**Disclaimer: The characters and situations of the Twilight Saga depicted in this story are the legal property of Stephenie Meyer, Summit Entertainment, and Little, Brown & Company, and have been used without permission. No copyright infringement is intended, and no profit is being made.
Chapter 6: Rain
That first night, after we arrived home from Port Angeles, she gave me a pained smile in the garage and said, "I need a little space."
My chest clenched. "Of course."
We entered the cottage and Bella went straight to Renesmee's room. She relieved Rosalie, who was reading the latest issue of Motor Trend in the chair by the bed. I stood in the doorway as Bella and Rose hugged, as Bella smiled like nothing was wrong and thanked my sister for helping us out.
But when Rose left, Bella stayed in our daughter's room. She climbed onto the bed beside Renesmee. The little girl stirred, instinctively snuggling into the body of her mother, but did not wake. I gazed at the two of them, my family, with tenderness and longing.
"Shut the door please, Edward," Bella whispered.
Reluctantly, I did so, giving Bella the space she requested.
I found a chair in the parlor and sat facing the window. Sunrise was only a few hours away, and I waited for it. In the morning, maybe Bella and I could talk, really talk. I could fix this. Or would she need longer than that?
It turned out, yes.
"I don't think I'm ready," she confessed while cutting up a mango at our kitchen counter for Renesmee's breakfast.
"Okay." I nodded, agreed, like I knew I was supposed to, but I felt such a spike of terror and turmoil. I couldn't even access the anger that had caused me to shout such an ugly thing at her. I remembered well that I had been absolutely furious with Bella and her repugnant suggestions. I knew that they disgusted me still, but I couldn't find those feelings anywhere inside me at the moment. All I could feel was dread that I had caused irrevocable damage and shame that I had lashed out and hurt her.
Her gaze dropped. "I'm sorry." I could see that she actually felt guilty for not being ready, for disappointing me. It made me feel ill.
"Don't be sorry, Bella." I placed my hand over hers before stopping to consider that she might not want me to. But she didn't pull away. "I'm the one who was out of line. I'm the one who was…" I struggled for an adequate descriptor, "mean. Take whatever time you need."
And then…time passed. A week.
Bella was visibly distant with me and everyone we interacted with could see it. Some even knew what was going on.
On the afternoon of the first day, while I was helping Esme clear some bushes on the north side of the house, Alice strode up, whapped me hard on the back of the head, then turned around and walked away. She didn't say a word, but I heard her loud and clear—she knew I had broken my promise.
I didn't elaborate on the situation for Esme, but she wasn't pleased that we weren't getting along. Despite her pleas, Alice hadn't spoken to me since.
Even worse than Alice knowing how I had behaved was Carlisle. That first evening, he invited me with his thoughts to go on a walk with him, but kept me out of his head until we were out of range of the house. We stopped by a winding brook with ancient trees bent over it and waist-high ferns crowding either bank.
"I had an interesting conversation with Bella this morning," he began. I don't know which was worse—the graveness of his demeanor or the kindness in his eyes. "She asked if there was any way a vampire could reduce their sex drive."
I felt my face fall.
"I'm sharing the broad strokes of the interaction because I doubt very much I would be able to control my thoughts around you about it indefinitely. Bella gave her permission—she told me right off that she knew it would be almost impossible for me to keep secrets from you, but that I was the only person she thought might be able to help her."
"Were you?" I spoke to my shoes, hands fisted in the pockets of my jacket.
"No," Carlisle's voice was gentle. "To the best of my knowledge, there is no way to artificially impact our chemistry in that way. With humans, of course, there are all kinds of treatments which have to potential to raise or lower sex drive—but their internal workings are much more complex and fragile than ours."
I nodded numbly. I could see the image of Bella in Carlisle's mind, in the faded chair across from his desk at the hospital. She was curled in on herself, like a wounded animal attempting to make itself look small, and she was plainly miserable.
"The only avenue I could think of was an aspect in which we are nearly identical to humans," he continued.
My jaw felt tight. "Psychologically."
Carlisle inclined his head. "Obviously, trauma or depression can have a major impact, whether someone is human or vampire, but I hardly think either is a solution to anything, let alone problems in the bedroom."
If I could die of shame, I would have in that moment.
He sat on large rock facing me, the sunset over his shoulder. "Edward, you can ask me anything. I am at your disposal." He looked so neutral, so nonjudgmental, it was like a punch to the gut.
"Bella's sex drive is…it's very high, even beyond the factors of her being new to her vampire body and the two of us being recently married. We fought last night, and I said something unkind."
"Unkind?"
I wanted to be clear about this, so that Carlisle knew my actions were indefensible. "In so many words, I told her that her appetites were excessive and a burden."
The expression on Carlisle's face cut right through me. He struggled to temper his thoughts, but I was overwhelmed by his disappointment in me. "That is unkind."
"I didn't mean it," I said pathetically.
He studied me. "Didn't you?"
I inhaled sharply.
"Edward, I can see two reasons you might have said something so directly cruel. Either it is true but you have been suppressing those feelings because you knew they would hurt her, or it is untrue and the only reason you said it was to deliberately cause Bella pain. I can't see you doing the latter." He watched me absorb that.
My fingers raked through my hair. He was right. Rage at my own weakness clawed through me. "How do I take it back?" It was a childish outburst. I knew that what I had said could never be unsaid.
"You can't." There was so much pity in his eyes.
"Then how do I fix it?"
Carlisle didn't reply immediately, and a kind of refreshed horror swept me when I realized why. He was thinking of Bella, the crumpled version who had come to him this morning. I can't see a clear path to how this rift can be repaired, but I can't say that. Edward is so prone to despair. He needs guidance, and there must be a way. They love each other so much. If only I knew how to help. He was at a loss. Carlisle didn't talk to the people he loved the way I had spoken to Bella, so he lacked first-hand experience. He could only apply generalized wisdom. "You've apologized, of course?"
I nodded. "Yes, immediately. And again this morning after we both had some distance."
"Then all you can do is show her with your actions that you are sincere. Give her space and time as she needs, and make showing your love a priority."
It was good advice, but it was nothing I hadn't come up with on my own. Maybe there was nothing else that could be done.
I did my best, over the next several days, to be there for Bella but out of her way, to show her my remorse without pressuring her for a response. Bella was civil, but kept me at arm's length, literally and figuratively. Not since we first met had I gone so long in her presence without touching her.
