They return to the cottage late in the evening, long after night descended so that Esme could see all of the stars up close.
He enters the house with her still clinging to his back, her laughter like a melody in his ear.
"I'd climbed tons of trees before that fateful day," she argues, digging her chin into the juncture between his neck and his shoulder. "It was my father's fault that I fell. He startled me."
"What were you even doing up there?" he presses, enjoying the frustrated huff of her breath at the back of his neck, ruffling his hair.
"Getting some perspective." He's walking them through the house, her body still draped at his back. He can feel every breath so clearly like this, can feel every puncturing beat of her heart, the rush of her blood beneath the thin barrier of her skin. She lowers her cheek flat to his shoulder blade, an action that siphons the unnecessary air from his lungs. She's so at home with him, so content and trusting. It horrifies and thrills him all at once. "I used to take my sketchbook with me. For the longest time, there was a nest up in the branches. I sketched its transformation until the day the eggs inside hatched. It was breathtaking."
"Your parents never realized how extraordinary you were, did they?" he asks suddenly, feeling the slight hitch in her breathing pattern.
"I wasn't extraordinary, Carlisle," she sighs, deflating against his frame before slowly shifting to let go. He helps her to her feet, pivots to face her. She gives him that sad smile, the disheartened quirk of her lips. "I was a waste."
Incredulity surges in his chest.
"Esme-"
She quiets him with the touch of her hands to his cheeks, the steadying brace of her palms cradling his face. "Maybe not to you," she acquiesces, stroking the corner of his mouth with her thumb. "But to everyone else... I'm a twenty-six year old woman who took too long to marry, who failed to be a proper wife. I was a burden to my family."
"No," he argues, circling her wrists in his hands, drawing her soothing fingers down and trapping them at his chest instead. "Esme, you're right to believe me biased, but please, do not chalk it up to nothing more than that when I say it was they who failed you."
She begins to shake her head, but Carlisle catches her chin in careful fingers.
"You are a brilliant woman with a gorgeous heart. Your parents should have nurtured you, your talents, instead of stifling you. You should have married for love, you should have been treated with every kindness this world has to offer," he insists, not understanding when her eyes begin to shimmer with moisture. "Esme, you... there are not enough words for what you deserve, but I can assure you it was more than what you were given."
Her lashes are wet with tears now and he feels the guilt creep into his senses. He really did not mean to make her cry.
"I didn't mean to upset you, I'm-"
"No," she hushes, slipping her hands from beneath his to band her arms around him. He embraces her automatically, reflexively, welcomes the burrow of her body into his. "I'm not upset, I just... I wish-"
She lifts her head, her eyes find his, flicker down to his lips for a moment.
If he had a heart, it would be racing, battering itself against his ribcage as she leans in, touches her lips to his cheek.
"I wish it would have been you," she whispers like she's in confession. "I've always wished it were you."
It takes him a second to compose his thoughts, think past the kiss she left on his skin. But it's as though she has branded him, imprinted fire on his frozen flesh, seared him to the bone.
Her head bows, forehead knocking against his jaw.
"You have no idea," he manages at last, struggling to speak past the thick scent of her engulfing him now. All he can smell is honeysuckle and blood. It's intoxicating, dangerous. Just like the words they're admitting to each other. "How much I wish that were true."
When she meets his gaze, her cheeks are tinged pink, eyes damp but soft on him, calmed.
"Thank you," Esme breathes, offering him a watery smile that he can't help tracing his thumb across. The color of her cheeks darkens, spreads to her neck, the quiet thump of her pulse quickening in his ears. "For being here now."
"Nowhere else I'd rather be," he answers honestly, stealing that little trick of hers from earlier and trailing his gaze from her eyes to her mouth.
Oh no, no, his hunger is too great for all of this.
"Carlisle," she murmurs, her warm fingers rising to trace the paper-thin skin beneath his eye. "The color of your irises is looking rather dark. A bit like copper today."
"I was actually going to ask if you would mind if I went for a quick hunt," he grins with self-deprecation.
Esme chuckles, nodding immediately but slow to lower her hands from his face, his chest. "Of course. Please. Just one thing?"
"Anything," he replies without hesitation, causing her smile to broaden.
"Come back to me afterwards?"
He didn't know there was any other option.
"Always," he promises, squeezing her shoulder in farewell before dashing through the front door.
He doesn't think he has ever hunted so fast in his life.
He was quick to find the deer, drain it of its blood until all of his desire for Esme's had dissipated wholly. He's returned to the cottage in less than a half hour, hearing the shower running from her bathroom as he enters.
Carlisle locks the door behind him out of habit, peruses each and every window, checks any and every possible entry to the house before finding his way into her bedroom. There, he waits on her bed while she bathes and prepares for bed. He's engrossed in one of her many novels on architecture and gothic design when she emerges, smelling like honeysuckles and wet earth.
