15. A Tuesday

"Idiot!" Rosalie hissed. Her next string of insults were much more colorful. "Your name is that book! What if she looks it up on the internet? What if she finds it in a newspaper somewhere?"

She acted as though I hadn't taken that into consideration before I had "gifted" Bella a book with my own human name in it.

Jasper raised an eyebrow. He was always the one responsible for covering our tracks— scrubbing records, deleting photos, removing newspapers from archives— so he had a right to feel slighted. "She won't find anything connected to that name, Rosalie."

—you selfish, pig-headed, arrogant ass— She wasn't listening to Jasper. Do you hear me, Edward? Her mental yelling never ceased. Compromising my safety, my happiness—

"She won't look for the name," Alice sighed, wiping a weary hand across her brow. The sky was lightening with the first signs of dawn. We had been having this same argument all night.

—always about you, isn't it? Perfect little Edward. As if—

I growled. "Do you think Alice would have helped me if she had even seen a possibility of—"

"What if she missed it?" Rosalie's hands flew out in front of her as she spoke, jerking around like angry hornets. "It's happened before—"

"Rosalie," Carlisle said with the sort of gentle weight only he could muster. "We are a family, and we are going to work through this as a family. Your opinions on the matter are just as valid as Edward's, but we have to trust one another."

"Trust Edward?" Rosalie roared, swatting at Emmett's restraining hand on her shoulder. "He always puts himself first—"

"Rose—"

"—always, Carlisle. If he had been doing his duty to our family, the girl wouldn't even be alive right now—"

"Truly? You who dragged his—" I motioned to Emmett— "half-dead corpse halfway across the country and begged Carlisle to intervene, you are going to tell me that I'm being selfish?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Change her. Or I will."

That was too much. I slammed my hand down on the tabletop, sending a long, jagged crack all the way down its length.

Rose stood up and began yelling again. Alice was chastising us all with her tiny, manicured finger. Carlisle dropped his chin onto his fist, his elbow propped atop the broken table. Esme pinched the bridge of her nose and opened her laptop, pulling up the website where she had originally ordered the dining set. Emmett was soothing, Jasper fuming, and I couldn't take it any longer.

I rose and walked upstairs to find a change of clothes. This argument was going nowhere. I combed through my hair with my fingers, doing my best to block out the chaos of the floor beneath me, and exited the house through the window.

I'm sorry, Esme, I sent her in a text. Please forgive me. I will gladly pay for the new table.

I heard her mental sigh as she read it. I'm just worried about you, Edward. I don't know why you resist the things that Alice has seen.

I took off at a sprint, desperate to get away from that thought. I could never let myself embrace that future. Not for Bella.

My feet took me to her neighborhood without my consent. I stopped a half-mile from the Swan house, as close as I dared get. With my eyes closed, and my breathing ceased, I counted minds and heartbeats until I was sure she was still alive.

I had put her at risk again. Rosalie would be harping on about it all day, I was sure, demanding that Bella be dealt with in the way that Rose saw fit.

I pressed my forehead to my knees, listening to the soft thump of Bella's sleepy pulse. It was like music.

Where could I go from here? I was grossly entangled in the affairs of this precious human girl. Dangerously entangled. If not for Rosalie's frightening volatility, I think I would have fled again, condemning myself to the torture of living with a hole in my middle for the rest of my days. It was better to carry the pain myself, alone and aching for the rest of my days, than to hurt Bella Swan.

But I couldn't do that. I couldn't leave her unguarded. Jasper, Alice, and Esme all agreed with Rosalie's course of action, whether they spoke it aloud or not. Emmett was close, too. I heard it in their minds— change her, Edward— as if the possibility had never occurred to me. As if the idea of having her by my side for all eternity was a new thought for me.

A low, slimy thought slithered its way into my mind. Perhaps this was the answer to my dilemma. I was sure that the red-eyed Bella in Alice's vision would hate me for changing her, but what if it was not I who changed her? What if it was Rosalie that she hated? Could I let my sister—

No. No. How could I even entertain the thought? Bella was too rare a soul to be condemned to this soullessness. For Bella's sake, I had to resist.