It was such a strange experience. In the past, Bella had always forgiven me quickly, no matter what I had done. I used to bemoan her inability to stay angry with me, to hold me accountable for my bad behavior, but here was the proof that she could. The difference, I supposed, was that even when I had hurt her before, sometimes deeply, profoundly, Bella could always trace my intentions to noble or loving origins. Not so here.
She spent most of her time during the day with my family or with Renesmee. Her nights were spent reading in a corner of the parlor. She showered in the north bathroom, dressed in the room Alice had designated as the closet, and never once set foot in our bedroom. It was a such a pointed departure from our usual patterns that it could not possibly be misinterpreted. Bella and I used our bedroom for one thing and one thing alone, and it was off the table.
Shamefully, as the days passed, I found myself going into the room more and more—only when she was gone and wouldn't know. I didn't want her to think I was trying to manipulate her. I just missed her. I would lie down on our bed for hours, to smell her scent, to feel close to her. My anguish was growing. I could feel it swelling in my chest, my throat, so acutely that it was painful. I remembered what Bella had said about how she wished she could cry and thought I understood. None of my usual ways of releasing emotion were working. Everything was trapped inside me, pressing against the walls. The only experience I could relate to this was when I had foolishly thought I could leave her.
At the end of that first week, Bella announced a girls trip to Seattle. She, Alice, and Rose took Renesmee for a day of museum visits and shopping, capping off with a night at the ballet. They returned well after midnight, with Nessie curled up asleep in the back seat.
As I helped Bella unload the crate of books she had purchased from a second-hand bookstore, she presented me with a paper sack.
"They had some vinyl in the back, separate from the books. There were a few I thought you might like."
That she had been thinking of me while she was away, lit me with such warm hope inside that I briefly felt dizzy. In the bag, I found The Crickets, Martha and the Vandellas, and Solomon Burke. On top was Roy Orbison's In Dreams.
She chewed her lower lip. "I know you have that one as a CD, but you mentioned that you didn't like the remaster."
I was at a loss for words.
"Edward, is it all right if we talk?"
I answered in the affirmative, not daring to breathe, and she led me to our bedroom. She paused inside the door, and we both eyed the mess of rumpled sheets, preserved relic of the last night we had spent here together—the night I had made love to her for ten hours straight. Despite having been in here multiple times, I hadn't been able to bring myself to change the sheets or make the bed.
"We're here for privacy," Bella said lightly. "Not for that."
I nodded stiffly. I hadn't thought anything different.
Bella sat on the cedar chest at the foot of the bed, arms close to her body, and gestured that I should take the cushioned French Modern chair in the nearby corner. After I was settled, she took a moment to gather her thoughts.
"Edward, I have spent a lot of time this week thinking about what happened." She managed a thin, forced smile. "I want you to know that I accept your apology and I forgive you. I'm not angry."
Those words should have been comforting, but they weren't. It wasn't that I doubted her, just that everything in me screamed that the picture was incomplete.
"If there is anything I am still pissed about, it's that you were unhappy or maybe just…unenthusiastic about some of the things we were doing, but you never told me. You didn't use the safe word or even just say that you didn't want to." Her voice trembled.
"It's not like that." I shook my head.
"Then what's it like, Edward?"
For the last week, I had wanted nothing more in the world than to talk to Bella like this, to be this close to her again and have all of her attention focused on me. Yet, now I had to suppress the urge to stand up and walk out of this room. One hundred percent of my energy had been focused on Bella and my dread that I had wounded our relationship in a way that wouldn't heal. I hadn't dealt with or examined my feelings of anger or disgust at all, and I didn't want to excavate them now. I wanted things back the way they were, and I couldn't see how expounding on the ugliness in me would get us there. "Bella…." I trailed off, unable to find the words.
She stared at me, unspeaking. The silence stretched between us as she did not give an inch, as I was forced to find a way to articulate myself.
"Do you remember what you said about how, in the past, I conflated things that were a hard limit for me and things that I thought were out of the question because I was worried about ruining our relationship or hurting you? How I had a hard time separating the two?"
Bella nodded.
"I think maybe it was like that, but in the other direction. You're no longer human, we're married—there's no danger or impropriety. I'm not supposed to tell you no anymore. I'm supposed to make you happy, to put you first, always." I was leaning forward, magnetically pulled in her direction and wishing so badly that I could touch her, hold her. I was starved for her. "Until you brought up biting, nothing you asked me for felt over the line. Not the what, not the how, not even the amount. I never told you no because, in the moment, I never wanted to. Even when you asked for something I wouldn't have chosen, it was enough that you wanted it."
"Edward, I saw your reluctance sometimes. I just took your agreement afterward at face-value, and maybe I shouldn't have. It's okay that you didn't want to do some things. We shouldn't build our sex life around catering to me. That's ridiculous."
How could I make her understand? "Bella, for me, sex is all about you. Only you. Remember, before you came along, sex held so little interest for me that I might have continued my existence forever without it. Sure, I enjoy pleasure and there are acts that I find appealing in an abstract sort of way, but, for me, sex isn't about how good it feels. It's about how much I love you."
She swallowed. "But underneath, you were building resentment."
"No!" I denied. "I mean…resentment is a harsh word. I would say that maybe I feel…pressure? Pressure to meet your needs and make the sacrifices you made to be with me worth the price, but that is only because of how precious you are to me." I faltered, dropped from the chair to my knees in front of her. "Bella, please believe me. I don't resent you or anything we have done together. I've never wanted to take back something I said so badly." It wasn't lost on me that I was begging on my knees. Begging for my wife to take me back.
When I felt her fingers slip into my hair, relief shuddered through me. It was like I could breathe again after suffocating for a week. I needed to be closer to her—I shuffled forward until I was between her legs and pulled her against me, still half terrified that she would push me away.
"Oh, Edward." Her voice cracked, and her hand stroked the side of my face.
I'm not sure how it started, but it was absolutely me who escalated. I started kissing her, feverishly, and couldn't stop. It began with her hands, her arms, then her chest and neck. And finally, her lips. I could feel my hands shake as I caressed her skin. I wasn't sure if I had ever wanted her so desperately.
I guided her backward, onto the bed, and climbed on top of her. My steely-hard erection pressed into her thigh as I hungrily kissed her neck and tore her shirt from her body. I needed to be inside her. I would only be whole and healed again when I was inside her. And I needed her naked and open while I did it.
But when I reached for her bra, Bella's hand came up to rest over mine.
"Edward."
Something in her voice drew me up short, knocked the breath out of me. I froze and met her eyes.