The pajamas she wears are two pieces, long and flowing pants with a top that buttons, the fabric always cozy and soft when it brushes his skin.
"All good?" she asks, tossing a towel into a hamper by the door. Not at all perturbed to find him sitting on her bed, as if she expected to find him there all along.
"Better than," he confirms.
Esme plops down beside him, pushing her legs beneath the blankets and arranging herself at his side.
It scares him, how truly easy it is. How much he loves her in that simple moment.
It's easier now, since his talk with Edward earlier in the day, to think it without immediately trying to banish the idea from his brain. He loves her. To some capacity, he believes he always has and with a damning kind of certainty, he knows he always will.
They stay that way for a long moment, indulging in the extension of the usual end to their daily routine. There have been many times in which he's lounged in her bed with her, atop the covers and typically with a book poised between them, but tonight the air feels electric and the risk for temptation dangerous.
"I suppose I should head home," he sighs, closing the book in his lap and looking to the woman next to him.
Her hair is still damp and dripping, as if she rushed the process of drying off in order to return to him quicker. The stream of moisture bleeds through to stain the fabric at her shoulders, the wild nature of her natural curls threatening to soon emerge.
"You don't have a shift tonight," she comments, her eyes roaming his features. But he isn't sure what she's searching for. "Did you get enough to drink? Your eyes look gold."
"No, I hunted enough. I just… this is when I usually take my leave," he shrugs, reaching out to brush the hair from her shoulders, his fingers tangling momentarily in the wet strands.
Her lashes flutter to her cheeks and she nods. "Thank you, Carlisle. For today."
He hates when she expresses gratitude to him for anything, not when it feels like he should be thanking her for so much more.
Carlisle leans forward, presses a kiss to the top of her head, steals a silent inhale of her scent before he pulls away.
He's at the door, prepared to make a swift exit and walk the perimeter once like always before actually heading back south, when he catches the whisper of her voice.
"Carlisle?" He pauses in her bedroom doorway, glances back to the woman sitting alone in the bed and calling him back to it before she says a word. "Will you stay with me?"
Something in his chest eases, a lightness inhabiting his bones as he returns to his place beside her.
Carlisle settles his back against her pillows while Esme curls into his side, like it's the most effortless thing in the world. These days, it is.
"As long as you'll have me," he murmurs, combing gentle fingers through her hair.
Her cheek is pressed to his sternum and he feels it rise against the bone. For a while, they lay there as they have before, him content to remain by her side while she fights the inevitable sleep that will soon take her.
"Carlisle," she calls, his name a mere mumble now.
"I'm here," he assures her, craning his neck to drop one last kiss to her crown. It's all he'll allow; he can't keep indulging in every urge to touch her. It's become beyond appropriate as it is.
She hums, closing her fingers around the fabric of his sweater, over the stretch of material where his heart should be.
"I never thought I'd be happy again," she confesses, nuzzling his chest. "I thought I'd died with my baby boy."
"Oh, Esme," he breathes, holding her just a little tighter. He knows her pain, has held her through onslaughts of aching and misery and mourning that will never truly subside. He knows that her son's death shattered her and she will never be fully whole again, but he has also watched her work through the brutality of that fact every single day. He has watched her heal and has been privileged enough to stand with her through the last six months, to be let in when she could just as easily have shut him out. When she could have returned to that cliff in the night when he would believe her to be sleeping.
Dying would be so much easier. But she is so much stronger.
"But you make me happy," she whispers, breaking his stone heart into pieces before putting it back together all over again. "Thank you."
If vampires could cry…
"It's so very mutual," he promises her in return, listening to her breathing slowly begin to even out against him, the tether of her consciousness coming undone. "More than that, actually," he admits to himself once he's sure she's asleep. "Because I'm quite sure that I've fallen in love with you."
Esme stretches like a cat upon waking, her extending limbs bumping into something solid beside her. Something stone-cold yet inviting.
The smile graces her lips before she can even open her eyes.
"Good morning," she hears him chuckle and god, if she could just wake up to this every day...
"Good morning," she rasps, blinking a few times until he is perfectly in focus.
The room is dimly lit, clouds crowding the sky outside, but he looks no less beautiful.
Carlisle reaches out to stroke the hair from her face, his fingers gliding through the mess of her curls, skimming her scalp.
"How did you sleep?"
"Better than usual," she admits, turning into the cup of his palm at her cheek, the cold of his flesh cooling hers as she smears a kiss to his wrist.
His breath catches out of habit, one that fascinates her. Carlisle does not need to breathe around her, she doesn't require the facade of necessary oxygen as other humans do, but he still manages to indulge the mannerism around her. Apparently, she is able to make his retired lungs contract with something much more than necessity.