When she left for school, I followed on foot, focusing always on the sound of her beating pulse— proof that she was still whole. I'm not sure how I made it through school that day. My feet walked, my hand wrote, my eyes feigned attention, but my mind was attuned to nothing but that soft, musical thrum of her heart within her chest.

It wasn't until Biology— when the object of my fascination sat next to me without fear— that I realized she had spent the day in her own strange silence. I hadn't been able to bear watching her through others' eyes, so it took me by surprise when she drew a gallon-sized ziploc bag out of her backpack as soon as she took her seat. From the bag, she pulled a book.

A familiar book. The Hound of the Baskervilles— my gift.

She kept it in a plastic bag? I grinned behind my hand. She held it so carefully in her graceful fingers, turning the pages gingerly like she was handling a fragile, ancient manuscript. I suppose it was an ancient manuscript to her. Eagerly, Bella's eyes sped back and forth over the text, devouring the story like it gave her life.

A strange warmth filled my chest. She liked it! Out of all of the gifts she had received, mine was the one she cherished. Could vampires fly? I felt like I could.

Without warning, I felt her gaze on me, her eyebrows screwed up in pure bemusement. I realized than I had been grinning cheek to cheek like an utter fool, smiling so wide that all of my lethal teeth were put on display. I covered my mouth with a fist.

Bella arched an eyebrow. She drew in a breath like she was about to ask a question, but just then Mike made an appearance.

"Bella. Hey." Embarrassment fell off of him like an odor. I was holding my breath, but I wrinkled my nose anyway.

Bella glanced at him, and then back to me, and I could see her sharp eyes just longing to tear off another piece of my facade. "Hey, Mike—"

"Yesterday," he said, and Bella turned back to him with her lips pressed into a thin line.

"Don't worry about it," she insisted.

"Really?" He glared at me— I was making no attempt to hide my eavesdropping— and turned back to Bella. "Because I—"

"I'm not a really a gift person," she said, even as she clutched my gift to her chest. "Never have been."

"Oh."

Bella glanced back at me, but my grin had gone to a full, unashamed, arrogant smirk.

Mike followed her gaze. What a creep, he thought. He rolled his fingers into a fist, imagining how good it would feel to finally punch me in the nose.

Bella's cheeks turned a lovely pink. "It's fine, Mike. We're good. Don't worry about it."

He nodded, inwardly drowning in dismay at the possibility of something going on between Bella and I— or Creepy Cullen, as he called me in his mind. "Cool. So… new book?"

Bella's eyes lit up, and with them, my entire being. "Yeah. I found it on the side of the road." She raised her eyebrows like he should be impressed. "Look, Mike—" she flipped to the front— "this is a first edition. Someone was throwing it away! Can you even imagine— Who in their right mind would put this out with the trash?"

Mike shrugged. "Is it worth a lot of money?"

Bella balked. "Well, maybe, but I'm certainly not going to sell it."

He grinned. "You're a little bit nerdy, Arizona. You realize this, right?"

"Shut up," she laughed. "You never know— I might be your boss one day."

Mike grinned even wider, and I didn't need to hear his thoughts to know what sorts of things he was imagining.

"Alright, folks," Bob Banner yelled above the din. "Last call on the Mendel worksheet. If it's not in the basket, you won't see it in the gradebook. Lewis, I think that pencil is sharp enough. Newton, take a seat. Miss Harris, can you pull that door closed—"

Mike took one last look at Bella, feeling victorious for the way she laughed at his joke. He slapped a palm to the table and walked back to his seat, daydreaming of a fist fight where I came out as the loser.

How amusing.

After school, I spotted Mike's teddy bear. It lay filthy and forgotten on the floorboard of Bella's truck.

Thanks for waiting so long for this update. :) I really appreciate all of your encouragement to keep writing.