For a moment, Carlisle could only stare at her, and then he quickly moved to console her, "No, Bella, no, he's just worried about—"

"No, he doesn't love me," Bella said with firm unshakeable confidence, "I always knew it."

She stood from the chair and moved to the sink, put the towel under the faucet, and slowly began to wipe the makeup from her face, "I always thought it never made sense. Someone like him with someone like me? I'm nothing special; average hair, average height, average eye color. The only thing that isn't average is that I can't get a tan and my brain runs on AM instead of FM."

She sighed, her face raw and red from rubbing away the blush and lipstick, "But he said it like he meant it, he said it so often I started to believe it—"

"He does mean it," Carlisle insisted, "I know his choice is a little unorthodox, perhaps a little unethical, but never doubt that he loves you."

She stood at the sink, still staring out the window, and said quietly, "You know, he was offended when he left after my birthday. He said he was offended that I believed him so easily when he said he'd gotten bored. He thought it would take hours, that it'd take all night to convince me, and then—It took a sentence, because a sentence was all I needed!"

She gripped the counter, leaning forward as she tried to stifle her tears, "I asked him why he loved me, you know. Later, I told him, list out what you love about me so much, because I just don't see it. You know what he said? He told me it's because I smell good, can't walk in a straight line, and that I'm a fucking disaster magnet."

"He said that?" Carlisle asked in dull, growing, horror.

Bella shook her head, laughing, "Not exactly, he said it prettier, but yeah that was pretty much it. I smell good, I have a human heartbeat, and I love him even though he could kill me at any moment. I'm the girl who loves monsters, I'm the beautiful lamb to his hungry lion."

She finally turned back to Carlisle, smiling through her tears, "And you know, at the time, I thought that was a great metaphor. Most guys would probably talk about how our love is a red rose, or something you could read out of any old book, Edward tells me I'm a fluffy lamb. It's original, at least, and it isn't wrong. There probably is something wrong with me, to be in love with something that could so easily kill me, but I—"

"Bella," Carlisle said slowly, and motioned to the seat next to him, "Bella come here."

Bella slowly shuffled back to her seat. Carlisle reached out to take her hand in his only to withdraw it when Bella winced at the coldness, "Bella, I have known Edward for one hundred years, and trust me when I say you have changed him for the better. He might not know how to express it, might not know what to do, but he does love you. I know he loves you."

Granted, he could have expressed it better than telling her how edible she was. Carlisle wished Edward had said something about that, not necessarily to Carlisle, but to someone who could tell him that that wasn't the kind of answer a girl wanted.

As it was, Carlisle couldn't help but wonder if that had been Edward's sad attempt at dirty talk. He couldn't see Edward as the type, but Bella had thrown him for a desperate loop, and why else would he ever compare her to a lamb or talk about how delicious she smelled?

Bella just looked at him and weakly smiled, clearly not believing a word he said, "You're sweet, Dr. Cullen, why are you really here?"

"Pardon?" Carlisle asked.

"You're not here to have sex with me, are you?" Bella asked.

"Well—" Carlisle paused, tried to search for the words, "No, actually, I was hoping you and I could talk."

Bella nodded slowly, "You didn't seem like the type. I take it Esme's in on this?"

Carlisle opened his mouth, closed it, and forced himself to look away, "Actually, no, Esme full expects that you and I—"

Bella didn't even let him finish the sentence, "She what?!"

Carlisle sighed, unfortunately, he was still right there with Bella. It seemed absurd to him that he should find himself in this situation to begin with, yet here they were.

"You must understand," he said slowly, "Esme loves our children, and she—"

She loved Edward more than the others. Carlisle didn't want to say as much but it was the truth and he was sure all of them knew it. Edward had been there the longest, had desperately needed parental figures when Carlisle had turned Esme, and had always remained their most troubled yet precocious child.

The others, they called them children, but that was a term used for convenience.

Jasper was a grown adult who had seen horrors that could not be unseen, who had lived a life of pain and suffering, buried in hell on Earth for decades. Jasper needed a friend, an advisor, a path beyond the bloodshed of his youth, and hope for the future. Jasper went along with the high school scheme because it was necessary, but Carlisle knew he found the entire thing insulting and absurd.