She looked…anxious and small. "Edward, I'm sorry, but I'm not ready." I could see just how true that was now I was looking properly. Her pupils weren't dilated, her nipples weren't hard, and her breathing was even. She had been kissing me back, but we were in very different frames of mind. Poor Bella—she had probably only been seeking affection, comfort, and I had taken those things to their farthest possible conclusion.
"Oh," I mumbled, and rolled off of her immediately. "Forgive me, that was unacceptable. You were clear when we came in. I don't know what came over me."
She sat up. "No, Edward. It's okay. I understand why you want to, and I wish that I…." She trailed off, and gave me a baffled, helpless little shrug. "I don't know what's wrong with my body."
I rose beside her and wrapped my arms around her shoulders. "Nothing, Bella. Nothing is wrong." I placed a gentle kiss on her brow. "We just made up. Take whatever time you need."
"I love you, Edward," she whispered into my collar.
"I love you."
She reached for her shirt, only to find it in shreds.
I winced. "Sorry."
She snickered, holding up two of the disparate pieces. "So that's what that feels like."
I laughed, too. "Here," I said, unbuttoning my shirt. "Take mine. That way you won't have to walk across the house to the closet in your bra."
Bella cocked a brow at me and I could see that she was considering refusing, but our daughter was home, albeit asleep last we checked, and almost all of our windows were uncovered.
"Take it," I insisted chivalrously.
She slipped it on and buttoned it. "Thank you." She kissed me. Easily, like things were back to normal, and the invisible band around my chest loosened just a little.
Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, Bella rose to her feet. At the door, she turned to look back at me. "Are you coming?"
"I, uh, need a minute," I confessed, and looking me over, it dawned on her what I meant. To her dismay and mine, I was still painfully hard.
"Oh," she murmured. I knew that expression on her face, that posture, well. If she could blush, she would be right now. She wasn't the only one. "I'll…give you some privacy then."
I groaned in embarrassment as she slipped out the door, collapsing backward on the bed and throwing my arm over my eyes. Why, oh why was my body so unruly right now? And did she really think I was about to take myself in hand? The idea was so very unappealing at the moment. I couldn't remember ever feeling so bitterly disappointed at not getting to have sex.
Maybe because Bella and I had never forgone makeup sex before? How could I not worry it meant that things were yet unresolved? Or perhaps, the novelty went even deeper: This wasn't how things went. Bella wanted my body, always. Never, not once since we married, had Bella ever said no to sex with me.
Panic revivified inside me, the irrational fear that I was losing her somehow, that she was slipping slowly out of reach and there was nothing I could do to stop it. It was a desperate kind of misery I hadn't felt since I returned from my long absence to find Bella traumatized by my abandonment and half in love with Jacob Black. Part of me knew it was ludicrous to worry—Bella had chosen me, and she was now an immutable vampire, not a changing human. Bella was my wife, my mate. She wouldn't leave me or fall out of love with me.
And yet…the fear would not be quiet.
My erection was dead. I rose from the bed and strode to the door.
Bella was standing in the hall, just outside, still wearing my shirt, chewing her lip like she was at war with herself.
"Is everything all right?" I asked her.
"Yes," she answered, eyes slightly wide.
I nodded curtly, feeling terrible for spooking her. I could tell she found the expression on my face upsetting.
My feet carried me to the closet, where I threw on the first shirt I could find.
"Edward?" Bella had followed me. She was standing in the doorway, unsure. My heart ached at the sight—I couldn't let her worry.
With purpose, I walked to her and cupped her face in my hands. I kissed her sweetly, with all my devotion. Resting my forehead against hers after I broke the kiss, I reassured her, "I'm okay, Bella. We're okay. I just…I need to go for a run right now. I'll be back in a few hours."
"All right," she whispered, gripping fistfuls of fabric on the chest of my shirt. "Do what you need to do."
I pressed my lips to the bridge of her nose and whispered with a shameful level of emotion, "I love you, Bella."
She released me and mumbled that she loved me, too.
The next second, I was out the door, running to Canada. I wasn't back in a few hours; I ran all night and well into the morning, not returning home until the middle of the afternoon. The cottage was empty, but I found a note stuck to the fridge in Bella's handwriting about an excursion to the beach. She and Renesmee would return in the evening. I showered and changed into clean clothing. When I saw that our bedroom door was ajar, I made an unwelcome discovery. Bella had changed the sheets and made the bed. It shouldn't have bothered me, but I couldn't help assigning significance to the act.
I found myself loading the Roy Orbison record Bella had bought me onto the turntable beside the bed.
In dreams, I walk with you
In dreams, I talk to you
In dreams, you're mine all of the time
We're together in dreams, in dreams
Some of her scent still lingered, from making the bed, and in the pillows and mattress. I breathed deep as I laid there, staring up at the ceiling. The music gave my feelings an anchor, a place to wallow.
But just before the dawn
I awake and find you gone
The sun was setting when I heard Bella and Renesmee arrive home. I'd had plenty of time to worry about what kind of reception I would get from Bella and expected the worst, but she was happy to see me and didn't even bring up that I had been out later than I had told her. They both chattered cheerfully about their day, and I was appropriately impressed with the new crop of shells and rocks Renesmee had brought home for her collection. While they got cleaned up, I prepared a single dish of cavatini with garlic bread and roasted zucchini. We were trying to get Nessie on a diet with a higher proportion of human food with the hope that it would broaden her options for assimilation in the future. So far, the efforts were a limited success. Blood was still the sustenance of choice, and the only human food she reliably enjoyed was high in sugar content. Bella assured me that a sweet tooth was actually pretty common among human children, but we weren't going to give up just yet on broadening her palate.
After we put Renesmee to bed, Bella picked up her latest book, The Wanderer by Frances Burney. When she headed to the parlor, I assumed that I was being dismissed, but she took my hand and led me in there with her. I retrieved my own current book, a history of the Babylonian Empire, and joined her on the loveseat. Rather than sit beside me, Bella settled her head in my lap and we read together by low lamplight.
This was such a typical evening for the two of us, it was a balm to my anxious heart. I stroked Bella's hair and listened to the sound of her pages turning. It took longer for me to get into my book than it did for her, but after twenty minutes my mind calmed and I was able to focus. As the hours passed, however, a difference between tonight and our previous routine emerged. Usually, around midnight, Bella led me to bed. Tonight, we read on the loveseat together until dawn.
