of them.

Then he would walk the girls back to their rightful rooms without a hint of displeasure to his rambling.

He did better in the classroom. That awful Evenson boy, for example. That lowlife scumbag who dared to saunter down the town sidewalks, to slander the family in church, proudly disseminating his so called… conquests…

His teeth gnash together.

He had done quite well to punish him at the time. Detentions. Verbal warnings. Failed grades. Not that it ever achieved much…

He'd never suffer the consequences of his defamation now. Only the accused would suffer.

The Headmaster has apparently been waiting for a response for some time now.

'Sorry, what was that?'

'I said you need a woman, Doctor Cullen.'

Startling comment and ever so brazen for the man.

'For the house,' he goes on to explain. 'Such frivolities are better suited to women. You need yourself a wife.'

He talks as if selling cattle, another focus Doctor Cullen feels less than familiar with.

'Oh, quite…'

No, he corrects himself. No not quite. He didn't want a wife; he didn't need a wife. Women were far from what he needed considering several of his actions this month and on the basis that the summer break was looming, he felt that actually, his house was coming along perfectly.

He is struck by an image of Esme emptying a box of his books. Her hands dusting the fabric covers a she orders them against windows. Then painting those windows…

And he blushes again.

No. He didn't want a woman. Nor a Wife.

He wanted….

'How about you, Eleazar? I hear the wedding bells are tolling for you?'

The Spaniard beams, his teeth pearly in the extent of his smile.

'Not for some time but at the very least, she is agreed.'

The Headteacher claps a dry hand on his back in congratulations and chuckles.

'You'll want to get that organised before next summer. I daresay these modern dances are used for the very purposes of social mixing…'

Carlisle tries hard to keep his face straight.

'That couple,' the older gentleman points to a foursome of students standing nervously between a bloom of flowers. Carlisle reckons he may recognise the boy from his classes but the girl is not all too familiar and their chaperones look none too pleased to be attending.

'Who are they?' He asks.

'I believe she is Natalie Layard. Her parents own the Grocer's down second avenue.'

Which explains the rather frightful mess of fabrics adorning what he believes is meant to be the girl's figure.

'Ah,' the man agrees, nodding. 'Yes, I know of it. And the boy?'

'Thomas Baker,' Dr Cullen murmurs.

The teacher muses to himself with a finger tapping against his chin.

'Yes… quite the pairing I should imagine… and yet with all these fashions… It's a wonder parents are letting their daughters out in such materials. You see, that girl, who is she?'

'Victoria Eckeridge,' somebody murmurs.

A distant friend of Esme's. Or friendly enough that he can remember such conversation starters as, 'That Doctor Cullen is in a frightful mood today,' Or 'Can I borrow a pencil? I only have a fountain pen and if I sketch in that, Mrs Luccille will have me dismembered.'

'My word, the girl leaves little to the imagination. Her father-'

'Passed earlier last year,' Carlisle intercepts and though he tries to be sympathetic, given his mood this evening, he can't ignore that it comes out a little threateningly. Almost as if daring the man to fire him.

He sighs, guiltily, and amends his expression in apology. Even if his superior demanded his return on field… he truly couldn't expect to be angry at him long term. It was rather foolish for Carlisle to hope not to return following that incident with... Esme….

Evenson.

He means Evenson.

The incident with Evenson.

The matters with Esme were simply an unfortunate by-product of the incident. By-product of the fear even.

If it wasn't for Evenson, she would never have ended up in his home… After what that brute did to her.

He unconsciously stretches the fist of his hand.

'Well… that is unfortunate…' Master Forser murmurs. 'And yet still, the girl will hardly find herself an agreeable husband if she dares vulgarise herself to such a standard.'

He points towards the gaggle of female teachers at the other end of the hall.

'Have one of the Matrons address it with her. We don't need matters of-' His expression drops, his eyes widening in blatant shock as he flicks two fingers to the looming College boy at the end. 'Tell me- have all these chaperones been vetted? All authorised by parents and teachers alike?!'

His voice is aghast as if he is daring to face his darkest nightmare.

'Of course, Sir,' Eleazar tells him.

'T-that boy.' He stammers. 'Who is that boy-?!'

Carlisle feels even guiltier for wishing Trouble to rear so early on as he now fears he is about to meet it in a rather explosive dance.

'Emmett Masen, Sir?'

'Masen?!' The teacher growls. Carlisle stands in an opposing direction already preparing to mediate when the image of the pointing authority captures the enthusiastic chaperone.

'Sir?!'

He yells across the hall, and in a joyous wave his elbow bends above his head, his wrist frantically rotating. He is much like a canine as he bounds back over but this time his sister stays close with the women, discussing matters with her fellow dance teacher as if she herself is one.

'Emmett Masen- who dare let you back on the property?!'

The figure secures a hand around the Headteacher's point and shakes it as though greeting a dear friend. The short man's face blows up in colour, words clambering in his throat half-choking him to death.

'You're looking mighty fine, Ol' Chap. Age becoming and all that. How the devil are you-?!'

'Don't you start with that cheek, Boy- What are you doing here? Who permitted you-?!'

While Carlisle feels himself the likely cause, he is surprised by his friend's eager pleadings of forgiveness as he moves to the Sportsman's defence.

'Sir, you'll have to forgive me. I granted Emmett's attendance on the basis-'

'I'm here with my sister,' Emmett says proudly and Carlisle is shocked by the challenging fold of his arms over an expansive chest. 'Her chaperone, of course.'

'I forbade you from stepping one foot on the grounds after what you did -'

'That,' Emmett disputes haughtily, 'was never proven and I resent the implication that little old me was the blatant offender.'

The small man attempts to secure a tight hand on the Boy's bicep, hauls him forward to noticeably throw him towards the exit. Or at least attempts to. In order to grant him success, Emmett himself chooses to follow in his direction.

The teachers jump in.

'Sir-'

'Headmaster- I-'

'Sir-'

'Masen, I warned you one step on school property and I'd have your College expel you permanently. If you are foolish enough to doubt me-'

'On the contrary, Sir, some might consider it optimism?'

Eleazar fights the smile.

'Headmaster, Emmett is merely here on behalf of Esme. Without whom this very event would be without cause-'

'Doctor Cullen, I trust you are not foolish enough to interrupt. This Boy near brutalised the very name of this school with his antics. Those harmless pranks-'

'Again, Sir,' Emmett counters, following the man's determinable shake of his limb, 'no student was harmed as a result of my actions. Whereas the several matters of your slipper, I might argue-'

'Emmett,' Carlisle ushers. It's too late. The professor's anger blows and flecks of spit rattle out in line to his yells, now of course startling the remainders present.

'Discipline, Boy! Your father clearly never bothered to show the meaning of-'

'Once more Sir, even Mr Garcia, here-'

'It's true, Headmaster,' Eleazar asserts, emphatically. 'I whooped the boy many-a-time.'

'You can't fight spirit, Sir-' The Boy grins. 'Some say tenacity is good in a man-'

'Ignorance! Cold blooded ignorance-'

'Stupidity,' Eleazar corrects silently but he turns again to his superior and attempts to plead with the ruffling and the roughhousing of the grinning fiend being thrown out the hall and off the grounds.

Hardly thrown.

The Headteacher would have better luck uprooting half the block of classrooms than the amused Kid here. He is grinning even wider, entertained at his own performance as countless faces come securing upon him. And then he flinches and mutters fine 'oops.'

'Emmett?!' Esme demands, a dainty 'V' appearing in the meeting of her brows.

'Aw, Chill Es. Ol' Dracula here got his knickers in a twist because I outsmarted his rules-'

Though many of the students present, and Eleazar, suffer with the need to smile at this point, Doctor Cullen is focused on the rather panicked expression of Miss Masen, desperately pleading in her wide hopeful eyes.

'You were forbidden to return-'

'I was forbidden to cross the entrance- we came round the East End. I believe it was Mrs Forser who granted us entry?'

For a rare moment, Carlisle and Esme share the same expression. Both eyes widen in disbelief, their lips straying straight to a hard line as the curly-haired nuisance lets himself be dragged. Eleazar is frowning hard, too hard Carlisle notices and if he's not careful his laughter is going to break soon.

'Master Masen, you say one more word-'

'Sir,' Esme whimpers in meekly. 'Please, my brother is… lacking in brain cells, I swear to you-'

'Out as well, Miss Masen. I likely can't trust the pair of you-'

'Sir!' She protests in shock. Carlisle puts a desperate foot between them, gesturing nervously to the innocent.

'Headmaster- please. I implore you to see reason. Miss Masen here has done nothing-'

'Consider your youngest one banned from events as this, too. Until your parents can bestow the lot of you with manners-'

She flinches as if he struck her and Carlisle realises the vulgarity of his superior's criticisms, as recklessly as they have been hurtled, have done more than silence the girl in a whip. He bites his jaw down, grasps her arm to prevent her from following in the direction the boy is being dragged.

'Stay here, I'll sort this-' he promises.

Thankfully his friend raises a hand to stop him, offering himself in his place. A weak eye falls to Esme. He needs to hurry her away from focus of the students. Now.

'Headmaster, please, let the boy stay. He is here only as a chaperone-'

Her brother is still being dragged out as she stares, fruitlessly, but Eleazar's expression forbids Carlisle from following. His points his eyes to Miss Masen, her expression flustered, verging on emotional as numerous pairs of eyes startle on her as the figure in the lone hall.

One mortified tear slips from the line of her eyelid, falling heavily from her lashes and in concern for her ego, Carlisle takes one tight grasp of her wrist and half pulls, half lulls her towards an escape.

She bows hers head in shame. She lets herself be led from the eyes, oh so many eyes on her, on Emmett, on her family, so many people hearing the criticisms as if Charles hadn't already ensnared their name. She knows where he is leading her but does not let the emotion expound her features till the classroom is unlocked and he is pushing a chair beneath her shaking knees.

God the embarrassment, the humiliation. Even Doctor Cullen is silent as she lets a few miserable tears escape.

'Emmett,' she curses, lamenting his name with fury. 'That absolute maniac, I might have known.'

He pulls a white handkerchief from his pocket, holds it expertly under her chin in a way that means she has to pull her eyes up to look at them.

She wrestles with her clammy hands in her lap, heavy tears thankfully not smearing the colours as she settles herself into the furniture, dragging a deep breath into her lungs till her figure is almost bursting through the fabric.

No- not the time.

'That bedlamite,' she groans wetly, gratefully taking the favour now and hastily wiping a few fallen tears and sniffles.

He feels his lip curl into a small smile as he silently leans against his desk, crossing his ankles, folding his arms and waiting for the embarrassment to subside.

Bedlamite. He hadn't heard the term in so many years.

He hadn't even heard her curse before.

It was remarkably troubling.

Oh so impertinent, especially for a lady and a young lady at that. But tasteful in the worst of ways. She must be thinking on the same thing because she looks up, pressing a smile away with a guilty fold of her lips.

'Oh Lord,' she murmurs guiltily. 'I'm so sorry- I didn't mean to swear.'

'Don't fret,' he reassures, waiting for the eventual question of her own dignity. She wrestles her hands together tighter, her painted pout shaking a little. He wishes to soothe and hold her as he once did. But he mustn't. Especially not on school grounds. Especially not here.

'Oh Carlisle,' she whimpers and throwing her head forth she covers her face with the waves of her autumn curls and half hiccups her way to calm. He feels the strike of gold flutter in his stomach

That's how he can relax knowing they are alone.

She called him Carlisle.

She had taken, perhaps wrongfully, to void calling him anything. She would simply have to start speaking and he would know he be the addressee.

But Carlisle… it was now the sixth time he had heard her use the sound and it was so much more enriching than the minimal cursing.

'What he said of my parents.'

Guilty, he restores his focus to her pain.

'Eleazar will rectify it,' he promises calmly and he watches as she scrunches his handkerchief in her hand, almost too frightened to wipe her expression with it. He likes seeing it on her palm, the crush of his materials under her touch.

'He's such a fool- I should've known he was up to something. Should've known he wouldn't just be let back on the property-.'

'Esme, Honey,'

She gasps, inwardly, looking up to him as if seeing him for the first time this evening. The little fall of her lip coming open, her dark eyelashes still flickering. He touches her pointed chin with the ridge of his finger. Not for long. For a second. Pulls her expression up and looks deep within her hazel eyes.

'I promise you, if Eleazar says he will sort it…'

'It's not Eleazar I am concerned for,' she murmurs, her voice shaking a little. He smiles, warmly. 'He can be such an oaf sometimes- no consideration to Edward. To Mom or Dad-'

'No one thinks as Forser insinuated,' he feels himself rush in. 'Your parents are two of the most highly respected individuals in this community-'

Her hands wring together again, the knuckles almost red now where she looks as to tear off her digits. He grasps the heel of one hand, intending to stop the fidgeting and instead only injuring himself with delight. The smoothness of her skin, the perfume, the beautiful mixtures of peach pinks leading into an almost moist red under the veil of his cloth.

She stares at their hands for quite some time, letting her heel be held till her voice has almost returned to normal.

'I suspect you have heard about the Evensons…'

'No,' he lies. He doesn't mean it to be a lie, he just doesn't want to acknowledge that such dire criticism had fallen upon his ears. He didn't listen to them anyway. Foolish imbeciles.

'You must have,' she refutes delicately. 'He's telling-' she hesitates, and then rushes forth in panic. 'He's saying that-'

'I've heard,' he blurts, wincing. She bows her head lower in misery. He swallows.

'It's not true-'

For a moment he is offended she feels the need to tell him.

'I know it's not.' He regrets that he sounds a bit short-tempered in his reply but surely Esme did not expect him to have forgotten that fortnight? Him cradling the bruises on her beaten face, the darkness of a swelling eye. The rip of her summer dress…

He feels his own anger swell again, his eyes falling to the swinging ankles on the seat, her shoes covering any of the remaining marks left. Before he can stop himself, he tilts his face up and scrutinises both her eyes. She isn't looking at him which makes it almost easier in one sense but harder to assess the healing… and then a finger brushes the silk of a caramel wave away, and there her eyes are. Swimming in his blue monstrosities, falling deep into a slumber of calm.

The sounds of her sobs almost vanish completely as he focuses a scrutinising expression first from one angle and then the other.

'You're still healing nicely.'

'Thanks to you,' she whispers.

He swallows again but cannot permit himself to smile. The hand holding hers, the one that he has denied the need to shake no matter how much his nerves are screaming to move… that hand he holds still, feeling the rise and fall of her pulsing blood, the wavering temperatures, the flicker of her fingers.

He mustn't envelope them.

'They're saying it's my father.'

'No,' he refutes. He wouldn't let her do this. He wouldn't let her fall to suspicions.

'I hear them whispering at the door, in town… They think I… gave myself to Evenson and as recompense, my father punished me.'

Carlisle winces again, forcing his lips together in agony, his chest flaring again.