Alice toyed with the idea of acting like a daughter but was far too much her own person to truly take on the role. She played at it when it suited her but more often acted as the family's knowledgeable advisor, guiding their path to the future. That and daughters normally didn't pick out wardrobes for their parents.

Emmett thought treating Carlisle and Esme like his parents was the world's greatest, and funniest, joke that he'd never let any of the live down.

Rosalie was the closest, in a way. Things between her and Carlisle had always been tense, but she did have great respect for him. She recognized that a part of her was wishing for a life she couldn't have lived, that if Carlisle hadn't turned her, she would have simply died. However, it was easier to blame Carlisle than it was to blame God and she had not asked to become a vampire. With Esme, things were more clear cut, Rosalie had always been very fond of Esme.

However, Rosalie often looked to Esme as a fellow woman who had endured unspeakable things at the hands of human men. Rosalie did not treat her like a mother.

The point was, they didn't need parents, they needed friends, a coven leader, advisors but not parents. Not the way Edward did.

For that reason, and a few others, Edward was Esme's favorite.

Carlisle didn't say that though, instead he explained, "Esme has watched Edward endure decades of desperate unhappiness. She watched him leave, killing humans to try and find himself, and come back more despondent than ever. She is very grateful to you and so happy for him—there is very little Edward could propose to her that she would not do for the sake of his happiness."

Bella just looked at him for a moment and he wondered what she saw in him. Often, she seemed to look over him, to clearly have categorized him as Edward's father and moved on with her life. Now though, her deep brown eyes assessed him as if she were seeing him for the first time.

Finally, she said, "If it were the other way around would you have let Esme do it?"

In other words, what would Carlisle have been willing to do for Edward?

It felt damning to say, "No, no, I would have tried to suggest something else."

Even if Esme had been as supportive as she'd been when Edward asked her permission for Carlisle to bed Bella. Even if she'd tried to coax him into it—he couldn't picture himself saying yes.

Not even for the sake of Edward's happiness.

He sighed, stared ahead, and tried to get the conversation back where it started, "But he does love you, Bella, he's just—he's young."

"He's a hundred years young," Bella snorted, even rolling her eyes a bit, a small smile working its way onto her otherwise grim features.

"He's seventeen," Carlisle corrected, "That he's been seventeen for a century doesn't mean he's not seventeen."

Bella sighed, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with Carlisle, but then he wondered if she understood what he meant. Bella was more or less the same age as Edward himself. Like Edward, she was very mature in some respects but acted her age in others.

What would it mean, to her, that someone was seventeen? Bella was still a teenager herself, had had so little time to look back and reflect on how she'd changed. Perhaps, Carlisle saying that would mean very little to her.

Regardless, after a pause, she mused with a thoughtful frown, "You know, I think that's it, I think Edward thinks that he loves me."

Carlisle felt his eyebrows raise but she didn't give him a chance to ask.

"I'm serious," Bella said, "I mean, especially since—since Italy, he tells me he loves me almost every day. But he—I think he just thinks that he does."

"I'm afraid I don't follow," Carlisle said.

"Hear me out," Bella said, lifting a hand to ward off his comments, "Edward—I think, sometimes, he forgets—I don't really know how to put it. It's not that he forgets I'm here, forgets I have opinions or anything, but he forgets something. Maybe he forgets that he's a part of my life too."

She motioned around her, "You know what he told me when he—when he left? He said it'd be like he'd never existed. He took all the photos, all the gifts from my birthday—"

"He did what?" Carlisle couldn't help but blurt.

"Everything except the stereo in the truck," Bella nodded, as if this were nothing unusual, "I think either Rosalie installed it or something and he didn't think he could get it out. Funny story, I actually ended up clawing that thing out with my bare hands."

How was this a funny story, Carlisle desperately wanted to ask.

"I just looked at it, right after you guys left, and there was this white noise in my head. I tore the thing out, screaming my head off for thirty minutes. I practically ruined my hands," Bella said with a cheerful laugh, "Oh my god, they were such a mess afterwards, there was blood everywhere. Now its sad mangled corpse lives in my closet. Everything else he stuck under my floorboards."

He put what under her floorboards?