I came to realize over the next week, that this was our new routine. Bella was warm and affectionate—no one watching us would have known anything was remotely different from our life before. Even when we were alone, there was little indication of lingering hurt. She joked around with me, kissed me, cuddled with me on the couch, grumbled through reviewing the monthly finances with me. But sex had disappeared from our life completely, and that somehow made each day seem unbearably long. I hadn't realized just how much time out of a given week had been dedicated to making love in our married life.
Bella seemed to be doing just fine with the change. She was cheerful and always had plans to fill those endless hours—nights out with Alice, restoring and reupholstering a Victorian sofa with Esme, riding her motorcycle up and down the coast with Jake, evenings teaching Charlie and Renesmee to cook at her dad's house. But I…was at a loss. For someone who had managed to fill an entire century worth of hours with activities other than sex, I sure didn't have many ideas. My old hobbies seemed hollow and lonely at the moment.
To fill the time, I developed a singular fixation.
The night is bright and gay, but I'm so blue
My heart must have its way and dream of you
When Bella disappeared from the cottage, I would put on the Roy Orbison record and let the music take me into its tragic dreamscape.
Wherever you may be, I'll still be true
And when the clouds roll by, I'll come to you
But until then I'll drink my lonely wine
Perhaps it wasn't the healthiest of my coping mechanisms, but it was an old one, tried and true. It wasn't even the first time I had chosen this particular record. During dark times, finding an album that spoke what I couldn't and drowning myself in it could get me from one moment to the next. It drove my family crazy. Rosalie had more than once accused me of torturing them along with myself, but there was no one in this little cottage besides me to hear if I played the same twelve songs over and over again. I only turned the record player on when I was alone.
I didn't know if it was fitting or just melodramatic that I had found my way back to the album I had worn to death when I left Bella three years ago. Maybe it was providence. Bella certainly hadn't known its history when she brought the record home.
I'll tell them we grew tired of each other
And realized our dreams could never be
I'll even make believe I never loved you
Then no one will ever know the truth but me
As we entered our fourth week of no sex, I was finally able to put a label on what I was feeling: I was in mourning. That in and of itself seemed wild to me—an overreaction at the very least. For so much of my existence, sex hadn't been a priority. Even in my relationship with Bella. I had spent the first year and a half after meeting her determined to keep her human forever and assuming that meant sex was impossible. After Bella made it clear that celibacy was not tenable for her, all of my personal preparation and logistical planning had been done with her experience in mind. Sure, by that time my body had woken up in a way that I never dreamed was possible, but I still thought of sex as something for Bella, not me. As long as I had her, I would be just as happy without it as with it. I told myself that so often and for so long that I came to believe it, even well into our marriage. And then it went away.
I knew that I enjoyed sex, looked forward to it, that I initiated it quite often, but I hadn't realized how much I had come to depend on it. Over the years, I had heard all the mushy metaphors and euphemisms about how the sex act was a joining, becoming one with someone else, but I still hadn't been able to fathom what that actually felt like until I experienced it for myself. I never could have anticipated how close I would feel to Bella when I made love to her. How cathartic it would be to touch her, kiss her, thrust into her like it was a basic need—something I would die without. To have her reciprocate that urgency. When I was inside her, I was a part of her and she was a part of me. We were naked in every sense of the word, perfectly vulnerable to one another. And, after release, when she clung to me and implored me to stay inside of her, part of her, just a little longer, I was made whole and content. There was nothing like it.
I had become addicted, and now I was having withdrawals—for the pleasure, for the intimacy.
I see her in the twilight standing there
The wind softly stirring in her hair
The sweetest fruit the earth can bear
So young, so warm, and so rare
Obviously, I had been kidding myself. Waxing on and on about how I didn't have fantasies, how my needs were immaterial. I had built our sex life around catering to Bella's desires, and maybe that had been a reasonable place to start. Fulfilling her fantasies, satisfying her urges, and bringing her body pleasure was all immensely gratifying for me. But we hadn't continued beyond that, despite Bella's repeated efforts to bring my needs to the fore, and that may have left Bella susceptible to the idea that whenever she wanted something, I was doing her a favor. That her sexuality was a beast I fed out of obligation. It wasn't true—of course, it wasn't. But the window was open for her to worry, and my thoughtless comment had convinced her of it.
A simple truth was dawning on me: I had sexual needs. Potent, pressing ones. As urgent and insatiable as anything Bella felt. Maybe I hadn't recognized them properly because they didn't look like Bella's, or anyone else's whose mind I was familiar with, but they were there. They had to be, otherwise I wouldn't be devastated at the sudden absence of physical intimacy in my life. I wasn't sure I could articulate what it was I needed yet, but one thing at a time.
The question was, did it even matter anymore? Was I too late to this realization? Was this drought temporary or permanent?
There, in the darkness of
My house without windows
I will never see the stars that shine
Shine on you
No, that was a ridiculous idea. This bleak present couldn't be our future. We had tasted heaven, repeatedly, constantly, in each other's arms. A future where we never went back had to be impossible.
I had messed up, horribly. But surely, I hadn't killed Bella's love of sex with one comment. Right?
I'd rather wander through an endless night
Than to face the light of another lonely day
Knowing that you won't be there
Bella eventually found me out. She had gone into the bedroom to dust and, by the strength of my scent and the indentation of where I had been lying on our duvet, was able to deduce I had been spending a lot of time in there.
She was waiting on the cedar chest when I got home and greeted me with a tiny smile. "We should talk."
I froze in the doorway, feeling ambushed. "We don't have to, Bella. I just come in here to listen to music sometimes. It doesn't mean anything."
But I could see on her face that I had protested too much and she didn't believe me. If anything, she looked even more unsettled. When I didn't move, she asked me to sit. "Please. There's something that I need to say."
Giving in, I closed the door. When I made to sit in the corner chair again, she caught my hand and pulled me to sit beside her on the chest instead. She interlaced our fingers and held tight, but she didn't meet my eyes. "I've been meaning to explain something, because I don't want you to get the wrong idea." Bella swallowed. "The morning after we fought, I was feeling horrible and ashamed of my body and…how much it wants."
My jaw tightened and I had to restrain myself from interrupting to reassure her. I could see that she had spent some time psyching herself up for this.
"I asked Carlisle if there was any way I could make myself want less, but he said no. I hadn't really thought there was, but it was worth a try—if it would make us more compatible, you know. But then, after we made up and you started kissing me…it was the weirdest thing. It's not that I didn't feel anything. I just didn't feel what I usually feel." She gave a shy, sideways peek in my direction. "You know, horny. I wanted to, but it wasn't there. But I thought it would come back. I keep thinking, tomorrow. Tomorrow I will want to have sex again. And then tomorrow comes, and I still don't."