'He won't get away with it-'

'Of course he will,' she whispers. 'Look at me. Even while in there-'

'When you were in there, Esme-' he inhales, pulls away from her lest she get too close again and forces a small smile. 'Mademoiselle Masen, all eyes were on you… and not because of some banal drama no one in their right mind believes… but because all those suitors… want you.'

He was aiming to flatter her, to say something that would reassure her no matter how damnable he felt the understanding. The multitude of men- no, not men, boys. Boys wanting to be tied to her. She wouldn't see herself for the status she held.

She considered herself Esme Masen; the plain girl.

She was anything but. According to several teachers, her home economics put those to shame. She had paintings shared amongst town. She was known for being selfless, good humoured, witty, sweet natured, effortlessly easy on the eye, smart and to top it off she was well-mannered.

She spoke as if her worth amounted to her family and little else which admittedly was modest.

But every suitor, every boy and their father looked at the woman with favour of all she would become.

'No,' she murmurs, shaking her head.

'Believe me,' he implores. 'Oh Esme, trust that I do not lie to you. Even the Headmaster himself cannot deny the ascension you bring the school… You'll just have to forgive his ego not being as foolhardy as your brother's...'

Her eyebrows meet again but this time, a smile grows adjacent and she watches him cautiously promise all that she could wish to hear.

'Oh he is such a fool, though, isn't he?' she bemoans and before he can halt it, a warm chuckle hums from his chest. 'You'd think Emmett would learn some manners, too- he's just got no control over that mouth of his.'

'I think he rather enjoyed the play, don't you?'

She smiles and nods.

'I wish I'd been smart enough to rein him in before he opened that trap of his-'

'Don't wish for that,' he squeezes her hand desperately, feels the natural wave of his body lull in comfort to her needs, his handkerchief now lying forgotten on the floor. She gulps a little, fixes her hair one handed and nods.

They sit in silence for a few minutes, the extension of their breaths long surpassing comfortable and now interweaving like a shared pattern, a duet of three breaths for his two. A dance is between them, the deep gift of one's oxygen. She lifts her chin, wide eyes scanning the room, the walls, the desk, reading the dust on the chalkboard and the clutter of paper in drawers…

'What are you thinking?' He has to ask, his voice grating almost.

She smiles, small at first before pulling it short and instead letting her eyes encompass him.

'Just that I'd never expected to see this room so soon… after…'

Carlisle flinches.

First because of the strike of fear cursed through his body like a struck match. The explosion of a gunshot. The absent, exhausted fear in their eyes as he threw her to the cupboard… and then that itself…

The cupboard.

His focus finds the door. He looks upon it as though assessing a rival, weighing up the threat of the wood and acknowledging it.

'Nor me,' he admits, following the route of her eyes before again, letting himself visualise the way in which he had tainted her mouth with his for the first time. The bite of the forbidden fruit on unsuspecting lips, the bliss and the yearning and the fear…

And, as ever, the repercussions.

The second and the third kiss within that same moment…

Their real second kiss just last week… When she had dropped her hand beneath the buttons of his shirt. When she had intimately touched his chest with restless fingers, peeling back the fabric of his wear. Her lips, what should be her naïve lips, moving into his, initiating his desire…

Her tongue….

He mustn't do that.

He had to stop himself from doing that. The slipping into memories. The slip into the want of her. The need, the desperation… It was like slipping into sleep and once unconscious, gripping the realms of reality…

It was like tasting heaven, wearing its sweetness like syrup on his taste buds, sharing it amongst them-.

He was a sinner.

After twenty-five years of a moderately acceptable life, Carlisle had fallen into unrestrained sin. Perhaps that was the worst bit, the delusion. It never felt like sin. It felt like the opposite. Like he was Carlisle and she was Esme. Man and Woman. Man and…wife?

No.

Now that was sinning.

Sacrilegious even.

Damnable.

There were lines. There were lines drawn months ago. This was a boundary-zone. No man's land. The warfare of desires.

'It's hard to believe it was really only a few weeks ago…'

He nods but forces his eyes go to that eye-socket of hers rather than the source of the words. The make-up has done well but it can't cover the darkness completely and it certainly can't erase his memory. Not from this time nor the time before it.

'Or not?' she realises.

'To some extent,' he agrees and he sighs, looking guiltily around the room once more.

'Do you-?'

'No,' he says fiercely.

He knows just from the cautious draw of breath what she will ask. She has asked it several times these few weeks and his answer has never wavered. Perhaps she is testing his resilience, expecting him to change his mind. He wouldn't do so, no matter how much she asks.

'No, I don't regret it.'

'Never?'

'Do you?' he asks, his voice in whispers. She looks guiltily to her hands, frowns.

'You know you mustn't ask me that.'

The slight joy of the double standard appeals to him and he feels his lip curl in curiosity. She does not smile, she keeps her eyes on her hands, her skirt fluttering with the fidget of swinging ankles. She does not wish to break the barrier so he must meet it for her.

'No?'

Still, she keeps her lips tied. He lowers his voice, the smile slipping as he considers the reason for her solitude.

'Because… you do?' he whispers, afraid for the echo in the room.

'Doctor Cullen, you acknowledged yourself that I… have a…' she falls short, not willing to repeat his own words back to him. He understands the necessity of his title to distance them now, but he doesn't like its employment either. For once the warmth that is Esme Masen seems concealed by a shell of unfamiliarity. She sighs shakily. 'You have already acknowledged my feelings on the matter…'

Feelings.

He feels his palms bristle.

Feelings….

They had never referred to it as so tangible before. It almost made it all the more delectable… All the more condemnable, too.

'I've alarmed you,' she realises, pulling her posture backward.

'N-no,' he refutes pitifully. 'No, I…'

Well… perhaps she was being too general, too. He had asked if she had a crush on him. Perhaps in slighter terminology; if she was sweet on him…. She had blushed but moved on without conviction… Was she really so cruel as to deem that an acknowledgment of feelings…

Feelings were so much more…

Inescapable.

'I've embarrassed you,' she whispers.

'No, you haven't,' he insists weakly. 'I'm more… embarrassed by myself,' he murmurs.

She comes to open her mouth again but his hand, that wrongful, sinful, impulsive hand, finds hers and latches over the knuckles.

'We can't-' he mouths painfully. 'We mustn't discuss this.'

Her expression flickers, the eyes no longer hiding behind the veil of browns and soft, dull oranges. That V has returned too, almost to provide an opposite to the shape of her lips which is curved in apprehension.

'Is it really this easy for you?' she asks miserably. 'Is it so easy for you to compartmentalise right and wrong regardless of what… what says otherwise-?'

She pulls from his hold, dragging her grip back like a punishment. He is lonely without it. Desperately frightened and wary.

'Do not ever belittle the actions taken for your honour,' he pleads her, his limbs up in shock when he agrees with the distance and parts from her. He finds the words bumbling out now, chaotically.

'Esme, nothing causes me greater pain than your misery. I loathe what must be done-'

His whispers fall even more quiet. He could be writing them for not even his lips sound in shape when he speaks.

'I agonise over your position,' he confesses to her. 'And will eternally agonise-'

'You're not saying anything, Carlisle.' His name, oh his name on her lips is like a beautiful swear word. It's like a hiss in the weakest of wounds. 'You are thinking on the after thoughts but what about now-'

'I can't,' he implores her, the words now breaking as he lays his palms cripplingly on the desk. 'I will not live in purgatory of this conversation, Esme. You know the reasoning, do not feign ignorance. You know why there are lines not to be crossed-'

She spins on the spot like a pirouette with the flicker of legs.

'And yet we cross them anyway-'

He draws his eyes closed, retreats a step or two till he is flat against the wall in surrender.

'Even without fault, we seem to fall into this.'

'I have just confessed there is no greater pain to me than your sadness,' his lower lip wavers, his eyes startling open now he sees the depth of her watery eyes, the hope, the raised foot, the open stance. 'Can you really not say the same?' he whimpers. 'Can you not even acknowledge the dire anguish I suffer in not being able to give you answers?'

'I see you,' she whispers, apologetically, her fingers fighting knots amongst herself, her eyes falling down his posture then up again.

'Then, I beg you,' he draws his eyes up. 'Spare me the torture. Spare me the agony of having to deny you again and again and again. I am weak to you, Esme-'

'No,' she swears. 'Far from it- You are the most resilient man-'

'You misunderstand,' he whispers. 'Esme Masen, I am weak for you. Please. For the good of our soul's… for God… please, please do not continue to have me suffer this damnation-'

'D-damnation?' she repeats.

His lip falls open; he tries to shake his head but the pain falls to her face more visually than the bruises. He didn't mean that. Or maybe he did, but he didn't mean to imply…

'You c-consider me a damnation?' she asks in disbelieving horror.

'I consider you temptation-' he tries weakly to amend. She takes a wider step away from him, her lip falling in shock, her brows furrowed as she makes the connection herself.

'Then you consider me a figure of hell incarnate,' she concludes viscerally. 'You consider me your fall and the temptress of all evil-'

'It's not like that,' he faults but he doesn't have the corrections prepared.

'I am your snake,' she ascertains in disgust. 'I am your Judas-'

'My Darling- I-'

Yes.

She is already backing away from him, backing away from the chair closest, backing amongst desk and clumsily falling against tables and desks that edge painfully into her sides.

'My- words,' he stumbles. 'They're brutish and plagued- Esme, please, don't leave like this-'

She is already stood with the door frame against the ridge of her spine, her pout bowed and her eyebrows furrowed… She does well to wound in the darkest of ways.

'It is God's will,' she declares and with a spin on her heels, she abandons him and heads back, he presumes, to the hall.

---

It's a detestable long time he must live with the hate of his words. That he must face the enemy of his thoughtlessness and given that he is alone, he can bear to put his head in his hands and groan. Perhaps if he were at home alone, he would sob. He is feeling a peculiar cocktail of emotions at the moment, all of them unfriendly and they swell the vice in his heart to immorality.

His fingers slip down his arms in an ache, winding themselves against his stomach as he hears his sounds back to him.

Hurting her… the image of dire disappointment on the example of her beautiful portrait… he winces again, thinking now to how he stood in front of her, bowed his posture around her at Irina's curses, thinking how he had felt himself fight the need to hunt that supposed boyfriend of hers…

Thinking now to not only moments where they had shared lips…. But where they had laid together in one bed. Staining their innocence with suggestion. Not with that in mind of course… but they had done so. She had rested herself along the newer sheets of his eiderdown covers, come to read a book and had slipped into a deliriously long sleep, her hair fanned out behind her like an angel's halo, her knees curled inwards and a hand enclosing the pillow to her cheek.

That particular night he supposed she had planned to keep watch on the newly painted windowsill…

He had come home from the hospital, frightened that she had finally left him as she ought to, run the course of the house in frantic feet before half collapsing at the image of her so peaceful, so comfortable in his own bedroom.

The venturing Goldilocks…

And when she had awoken some moment later, rather than fall into semantics and curses, they instead fell into conversation. They discussed their day as if the eight hours of separation had been thirteen days.

They talked and they talked and she giggled and when the exhaustion took them both, they slept.

In one bed.

As though they were… man and wife…

Carlisle kneads the unexpected cramp rattling in his stomach. He suspects it might be craving for food but he is not hungry and cannot bear to take the time to eat something let alone cook it… Perhaps he ought to be alone though.

He had already acknowledged his temper was off, his attitude sour… yes, he would do best to leave. He would check to ensure Emmett hadn't troubled himself disastrously and then he would tell Eleazar that he was leaving.

Always leaving.

His friend is not where Carlisle expects to find him following the examples of Emmett being hauled and the men competing under which notion to judge him best. Headmaster Forser cannot be so much as heard in the darkness of the July evening.

There is musical wildlife. Crickets, the odd whistle of an owl, the rustle of the trees, but in all, no determinable words. Only music coming from the hall behind.

With resignation, Carlisle wanders back into the hall, faces the affront of the band and their jazz instruments. He holds back he need to complain.

Doctor Cullen loathes jazz.

The unnecessary drag of the morose cries and the blues. The misery and damn right sulk of the instruments being harangued into notes and chords.

Eleazar is waiting for him on entry and while he is standing with a number of women- unable to prevent himself from flirting- on spotting his entrance, the tall figure turns and makes his way back to his friend.

'There,' he commends himself, stretching a hand in general display. 'All rectified.'

The blonde looks about the hall, searching initially for Emmett but failing to move on once he captures the sway of a familiar metallic pink skirt. He sighs, lowers his eyes to the floor and nods distractedly.

'Forser agreed to let him stay?' he presumes, surprised.

Judging from the extent of his demands, he couldn't know how Emmett escaped let alone to his own favour but considering his sudden exhaustion for the night, or even the month, he is not willing to ask.

'To some extent…' The Spaniard muses playfully. 'Unfortunately Emmett Masen has a nose for trouble. So some high demands are being made from him. It'll be interesting to see to what end he will undertake them...'

Carlisle focuses a little on the end of the hall. She is surrounded by a number of eagerly awaiting gentlemen. Gentle-boys. Suitors, really. She seems a little intimidated by the mass of them swarming her, particularly without Emmett's appearance but Carlisle hopes that the distraction will be good for her. And he suspects at the very least that a number of them are chaperones themselves, eager to make conversation with her.

And yet she clearly resembles a hunted doe, fleeing the clearing of hunters and stags alike, every direction she turns is another figure, wanting to capture her for their own greed. Mount her-

He gasps, puts his hand to his mouth in surprise.

'All okay, Friend?'

'Y-yes, quite,' he murmurs, embarrassed as the tang of blood swims about his taste buds. 'High demands?' he reminds himself.

Eleazar chuckles.

'I believe the Boy is – earning his keep- shall we say? Unless he's thrown the towel in already-'

'No,' Carlisle hushes politely. 'Tenacious as he said. He adores his sister too much.'

Eleazar presses his lips together, concealing the smile but Carlisle had already continued in ignorance.

'The three of them,' he corrects. 'Four with Miss Brandon. The four of them are as interminable as water and spirits…'

'Yes,' Eleazar laughs. 'I do believe it was me who introduced you to the family after all…'

The blonde colours slightly, bowing his head in apology for his… what? His assimilation? The way he had declared familiarity on the Masens? Even Eleazar couldn't ignore that Carlisle got on well with the family. And regardless of Esme… he didn't want to think regardless of her, but still, even in the midst of their undulating rhythm… he had taught Edward and favoured his company just as much.

In fact, out of all of them, Emmett was the one he knew the least. Esme the most, Edward the best. Alice just as favourably.

She is clearly cautious with her step amongst the crowd of interest.

Must his mind always drift to Esme?

Would he spend the next nine weeks in agony as he waited for her to leave for college? And what would he do once she left? Once the prospect of merely bumping into her by circumstance had fallen away and when he had come to accept his digressions in full display….

He swallows, watches as the gazelle leaps away from the brutish touch of the impertinent boys.