She continued before Carlisle had a chance to say anything, "Anyway, the point is, I think he thought that was all I needed. Maybe he thought it'd take a few months, or something, but if he just took away a few reminders of his existence then I'd forget about him. Like I wouldn't go to school every day looking for him and Alice, or I wouldn't see your empty house, or I—"

"He told me he thought it'd take all night to convince me and yet he thought I could forget about him because he happened to steal a couple of photos," Bella said, tears gathering at the corner of her eyes again as she shook her head.

"He doesn't—" she threw her hands in the air, "He always does this! It's like I'm just there sometimes! I'm just—I'm just there and he's just there and he can just shove you or Jake at me and I wouldn't even notice!"

She laughed and looked down at her lap, "You see, I think—I think he just likes, loves, the idea of me. The real me, average, boring, Bella who can't just forget about him or sleep with anybody else—she's not even on his radar."

For a moment Carlisle said nothing, he felt as if there was nothing he could say. He couldn't say he imagined what this conversation would be like but this, whatever this was, was not it.

He had known that Bella and Edward's relationship was a work in progress, that, like all relationships it had flaws. However, he hadn't realized exactly how deep those flaws were and that Edward's latest actions were just a culmination of something far more dangerous than a lack of communication.

The way she talked, the things she recounted, it was as if they hadn't had a relationship since Edward had returned from Italy, if not before he left.

Finally, he noted, "It sounds like you've been thinking about this for some time."

She shrugged, "Not really, I mean—it hurt so much when he, when you, left that sometimes it feels like I'm just grabbing on with both hands for dear life."

She pantomimed holding a bull by the horns, "It, god, it felt like he ripped my heart out of my chest that day. When he came back, when I saw him in Italy, I never wanted to feel like that again. I promised I would never feel like that again, that this time, this time I would do whatever I had to—"

She sighed and cut herself off, let her hands drop onto the counter where she poked at the placemat, "You know, it doesn't hurt as much as I expected."

She glanced at him, "I mean, it hurts, obviously, but it's not the same. Maybe it's because it's less of a shock this time. I think last time I actually let myself believe he loved me, because some part of me wanted him to so desperately. This special, perfect, boy who wasn't even human loved someone like me. It was—it was the greatest feeling in the world. This time, well, this time I saw it coming."

"Bella, he wants to marry you—" Carlisle started but Bella laughed before he could even finish.

"Marriage," Bella scoffed, "No offense, Dr. Cullen, but I've seen marriage."

"Marriage," she said with a cynicism he'd never seen in her before, "Is overrated and for people who rush in too young, too fast, and end up hating each other. Marriage isn't forever, sometimes you're lucky if marriage is even a year. Marriage is a piece of paper and a nice party."

She held up a hand and began ticking off fingers, "Immortality, sex with someone you love, now those mean something, those last. Funny, isn't it? Edward wanted a flimsy piece of paper so badly, but he can't put his money where his mouth is. Edward wants forever, but only if forever is six months of cuddling."

"That's not true. That's not how he sees it, Bella," Carlisle corrected quietly, "Marriage is important to Edward. Marriage is a vow that will outlast everything—"

"Edward wants to marry a girl who doesn't exist," Bella cut in, just looking at him, eyes still watering but face calm and stoic despite her red blotchy cheeks.

Carlisle had nothing to say.

He sighed, looked up at the ceiling, and wondered how it had come to this. What counsel could he possibly give for both her and Edward?

Edward—Edward would be devastated if he knew what she said. He'd be horrified to know that some part of Carlisle couldn't help but agree.

"Originally," Carlisle found himself saying quietly, "When Edward came to me about this, after we talked, I was going to suggest you and Edward postpone the wedding a few years until after you were turned. Take time to get to know each other, let you have time to adjust, and then—"

He didn't finish the sentence, there didn't seem to be a point.

He and Bella instead sat in silence, letting the minutes tick by as they each became lost in memories. Carlisle found himself going over the past two years, the way Edward had suddenly brightened, that day he'd first brought the shy girl to visit their house, Carlisle's conversation with Bella when giving her stitches—

Then Bella asked, "What happens if I don't marry Edward?"

"What do you mean?" Carlisle asked.