Each of her words was a twisting knife in my chest, but none of what she was saying was surprising. I had suspected something like this. I kissed the top of her head. "It's all right, Bella. We have forever, so there's no rush."
She leaned into me. "I just didn't want you to think I was punishing you. That I was dragging this on out of spite or to prove some kind of point."
I pulled her into my lap and wrapped my arms around her. "I know you better than that, Bella." I kissed her lips tenderly. "I'm sorry you're hurting."
She curled into me, tucking her head under my chin, and accepting my comfort, such as it was. After a few minutes, I heard her whisper, "Do you miss it? Being with me that way? Is that why you come here?"
I didn't want to answer truthfully because I didn't want her to feel guilty or pressured, but it would be worse to lie. "Yes."
She exhaled, and in that breath, there was such relief. "Thank you."
That wasn't what I was expecting. "Why?"
She admitted, "I was so scared that you didn't. That you were okay with the way things are now."
My arms tightened around her.
"Edward?"
"Yes?"
"I miss it, too."
Needless to say, the next time she left the cottage, I went right back to the album.
When I feel blue in the night
And I want you to hold me tight
Whenever I want you, all I have to do is dream
It seemed that I was just going to have to be patient. And that could be done, right? Like I had reassured Bella, time was something we had. If she needed me to wait, theoretically, immortality meant I could give her however long it took.
I need you so, that I could die
I love you so, and that is why
Whenever I want you, all I have to do is dream
Or, maybe that was wrong. Maybe Bella was stuck because there was something I should be doing to help, but wasn't?
At the edges of my thoughts, I became aware that Emmett was approaching the cottage. I glanced at the curtains and approximated the time of day by the amount of light that was peeking through. Probably, I should get up and shut the record off before he arrived. It wasn't like he would knock and wait for me to come to the door. But I didn't move. He could make fun of me if he wanted.
When the twilight is gone and no songbirds are singing
When the twilight is gone, you come into my heart
And here in my heart you will stay while I pray
The front door banged open. "Ed! Edward! You here, man?"
There was no use putting off the inevitable. "Yes."
He followed the sound of my voice and the music. The bedroom door swung open and he took in the scene. "Ah, jeez."
My prayer is a rapture in blue
With the world far away and your lips close to mine
"Wait." The song drew him up short. "I know this sad-sack crap. Isn't this the record that Rose smashed to pieces after you played it two hundred times in one week?"
"Yes," I admitted.
He snickered. "And then you stomped off to Brazil?"
I didn't care for his characterization, but his timeline was correct.
"I thought the replacement she got you was a CD."
"It was." I rubbed my face. "Bella bought me this one."
Emmett made a face. "Your wife bought you a breakup album? For you, the breakup album?"
"It's not like that. She didn't know—she was trying to do something nice."
He busted up laughing.
"It's good you think that's funny," I sneered.
My prayer and the answer you give—
May they still be the same, for as long as we live:
That you'll always be there at the end of my prayer
The final notes of the song rang out and the record ended, the needle drifting off into white noise.
Emmett approached the bed and shut off the turntable. He was thinking about how I looked like garbage. But that was an exaggeration—I had made myself presentable just this morning to make Renesmee's breakfast.
"When was the last time you showered, buddy?" he asked.
I shrugged. "Couple of days ago."
"Uh-huh." I didn't have to read his thoughts to know he didn't believe me. "And when did you last hunt? Those eyes are looking pretty dark."
He was confirming my suspicions of why he was here. "Esme sent you to babysit me."
But he shook his head and a different face appeared in his mind. "Bells. She's worried and she doesn't know what to do because she's never seen you like this."
Guilt hit me like a wave. I had thought I was keeping the worst of it from her.
In Emmett's head, I could see flashes of the conversation Bella had initiated with my family in the dining room of the big house this morning. They had explained to her that sometimes I'm just…like this. Mopey? Alice had called me mopey?
Emmett volunteered to be the one to come down here and drag me out of my funk. Whatever resentment I might have felt toward him was defused by what I could see of his motives. It was more than not liking to see the two of us unhappy. He missed me.
"Come on." He nudged the mattress with his knee. "Get cleaned up, and then we'll grab a quick hunt."
I didn't protest. If Bella was worried, that altered my priorities completely. I showered and dressed in just under five minutes and Emmett and I set out into the trees and up the mountain.
The sky rumbled angrily and by the time we reached our regular hunting ground, it was raining.
"It's a good thing I took that shower," I griped.
He grinned, rain running rivulets down his squared jaw. "This way," he gestured east. "I think I smell something fun."
"Something fun" meant something with claws. I wasn't in a mood where I particularly cared what I ate, but I followed him. Sure enough, fun turned out to be an adult male grizzly bear taking shelter under an outcropping.
Emmett clapped me on the back. "All yours, my guy."
He wanted the bear for himself, but congratulated himself on being magnanimous. He looked on with disapproval while I approached the animal with stealth and killed it before it fully realized it was being attacked.
"You take all the fun out of hunting sometimes, you know that?" He was leaning against a nearby tree while I drank deeply. "Your clothes don't even get mussed."
I ignored him. Relief was coursing through me—I hadn't realized how starved I had become. As the blood of the six hundred pound animal filled me, saturated my tissues, my head cleared, my limbs felt less heavy. The tempest inside of me quieted, just a little. I drank until the well was completely dry and collapsed against the rock face to catch my breath.
Emmett cocked a brow at me. "Thirstier than you thought?"
I didn't have the will to be defensive at the moment, so I just nodded.
He looked satisfied. "Then this is good. You'll feel better."
I closed my eyes and concentrated on the feeling of the blood seeping through my system.
Emmett was watching me. He had been tasked with more than just feeding me and getting me out of the house, but he wasn't sure how to transition, how to broach the subject.
"I already talked to Carlisle about it," I preempted him.
He was happy I had read his mind and cut to the chase. "Yeah? Did it help?"
No, I admitted to myself. It really hadn't. If anything, the burden of my mistake had felt even heavier, because I knew I had let Carlisle down, and I'd come away with no solutions.
I opened my eyes, at Emmett grinning down at me, the mist of the rainstorm around him.
"Come on, try me." He was aware that conversations like this were not his strong suit, but he wanted to help and he was willing to try. "Is there any overlap in advice you would get from Carlisle and what I would say? At least what comes out of my mouth will be something you haven't heard already."
Well, he may have a point there.
"We had a fight. I hurt Bella's feelings, and now we are having trouble getting back to where we were."
"Apologize." Emmett said the word like it was the simplest thing in the world.
"I did. It helped, but things are still not right." I pushed some of my wet hair out of my eyes. "Haven't you ever upset Rosalie so badly that she didn't forgive you right away."
Emmett thought about that and shrugged. "Not really."
I could see he was telling the truth. Rose could hold a grudge like no one I had ever met, but her stubbornness was no match for Emmett's golden retriever caliber playfulness and devotion. There probably were things he could do that would cross those lines for her, but he had never done them. It had never even occurred to him that he was capable of hurting her so deeply.
Great. Another model husband I couldn't measure up to.
"What did you guys fight about?"
I rubbed my eyes. "Vampire stuff." I definitely did not want to get into details.
"Vampire stuff?" he said dubiously. "Like how she loves it and you don't."
In a nutshell? "Yes."
"You shouldn't be so hard on her. Aren't you glad that the change wasn't horrible for her?"
"Of course I am."
"And now, you get to keep her. Win/win."
Sometimes I couldn't help but envy his simple and direct way of looking at the world. I could see his point, but, "Sometimes I wish she wasn't quite so comfortable. I'm glad that this life is easier for her than it is for most because I don't want her to suffer, and I don't want her to have regrets, but it makes me nervous sometimes that she doesn't take certain boundaries seriously."
Emmett's brows knit. "Like what?"
I don't know why I kept talking—I didn't want to. Maybe I needed to. "Like with the nomads we know. She's very chummy."
He cracked a grin.
"And she wants to exchange mating bites," I blurted.
Emmett's eyes went wide, and then his thoughts caught up to the shock. Whoa. That's hot.
"Hot?" I snapped.
He was unapologetic. "Yeah. Crazy hot."
His thoughts were crystal clear on the matter—he found the notion of mating bites deeply titillating. He wasn't put off by the primal nature of the ritual, how animalistic it was. Nor did he balk at the connotations of ownership, or worse, the conflation of an act of feeding with an act of mating. On the contrary, all those things went into a plus column labeled "Kinky as Hell". A brief visualization of me biting the base of Bella's bare neck melted into a more lingering one of him biting Rosalie. The thought was a big turn-on for him, but he regretfully pushed it aside.
"Rose would never go for it. Not in a million years," he said wistfully.
He was dead on about that.
His eyes refocused on me. "You should do it."
"No!"
"Why not? She'll let you—that's awesome."
I gaped at him. "I don't want to."
"Oh." Emmett said it like he was just remembering who he was talking to. Damn, what a waste. He's insane. "But she wants it, right?"
My eyes narrowed. "Emmett, if you think about biting Bella, I'll make you regret it."
He laughed. "Jesus, you've lost your damn mind. I would never touch your girl, and you know that."
"No." I clarified, my voice low and deadly, "I'm saying don't think about it. Don't picture it—not even for fun."
He only laughed harder. But he didn't imagine himself biting my wife, so I let him continue until he got it all out.
"Man," he said, his grin still wide. He slipped the fingers of both hands into his sopping curly hair and moved them quickly back and forth to dislodge the excess water. "You are really making this more complicated than it is."
I glowered at him.
"I'm serious." Emmett spread his palms and took me through his reasoning. "Look, you had a nasty fight because she wants mating bites and you don't, right? You said no in a way that hurt her feelings, and you've apologized, but things are still bad. You're moping in your room and she's walking around like a kicked puppy."
My ears perked up at that. "I thought Bella was doing okay." Aside from our conversation where she admitted that she missed sex and was baffled by the change in her body's response to me, she had seemed perfectly normal over the past few weeks.
He looked at me incredulously. "Maybe she's putting on a brave face for you. That sounds like the kind of dumbass thing you two would do for each other. But no, she's not okay. I mean, she's a trooper and she's giving it her best, but even I can see she's struggling. Jasper says she's a wreck."
The bottom fell out of my stomach.
"Look, I get that vampire stuff bothers you, but you gotta put your girl first, man. Is it really worth dying on that hill if she's this unhappy?"
I thought of Bella—our fight, the conversations we'd had since. I wasn't sure this tracked. "I…don't know. I'm not sure this is the problem. I think it's more an emotional issue."
Emmett shrugged. "Women can turn anything into an emotional issue. Maybe she took it as you rejecting her rather than rejecting the thing, and now she's worried you're not as into her as she is you. Or that you're not as committed. Maybe she built up the bites as this big romantic moment and you made it into something dirty and now she's ashamed."
My jaw dropped. "Em…that doesn't sound half-dumb." On the contrary, what he was saying was actually making sense.
He swaggered a little. "Damn straight. Don't forget, I have been married to Rosalie for seventy years—I know what I'm talking about. I love my woman more than the moon and stars, but it can get tricky sometimes, keeping her happy. I learned a long time ago that nothing in the wide world is worth standing my ground over against her."
Well…damn.
"So," he prompted, "what are you going to do?"
I swallowed, my insides squirming. "I guess I'm exchanging mating bites with Bella."
Emmett whooped. "Lucky bastard. Goddamn, I hate you," he said good naturedly as he hauled me to my feet. "You wanna go another round or head home?"
I considered. It would be so easy to put off what I now knew I needed to do with Bella, but as repulsive as the idea was, the pull to resolve the tension between us was stronger. If this worked, if this made her happy, I could have my Bella back. The lure was irresistible.
Besides, a full-grown grizzly bear was hardly a small meal.
"Home."
We made our way through the pouring rain in a loop to circle back the way we came.
"You doing okay, Ed?"
It wasn't until he spoke that I realized I had been quieter than usual. Yet, I wasn't feeling the fog of despair I had been moving through for the past few weeks. I had direction now, a plan. "Yeah. Just anxious to get home, I guess."
Emmett shot me a leer. "I'll bet."
I shook my head in exasperation. "I'm not looking forward to that. I just want Bella back. I hate that I let her down. It's been killing me."
"Makes sense." Emmett leapt over a fallen log and landed with large splash in the water-slogged mud on the other side. "I mean, that would bother me, but you're you, so it's gotta be worse."
I circumvented the log instead, to avoid getting mud on my jeans. "I'm me?"
"Yeah, it kills you to let people down when they are counting on you."
I saw his plan to push me into the puddle just in time and dodged.
Emmett chuckled, but otherwise continued on as though he hadn't even made the attempt. "That's when I really knew that Bella was going to work out for you—when she Carlisle-d you."
That drew me up short. "She what?"