He feels his hand clench, his bloodied tongue snag, his foot come forward when he sees that actually… she has taken the hand of one loathsome kid. A brunette, freckled boy who…Who Carlisle seems to recall as being astutely shy. Not only that but… he seems to recall the boy already had a betrothed. Had. Until she passed of tuberculosis some months ago.

His anger dissipates a little. The boy she has selected is rather measly. Unthreatening. One might even go so far as to suggest he has been crying considering the blow up of colour on his face.

'Peculiar choice,' Eleazar murmurs, catching the line of sight of not just Doctor Cullen, but most of the faces present.

A number of people seem to question her sanity. Carlisle included. She might not consider her position oh-too valuable but she knows without a doubt that it is higher than this farm hand. She is the Emma Woodhouse to his Robert Martin, except she is kind, unscrupulous, trusting…

Far from naïve.

'Yes,' he agrees, his eyebrow coming down in dance.

In fact, she makes the rather bold choice to lead the stumbling boy to the dance square. The jazz is coming on its monotone sob now and while she humours him, all fresh smiles and trust, Carlisle has to withhold his spite when the boy's hand drapes foolishly to her waist.

She was condemning herself to scrutiny amongst the faces….

Though she did seem comfortable at least and even if the boy is touching her, flushing untrained hands against her curves, he is blubbering in such a way that the effect is lost on him.

'My word, I think she's lost it.'

'Hm,' Carlisle murmurs harshly, unable to take his eye of them now. Her beautifully trained legs make a start and lead them in a slow waltz. The boy's stature is meagre. His fingers fidgeting on the outer layering of her hip, his eyes weepy and his steps awkward…

'I think that's…' Carlisle pulls his eyes from them, the giggle, the enrapturing delight of her laughter. His own palms are burning now, ferociously. 'I think that's the Carson boy.'

'Oh,' Eleazar murmurs, shocked. 'The one who lost…?'

Carlisle nods.

'So then… charity?' he presumes, pushing his lips together. 'Not too sure how her chaperone will take to that…'

Charity. Was it wrong for Carlisle to wish for it? She surely… surely wouldn't be attracted to the boy. Not for entertainment nor marriage. Abominable to put the thought of marriage between them. It was a horror.

Particularly when she had just so fiercely claimed feelings… Damnable incorrigible feelings. To him.

Was he being punished? Did God not favour his choice and wished to see him suffer in the eye of envy. Envy itself was a sin. A deadly sin. Was he being made to witness this very event because of the words he had used to distance her?

Is it because of what he said or how he felt?

He tilts his wrist inward, rubs his skin under the resistant ticking of the clock face.

I can't take it anymore, he almost cries. I can't watch her sway in the arms of someone else, no matter how innocent those intentions may be. He can't bear to witness her smile gifted to another, her curves be graced with a frail, regretful hand.

He might have questioned the honourability of his… of his feelings… but he never moved her with indecision. He never raised an unsure hand to her. He never shook under her watch or doubted the flush of a finger upon her peached skin.

Any movement he made towards her, he committed to it. Even if he could not promise the words themselves.

'It's getting late,' he whispers to himself.

Eleazar is still watching the couple. More unsure teenagers are taking the floor now, trying to follow the natural wave of her limbs, her hips. Carlisle wishes Emmett would just hurry up in his digressions and storm in here. Tug her hand from the boy's, demand to know what she is thinking as he takes her back home and leaves her to pout in her bedroom.

'Hm?' he murmurs, still without taking his eyes from the twirls and the dances of the pairs.

'I'm going to go,' Carlisle repeats a little more forcefully. Eleazar frowns, checks his own watch.

'Carlisle, Friend, the night has barely started-.'

'I regret I'm not much in the mood for the evening,' he admits, pressing his lips together. Eleazar holds out a hand.

'Not even for a waltz? I see Madame Melissa has been looking your way for quite some time now.'

Carlisle knew. He had already spoken to her at his arrival when she had asked for a dance with him then. He had played it off. But now seeing the twirl of caramel, he is half determined to take the foreign woman into his arms and explain in motions exactly how one dances. Particularly between man and woman.

It was nature. Not to be bumbled or rushed through. Not to be condescended with naiveté.

It required trust. Implicit faith.

Surrender by both parties.

He watches her giggle again, a hand coming up over boy's shoulder, cementing his confidence with compliments. The Doctor's stomach-cramps tighten, a fire enclosed in his gut, the boiling, bubbling acid rising to his throat.

'I must go,' he repeats, weakly.

Eleazar sighs, touches him slightly on the shoulder.

'In time,' he promises. 'You'll come to feel better about your bachelorhood in time…'

'I am hardly the sort to cavort about town, Eleazar,' the doctor remarks reproachfully. Eleazar chuckles.

'Perhaps it wouldn't go amiss to learn some new talents?'

He made it sound as though an agency was in order. As though he should be placing an ad in the newspaper and waiting for a response. He shudders.

'Be sure to have a good evening?' he says in parting, shaking his hand in leave.

'Carlisle?' his friend inquires worriedly. The blonde faces the call. 'Are you sure you're fine? I can always stop by later?'

'No,' he says a fraction too quickly. He forces a smile, sighs. 'Thank you, Eleazar but I think tonight… I just want to be alone…'

He is grateful for the offer, exceedingly grateful but he knows how it will end. It will end with the two of them drunk past resolution come the early hours of the Morning and Carlisle will either be inconsolable as he sought to come to grips with his losses- or at worse, he would be utterly delusional.

Perhaps he would do something undeservingly rash, plead on bended knees for Mr Masen's blessing. Howl to the moon like a wolf as he begged the woman to take him for a husband. To accept any and all that he could offer her, in spite of how incorrectly they had grown to love each other.

He hadn't wished to believe he could make her happy. That was talk for the devil. But perhaps he could… He would endeavour to do so. He would be the sort to pride himself on the achievement of her happiness.

'We'll talk?' Eleazar asks in concern.

Carlisle nods and under the disguise of the dark hall, the candle lit shades and the twirling couplets to soulful drones, he slips out of the school, his stomach knotted and the weight of his misery falling into his lungs.

It does not go unnoticed by Esme that he does leave, of course.

She tries to focus a little her dance partner but he is understandably lost in memories of a past blind to her. She rubs his shoulder thoughtfully, thinking of the same girl for a moment and wondering what he must be lamenting between them. He clumbers on her feet when she leads him. His grip is uncomfortably tight but unaware. His complexion facing a glowing red and his hand too small and too rough to be a comfort to her.

Because they are not his hands.

They do not bear the extra years of wisdom, do not share the cold of a medical professional. They do not hold their weight under strict command nor do they clasp with intention in mind. They do not seem to enclose her properly either. Carson's hand.

Her fingers do not sit cozily, his scent is not like that of books and a fireplace. He is not humming the music under his breath.

But at the very least, she supposes he makes a better partner than the other peculiar crowd of males wanting her attention.

Now that had never happened before. She couldn't understand why it is happening now. Unless of course…

Unless Charles' lasting taunts felt like an offer to them.

Perhaps they consider her a trial attempt in the sack. Based on what her ex-boyfriend told them all anyway. They might want her, she prophesies, but it wasn't for good reason.

She looks back up to his table, the absence plaguing her like a punch in the stomach. Mr Garcia has moved too now. He is with some remaining teachers, making conversation without the aid of a sulking friend.

Perhaps he is due a sulk.

He had been so…cruel to… So horrifically unnecessary. He was a proud man of faith. For him to… refer to her in so damnable manners. She wanted him to feel strongly about her but not to that formidable extent.

And yet she still couldn't help but regret hurting him.

How was it fair that when he wished not to injure her, his remarks were crueller than the fists she felt upon her face? Why is it that just thinking of him, alone on the dark night in his cold house is enough to make her innards curl?

She can feel the hasty brush of emotion rise up again.

He had called her My Darling…

Carson startles at her sudden pause in stance and looks to her with a lost expression. She will not remember the words she uses to get past him, but they are simple enough in formation but meaningful in sentiment.

She hopes Emmett will return before she has to face the men alone- Speaking of Emmett-…

Esme huffs, her fingers lightly touching the silk meeting of her chest. Screw Emmett, she considers. Screw his damn drama scenes. Screw the boys now calling for her attention.

Screw Carlisle and his inescapable, sweeping gait of trust.

She looks to the table not far off, where her bag is… she still has her brother's car keys after all…

Deliberately, Miss Masen decides to avoid saying her goodbyes to her fellow students she doubts can remember her name. She won't even say goodbye to her teachers. She will… she will simply drive there… apologise for her behaviours… and go.

Yes, that sounds right.

After all, for two-weeks he had her in his home. He cared for her and provided for her and spoilt her with the attention only those married to one another had time to appreciate.

And he called her His Darling.

Did that not mean anything? At it's very least, it surely meant that he cared, cares perhaps, for her wellbeing. And she should thank him for it. She should thank him for his generosity to her family… and prepare to leave it at that.

Who knows? Father may even let her leave for college early…

She hurries quickly out to the car, eager to seem as if she had always come alone. Perhaps Emmett would be pissed at the abandonment but if she was only gone for a moment. Yes, a moment. She'd be in and out.

Doctor Cullen would hardly wish to speak with her anyway.

She would say her piece and leave him be.

She swallows difficulty, flickering through the ignition till the engine rumbles in greeting. Considering it's Emmett's project, it might rumble at first but sooner or later, people will put together a missing car.

And Emmett will have to-

'Maple?'

Damn.

He moves from whichever direction he suddenly appeared, much like a chaperone in fact when he moves around the hood of his car and leans down the open window.

'All okay?' he asks, somewhat ironically.

'Yes,' she says calmly. 'All is well.'

'Right.' He nods his head, combing his dark curls backwards as he takes in the vehicle. 'Are you aware you seem to be sitting in my car? Or have you been spiked already?'

'Em,' she complains, eyes half rolling.

'If you wouldn't mind getting out?'

He's layering it on thick now, taking his employment to serious levels. Perhaps that was the issue with his attitude this evening, perhaps that why he was so determined to attend. Father was clearly paying him.

'I actually-'

'Es, get out the car.'

She frowns and tries to surreptitiously lock the doors but the click is loud enough to engage his thick eyebrows of disbelief.

'Esme Masen, Dad has given me the power to ground you-'

'No he has not,' she refutes her eyes raising to the car ceiling in boredom.

'Alright, not yet, but when he hears you're sneaking off-'

'I'm not sneaking off!' She corrects. 'Emmett, I just need…'

Her voice is jumping to triggering octaves now. She isn't screaming but they both feel like she is given the scratch of her voice. There's tears she realises. Tears in her throat, under her ducts, ready to hurtle out and pour.

She didn't even have anything to cry about. Why was she possibly crying? Because of what he said?! Because of the words he used?

Because he had also called her his Darling.

Did you refer to the causes of your misery with endearment? Did you consider your route to hell with possessive familiarity?

For one, he never used such terms with his former- courtship. His own sister had told her that. Irina herself had suggested it in fact.

And yet Carlisle hadn't just endeared her once. He called her His Darling. His Dear. Honey. Oh he used them so frequently when she was with him.

Her name hardly crossed his mouth before it was replaced with something delightfully sweeter…

'Esme, get out the car.'

'Emmett, I can't. I can't get out the car-'

In confusion he comes to punch an arm through the open window and snag the keys but she blocks his hand with her fist. Her voice wavers even more when she tries again.

'Trust me. I'll come back. I just need five minutes alone-'

'Then have five minutes down the end of the school- Maple, I didn't just oath myself to this shitting soccer team for you to play escape artist. If you don't want to be here, fine, but we are going home-'

He puts both hands onto his hips, the blazer billowing out as he fights hard to keep his features stark still. But beneath it all. Beneath Dad's bribery, it is still Emmett of course. And while she can't deny that she is worrying him, she is also only too familiar with the fight of a smile under his jaw.

At the very least, he was impressed with her sudden rebellion arc.

'Five minutes Emmett-' she pleads, once last time.

'You won't get anywhere in this village in five minutes. Get out the car before I drag you out.'

That settles it then.

'Fine,' she murmurs, delicately raising her foot to meet the bite of the clutch. 'I'll see you at home.'

She only just manages to catch the drag in time, the heels aiding in leverage as she floors the gas and drives his car out the school grounds. He is going to be pissed. She checks in the rear-view mirror. Nope, he is pissed.

Never mind about leaving for college early, she might not even get to college if he tattles on her.

But if she doesn't go… if she doesn't at least see him, she will spend the next nine weeks in perishable disdain.

She has to know he's okay.

---

The drive comes almost too easily. Not just because of the car but the route, too. Admittedly she is going faster than the men in her life would like her too, except perhaps Edward of course, but some urgency is necessary. She considers the few times she drove Carlisle's car. Never far. Only down the end of the drive, perhaps around the block. He'd smirked but wrapped a fist on the passenger handle.

Always at conflict with her.

She almost whimpers now..

She didn't even know the words she would use. What she would have to do to get him to listen to her. If he would listen to her. A damnation. A plague.

Had he really said those words, though? Had they really not come to him in the same panic that other foolish words came?

Doctor Cullen was not a cruel man and yet some of the comments that fell from his gentle tongue… Specifically the ones he made towards Charles Evenson. Even if he made them out of earshot, they rattled her in their… passion? The word sparkles like jewellery. A white bright diamond of hope on an earlobe.

Esme is not far from his home now.

She knew the drive wouldn't take her long, particularly not with the speed at her feet but once she turns into the lone path to his house, she feels her throat dry unmanageably. Maybe he would tell her to leave before she even got chance to park up.

Maybe she wouldn't be brave enough to stop…

None of the lights are on but his car is parked perfectly in the drive. The adrenaline is coursing through her blood but only in the form of panic. She doesn't know a single word she will come to use or even if she'll know how to speak…

In all she is foolish, she is naïve, she is young and she is desperate for him to forgive her. Parking at least settles the anxiety of being caught, even if she does a terrible job at it.

With shaking hands, she looks in the mirror and checks her appearance. A bit pale perhaps but mostly undisturbed despite earlier tears… she locates her bag in the footwell, smears the perfume on her neck, touches it to the ends of her hair to rearrange the wave and forces herself to leave the vehicle.

The house might have looked silent but the nearer she comes to the house, the heavier is her need to soothe him.

For one, he has left the front door marginally ajar and she can hear his therapy playing on a record player in the distance. For the volume, he must be attempting to burden himself with a headache but she imagines he must be towards the end of the house.

More importantly she wonders if he is okay because the record he is playing is another miserable one. She doesn't quite knock. She raises a pathetic hand to the wood, drags it back a fraction and then uses her fingertips to weigh the door open. Her ankles are knocking together now, her toes wiggling.

And yet she still almost crumbles when she sees him.

He had just left the kitchen, tumbler of whisky swinging in the clasp of his hand, collar gloriously open to expose a pale throat and his expression- his eyes. His stature lowers in gratitude, his lips coming together, eyebrows furrowed.

'I-,'

Ah, yes, she worried this may happen.

He waits patiently for the words to come, his dark shoes still at first before clapping nearer, she almost gasps. Almost tells him to stay there so that she can say her piece but he is so endearingly heartbroken…

And she is strong.

'Please excuse the mess,' he murmurs and relief tumbles through her. He is inviting her in.

She crosses the threshold with a tentative step, eyes taking in the familiarity of the walls, of the space, the smell of… him.

She stops when she reaches him, the music swelling to a crying crescendo but he doesn't move. He stays with his eyes on her, reading her. She thinks this openness must be fault of the alcohol. He'd usually try harder to be subtler. Perhaps she wouldn't even know he had looked at her.

But now… now there is no denying the way in which he undertakes her soul.

'It's awfully dark in here.'

He smiles, just a little and nods.

'I'm in the conservatory…'

Odd. She had never seen him in the conservatory before. For one, there were far too many boxes to allow a path and two… two it must be cold…

He can feel her stance spread in a confident walk as she follows him through the length of the hallway, passing the stairs and stopping just by the southern glass of the house. She gasps, her hand coming up to her lip.

He has anointed the room in candles.

The majority of them don't have a scent except one that… that she used when she was here. The flush of linen tickles her nose and with her eyes on the glow of the fireplace, the awkward stretch of the drink in his fidgeting hand, she parts her lips to praise him.

'It's beautiful in here.'

Which only leads her to wonder where exactly he has shoved those boxes…

'It's just dark,' he diffuses modestly but it's another misunderstanding. The dark and the dull glow of the orange flickers make it beautiful. She breathes deeply, filling her lungs and her thoughts with him and surprising herself to find he is still watching her when she opens them.

He is not just watching of course. He is dreaming, reminiscing, praying, memorising and altogether gazing as every aspect of her and gorging himself on it.

'What are you up to?' She asks deliberately and the flicker of embarrassment coats his smile, his left hand half dragging the glass behind his hip.

'I've never….' Embarrassingly, he stops there. Drags his hand around to hide it better. He's being rather silly if he thinks she hasn't noticed. Not only because it's outstandingly obvious but because his features are far more relaxed than usual, as if unconsciously revealing a secret.

'Never been to prom?' She presumes and while he smirks and she smirks in undue consideration to the double meaning, he also shies his gaze away.

'No.'

She touches her fingers together, breathes calmly and lets it play movements in her chest. She knows he looks. He knows she knows he looks and guiltily, he allows a tense sip of the whiskey to touch his tongue.

'It doesn't help you to make those experiences if you run from them…'

He looks away now. Moving from her towards the glass windows, eyeing the garden and the looming dark surrounding.

'She said, hypocritically,' she narrates for him.

He turns over her shoulder, smiles.

'The music is wrong,' he admits after a while. The long fingers are fiddling at his pocket, touching the rim of the fabric but hesitating whether to slide his thumb in. She shivers unevenly. 'You know me….'

'Let me help you?' She whispers. He presses his lips together, gestures a hand out towards the box in question.

She doesn't take a second's pause. Immediately, her hands dive into the top of the tower, sealing on flat records and reading the titles enthusiastically. She makes a face.

'Well here is your first problem….'

She didn't hear him wander over and now he is behind her, chest almost touching the silk of her blouse, her hair by his shoulder, every inhale bringing them closer till she wavers on the spot. She knows his neck is stretched when he speaks because the words fall down her right side, just by the shell of her ear.

'Hm?'

'The wrong medium, Dear.' She teases sweetly. She feels his warm chuckle and settles her worries a little. 'You need your Cassettes…'

'Thought as much,' he confesses and he parts her company to go and find the box in question.

She knows where it is. She feels for that reason she has a responsibility to tell him. But she lets him guess for himself and moves from this tower to stand as he did by the window.

She is looking rather worriedly at her reflection. She hopes it still carries the effort she put into it but considering she has half-forgotten her excuse for coming. She only wishes to comfort him, therefore she thinks it wise she ensure her make-up does just that.

Perhaps her shoes, however.

She hesitates and then carefully lifting a hand under her skirt, she locates the strap of one tall heel and comes to unbutton it.

'Uncomfortable?' He assumes, confused.

He sees now that she was expecting a few more minutes alone but with the box of cassette tapes carried between two wide arms, the stacks covering his chin, he even struggles to make out that she is fidgeting.

'No-!'

Her foot is loose to the contraption and he admires it.

'Your shoes,' he murmurs.

He murmurs for two reasons. The first is harkening a sense of respect to the torture trap. The second is a desire to see her rested on two pretty feet. The high arches, the narrow width, the perfectly poised toes and the neat polish on the nail.

'I don't want to harm your flooring,' she excuses, indicating the harsh stick and the apparently vulnerable floorboards. He frowns. He cares little for the marks she may make but wishes if she is to make them that she does so intentionally.

'Are you in discomfort?' He asks again.

She shakes her head and cautiously rebalances both shoes to the floor, one unbuckled. He moves the box to the edge of a chaise long now, cushioning it to the legs of the old moth eaten furniture as he kneels in front of it. On one knee. To her.

For a moment, she loses all understanding and can only witness his left knee now bent on floorboards she'd wished she'd varnished for him. His suit slacks are rubbing into the dust, the glow of flickering lights casting shadows by his long nose as he holds a hand out.

Unsure, she moves as if to put her hand in his when he chuckles, shakes his blonde locks and indicates with his fingers for her leg. The one that he held amongst his hands almost two years ago…

Her breath catches at the mere impertinence, the evocative risk of such a request and regardless, she raises her ankle to a count of four and lets him catch it on the fall. His hand is almost perfectly cut to hold the shape of the shoe, the material glittering under his eyes as he balances her on the spread of his joint.

The colour is hot underneath her cheeks. It's hot on her throat, in her neck, everywhere… and when the back of his two nimble fingers brush up the stocking, she feels herself almost faint with desire. Her skirt is swinging a little lower now. Enough that he has to let his fingers travel blindly under it to follow the strap and once he finds it, he claps the hold back together again, keeping her foot secured and the freedom enclosed.

Her skin is perspiring lust.

'Not too tight?' He asks.

She shakes her head, watches as he holds tight to the ankle as if testing her it's weight. Her throat, like his, is uncomfortably dry. He is uncomfortably doubting his intentions and yet his physique seems to act on its own accord. With his blue eyes causing conflict to her hazel glow, he holds her steady and slowly, with his eyes only on her, lowers two perfect petals to press on the curve of her foot, pressing against the material in such a manner so as to ripple through the stocking.

The movement is chaste- the act is impertinent and she blunders blindly down a hall of needs before she sees it for what it was.

A gift.

It is not the intention behind the action, but then, he cannot say much for housing intentions being that impulse led his lips to lie there, to the suggestion of skin covered by a fabric shadow. He gulps deeply, swallowing the accumulation of saliva, the drill of fire from the stretch of skin and carefully moves away.

'Thank you,' she whispers, the sounds jumping breathily.

He wants to tell her the truth, that he did not do it for her. That he acted on his own craving… but he needs her with him. He needs her here. And that means he will do all is possible not to unnecessarily frighten her away.

Including, apparently, threatening her honour.

'Forgive me,' he whispers.

'No.'

He frowns, asks her to reconsider with just a flicker of his features. She moves her chin in a tight decline.

'To forgive you means we are required to be sorry… to repent it…'

'Mary Magdalene,' he starts to say and the point of his reference makes her think he's calling her a harlot. He rearranges his sentence in a hush. 'She lay her tears upon the Lord's feet, wiped them away with her hair, kissed them and anointed them in oil….'

Before he can say more, she smiles softly and moves a hasty hand to brush a fallen blonde lock to its right parting. He leans to the movement, almost trying to cradle her touch but without forgiving herself the demand.

The alcohol, she supposes.

'One out of four isn't bad,' she murmurs and she feels the acknowledging breath of humour warm her toes.

She wants to ask him lots of things in that moment. She wants to ask him why they're doing this to one another when their mere bodies seem to pulse and beat together. She wants to ask him for the strength to decipher when she is being witty with him, and when she is asking him to take her honour for his own and screw the consequences.

She wants to ask him how to be as strong but instead she simpers to her feet, preparing to come down and sit upon the floor beside him.

He stops her in the last second.

'What are you doing?' He asks nervously.

He eyes the precision of the pleats in her skirt, the silk dark cut of the boat-necked blouse along her shoulders. And he inhales what he believes are the beautiful delicacies of her floral perfumes tainted with the burn of his candles.

'Helping you find a song,' she explains calmly but before she can settle herself, he has stopped her again.

Already the dust of the old house is gathering to her clothing. Sticking upon the fabrics and while she doesn't seem to pass notice, he can't say the same. He puts a hand out to stop her and awkwardly shuffles out his blazer to lay upon the floorboards.

She stares at him.

'To save your clothes,' he explains, rubbing a fidgeting hand down the front of his vest.

'My clothes don't need saving,' she corrects stubbornly.

He chuckles, nervously pats the stomach of his vest self-consciously before fiddling around for that tumbler of whiskey.

She locates it for him, passing it to his hand and wittering when that fallen lock returns. He scratches the veins of one wrist.

'Don't be nervous,' she whispers reassuringly. He smiles again, delightfully, appreciating her observation even if he can't understand his own emotions for now. She waits a little, balancing his current attitude to her bravery.

'After all, you look incredibly handsome…'

Her forwardness ought to disturb him. Particularly given their conversation just an hour ago but he is so relieved that she came back to him that he can't help but fall in love with her flattery. He can't help a lot of things at the moment and being with her just happens to be the main one.

He has to remind himself that she is giving the gift of a traditional prom as she knows it. Finding the compliments one might give a date.

If such dates were permitted of course. They would not be permitted to Esme Masen.

Not after that vile insipid poison of a boy.

And Esme Masen would not be permitted to date him.

For the obvious.

'I thought we were denying that you are sweet on me?' He whispers, the touch of his humour kissing along her cheek. She lowers her eyes, her hands finding the tapes and flickering through a number she hasn't got time to glance at.

'We are,' she says distractedly but she keeps neck bent and her long hair covering her blush. Particularly when he starts to unbutton the cuffs of both wrists, ruffle down the sleeves of a starched shirt till both forearms and throat are on display.

She nurses her hands a little more desperately. He parts his lips to open and leaves them there agape for the moment. He waits to see if the word will fall on their own accord.

Sure enough, they do.

'Heavenly.'

'Hmm?' She asks, sounding much like a distracted mother bustling a busy kitchen.

'Pulchritudinous…' he adds.

A small smirk begins to tickle her lip at the peculiar vocabulary.

'Elegant,' he muses.

Gathering the rather direct look of his eyes upon her cheeks, she fears he is about to say something particularly disarming.

'Divine…'

Now she really ought to tell him to stop. Before the alcohol makes a fool of them both and he says things, suggests things that he cannot for one second mean. Besides, he seemed oh too keen to remind her of their… predicament.

Oh but what did that mean when he just as surely welcomed her into his home?

Was it just because that was his place of work?

Or is it because he is intoxicated and toxins do this do a man…

'Lovely.'

'What are you-'

He thinks it wise not to mention the several other thousand words that accompanied.

'Just a few terms that came to mind when you entered that hall…' he explains and this time, the swig of his drink is almost like a deliberate restraint.

Esme looks at own her peculiar posture on the floor. Where her legs are curled on the inner silk of his expensive suit. Where the linen presses against her stockings and her skirt brushes up the side of the cardboard box.

'Heavenly?' She asks the blocks of music.

'Yes.'

She might think it a lie but it is his darkest truth. His most frightful fear. That she is a figure of heaven and her… her innateness must therefore be examined.

Was it that she was an angel who imitated the devil? Or was she a devil who imitated an angel?

Because he wanted her, not curled around those cassettes and floorboards. He wanted her in his arms. He wanted her nestled to his chest. Chin tucked over the crown of her hair. He wanted physicality to meet the demands of the soul as they sway as one….

'You had rather different sentiments earlier…' she says softly, allowing him the time to take in the words.

'I have conflicting sentiments,' he amends, guiltily.

'And I?'

'What do you have?' he whispers, hopefully, as one would whisper to a priest.

'I have faith, Doctor Cullen.'

His eyes slip closed in pain, his dark lips becoming lines against each other as his forearms tense. Curiosity leads her touch to him. Curiosity and a desperation to soothe his pain. Delicately, as if requesting permission, she places her fingertips on those blue veins of his.

His darker blue eyes startle open, witnessing the clamp of her hand and she stretches the tickle to lie where the bend of his elbow is, his palm opening graciously.

While limbs and shoulders and tongues and words shake, her hand on his forearm does not. It drops like a pearl of cool water down his overheating wrist. He can feel nothing but that hand and so… intimately. The details of buffed and polished nails, so different to her usual shape, barley marking him as they slip down his arm. The flickers of knuckles, the endless tinge of graphite and charcoal on her palms…

'What of this one?' She asks and she pushes the rectangle to his hand.

Though his eyes had been open, he had been dreaming solely on her perfume and must now remind himself exactly what he is wanting from the tape and… well… he needs to remove her hand.

In fact, he needs to remove her hand now.

Before he cannot be without it.

That is really his problem with her, that he can never be satisfied. She invites familiarity and he finds he cannot be a second without her warmth without the world turning grey.

'The cassette? Or a particular song?' he murmurs.

'The cassette,' She requests.

His youthful smirk pulls into his cheek as he reads them over. She'd liked this tape. It was one left on top of the pile from when she… stayed. From when they first drove into the box with frantic hands and he pulled her up from the second-hand couch and rocked her hips with her laughter in his ear.

This time he feels he does not wish to solely laugh with her.

He wishes to… apologise in a way… atone in another.

He wishes to hold her.

'It's all slow songs,' he says. She smiles and nods.

'The slower songs encompass prom night most… efficiently.'

'Most… romantically…?' he amends, his eyebrow clocking up in tease of his correction. She looks away, concealing her smile but not the slight blush. 'Very well.'

He parts from her again, drains the last sip of his beverage and abandons the glass on the side. If she were not stranded on the floor waiting for the music to start maybe she would take it for the kitchen, wash it as it ought to be washed and place it on the upper shelf on the left above the breakfast bar. Where the space suits it best.

With nimble hands, he removes the needle, softens the delicate scratch of the record player and moves out of sight. There's silence for a few seconds. He watches the machinery with an air of patience, thinking on nothing in particular and then all of it at once.

And then he opens the deck, checks the winding and puts in the music. She hears him fiddle with the volume notch a few times and then once the grating rewind of the tape cuts to a stop, he presses play carefully.

Her heart beats nervously as she waits for the notes and then here they are, so much more rich and so much more flavourful than the awful Jazz from school. And better yet, this one has words for them to communicate between.

She doesn't know the first song too well but that doesn't stop her from enjoying it any less. He pads silently to be nearer her, standing awkwardly in the square of the room as he lets his focus slip into the story being sold to them.

Momentarily, she is remarkably grateful that it is a sentiment lost on her and gifted instead to Edward.