"Can you stay a while longer?" she inquires, sitting up in the bed. His arm lifts, opening a place for her to lean into his side.
"I don't need to be at the hospital until this evening," he confirms, relaxing back against the headboard with her snug against him.
"Carlisle, how long do you usually remain in one place before you have to move away?"
"Typically two to four years," he answers, his thumb tracing maddening patterns on her shoulder. "Long enough for people to start to wonder about my true age, as well as Edward's."
Esme hums, stealing his other hand from his lap to toy with. "How long have you resided here?"
"Nearly three." His fingers interlock with hers, indulging her tendency to fidget. "Why?"
Her teeth gnaw momentarily on her bottom lip. "You wouldn't just… leave, would you? Disappear in the night never to be seen again?"
"No, of course not. Not without telling you," he promises, dragging their twined hands to rest beneath his chin.
"Good," she states, shifting to look up at him. "Because I - I want to go with you, wherever you go."
The beginnings of a frown do not surprise her. "Esme-"
"You and Edward are family to me," she presses on, noticing the drop of their hands to his chest, where his heart should be. "Carlisle, you… you brought me to life. Please don't go."
His expression is a contradiction of elation and pain.
"I can't put you in danger. You knowing about our kind is incriminating enough. I told you of the Volturi and if ever they learned of you-"
"No one will learn of me. We've been careful, we'll be careful."
"Esme, I want more for you than a life of constant instability and fear. I want-"
"I want you," she cuts in, determination shooting off sparks inside of her. She shakes free of his hands, lifting her own to cup his cheeks in her small palms. Her heart quivers at the proximity, the intimacy; this is the closest they've ever been. "Unless my feelings are one-sided-"
"No," he interrupts quickly, gravely. "They aren't."
She didn't believe she was alone in this, but even so, the confirmation has the butterflies soaring to life in her stomach. She can't help the smile that tugs at her lips, even as her eyes remain solemn on his.
"Then be with me." Esme leans forward, enough to rest her forehead to his. "Carlisle."
The whisper of his name, the strained syllables in her mouth, causes something to shift between them, a certainty filling the space of her bedroom.
"I don't think I could ever leave you again," he confesses, the admission sending relief through her blood.
"Then don't," Esme breathes, easing closer to him, practically in his lap now.
"I'd like to try something," Carlisle murmurs, dusting his fingertips along her jaw. Her brow furrows slightly, but then, realization blooms as he tilts her chin and leans in towards her. "Stay very still, please."
Her heart is beating so hard, it feels impossible to remain motionless, but Esme tries her best not to move as he drifts in closer.
His gaze flicks from her eyes to her mouth, a silent request that she acquiesces with a dazed nod of consent.
When his lips touch hers, it's like electricity running through her veins, lightning to accompany the thunder of her heart. For a moment it is nothing more than the gentle pressure of his mouth, the cold breath of a kiss on her lips as his hands cradle her face.
Esme leans into his touch, her hands yearning to reach for him, scared to push for too much too soon.
Carlisle parts from her a moment later, one of his hands drifting to feather at her pulse. She doesn't bother to hide it now, the way it must be racing for him. It was such an innocent kiss, so delicate and new, she wonders if it's the first time for him.
"Breathe, love," he whispers, his lips still so close to hers.
Because it feels like the first for her all over again. What should have been.
Esme nudges her nose to his cheek, the stretch of her smile brushing against his. "Kiss me again."
Carlisle chuckles, tilting his head to take her mouth once more. Her arms lace around his neck this time, her fingers slipping through the tufts of blonde hair at his nape. He's so tentative with her, always so thoughtful, gentle, and she loves him for it, for how much care he takes when it comes to her.
But she feels a sliver of his control waver when her tongue slips past his lips. His grip tightens ever so lightly at her back, his breath losing its graceful rhythm for one ragged second.
He abandons her mouth for her jaw, dusting a string of kisses along the bone until he descends to her throat, settling his lips at the pulse of her neck. Her spine shivers as his mouth opens there and part of her thinks that she should be afraid, but she just can't find the will to fear him. Not when he seals a kiss there before pulling back to look at her with eyes brighter than she's ever seen them.
"I think I could get used to that," he murmurs, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear.
Esme grins, letting the joy strung across her lips graze his own smile once more. "Good, because I don't think I want this to be a one and done occasion."
He's the one to tug her closer then, her body sliding so effortlessly against his, her knees on either side of his hips, their noses bumping like the butterflies colliding in her ribcage.
"Esme, you'll tell me if it ever feels like too much," he ensures, lifting her face in his hands to look into her eyes.
She tightens her arms around his neck. This sweet, wonderful man.
"I will, I promise." She kisses him once, twice. "Now is not one of those times."