"Carlisle-d you. You know, how Carlisle looks at you and says, 'I trust your judgment, son. You're a good person and you'll do the right thing'? And then you move heaven and earth to not let him down? It's the cheat code to bringing out your A-game, and Bella cracked it from minute one. She looked at you and said, 'I trust you no matter what, I love you no matter what, and you won't hurt me.' And then you fell all over yourself to live up to that." Emmett winked. "She's got your number, kid. You were never going to eat her after that, no matter what she smelled like."
It was disconcerting to hear Emmett sum me up like that. I thought maybe he was oversimplifying a bit, but I couldn't say he was outright wrong. Bella had always….
I froze and assessed the air. It was so faint I may have imagined it—especially given we had just been talking about her. But—yes, it was there. I was sure.
"What is it?" Emmett's voice had no trace of teasing or humor now. He was in defender mode.
"Bella," I answered. "She passed near here, recently."
He shook his head, "I don't…oh, hey. There it is, yeah." His shoulders relaxed. "She's probably just on another hike." At the confused look on my face, Emmett raised a brow at me. "Do you know anything about what's going on with her? Seriously dude, get your shit together."
I glared at him. "Thanks." Slipping my hands into my pockets, I started walking. "I'm gonna…," I gestured with my head toward the scent trail.
He gave me a thumbs up. "You've got this. She's going to forgive you."
God, I hoped so.
The rain made things tricky, but there was no scent in the world I was more attuned to than that of my wife. I found her actual trail, which was straight through some undergrowth and not on a path, but I was able to discern her direction from a partial foot print. I was puzzled that she was moving through the forest off-trail. That didn't seem like her. Although, I conceded once I had taken in my surroundings and triangulated where I was, if she knew any part of the woods well enough to abandon the foot path, it would be here. We were up the mountain right behind her dad's house.
I thought of what I had resolved to do, and my step hitched. I stopped and took a moment to deliberately break my cardinal rule: I pictured it. Rolling in the sheets of our bed with Bella, thrusting inside her. She would cling to me as she bit me, her nails scraping my skin as she tried to clutch me closer. Maybe she would do it as she came, marking me as forever hers as she milked my seed. Then, I would take my turn, chase a second release for us, and when I was close, my mouth would descend to the base of her throat. Finally and for the first time, her skin there would give under my teeth and they would sink deep.
Was it comforting or horrifying that my pants were now tight? I couldn't decide. On the one hand, I supposed if I were going to do this, it would be best if I could, at the very least, get it up. On the other, I felt sick at the thought of myself. But was this really a shock? If I was going to acknowledge that I did indeed have sexual needs, this would be the least surprising thing to find in the murky muck of my psyche. After all, as Bella had well remembered, the one thing I knew about my sexuality before marriage was that the idea of biting human Bella had made me hard. God knew what else was lurking down there.
I waded through the knee high grass and waist high ferns, around the mossy tree trunks, pulled forward by her scent. There would be no saving these jeans now. The phone in my pocket rang, the sharp sound jarring against the patter of the rain. I reached into my pocket and glanced to see who was calling. It was Alice—Alice who hadn't spoken to me in a month.
As I went to answer, a clear sweet voice I'd know anywhere rang through the forest. "Edward?"
I dropped the phone back into my pocket and rushed forward, around a cluster of trees, and there she was. Bella was seated on the forest floor surrounded by ferns that came up to her chin, her back propped against a tree. It struck me as an odd place to have stopped. It wasn't a clearing or meadow, there was no nearby path, and the slope was uncomfortably steep. Yet, here she was, wide-eyed like I was the last person she was expecting. Considering my weeks of wallowing, I probably was.
"Hi."
She was recovering, and she smiled at me, face wet with rain in spite of the cover provided by the branches above her. "Hi. I thought I recognized that ring-tone."
"Emmett and I went hunting."
"I see that," she said, noting my eyes. "I'm glad."
It occurred to me that the only reason a person might have chosen this spot was to be alone. "Am I intruding?"
She shook her head. I had a half-second of paranoia that she was only being polite before she scooted to the left and made room beside her for me to sit. I joined her and sighed with relief to be out of the direct rainfall.
"Is Emmett around?"
"No, he went home."
On impulse, I reached for the hand Bella had rested on her knee and took it between mine. I traced her knuckles, the lines of her palm, my touch delicate and slow, loving and repetitive. It wasn't until I heard her breathing change that it occurred to me how strangely I was behaving. I hadn't even spoken to her for the last three minutes. I bent to press a kiss into the base of her palm, over the crescent scar left by James' bite, and then straightened to rest the back of my head against the trunk.
The expression on Bella's face was one of such sad longing. "Edward, I miss you. I miss us."
Emotion swelled in me. "I miss you, too."
She nodded, determination in her eyes. "I want to try."
"Try?"
"To have sex."
"Are you ready for that?" I asked, concerned.
Her shoulders lifted and dropped and she looked lost. "I don't know. I still don't feel h—" she cut off. "Like myself," she finished instead. "But I want to try anyway."
I had some misgivings about her pushing herself if she wasn't sure she was ready, but ultimately, her boundaries were her choice and I wasn't going to deny her. I wasn't sure I was capable of that at the moment anyway. At her offer, my sex-starved body had gone bounding ahead at full speed. "I'll go slow. I'll be gentle."
"But, do you want to?" She was chewing her lower lip.
"Have sex with you?"
She nodded jerkily. "I need to know that you want to. That you're not just…."
Humoring me. She didn't finish the sentence and I couldn't hear her thoughts, but I knew what she was scared of.
I took her hand, still in mine, and led her down to the bulge on the front of my jeans. My cock spasmed enthusiastically under her touch, and I groaned at the pleasure-pain of it. A month was so long. "Bella, I am going out of my mind from how badly I want you. It's all I can think about."
Her jaw fell open.
How could I have ever left her in doubt of how much I desired her? I had to rectify this—immediately. I scooped her up into my lap and buried my face in her wet hair. My erection throbbed. She had always smelled best in the rain.
"Bella." I kissed the nape of her neck behind her ear. "I'm such a mess." My hands were all over her throat, her jaw, her shoulders…her breasts. I knew that she could feel them trembling with need, and I was fighting to keep my promise to go slow and be gentle. "Don't misunderstand me. I respect that you weren't ready. I would wait forever if you asked me to, but I don't want you to worry that it would be easy for me, because it wouldn't be. And I know that you weren't trying to teach me a lesson, but God did I learn one. I need sex, Bella. I need it with you, all the time. I go to pieces without it. Right now, I feel like I could keep you in our bed for a week straight and still not be satisfied."