Because to see him lost in sombre dreams to the music brutalises her heart as though watching the fall of Pompeii. Every aspect of it hurts. Even if it is it is also momentous.

Though his eyes are closed, those fair eyelashes touching his under eyelid he can see her perfectly well on his blazer, her legs curled around her as she waits impatiently for him to realise.

'You're missing something,' she warns him.

'Hm?' he flickers his eyes open, grateful that the apparition of her has not yet faded. He looks down himself and then down her posture.

He disappears yet again, returns with… flowers…

Again, flowers from when she had been here…

Everything seemed to be reminding them of that. Everything highlighting those two weeks. He measures the flowers together and taking the longer, paler peony, he picks off the leaves and fishing the bow-tie from his pocket, expertly winds them together.

Then raises his offering to her.

This is not what she'd been referring to but the curiosity enamours her.

'Me?'

'Mm hmm.'

She stands awkwardly, shyly watching him stare at her free hand before he wraps the entanglement around her wrist and secures it with a tie to the vein before shuffling the ends behind the knot and flower bud.

'Not too tight?'

Her eyes are sparkling in flattery. He'd fashioned her a corsage. And one that almost perfectly matches her colours. Black and pale pink, the tie holding the flower tight and perfuming from her hand to her shoulder.

'It's perfect,' she whispers gratefully.

He conceals a shy smile, seeming surprised when she takes the leftover bud and rather forgivably, breaks a large majority of the stem off. He almost regrets bringing the second along. He only wished to compare both to the colours to her skirt but if she is now hell bent on eroding the examples of herself, maybe he ought to request she curb her enthusiasm.

Except the violence is temporary.

She meets his feet with the tip of her shoes, raising the peony between them before tickling the sensitive skin of his nose with the scent. He wrinkles his expression, enjoys the sweet giggle of her delight, the aroma of trusting summer and watches as she fiddles with poking the stem through one free button hole.

He tilts his long neck to grant her fiddling hands access. His Adam's apple bobbing nervously close to her fingers.

'Hold that?' she asks him and grinning, he pinches the flower still and watches as she pulls a few hair pins from by her right ear.

There's something about the act… and not just that she is literally letting her hair down even more…

It's even more familiar than they had already found themselves drawn. Focused, she pinches the flower again and slides one hair pin and then the other to keep the stem still under the shirt, the flower blooming close to his clavicle.

'Better?' he asks her, almost nervously.

'Perfect,' she amends. He sighs, shakily, his shoulders almost nervous.

The confidence is swimming about her now. Perhaps it is the shyness of his dancing eyes, or the music… or just the eagerness to please. Nevertheless, she lifts her hands up, waiting for the eventual surrender.

It comes with a smile.

'It's a rite of passage,' she murmurs, swaying demonstratively until his rhythm warms and then suddenly, she is not leading, she is following the direction of his hips.

His hands open underneath hers, spread out the fingers till both are palm to palm. Glowing in warmth. They mirror one another's movements judging the difference in size. His fingertips scale down the length of her inner digits, making her head swim and her shivers darken till he threads his hand to hers.

She looks at the couplet now.

He looks too.

While she is so much smaller, there is not a gap left. They fit snugly together, fingers interlocked, palms together, both of them tender yet firm as if ready to support the lazing weight of the other.

'May I?' he whispers and she feels the words slip guilty off his lower lip.

She isn't quite sure what he is asking until he envelopes her space, his left hand bent at the meeting of her spine, his arm a parallel line behind her shoulders. Smiling, she wraps a finger up to that shoulder and delicately pinches it.

'Relax this one?' She asks.

'Yes, Ma'am.'

He chuckles and lowers his arm accordingly, forcing the stretch to soften and his hands to hover now at her mid back. She grins and steps closer till their feet are touching by the outer casing of shoes. He watches their feet at first, hair slipping from its hold, though soon he starts to warm to relax and now sure of both posture and rhythm, he encourages them in a delicate sway.

Her right hip is pressed indelicately to his. Both further from each other than they could be and yet so, so close. Clasped together like magnets yet torn from each other with pleats and trouser linen.

Regardless of Charles's taunts… if she were to be seen doing this. With an elder man. If she was caught dancing as provocatively as this, it would only cement his accusations.

And yet… she cannot bring herself to care. She had sworn her innocence to both God and parents alike but here, in Carlisle's arms… joined even distantly, she cannot possibly conceive that such movement would dare be considered a sin.

Because she fits here.

Likewise, his movements are sturdy. He knows that should he drag them back in a swing, her posture will unconsciously trust him. Like the very roll of the music, together they supply one note, her moist breath layering on his shirt, touching upon his throat as his lips mouth the delicate words to her hairline.

He can smell the candles glowing on her cheeks still but more importantly, she can smell the ink and the spread of paper as he captures sweet nothings to her temples, swears them to her skin.

When Esme pulls back to watch the performance, she finds no shyness about him. Once a lyric might have been given reluctantly. Before, where he supplied the note with clinical competence, as though providing tools for a job, now it was all peaceful dexterous gift.

It came from within.

The lines are drooling unconsciously from his bitten tongue. They seem to be a lot more promising than he remembers. Particularly with her crushed against him, the beats of their hearts in sync, but if she doesn't mind, he will accept it. He lets her posture bow to him as he sings to her, his hand trusting the shapes they procure, the fire.

They dance pressed together for not just the entirety of the cassette tape. But for the opposite side, too.

He never tires.

She never weakens.

Because as much as they might crave each other, there's something about the faultless grip from one hand to one fabric that binds them inseparably. In fact, she doesn't think it can get more romantic than this.

Yet as one particular song plays, his version of the lyrics feels less of a recapturing but as though he is professing direct from his heart. His eyes have been closed for a long time now. He could almost be sleeping except he is moving them comfortably, his head coming down to rest against her forehead.

Her heart patters up a little. His lines now falling direct onto her mouth, sharing the breath, making the promise. She is perpetuated in a stay of outer body bliss. Every nerve feels alive and yet put to a resting slumber.

Carlisle is swept up in the swell of the music now. He strokes the tip of his slight nose down her smaller one, stopping once his lips are directed so precariously above hers.

He knows what he is about to do.

He can feel every instinct in his body leading for him to close the gap.

To give in and feel her against his mouth.

Distantly, he is aware that there is something about this need that would be frowned upon. There is something about this innate desire which is something to be scorned at. But it is like trying to remember a life not yet lived.

Particularly when perfection seems to grapple them together.

He will not move until the sign.

He doesn't know what the sign is exactly. But he knows that if… if things are… if feelings are… than maybe God will bless this with a sign.

Maybe God will forgive him.

She inhales shakily from him but just when he considers his answer there, she very careful lifts her slight chin up and forward… towards him.

He is no longer thinking.

Fuelled only by complete instinct, he tightens his hand in hers and seals her lips with his. She is warm and smooth and perfumed and heavenly and everything he wishes she would not be because now tasting her for the third time, fifth in some ways, he wishes only to remain locked here.

She moves against him, tilting back now so that her long hair tickles to back of his hand. He moves closer. Angling his mouth as so but the longer he presses his lips to her, the fiercer the burn grows.

And then she… Oh God she…

She moans.

For him.

Esme Masen involuntarily moans. At his lips.

And now he is helpless, his dark scent unsealing her indelicately.

He tastes it. He tastes its fleeting sweetness brace against his tongue and feverishly, hunts the scent of lust, his arms winding around her figure tightly, crushing her to him while her hands find the underside of his jaw and… investigate.

Every thought of his is clouded with the need for Esme. The need to taste that moan again but this time, this time it's accompanied by gentle, desperate whines.

His breath falls apart.

The pressure of his lips on hers wavers between aching tenderness and then fierce desperation and they dance between the two, bringing her closer till she is on her tiptoes and her fingers are teasing that sweet spot by his ear.

He can feel desire and need and fire. He can smell crushed flowers and the smoke of candles long since burnt out. Her perfume, the sweet scent of bakeries and sugared fruit making his tongue water-. Unless… oh God unless it's her tongue watering in which case he is subsuming her. He is touching the gift of her saliva, her sweetness-.

The spark in his stomach tightens, much like a fist reaching in and yanking his gut and when she moans again this time- this time into his open mouth, his tongue undulates to meet hers in indecent ministrations of yielding.

If her lips be poison, her slick tongue, shy but stable under the movement of his is death. Death of what was once pure. He is hers and she is his.

He groans in mewling similarity, singing an altogether new song that he doesn't recognise but knows must be voiced, moving tighter together.

And to feel her whimper against him-.

Hold on, whimper?

She whimpers?

Aghast, Doctor Cullen unleashes his mouth away from the rouged lips of Esme Masen. She still has her hands… well… they were in his hair, tugging. He thought he could feel something there but he hadn't put the notion together that she would… she would be tugging.

Tugging him to what? To be… closer?

And yet she is panting as though returning from drowning. Gasping. And so is he, with her shirt twisted in his hands, stretched by a moist grip, her breath still stiflingly hot on his mouth.

'W-why did you stop?' she stutters, dizzily.

He has a number of hazardous demands running through his head just then.

For now, this heatwave is slipping to ice down his neck. He takes in her angles, her curves, the flush of her sweet skin, the heaving demand of her breath, her breasts… and startles backwards, breathing hard himself.

'Carlisle?'

He puts his hand to his mouth, stopping the cry of anguish.

Carlisle, she had said. Oh God, Carlisle.

What had he done? What had he done?!

He'd just… he'd just tried to… he to tried to devour his student. He aimed to take her …

Oh God… Oh God. His fist drops to a full hand now and he realises he is shaking, his shoulders cracking under the weight of his shudders. Her decency. Her modesty.

And after everything her ex-boyfriend had tried to make of her. Tried to do to her. He'd just done the same.

He just tried to defile her in his own house. He is defiling her.

Vaulting, he moves far from her intoxicating touch.

'Carlisle talk to me?'

'You've got to go,' he demands hastily. The crumble of her features is like another crushing blow but he can't…oh God, he would've… he could've so easily have taken her.

'W-what?'

'You must leave,' he instructs her again, avoiding raising his eyes to either her or the door because the room is spinning and if he dares see the moral implication of what he tried to do…what he still wants to do… 'Now, Esme. Leave.'

She whimpers for an altogether reason now.

And he realises on hearing this cry, this broken plea of decline that the whimper he had heard to disturb him… had been a whimper of far different means.

He shivers violently, coming far away, arms wrapped around himself, near his belt in shock.

'Why?' she repeats, emotively. 'What did I do wrong?'

He looks as if she had slapped him viciously across the cheek. She holds her arms, too, trying to contain her own rippling from the loss of heat on numb limbs.

'You have got to go-' he repeats again, harsher this time but though the flush reaches her expression, she doesn't move. Maybe she is stuck in a state of trauma.

It would be understandable.

They had kissed before. They had, wrongly, tasted each other in subtle immediacy. They had shared a sharp salivation of each other's tongue but they had not… oh God, they had not… moved together before. Their hips had not dared come together before.

And more importantly they had not united all of those actions… into one instance.

They had not led one another in a dance of erasure.

But now? Now he was consciously aware of the burning ache in his stomach, eager to cripple him and ruin her purity.

'B-because?' She looks between the two of them. The empty path that Carlisle has just drawn in escaping far to the other side of the room. He puts his head in his hands, breathes tensely to himself.

She does not dare to interrupt him till she thinks he can handle the direction of her thoughts.

And even then, she has misjudged severely.

'It's…' she breathes in tensely, holds her hands tightly together by the lap of her rippled skirt. 'To some, it is a rite of passage?'

He does not understand at first. He is too busy condemning himself. He is praying for the good of her soul, the regret to come down only on him and then likewise bullying himself for fantasising of her in this. Of wanting her…

And then he realises that she is not demanding someone call the police. She is not even demanding for him to stay away for her.

She is… excusing his behaviours.

'E-excuse me?' he stumbles blindly.

Her voice doesn't shake when she clears her throat, but she has had to stretch her leg backwards to both propel her stance tall and hide the violence of her jittering calves. He himself is shaking still, needing several more gulps of air just to look at her.

But he cannot, he must not look at her because she still looks like Esme.

And not solely the Esme that he feels tied to but the Esme he wants to be tied to… the Esme he wants to deflower…

The guilt of hell strikes him like lightening, his lungs and stomach twisting like a wrung cloth as he falls helplessly to his knees in grief.

'M-many people my age,' she starts to explain, rushing to his aid. 'They -'

He lifts his pale expression to catch hers across the metres. Startling like a demon on the torso of a woman.

'You wish me to defile you?!' he growls, his threats waving like a storm in the pacific. She has to fight her lip not to pout. Particularly not at his anger. She has to convince him. She needs to convince him or she will surely waste away.

She will wither like the crushed petals on his shirt.

'Don't consider as if it is so abhorrent-' she moans fearfully.

'Miss Masen, it's absurd.' He is throwing distance between them in need but it is not enough. Intimacy was not grown solely through the words he used. It was birthed from the tone. The underlying caress of his tone.

'It's immoral.'

His ill-suited violence has returned but she can recognise now that it is pried from his fear. He is trying to push her away. He is pushing her away because he is scared for her but he will realise that she… that she trusts him.

'It's not!' She argues. 'How can such a thing in a being's nature be immoral? How can love be-'

'It is fornication, Esme!' He replies, hotly. The words spiriting dark glowers in her stomach. 'It is virtue to your husband not… not for anything less-'

'Times are changing!' she implores. 'Do you not think I am due autonomy from what should be done with my body? With my virtue?!'

'And your soul?!' he cries.

She hesitates with stepping closer. Her heels click a little on those floorboards and his face juts away as if in fear she will harm him.

'If God truly loves us, why would he taunt us? If this is so wrong Carlisle why can I not bear to be with anyone that isn't you.'

He seizes her in an instant. Grasping onto her arms with heavy frantic hands, he retreats her as fiercely as he did those two weeks ago. Except this time, rather them bundling them both into an enclosed cupboard, he backs them tightly against the wall of the fireplace and speaks at such a speed it is as though he is desperately shading the words she said.

'You do not mean that, Esme. Repent it. Repent it now.'

His hands are like glorious vices on her skin. Though his grip is firm she knows he will not hurt her, she also knows he would fall at her feet inconsolably dare she be harmed at his hands.

The entire angelic attraction of his face is paled, his poignant blue eyes demanding truth from her.

'I won't,' she says smoothly, likewise raising her hands to his arms should she slip lifelessly into sobs. She can't help feeling the weight of the brick plastered into her back is deliberately holding her steady. He shakes still, his chin tilted and his gelled hair slipping from its hold as he beseeches her to confess. Not as if she is in immortal danger, because she's not, but as though he is trying to protect their mortal lives.

'You don't know what you are saying, Esme. What you are implying-'

There are no implications to her words. There is only sparkling clarity.

'Do not condescend me,' she retorts. 'I am a grown woman and I know what I want-'

'And your parents?!' His expression is cracking under the weight of her unwavering stare. His tone pummels into her lip but where he hopes it may knock her into submission, it does the opposite. His tenderness encroaches her flames, only further worsened at the heavenly draw of his breath. 'You made an oath to both God and them until your wedding day. Does that not mean anything to you?! If your parents knew-'

Knew that he dares ache to dishonour her. If they knew that he was fighting carnal nature to murder her innocence and make her his. To submit himself to her wants….

Her cameo does not flicker, instead her lips part with control, her argument steady.

'It is not right to hold me to promises made when I was ignorant-'

'And therefore I refuse to let you do this. I will not let you fool yourself into thinking you know better for the sake of-'

He can't bring himself to say it. Nor infer that pleasure may be granted because he fears that he is unveiling a secret she might not yet know. A secret that will only tighten her resolve on the matter.

Nevertheless, Esme refutes him violently, thinking likewise of his hypocrisy. That he dares to speak as though it were not a path untrodden to him too.

He had, regrettably perhaps, made it known that he was physically as ignorant as her. He had not yet been married. In fact he had even called off his courtship.

His virginity remained as intact as hers. Even if his innocence did not.

'Like you know any better,' she snaps.

He bites his teeth down in flushed embarrassment. Even though he had also yet to be married and therefore yet to properly acquaint the marriage bed, they were incomparable.

'I am a Doctor, Esme. I did not need to commit the act to know what is involved and yet you-'

'You think me ignorant?' she asks in horror. 'I am not a fool, Carlisle! I know what is meant by man and woman.'

'Tell me then,' he demands chaotically. He thinks he has her caught, mostly because her blush is overtaking the strength of his shudders and she whimpers to herself, unable to form the words. 'Explain to me, Esme. What does it mean?!'

She hesitates, not in fear, nor in anger. Only in defence. He is frightened, that is the only reason for his outcry. He is frightened for her soul but when he… when he realises… when she explains to him…

Yet she is shy to unveil a concept that is not yet meant to be known to her.

'They become one,' she says simply.

He is so close to her, not in lap, in features. It is like kissing him all over again but this time the fire is spitting and she has to dodge carefully to avoid being hurt.

'Do not euphemise,' he utters to her, locking her delightfully against the wall. His stance is shrouding her as eyes bind her there 'Prove to me that you know. That you understand the trauma involved.'

She cannot help herself. To call it a trauma… it's… it's not like anything she has ever heard before. Maybe he is still trying to mislead her. He is desperate. He is frightened.

But he also has a determined look on his face.

He wants her to know.

And she wants to learn.

'Do you want me to tell you?' he asks, voice still curled in threat. 'You want me to explain to you?'

'You can't frighten me,' she swears.

He nods, disillusioned, his breath brushing her lips as he lowers his voice as though afraid of being overheard. They are alone. Salaciously alone. Yet he will not let himself consider to the suggestion. Both hands are flat against her shoulders, pushing into the plaster as if he'd trying to knock the wall down.

And then his words come and she shudders all over again.

'He penetrates her, Esme.'

His eyes remain fearful as he hushes the disclosure between them.

Another forceful stab flutters through her lower stomach… but not one of fear… like an acknowledgment. Like he is telling her something she always suspected.

She wants him closer.

'He doesn't resist,' he warns her, now drawing his figure up into the stance of a determined male. The tale slips from his tongue, details gathering speed down a steep hill.

'He penetrates her again and again and again. He makes her submit to him. He won't stop until he achieves his relief. He can't stop because all he wants is to make her his. He uses her, Esme. Do you get it now? Do you see why it is only between Man and Wife? Because he takes her. Because he makes her his.'

Her entire world is starting to slide on its axis. Not… Not because she's frightened. But because she's not.

'You talk of it so insensitively-'

'And you talk benevolently. Do not undermine the violence of the act. The degradation women endure-'

'How can you be telling me this?!' she cries weakly. 'Why are you so sure of its impurity- '

He foolishly thinks he has gotten through to her, he is almost relieved until he sees how pained she is. And then he is doubly frightened that he has scarred her.

'If this is what carnal desires do to us then it animalises us. It makes us inhuman-'

'And yet do we not live on carnal desires anyway? Do we not hunt when we are hungry?'

'Exactly!' he bemoans. 'It's a hunt. And you, Esme, are the hunted.'

There's too many things she is hearing in her head. Too much anger and resentments and fury and while she should be scared, while she is scared. She is not scared of the warning. She is scared by how, even when he is trying to frighten her, all she wants is to be with him.

Be hunted by him…

And finally, the tears prickle her along her lashes.

'You don't mean that,' she whispers, wetly. 'You are not like that-'

'I am man, Esme.'

And now, now she is frightened.

Because he is man. He is the gentlest of men. He is the softest, the most gracious and yet even he thinks of it with hate. It is hateful to him. She is hateful to him.

His chest is palpitating with heavy breaths, extortion hot on his features and with his palms flat by her hair, he drops his neck and kisses her roughly against the support.

For a moment, he reminds her not of a man but of a beast. His lips move hungrily into hers, taking capture of her all over again and when she comes to accept she will submit to him. When she realises that regardless of the violence, she doesn't find dishonour in being made to be his- that's when he unconsciously rolls his hips into her again.

The commandeering threat of his desire is pressing against the pleats of her skirt and her body convulses into him, her thighs tightening together.

With fearful fingers she pushes him from her, gasping.

She is really crying now because this beast is not the man she loves. He is an animal sent to scare her. Her is a spirit to possess her and while she wants to give herself to the man she loves, she doesn't want this. She doesn't want the fuel of anger fear control his tongue.

She doesn't want to feel the disillusion of his whiskey in her throat.

The tears fall hastily onto her cheeks. His act is broken, the fire paining his heart now dissipates to a match and though his hands are clammy, he moves his hips far from her and looks with broken outrage in his eyes.

'It is inevitable,' she whispers painfully. 'The loss of my honour is inevitable… If not already questioned by someone I thought would love me…'

His head bows, his fingertips now the only things leveraging his swaying weight as the guilt drowns him.

'Perhaps it is not degradation to women. As you so rightly suggest, Doctor Cullen, maybe I am one who does not deserve tenderness….'

His expression cracks, his hands dropping with haste.

'Oh Esme-'

Fearfully he pulls away from her, doing his best to move from her, every part of him trembling. For the second time today, she runs against his distance. With the music still playing to her, she reaches Emmett's car, the heavy droplets of humiliation dressing her front with moisture.

Torn, broken, Doctor Cullen stands in solitude between the creaking walls of his dilapidated home. The image of her tears tearing his heart in two, his hands, his angry damnable hands. He slips to helpless limbs among the floor, crushing his skull between his palms, the flower petals pressed underneath his chin.

---

Esme knows that she shouldn't be driving in the state she is in. She knows that he likely whimpered something about her safety as she tore herself from the touch of him and into the cold metal confines of the vehicle.

She sobs all anew now.

Her pink paint washed with the hot waterfall of sadness, of guilt and even when she finally arrives home, parks the car foolishly by the pavement of the driveway, she has to remain in the vehicle till her wracked shoulders are released from the torment of her soul.

She didn't know to what degree the tears were for.

Whether it was for the initial rejection that still stung her words to whimpers and moans of grief, or if in fact it was the submission. The way he almost performed a role that he could not play very well.

The way he had tried to be brutal with her, but had only reinforced her desperation for him.

She cries harder, cradling the steering wheel with both hands, he forehead and her hair tumbling over the peony scent when she thinks how deeply he didn't want her.

Or that he didn't want her… tenderly.

That she would only ever be wanted as possession to be had.

At its pinnacle, that he would regretfully use such beliefs to prove to her that he wasn't the image she had thought of him.

And yet if that were true, why did the flames of desire seem to embroil them both in a delicious burn? Why was it that she would sooner crumble to ash under his hate than be victim of his indifference?

Why did he punish her with his tormenting kisses when he didn't want her?

The porch light flickers on, the yellow tinge falling onto the white shutters of their home. She staggers in breath, her chest enclosing difficultly.

The clock reads eleven.

She had been with Doctor Cullen for hours now. She had been in his arms for the majority of them- Emmett was going to be so mad. Her parents. She shudders when she considers Carlisle's own reference to them and rubs away the tears still steaming to enter her home on cautious feet.

If she is lucky maybe it's just Emmett. Maybe he has covered for her. Told them she was staying at Victoria's or something.

She fiddles with the door on shaking hands and is greeted to the horror of her parents and her elder brother. The tears do not dry up as they need to. They drown in her eyes, wash them to the extent that she can barely make out the figures around her.

'Where the hell have you been?!' Her father demands, his face glowing in a hue she is barely familiar with. Her father never yells. He reprimanded in his office. If he was yelling than her college life was surely over.

Her mother is looking equally terrified as she drags the crumbling girl indoors, except she is empathetic to her sobs and cradles her in the way only a mother can.

'What happened?' she demands, her voice as equally as panicked.

'N-nothin,' she stumbles, desperately trying to make her way to the stairs. Elizabeth Masen's hands are grasping at her shoulders, the neck of her ruffled blouse, her wrist. Guiltily she sobs even more.

Her father takes to her tears with outrage.

'You have been with a boy, haven't you?!'

'Ted!' Her Mother yells.

He dismisses her with a heavy flummox of his hand, his daytime suit rumpled with stress and his tie knotted irreversibly by his collar. Emmett is hiding behind the scenes now. She thinks she can recognise guilt in his eyes, fear that he cannot be forgiven for the necessary betrayal. In this instance, she can only blame herself.

After all, she'd told him she'd be back in five minutes.

'Father,' Esme whines delicately. 'Of course not-'

He grasps her other shoulder throwing her painfully into the photo frames on the wall but far more harshly than Carlisle did. The images strike even more brutally. Even when he'd kissed her… even when Carlisle had tried to be forceful with her, he'd still been passionately gentle. He'd been… tender.

The mirrors of brown eyes are crushing into hers, weighing her to confession.

'Don't lie to me, Esme Masen. You think I am deaf to the tales that are being told?!'

And understandably, she cries even harder.

'Dad-,' Emmett pleads. Her father shakes them off, tightens his grip on his daughter.

'You think we don't know what that Evenson boy has been saying?! Were you with him?! Is that where you were?!'

'Edward!' Elizabeth strikes in horror. 'Edward, stop.'

'No,' she blubbers, pathetically. 'No, I would never!'

'You dare do this to your mother?! You dare have her in panic for hours of the night only for you to deface the family name?!'

'Dad,' she sobs. Her mother is aghast as she tries to simultaneous calm her husband's anger and soothe her hurting child. 'I swear to you-'

'Were you taken advantage of?!'

He is still growling with a grumble like that of Emmett's car but his eyebrows are searing fury into her. Even within this sentence, the liability is completely on her. That she would've let herself be taken advantage of.

She considers her youngest brother. They must have likely sent Alice and Edward to bed but they would be hearing this. Undoubtedly they would have their ears pressed upon the floor to listen.

The tears continue to swim under her chin.

And wasn't that the problem? That even when she offered her soul to him, he only wished to take it reluctantly. That he needed convincing? That Carlisle Cullen did not offer the extent of commitment she would undoubtedly offer him?

'Is that all you care about?!' She blunders, dragging the back of her hand beneath her nose and catching the edges of the fading flower on her cheek. Like the clouds, she waters them, looks to the silk bowtie of her wrist with anguish.

'What on Earth are you insinuating?!'

'Do you not think it could've been something other than my damn virtue? Is it really so high a mark of disgrace to you?! Does my happiness not matter? Not my well-being? Only my worth as a wife-'

Mr Masen gnashes his teeth together, his thumb leaving marks into her arm.

'You spoilt, insolent Girl. Are you really that ungrateful to the life we have given you-?!'

She had forgotten momentarily, who she dares argue with.

'No,' she disputes wetly. 'Dad, I didn't mean that-'

'You are the only girl in this town, in this state who is going to college. You yourself said that you didn't want to settle down and we honoured your wishes. Do you ignore the extent of your privilege?!'

'No,' she cries. 'Dad please- no.'

'Well you can forget about it now,' he threatens darkly. 'If we can barely trust you for a night, you filthy harlot-'

Her mother tears her eyes away.

'Why won't you believe me that nothing happened?!' She sobs, her hands crumbling into her expression. 'Please, please you promised-'

'We didn't raise you to be like this! It's that damn school- it was that Evenson-'

'Father please,' she screams. He looks even more harshly at her and trembling, she bites her lip. 'I haven't heard of Charles in weeks- I haven't even seen-.'

'Then where were you?!'

'I wasn't with a boy!' she swears, desperately. He scoffs. 'I promise you-'

'I won't listen to your hysterics, Esme. Go to bed.'

'But-'

'Now!' He roars.

'Edward,' his wife pleads emotionally, but he tears his arm away from both the women and watches his daughter run up the stairs in sobs.

As she drowns her miseries on a pillow, crying not just for the night or for her father or the events of her prom night, from across the bridle way Doctor Cullen remains bitterly on the floor of his conservatory. The tape deck has long since clicked off, the candles blown out and he remains upon the floor no more than a man traumatised by his own hands. Until eventually, he resolves to find her. To ensure she is safe and leaving the door carelessly open, he runs out to the car and starts his drive across town.

It takes some time for the young girl's bawling and convulsing to settle down into noiseless mewls and even then it leaves her winded enough to dizzy her head and make her feel close to throwing up.

She curls her hands tighter around the pillow, smearing it with the remaining pinks and blacks of her make-up, his silk bow-tie still wound smoothly over her wrist. It seemed whenever she is with Doctor Cullen, she left with a fabric memento. Such a reminder encourages several more repetitive tears to posses her features.

Someone knocks gingerly at her door. She supposes it will either be Emmett coming to plead awkward forgiveness while also demanding the truth of the event, or it will be Edward and Alice. She's surprised she hasn't heard them talking already. Or maybe the exorcism of her heart was loud enough to cover their conversation.

She tightens her face into the pillow case, mumbles sorely that she wishes to be left alone.

There's another knock.

'Go away, Edward.'

'It's not Edward,' the voice murmurs gently. Esme turns over her shoulder, flickering the knots of her waves back to see her mother's hand fiddling on her apron strings. 'May I come in?'

'Oh Mom,' and the girl falls into the pillow again, crying just as much.

The elder woman slips though the bedroom, comes to the convulsing of her daughter's back and settles a warm but firm hand on her side. She stays silent, waiting for the exhaustion to wear her out to calmness, her hand consistently stroking an arm, her side, her hair.

'Come,' she whispers and she helps the girl to sit up exhaustively.

She disappears for a moment, reappears with a cloth in her hand as she looks to the mess of paint on swollen features.

Of course, a likely catalyst to her father's anger. He hated when she wore make-up. Particularly if the colours were anything more than natural skin tones.

As if she was small, her mother pulls Esme's face into her hands and carefully wipes the smear of colour. She rubs gently, neither conveying a face of disappointment or relief but something directly in between, clearing her complexion smooth.