"I—" she stopped, swallowed harshly, "In Italy, the Volturi said that I had to be a vampire. Edward won't change me if I don't marry him."

Her meaning, of course, was clear. If she didn't marry Edward, would she be changed? Would she be signing her death certificate?

"I'll change you," Carlisle responded swiftly, leaving no room for doubt. She nodded slowly as she took that in, as if she was resigning herself to that fate.

"I—I know it's not supposed to make a difference, I know it's supposed to be three days of agony, but I just wanted it to be him so badly," she confessed, "I wanted him to choose me, not just watch you do it or grumble about it in some other room, but actively choose me forever. I thought—if he does that, then maybe he really does want me. Maybe he won't leave. Maybe he thought that too, maybe that's why he's not volunteering."

Carlisle shook his head, "No, he—Edward has phenomenal control, especially since he met you, but he doesn't want to risk it. Edward has never turned anyone before, and it is not an easy thing to do."

Carlisle, after all, had only ever attempted it himself after nearly three-hundred years and even he wouldn't say it was easy.

"That's the trouble," Bella said, "He never wants to risk anything. He wants to play it safe. He wants—maybe it's not playing house but it's playing something. Life is worth taking risks."

She sighed again and then asked a more damning question, "What if Edward and I don't stay together?"

Oh, oh Edward.

He wanted so badly to tell her to talk to him, to try. Carlisle would talk to him; Carlisle would do everything in his power to help them through this. He could feel everything Edward had worked for, the only true happiness he seemed to have known in one hundred years, crumbling between his fingers.

Some part of it had to be miscommunication and youth. Edward and Bella had had so little time and spent so much of it in a desperate fight for survival. Edward had never been in love before, neither had Bella, and both stumbled as all young love did.

But another part of Carlisle listened to every word Bella said, looked at the certainty in her eyes, and remembered Edward approaching him for the idea that had brought Carlisle and Bella here today. Edward had been so earnest, so confident, and made it sound so logical that it had almost seemed reasonable. Yet, beneath that, there was an utter disregard for and lack of understanding of what a relationship truly was.

More, there was an utter disregard for Bella's opinion.

Edward had no idea what he'd done in asking this of Carlisle and his future bride. Carlisle was sure he had never imagined Bella leaving him over this as a possibility. No, Edward was too busy planning Carlisle and Bella's honeymoon.

Bella leaving could destroy him.

Yet, Carlisle couldn't tell Bella to stay just because he wanted Edward to be happy.

His voice caught in his throat and Carlisle forced himself to say, "I'll still turn you and you'll still be a Cullen. You will always, Bella, be a Cullen."

She looked up at him, tears flowing down her face again, and he realized with some horror she had expected the answer to be no.

But then, why shouldn't she? They'd all left at Edward's command once before. From her point of view, it seemed simple that if Edward left her then his entire world left with him. Being with Edward wasn't simply being with Edward, it was choosing life itself over a cruel and pointless death at the hands of the Volturi.

Suddenly, Carlisle wished he had talked to her so much sooner. Today seemed far too late, even the night of her birthday party seemed far too late. Somehow, he should have found time at the beginning to assure her that her importance to him and his family did not revolve around her importance to Edward.

Even though, back then, she had only been the strange curiosity that was Edward's human girlfriend.

"Remember, Bella, that most came to this coven without mates," he reminded her, "I didn't turn Esme with the intention of marrying her. Rosalie took years to find Emmett. Edward has taken one hundred years to find—Only Jasper and Alice came together. Your coming into this family alone is not a remarkable event, no matter the strange circumstances."

She nodded, still crying, but a grateful, relieved, smile was also on her face.

God, she had thought about this. How long had Bella wondered about this? Had she agreed to marry Edward solely because of the unspoken consequences? Not just dangled rewards of sex and immortality but believing that Edward held her entire world in the palm of his hand?

Still, Carlisle couldn't help but ask, "Bella, will you—are you going to leave him?"

She shook her head, "No, I mean, I don't know—I don't think I can. Maybe when I'm a vampire, when I'm—when I'm not useless and human and look like Rosalie, he'll love me."

"Being human is not useless—" he tried to say but she didn't wait for him to finish.

Instead, with a small smile, she said, "You know, I think it's okay that I love him more than he loves me."