Her breath quickened. I teased her nipples through her wet shirt and bra, willing them to harden in my hands. I kissed my way under her jaw from her ear to her chin. I was rocking my erection under her bottom, straining up into her soft flesh.
"I miss your mouth on my body and the way your hand touches my cock like it's something precious. I miss you tearing my clothes off and having your way with me on the kitchen floor. The way you blow me in my car. I miss the feel of your hard nipples on my tongue. The way your hands clench my skin every time I enter you. Your moans and screams. The way you babble how much you love me whenever I'm inside you, and beg me to stay after we're done. I miss your pussy, the way it tastes and the way it pulses against my tongue. The way it stretches open for me and grips me like a greedy fist every time I have to pull back to thrust again. I miss the way it feels to fuck you when you are already full of my seed. God Bella, I miss your pussy so damn much."
Her breathless moan felt like a victory in itself. I could do this, confess my lustful obsessions to reassure her of the reciprocity of our desires, wake her body up, bring her back to me. Fix this. Heal us.
Inside my uncomfortable wet jeans, my poor cock was weeping gobs of precum.
My lips trailed her throat. "Bella, I want to make love to you, right here. I want to get both of us out of these wet clothes and watch the raindrops run down your breasts. I'll eat your pussy, however long it takes until you're ready for me, and then I will make love to you so good. I'll make you come over and over. I'll cherish you for hours."
I was at the base of her neck now, and my teeth grazed her skin. She gasped.
"And then, Bella, I want to bite you. Mark you as forever mine."
Nuzzling the crook of her neck, I tested the pressure of my bite against her skin. It was unbelievably thrilling to have my mouth here for the express purpose of biting her. A sense of rightness was pouring over me in waves. I belonged here, and she belonged to me. Her neck belonged to my teeth, and it always had. Just thinking about it was staggeringly erotic. My cock quivered, pulsed, and leaked, on the brink, and I was suddenly certain that I could come just from this.
Her whole body shivered.
"Whoa, okay. Fern!" Bella's hands pushed against my shoulders. "Fern!"
Reality and self-awareness came over me with sobering clarity. I snapped my head back, away from her skin, and released my grip on her body. She scrambled off my lap and away from me. I never felt more like a monster in my life.
"Fern, fern, fern, fern, fern, fern," she chanted to herself as she rose to her feet and paced the small patch of mud in front of the tree we had huddled under. Her fingers tugged at her wet hair. "Jesus, Edward! What the hell?"
Numb with horror, I stuttered, "I…I thought…." But I couldn't actually bring myself to say "I thought you wanted this," because it was plain as day that she didn't and it would be a blaspheme to put this on her. Whatever she had been imagining, it wasn't what I had just done.
"You can't one-eighty on something that big without talking it through with me before trying it. For God's sake, you almost gave me a heart attack!" Something she saw on my face made her stop pacing. "Edward? Are you okay?"
I wasn't sure if I nodded or not. I know I tried to.
Bella approached and lowered onto her knees across from me. She took one of my limp hands, and spoke gently. "Look, it's sweet that you reconsidered and you want to do that for me, but the one thing we agreed on last time we talked about this is that it's a big deal. We should talk about it, a lot, before we do anything. And if we do end up going ahead and exchanging bites, it definitely won't be here. Just…no. Never."
I was able to muster a response. "What's wrong with here?"
She shifted uncomfortably. "Edward, this is where Sam Uley found me, curled up on the ground and catatonic, the night you broke up with me."
Fresh horror swept through me, strangled me.
Bella was looking at my knees. "Exercising the bad juju with some sex is one thing, but I'd rather not have my vampire marriage here."
I couldn't tell if there was ringing in my ears or not. "We should go," I said.
She blinked at me. "We should?"
"Yes." I pulled my hand from hers.
"Edward, when I used the safe word, that wasn't a rejection." She was chewing her lip again.
I couldn't let her think this was her fault. "I know. It's not that—it was me. I went over the line, like you said. I should have talked it over with you first." But that was such a small part of what had gone wrong. It wasn't Bella's reaction to what we had just done that was bothering me. "And maybe it was different than I thought it would be. I didn't know it would feel like that, to put my teeth on your neck and press down." I stopped. I looked away and back again at her. "I can't talk about this right now."
Bella was wide-eyed. "Okay. We don't have to."
I pulled myself to my feet and took stock of my body. My jaw clenched in disgust. "Please excuse me for a moment."
I strode into the trees a ways without looking back. Leaning my back against a trunk, I lowered my zipper and none too gently fished my cock out. I had been too far gone when we stopped—there was only one way to release this excruciating tension. I stroked myself roughly, eyes fixed in the middle distance, the dark revelation still fresh in me.
Of course, my newly released sexuality would summon my monster. Hadn't I always known, deep down, that they were one in the same? It had been naive in the extreme to think I could bite Bella to just make her happy and move on with my life.
Thankfully, I didn't have to focus on anything to reach completion. I was so close, friction alone took care of the problem. I grimaced as my seed spilled onto the ground. I was such a degenerate. I hated my body, that it was capable of such a response. I hated myself.
Straightening my clothes, I walked back to where Bella was waiting. She knew what I had just done. I broke away from her gaze in shame. She reached toward me, but I leaned back.
"It would be better if you didn't touch me right now, Bella. Please."
She nodded, but I could see she was hurting. I wanted to comfort her, but I felt dazed, robotic, and I couldn't properly access how.
So we set off walking for home, separate. Not talking, not touching. It wasn't until we arrived at the cottage and I was removing my jacket that I remembered to check my phone. One missed call from Alice, and one text.
Had a vision. Don't do it.
Author's Note: So, Edward's an emotional hot mess this chapter. I know I wrote him to be kind of a lot, but if New Moon taught us anything, it's that Edward gets melodramatic when he's depressed. Sorry that we all just had to sit there while Emmett gave him advice that was, ahem, maybe not the best.
For the record, Emmett and Edward are both right about Roy Orbison's In Dreams (1963)—it is some grade-A sad-sack breakup album bullshit, but also…just pretty fuckin' great. The whole album is a serious "Go away, Mom. I'm crying" mood. But, you know, for grandpas. So, it screams Edward. I pulled some assorted lyrics from "In Dreams," "Lonely Wine," "No One Will Ever Know," "Sunset," "House Without Windows," "All I Have to Do Is Dream," and "My Prayer" for this chapter.