Silently, she unbuckles her shoes and encouraging the girl up to face her sore beaten stance in the mirror, her mother begins to help undress her from the tight fabrics.

'You'll still get to college,' she promises, undoing the buttons down her spine and watching the misery on her face pull her into a lost daydream. The tears have not stopped their assault but at the very least they are slowing.

'I doubt it,' she corrects. 'He's never been so angry.'

'We were worried for you, Sweet.'

Esme thinks it convenient her mother has aided in undressing her before encouraging the conversation. She suspects it's a deliberate attempt to leave her vulnerable and judge the tales on her face. She drops her chin to her chest, intaking a breath as her mother unbuckles the skirt roughly.

'That Evenson lad…'

'Mom, I would never… after what he did at the school. Do you really think I would ever trust him?'

She takes her daughters jaw in her hands and sighing, a small smile breaking, she kisses her cheek in relief.

'I know,' she soothes. 'I just needed to hear it wasn't him….'

In the mirror, the autumn eyebrows of the young woman flicker and cautious, now left in her brassier and undergarments, she turns to where her Mother is looking down upon her grown body. Her cheeks are as rounded as Esme's but her tied hair is closer to Emmett's colour and the eyes are the same ones bestowed to Edward.

She did, however, inherent the bosom. She sighs fracturedly.

'Do not take me for a fool, Maple…'

Her shoulders flicker again. The nickname bestowed by her dad now crossing her mother's lips could only mean she was daring the girl to lie to her.

'Mom, I said I wasn't with-'

'A boy, yes, I know.' She strokes the knotted hair again, and still while the girl is indecent or would be to another's eyes, she takes a hairbrush and slowly starts to untie the knotted fusions by her shoulders. 'Me thinks the girl protests too much?'

Her mouth falls open guilty, her red cheeks now glowing for more reasons as her mother busies herself in her task.

'I don't take kindly to you lying, Esme…'

'Mom I-,' she considers lying again but it would only be oh too fruitless now. She lowers her chin and sniffles. 'It wasn't like that…'

'Did you give yourself to him?'

The words are harsh but she asks them calmly, as if relenting herself to the ordeal. Her hands continue to gently unravel the knots, frizzing the colour to madness as she brushes from scalp to spine.

'No.'

But she surely tried…

Elizabeth Masen's shoulders lower in a second air of relief. She smiles again, as if thanking her for the honesty but the daughter's tears are gathering once more.

'He doesn't…' she gasps, furiously wipes away the stream.

'Hm?'

'The…' she is not going to say boy because then she will be lying to herself and confessing a lie to her Mother. 'He doesn't see me like that…'

'And yet you love him?'

She nods, guiltily.

'Enough to stop college?' she muses questionably.

Esme frowns. Her whole life she had been dreaming about college and… and Doctor Cullen shared those dreams. While the other teachers promoted her skills as a mother, he respected her for her independence. If she was forbidden to go, she truly wouldn't know who would be more devastated. Her or Carlisle.

If he still respected her at all that is…

And again, those stupid jewels of water fall down her cheeks.

'No,' Esme whispers. 'It hardly matters now. Dad will never let me go and even if I stay, Charles has damned my future enough-'

Her mother glares at her, likely for the casual curse.

'I'll talk with him.' She wraps a now knot-free lock around her ear, plaits the longer ends together. 'He is brash with you out of love, Esme. He doesn't doubt your goodness but doubts that others have been good to you…'

She winces, fiddles her hands together.

'But sneaking off for hours this evening… Alone as well. Can you understand why he would be so worried?'

'I'm sorry,' she says quietly, the words difficult to pry from her tongue. 'To both of you. I didn't mean to frighten you. I was just… I just needed… needed…'

'Sweetheart, we know this is scary. Perhaps made worse if you have ties here…'

'They aren't ties, Mother,' she corrects regretfully.

Elizabeth chuckles gently, helps the girl into her nightie.

'He doesn't reciprocate,' she reminds her. 'And regardless… even if he did… I couldn't…'

If her father would still let her go to college then she had a right to take it up… To prove herself.

'My Darling, if he is truly worth loving, his heart will remain committed to you no matter where you are….'

She feels the tears start to swell again but she is too exhausted to let them fight her into submission.

'Get some rest, okay?'

'Mom-'

Elizabeth pauses on her feet, looking towards the girl lovingly.

'Please don't tell Dad… I don't want him to…' What? Believe her? Disbelief her? No longer trust her? 'I don't want to disappoint him…'

Her posture lowers again, her smile still small but trusting as she settles an eager curl back behind the girl's ear.

'You could never,' she promises. She puts her cold lips to her daughter's temple and switching the light off, bids her sweet dreams.

She is over exhausted now. Made brittle with the weight of the world, the memories of the evening, the image of her father's desolation… Carlisle.

To mind, she is so exhausted that she almost doesn't hear the creek of the two and two pairs of feet creep awkwardly to her bed. Almost.

'Esme?' Alice asks weakly.

She smiles weakly, pulls open the cover to let both of them in. Edward is quiet, possibly frightened given their father's temper but then considering the boy had his own matters of trauma with him, it wouldn't be a surprise if he was focused on those bitter memories from a different time.

Alice's little figure cradles into her as though she is a mere girl of ten, not fourteen. But Edward, always lanky in posture, settles with a pillow by her feet, curling his knees to his chest to hear her.

She kisses Alice's forehead, her tears nearly dried now, and then arranges the duvet to cover all three bodies. The warmth of them, the unequivocal acceptance is the medicine she needs to calm.

'It sounded pretty brutal down there,' she whispers carefully. 'Mr Masen sounded awful mad…'

Edward is still very quiet though his green eyes are sparkling on her in concern. She smiles at him in the dark, hoping he is not focusing on just how swollen her face must look from all the crying.

'No, he was just worried…'

'Where were you, Esme?' Edward's voice almost breaks as he asks it, the panic in his strain, the fragility. She pulls herself up to kiss his forehead too, stoke his errant hair back in apology for her actions. He keeps his chin tilted.

'Nowhere important,' she reassures, fiddling through the realms of knots and getting caught on the dried gel he had awkwardly thrust through it.

'Dad almost called the police…'

Esme winces in the dark.

'He was really worried… Emmett's been grounded…'

And now she feels even worse.

'I was safe,' she promises the two of them. Now both are coming to her for reassurance, treating her like a nursing cat as they seek refuge in her warmth.

'You… you weren't with….'

It becomes all too clear how little she has been considering the weight of Charles until now. Sure she had been the intended victim of his taunts. This time. Though she hadn't considered the rippling it had caused to the others. Her father at work, for example. Her parents in church. Her siblings worrying obsessively over her safety.

'No,' she promises. 'Oh Edward, I would never waste my time with such a lowlife as Charles Evenson.'

'Then where were you, Esme?' his voice is too tight for comfort and she notices at once that if he starts to cry, they will all be in a deeper mess than they are now.

And then Edward will be punished for staying up late.

'You really want to know?' She asks, lowering her tone to almost silence. The pair of them nod eagerly, eyes wide in curiosity. 'You promise not to tell Mom or Dad?'

'We promise!' Alice swears. Edward agrees too, his hands clutching the fabric of the covers.

'Well, lay down and I'll tell you.'

Both do as she requests. They lay down amongst the cushioning, breathing deeply.

'So you remember the time Emmett taped up the old-school bully to the lamppost by the art building? And Headmaster Forser had him banned from the grounds?'

Edward smiles.

'It seems as though he hadn't forgotten about his tirade. He took one look at Emmett and I, told us to go-'

'You missed the prom?!' Alice asks, her voice shuddering. Esme squeezes her arm.

'Mr Garcia and Doctor Cullen leapt to Emmett's defence, all jumping in and trying to persuade Headmaster Forser to let him stay and he wouldn't have it. He said all these horrible things-'

'What did he say?' Edward asks, anxiously squeezing the blanket. She tries to reassure him with a smile but she should've considered anything between school and trouble had him in knot.

She should really be considering the weight of her words.

'Nothing much,' she amends calmly. 'He just went on one of his horrific rants and with the whole year there, watching, I was mortified and I tried to leave….'

She takes a calming pause, listening to their breaths soften though both are still wide awake.

'Do you remember when I told you about the gentleman who found me those weeks ago… and helped me escape to Wisconsin?'

She ought to feel guilty there. When Carlisle had first found her, she couldn't have come back considering the state she was in so she'd told her family that she impulsively went to Wisconsin to stay with a cousin.

Edward did not believe her.

So rather than tell him the whole truth about where she had been… and under whose care… she had simply confessed that a gentleman had found her. For some reason this has satisfied them to some extent.

Perhaps his naivety.

The biggest problem being that she made the tale all too exciting and now, it had almost become a game between her and Alice. She clung to the details with intrigue and Esme, all too grateful to have someone believe in him, easily complied.

'Yes?'

'Well… he was there.'

'At the prom?!' Alice asks, her excitement getting ahead of her. 'Did he look good?'

'He was very handsome,' she promises distractedly, thinking again to the easy detailing of his waistcoat, the linen trousers on sturdy legs. 'Anyway, he convinced me to stay. To enjoy the prom. So I tried to but he left…'

'He left? Why?'

Esme shrugs carefully.

'He's just a little shy sometimes and it was his first prom… he didn't even have a date-'

'You didn't have a date either,' Edward reminds her, eyebrow raising suspiciously.

'It's different for a girl, Edward. He is the kind that is too shy to ask a date to attend so once he got there, I suppose it was a little overwhelming-'

'Oh Esme, why didn't you dance with him?! You're a fabulous teacher, you could've taught him in an instant!'

'There's the problem,' she whispers dramatically, flattered by Alice's commentary. 'When it came time to dance, he was already gone.

'What did you-'

She ignores the interruptions and carries on, selling the romantics of her story even if she has re-written the details for the benefit of the children present.

'Emmett had been missing for a while now, and believing he'd be busy the whole night trying to convince Mr Forser to let us stay, I decided to drive over the gentleman's house and invite him back.'

'You went to his house? What did his parents say?!'

Edward remains in shock, looking at her like he almost cannot believe Esme would dare break such a rule.

'His parents weren't there. It was just him but he wasn't as shy anymore. So I invited myself in and offered to be his first dance.'

'You did?!' Alice gasps.

'Then he found a collection of slow songs, fashioned me a corsage from his bow tie-'

She lifts her wrist into view where she has still not persuaded herself to untangle the knot. She presses the aroma to Alice's face, hears the gentle flush of giggles and offers it to Edward too. He sniffs the petals, wrinkles his nose and settles back to the pillow.

'-And then we danced.'

'Was he a good dancer?!' Alice exclaims, 'Was it romantic?'

'He was perfect. He knew exactly where to put his hands and where to move his feet and he held me all night without ever needing to stop.'

She has to press her lips together to stop the guilt immobilising her.

'Did you kiss?' Alice breathes excitedly. It'd been a long and exhaustive night but at the giggle of the girl's voice, her head inching closer to pry the secrets from her, Esme cannot help but giggle a little too. She looks up over at Edward to see if he is paying attention.

Boys never liked such impertinent questions as these.

'Yes,' Esme whispers bowing her forehead to Alice's and smiling.

'What was it like?!'

'Alice,' Edward moans but he still moves closer as if regrettably curious.

'Perfect.' She swears vaguely. 'He was absolutely perfect.'

'Then why were you crying?' Edward asks her, shuffling up close now to read her expression.

He hasn't been sold on her story. For one, his face his downcast and he look sullenly at her as though he is not really asking but reading her mind.

She has to exchange favourites here and carefully invites Edward to lay up next to her so that she can cuddle him too, settle those nervous worries that always seem to plague him. Though Alice is smaller, there is something about Edward being in her arms that is infinitely more fragile. Maybe it is the inevitably he will shuffle away, maybe it is that fear always takes his first concern. Maybe it is because they nearly lost him once.

Regardless, with a blanket around him, she squeezes him to her, resting her cheek on his head.

'Because I hurt him…'

'Why did you hurt him?' he whispers. She lowers her voice even more, feeling Alice's cheek press into her arm less she misses out on the details.

'Because I love him. And we always hurt the ones we love.'

'But can't you apologise?' he offers weakly. 'Can't you-'

She shakes her head against him, sighs shakily.

'Why don't you sing for me? That always makes me feel better…'

'Esme,' he grumbles. 'You know I hate it when you ask me that.'

'Please?' she presses. 'You can hum if you'd rather?'

'I'll hum,' he settles.

He sings a classical tune that he only knows thanks to Doctor Cullen's tutelage. But he still sings it honourably. It doesn't take long for his gentle tones to send Alice to sleep and soon enough, his own hum draws her baby brother to peace as his fraught expression moves into total calm. She stays huddled warmly between the two of them, not quite able to rest despite her heaviness but even when she tries, another disturbance happens upon her door.

'Es?'

Emmett has surely got to know there is no way he's fitting in this bed. She considers ignoring him so that she can sleep instead but then she remembers he has been just as hurt by her antics this evening.

Careful not to disrupt the youngers, she pulls on a dressing gown and opens the door to him.

'We'll talk tomorrow?' she promises softly except Emmett's shaking his head, pointing in the direction of the stairs.

'No, it's not that.' For once his expression is incredibly serious. 'There's a phone call for you.'

'A phone call?' She repeats. 'At this time?'

She goes to read his watch but he reads it for her.

'Ten to.'

Ten to tomorrow, that is.

Frowning she ties the fabric together and pads gently after his loping down the stairs.

'Whose on the phone?' she asks, meaning to simply ask him but her mother and her father are here too.

Her father is looking at her rather strangely. It's almost as if there is guilt in his eyes, a twinkling sparkling regret. He is in the kitchen with his hand around the plastic receiver, holding it to his ear as he watches her step curiously towards them.

Her mother strokes her hair delicately, rubbing the flush of her cheeks.

'What's happened?' she asks, worriedly. 'Whose on the phone?'

Her father turns, almost hiding the movement of his lips as if worried the conversation is trying to be read.

'It's your teacher,' her mother warns her softly. Esme frowns. 'Doctor Cullen. He was concerned about you… said you left in bit of an upset. He wants to know you're okay.'

For a moment, the disbelief wishes her to crumble destitute to the floor. She wants to pleads thanks to the heavens, to fate, to her soul and more importantly she want to purge her guilt on more tears. Yet her parents, and Emmett, are staring at her and therefore she has to remain closeted.

'Oh?' she murmurs shakily. 'That's awfully kind…'

She swallows the lump in her throat, looks up to see if her dad is finished with whatever he seems to be saying. It's agonising watching his mouth move and not knowing the words that are coming from them. She can't even read his lawyer face; it is too rendered in neutrality for her to guess.

Her mother is fiddling with her hair again, sweeping that autumn lock around her ear and smoothing her worries.

'He's explained what happened, Sweetheart.'