She laughed a little, looking almost at peace, "Yeah, it's like it's good to finally know where I stand."

Carlisle felt as if his heart was breaking.

"You shouldn't have to live like that," Carlisle said.

"Funny, shouldn't you be all Team Edward?" Bella asked.

He sighed, laced his hands together, and said, "I think you and Edward should talk. I think you should have a long, in depth talk, and call of the wedding. I think neither of you see each other or yourselves clearly. You are worth far more than you give yourself credit for. Edward is—I believe he is not as callous as you make him out to be."

"I never said he was callous," Bella said shaking her head in confusion, "I get it, the Bella he's made up in his head is way cooler than the Bella in real life."

"Bella—" Carlisle tried to say but she didn't let him finish.

Instead she took a breath, and said, "No, on second thought, I have to leave him."

She let out a long, painful sigh and let her head drop into her hands, "Edward deserves someone he loves, someone he actually really loves, not just an idea of them. I don't know who that is, I don't know if it's Tanya or somebody else, but I don't think it's me."

"And what about you?" Carlisle couldn't help but ask.

"What about me?" she retorted.

"Don't you deserve to be loved?" Carlisle asked.

"Maybe," Bella said, "I don't know, maybe someday. Maybe what I have—had—with Edward was it for me. Just the idea of being loved like that—I think most people aren't loved like that, love others like that, their whole lives."

"You forget forever is a long time," Carlisle said, "You'll have time to find someone. I know you will."

"Yeah," Bella said weakly, "I guess that'll be me then, huh? Three-hundred years or more until I find someone who really has a thing for average."

"You're not average," Carlisle said.

"When I'm not average, I'm fucking weird," Bella said with a snort, "Seriously, what kind of a person has brown for a favorite color?"

Now that did throw Carlisle a little for a loop, "Brown is your favorite color?"

She nodded and explained, "Brown's underrated. There are all different kinds of brown, it's not just dirt. When you're from the desert, you look out and see layers and layers of brown and it's—it's warm. When I first came here, everything was too green, way too vibrant. It's started to grow on me though."

She fell into a thoughtful silence which was enough time for Carlisle to gather his thoughts. He felt as if he had to say something, find some way to reassure her that she was worth loving, that she wasn't forgettable or obnoxious or some kind of charity case Edward had taken on out of misconceived notions of love.

How could you say that in only a few words?

Even with an entire weekend before them, how could he find what he needed to say to her when he hadn't found what he needed to say to Edward in a hundred years?

In the end, he decided, that the only thing for it was to just start talking.

"Bella, I want to say something to you, and I want you to listen until I'm finished," he began.

She looked over at him with those wide doe's eyes. They were a little too large her face and Carlisle suspected they always would be, it gave her a strange, childish, and almost innocent look about her. Yet perhaps because they were so large, they always expressed so much.

Her face was an open book, but her eyes were the windows to her soul thrown wide open.

"Bella, you are an extraordinary human being and not simply because you captured Edward's interest," Carlisle said, and he could see her wanting to roll her eyes, to turn away from him and hide herself beneath a shield of sarcasm and disbelief, "It doesn't matter that your favorite color is brown, that you've visited the hospital more times than any healthy young woman I've ever heard of, or that you have brown hair, brown eyes, and an average height. Those are the surface details of any given person, things we spout in icebreaker activities when it feels too hard to reveal our true selves."

He motioned to himself and began an introduction, "My name is Carlisle Cullen, I'm twenty-three going on three-hundred-fifty. I'm tall enough to be gangly, have that color of hair that you can't help but wonder is thanks to peroxide, and an eye color that alternates between looking like a lizard's and that unnerving pitch black you see in horror films. At their best, they're almost brown. My favorite color is blue. I used to be a pastor and was a terrible disappointment to my father."

"You're not—" Bella started but Carlisle held up a hand.

"I won't claim to know you well," Carlisle continued, "In fact, I have come to regret that fact and not simply because you and Edward are—were—getting married. However, would you like me to tell you what I know about you?"

Bella looked horrified; a deer trapped in the headlights with a semi barreling forward at full speed. Her cheeks weren't simply red from wiping away makeup now but scarlet with sheer embarrassment.