'Yes?' she asks shakily. She tries to guess what he might have said but all she is reading in her mother's green eyes is sympathy. She lowers her inflection 'Oh, yes…'

Her father is beckoning her closer now. Her heart is frantic and frightened, leaping and vaulting in its cage as she bumbles awkwardly across the kitchen tiles.

'For you, Maple.' His large hands raise the phone to her.

Maple.

Had he forgiven her? Did this mean he still loved her?

She gulps and takes the phone from him, smiling in acknowledgment. He nods his head and leaves her the privacy of the conversation, so far as also leading his wife and son from the scene.

'Hello?' she breathes, cautiously.

'Oh Esme…'

And even on the grating of the phone line she thinks she will surely crumble at his feet in apologies. Hidden from sight, she puts her hand to her mouth to catch the sob.

'My Darling, are you okay?'

'I'm okay, are you okay?'

'I was so worried. I didn't know where you would've gone- I tried so hard not to call, Esme. Really. It's so-. So wrong of me… to call.'

She can't help but feel he is starting to break a little. Even in the delicacy of his voice, he seems to be throwing himself at her feet, pleading for her forgiveness. Every line is coming from him like the cry of a violin and if it wasn't for her parents, she would surely give in and let the sobs take her.

'It's okay,' she reassures softly. 'You're okay.'

She thinks she hears him sniffle but it's rather an unusual thought and she is plagued by another more endearing concept. The fact that he has called her. Until this moment, she had never heard his voice over the telephone, never heard his soothing accent twisted by electronics.

Even from across the hill, he sounds as perfect as normal.

But she misses him all the more now.

'I-I had to tell them,' he stutters. 'About Headmaster Forser, I mean. About the prom. I had to lie Esme-'

'It's for the best.'

She must be careful with her words. If they are listening they will only hear her voice and so she must do her best to remain vague. Her tongue is quivering to make just one small Carlisle. Just whisper it and have him acknowledge it but she can't and the restraint is tortuous.

'I have a meeting with your father about it tomorrow…'

She doesn't mean for the gasp to slip from her lips as violently as it does.

'What…' will you say, will you do? She wants to demand. 'About?' She decides difficultly.

He clears his throat.

'I feel I ought to tell him… to confess to everything I've done to you…'

No. Oh God No, No he can't. He'd be slaughtered. Ex-communicated even. And she'd be inconsolable.

'No, don't,' she urges. 'What with Forser and…' she doesn't want to use the excuse but if it will protect him… protect them, she can't find any reason not to. 'And Evenson…'

'That's what I thought I would say,' he mutters quietly. 'I thought to blame them-'

'It's the truth,' she reminds him. 'Doctor Cullen,' she stops, briefly distracting herself and him judging by the change in breath. 'You saw why I was so upset…'

'Yes,' he murmurs guilty, gathering the implication. Yes, he was agreeing. Yes, he would conceal the truth. 'I hate what I did to you, Esme… I don't know how I am ever to live with this guilt.'

'All is forgiven by me,' she whispers, trying her best to soothe him within the realms of her ability. 'God forgives all… even perhaps those with ignorant tongues.'

She makes the jibe a bit too soon based on the fact that he doesn't laugh nor apparently pull himself from his sadness.

'You deserve tenderness, Esme.' He promises. 'It will be yours, you will be treated with so much-'

'I know,' she promises, interrupting in case he talks is way into madness. 'And likewise… you are so-'

She holds her tongue, briefly looks behind her shoulder before pressing her lips to the receiver in a dark secret.

'- loved, Carlisle…'

He gasps, shakily and she listens to the sound of his breaths calm the more he talks to her, as if she is the sole reason for his calm. He is surely hers because she is relaxed now, almost, almost sleepy.

Until his next line.

'I can't see you anymore.'

She was expecting it, but it doesn't reduce the pain any less. She grasps her throat in case a noise of torture escapes from it.

'I… know,' she whispers brokenly, sniffling the tears away. 'What I did-'

'Oh My Love, it isn't you. Can't you see it isn't you? It's me. I can't… I can't cause you pain like this again, Esme. I can't. It's killing me.'

She wants to tell him a lot of things. She wants to sob and ask him to truly forgive her. She wants to promise that she will remain respectful only if he doesn't push her away. She wants to beg for him to remain…

'You're not… not leaving?'

'No,' he promises. 'No, I swore to you I wouldn't…'

She gulps, thinking to Edward with relief. If she had gotten rid of his one reason for schooling, she'd never forgive herself. And her parents would hate her all the more.

'It's late,' he whispers. 'You need to rest…'

'Will I not hear from you tomorrow?' she blurts out hastily. 'What about the meeting?'

'I promise I won't implicate you,' he swears and she can see him touching his heart as he promises.

'Your kindness, Doctor Cullen.' She lowers her head, the plait slipping over her shoulder as she fights her tears. 'I will never know another like it.'

'Oh you will. You will. My Dear, you will have everything. My faith is in you. That you will achieve all that you want from the world and will receive more than you could hope for. My faith is you, Esme.'

She doesn't wish to hang up. She knows she mustn't keep him too long or her parents will become suspicious but she wants to tell him, she need to tell him just how dearly… how dearly she loves him.

'And I you.'

He inhales cautiously.

'Sweet dreams, Miss Masen.'

'Goodnight, Doctor Cullen….'

---

The next Morning, her father leaves the house early, dressed in a suit that almost seems smarter than the usual. He combs his hair perfectly, kisses his wife on the cheek and leaves his children eating breakfast amongst each other.

Mr Masen had said few words to her over the course of twelve hours but the things he had said had been simple enough, of his usual warmth.

Eyes follow him in town. He has come to expect them ever since his daughter's dalliance with that Evenson boy… but he does his best to ignore them.

Doctor Cullen has arrived at his office earlier than it was agreed and though in a usual context, it would almost be rude, in this is comes to example just how nervous the man looks. Mr Masen gives him another once over. His own suit is also smarter than usual, crisp. Not that of a doctor's uniform, nor of a teacher's. His light hair been combed painfully straight, lathered in cream but while he looks everything of a man, the moment he looks to his face, he remembers that the talented Doctor Cullen is only a few years older than Emmett.

'Good Morning, Sir.'

What's more odd is that he speaks to him as though talking to a superior when the man's intelligence equipped him with far more qualifications…

'Yes, Good Morning Doctor Cullen. Thank you for meeting me so early.'

Nevertheless, he invites the man in, and lets him expound his energies into nothing less than dire reverence to his family.

In quiet honesty, he never knew the man could talk so much. He was always a quiet one in church. And yet… yet as he incriminates one man for the good of his children, Mr Masen can't help but wonder if there is something he is missing.

'Sir, with all good honour, your children do you a world of honour in the good they stand for. And… and Miss Masen is far from the exception,'

It's the rather unusual way he says Miss Masen. It's like he is all too familiar with it but is similarly foreign to the sound. The man is clearly exhausting himself in his efforts to defend their family name. His eyes are purpled, his face pale and he keeps wringing his hands in a way that Mr Masen finds comforting.

The Doctor hesitates.

'As a daughter, she will go far. As a student, she will surpass expectations and as a… as a wife…'

The man stumbles on the word foolishly, brushes it like sweeping it under a rug.

'As a..?' Mr Masen asks.

'W-wife,' Doctor Cullen whimpers. 'She is… she will make….' He calms himself, sighs chaotically and juts his chin forward. 'Mr Masen, your Darling Girl is everything''

'Doctor Cullen,' Mr Masen interrupts quickly. He is not offended nor suspicious, but he is empathetic to the man's consistent perspiration. One would've presumed he is near fainting. 'Doctor Cullen, my Esme is not like most girls her age,-'

'No,' the teacher agrees emphatically. 'No, far from-'

'After listening to you, Sir, you've perhaps reminded me how I might have rashly reacted… I have faith she'll make a great mother, like her own…-'

Carlisle casts his eyes low.

'She is just too young for marriage now. She is too young to be candidly loved. Your selflessness is much too kind, Doctor. But before your compliments run away with you and you say something rather regretful….' Mr a Masen breathes deeply. 'I will stop you and thank you for your time.'

---

Esme is too distracted to be able to calmly assist in chores for the day. She had promised Edward a chess match at some point but instead, she has plastered herself to the window by the front door, willing the return of her Father's vehicle.

Willing any vehicle for that matter so long as her Father is in it.

Her mother has to ask her to stop daydreaming. Her mother also has to ask her to stop fretting and trust in her predictions. It is not enough. It is not enough that she suspects Doctor Cullen will try to convince her father to let her go to college.

Because she wants to know the word he uses.

She has to know the lines he employs, how he says it, to what degree, whether he is calm or nervous, whether his hair is slipping into his blue eyes, whether he smells of crushed peonies, whether he is squinting from the break of the sun by the large office window…

Emmett tries to persuade her that if college is struck, it'll be a good thing in hindsight. And then he apologises and awkwardly backtracks.

At ten past two, her father finally returns.

He has been gone the entire Morning and now late into the afternoon on a Saturday… He didn't have clients to see. He would usually but not today, he commented upon it last night.

It makes her even more nervous as she rises to greet him, holding her hands out for his coat and hat, taking his briefcase eagerly.

'How was your afternoon?' she asks, her voice bumping up and down, still swollen from this Morning's secret sobs.

'How was yours?' he asks instead, coming towards the kitchen to find Elizabeth settling a late lunch. He makes a face of appreciation, pats his stomach.

'It was well.'

'Good.' He agrees, wondering through the kitchen now and pausing by the refrigerator. He nods to the door in his office. 'I believe we ought to talk, yes?'

Her shoulders lower. She doesn't know whether she is grateful for finally being able to acknowledge that something is happening or to be miserable that it still requires discussion.

She follows awkwardly, her eyes on her bare feet as she settles into the chair. Her father closes the door, drops himself at the desk and looks at her silently for the moment.

'Doctor Cullen-'

'I'm sorry,' she blurts. 'I know I shouldn't have run off. I know I should've come home and not made you worry and I'm sorry I yelled at the both of you so unforgivably and made it seem like I am so ungrateful. I promise you I'm not. Father, I swear to you-'

'Maple,' he warns her, tiredly. 'I spoke with Doctor Cullen… he explained why you left in such rush yesterday…'

'I really am sorry-'

'Esme, let me finish.'

She swallows and reclines in her chair.

'I fear the things I said to you following your escape are now only the crueller in hindsight…'

'Oh Dad-'

He holds up a finger to stop her.

'This is not the first time Doctor Cullen has come to your rescue, Maple…'

She shuffles nervously but he smiles in light of his joke.

'The things he had to say for you and Edward… Well. They'd make a priest blush. He was exceptionally complimentary of you both…'

Her breaths are coming in harshly now, expanding her chest painfully.

'Without his words, Esme, I am ashamed to think I would've punished you so severely for matters you were accused of.'

She has to wrestle her hands together to stop them from shaking. He smiles, delicately.

'You may still go to College…'

'I can?' she whispers in disbelief. 'You'll let me go?'

'With my blessing, you will attend. On the provision you do not do something nearly as ridiculous as you did last night. Do you understand?'

'I understand,' she swears. He nods, calmly, touching his jaw cautiously before nodding to his briefcase.

'Good, then it is agreed. Pass me that, will you?'

She moves from the seat to do as requested and watches him unclick the box and throw a brown sealed parcel her way.

'It's from Doctor Cullen,' he murmurs. 'Now school is finished he suspected you may wish to catch up on some reading.'

She feels her face flush; her eyes look into her father's.

'R-reading?' She considers opening the package but given that it is sealed so tight; instinct make her question it. 'Well, that is kind of him…'

She looks to the package again, weighing it in her hands to feel for the implied books. There is certainly more than one in there… and she wonders what brazened him with the act. If talking on the phone was not forward enough for a teacher, to be gifting her books…

She watches her father again in case he is just as curious. His focus is on his newspaper and when he looks up, he is almost surprised to still find her there. So she thanks him, kissing him on his smooth cheek in thanks for the apology before disappearing to her room.

The door is shut in such a way that her family will suspect she is changing and likely will not hassle her. They are busy anyway, enjoying the glow of the hot weather as her siblings throw a ball around in the garden. She moves to the other side of her bed, settles on the floor to tear open the packaging with frantic hands.

The books inside are just as neatly wrapped, tied with string looped around the edges. Perhaps she would feel a lot less miserable if she could see this as something more flippant than a parting gift…

She feels her insides numb. College meant that there were no two ways about it. She was parting. He was right. He can't see her anymore.

Before the tears come, she pulls the book to her nose and inhales the sweet spices of parchment and oak varnish and maybe even bergamot. Her fingers are fidgeting when they untie the string, and unseal the tightly wrapped brown paper, first on a bigger, flatter book. The design on the cover looks expensive but they're hardback too and before she can consider if she's never seen a novel in such a design, she flicks a hand through the thick paper.

Blank.

A sketchbook.

He's bought her a sketchbook.

Her old one… She wasn't even too sure where it was, the last time she'd seen it was in Doctor Cullen's classroom some three weeks ago. Before the cupboard. Before he kissed her for the first time.

Before Charles brought that stupid gun to school.

She swallows, turns now to the smaller book. The cover almost looks broken, painted black and hand carved. The pages also seem a lot more delicate and the words… are scrawled in messy handwriting, just like a diary.

A square of paper falls out.

She touches it, unfolds open on her lap and gasps at the opening line.

My Darling Esme,

In 1929 English writer D H Lawrence published a novel that quickly sought the outrage of the public. Scandalised by its detailed handling of a wealthy man cuckolded from the affair of his affluent wife and groundskeeper, the book was soon banned and publication stopped. Since then, few copies have remained in circulation excluding hand-written imitations and French re-tellings.

On May 2nd, that wretched, loathsome swine Charles Evenson slipped this book into your bag during a so-called date I offered to Chaperone. Quite in view, I took it and read the pages myself before I came to realise. How a boy of his impertinence came within an invaluable copy, I cannot say for sure. You'll have to forgive that the few times I resolved to condemn him for the material, I was only incriminating myself. Instead, I resolved to confiscate the book and have it burnt.

As you will be able to tell, I have not been successful in my aims.

Of the things I have taught you, biologically or otherwise, my re-telling on the nature between man and woman was nothing shy of crass. I cannot forgive myself for the horrors I foretold when, as you know, I am no more familiar than you.

This is not a lone novel that speaks of relationships so candidly, and it will not be the last. However, I hope it serves to prove that if tenderness can be fictionalised it can be realised.

If you feel for me as I hope you do, you will burn this letter after reading.
Lest we incriminate the both of us.

As for the book, I have faith that you will decide to do what is right. Though I do encourage you to conceal it.

Eternally yours,

C.C

Esme Masen resolves not to burn the letter after all. She does not need to. The weight of her remaining tears washes the ink from the page and with whatever is left, she crumbles into tiny pieces till his handwriting is nothing but micro-puzzles on the skirt of her dress.

Then she swallows them, holds his words in her soul and hugs her knees to her chest as she expels the last tears that she can afford to give him.