Carlisle couldn't help but grin as he continued, "I know you are courageous. You are courageous in the way that only heroes in epic poetry and ballads are courageous.

You knowingly confronted and offered your heart to what the world sees as a monster. You confronted James on your own, faced death with your head held high, and when he tortured you and asked you to plead for your life, your only words were for Edward. You faced the threat of Victoria and Laurent on your own while climbing your way out of heartbreak, the world you knew having abandoned you, and made friends with yet another inhuman society who had no intentions of being friends with you."

"It wasn't like that—" Bella tried to say but he just shook his head.

"When Alice came back out of nowhere, after months without contact, you embraced her with open arms and rushed on a moment's notice to Edward's aid, risking your life in a city of vampires that would kill you for what you know, even though you whole-heartedly believed he had abandoned you. You had the courage, Bella, to take Edward back and try again, even after the many grievous mistakes he made."

He reached out and took her hands in his, and this time she didn't flinch, "Bella, if that's not courage, I don't know what is."

She squeezed his hands, looked down at the counter, and tried to mumble, "It wasn't like that, of course I—"

"I'm not finished," Carlisle interjected.

"I know you love often and with everything you have," Carlisle said, "You love people who shun you, despise you, and disparage you even to this day. You have never shrunk from Jasper for all that he has avoided you, for having lost control and nearly killed you, or become contemptuous of Rosalie for all that she is contemptuous of you. You forgave us all for leaving and then coming back as if we still had a place in your life."

"Isn't that a bad thing?" Bella asked quietly, "Doesn't that make me stupid?"

"You're not without flaws," Carlisle agreed with a nod, "You're young, naïve, and sometimes very foolish. Edward told me you tried to stab yourself in the battle with Victoria because you heard it in an old Quileute legend. You ran off to confront James without stopping to think that, even if he had your mother, he simply would kill the pair of you if you went to save her. I'm sure I haven't been witness to even half the hare-brained schemes you've come up with in your desperation to find a happy ending in this madness."

Bella flushed in shame and shifted in her seat.

"Sometimes, you fail to consider the circumstances and lives of others," he continued, "Rosalie dislikes you in part out of jealousy of the human life you still have to live but also because you completely disregarded her advice. She sees you throwing everything away, a life you've barely begun to live, because you think you understand what our lives are like and have failed to seriously consider what you're going to lose."

He held up a hand before she could say anything, "We all, Bella, have character flaws. We have flaws and we have strengths. Whatever yours are, know that you are extraordinary, and you are not just worthy of love but deserving of it. Someday, and it may not be Edward, someone will see you for who you are, warts and all, and they will love you."

She was crying again, crying and biting her wobbling lip, whether to hide a smile or a sob he didn't know.

"I can't promise it will be tomorrow," he finished, "I can't promise it will be Edward, but know that love will come."

Finally, he made to withdraw his hands from hers, but she stopped him, "Wait."

She took a deep, steadying, breath and said the words that would damn them both, "I want to do it."

"What?" he asked, honestly having no idea what she was talking about.

"You waited three-hundred years for Esme," Bella said, tightening her grip on his hands, "Edward waited—he's going to wait even longer than a hundred years now. Dr. Cullen—Carlisle—I want to be loved, even if it's just once, before I start waiting."

He felt his stomach drop in quiet horror, "Bella—"

"Esme gave you permission," she listed off, "Edward gave us both permission, and this is the only chance I'll ever have. I know you don't love me, at least, not like that, but I—I want to be loved even if it's only once in my life."

She finally looked up at him, looked directly into her eyes, and said a single word, "Please."

It was that one word, he'd later thought, that one word and the way she looked at him with her soul wide open that did it.

At the time it was as if his body moved on its own.

His smile softened into something gentle, he squeezed her hands back as softly as he could, and he said, "You'll have to call me Carlisle."

Author's Note: The TL;DR versions of this chapter:

Bella: Edward doesn't love me.

Carlisle: No, Bella, Edward loves you very much, he's just-

Bella: Recounts Shit Edward Says

Carlisle: ... Alright, so Edward might not love you.

Carlisle: Unintentionally spouts paragraphs of romantic drivel

Bella: Take me

Thanks to readers and reviewers, reviews are much appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight