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2. ASHES
(STITCHES)
"Emmett, Rose, get Jasper outside."
Carlisle's voice was calm and authoritative, a beacon of sanity against the chaos that threatened to descend upon us. Emmett nodded stiffly and reached toward his brother.
"Come on, Jasper."
Jasper snarled, his teeth bared as he struggled against Emmett's grip. Something dark and inhuman stared out at me from the depths of his eyes, and I was grateful when Rosalie stepped between us, blocking him from view. A smug expression twisted her perfect features as she helped Emmett wrestle Jasper toward the door.
"Charlie," Carlisle spoke again, "can you—"
"Already on it." Chief Swan answered. His words were clipped, and I turned to see that his gaze was focused on Jasper as Emmett and Rosalie struggled to maneuver him through the door that Esme held open behind them. They were pulling Jasper backward, so Chief Swan couldn't have been using his gift—his form of telekinesis could only stop objects in motion—he couldn't move them on his own—but he was watching closely as he shadowed their movements, waiting for the slightest misstep that would allow Jasper to break free.
"I'm so sorry, Edward," Esme called, using what I was certain was the last of her air. She followed Chief Swan out the door, pulling it closed behind her.
Carlisle crossed the room carefully, his attention focused on Bella, who still crouched protectively in front of me. After a few seconds, she relaxed and stepped to the side to let him pass. He knelt down to examine my arm.
"Here, Carlisle." Alice handed him a towel. Looking up, I saw that her eyes were averted, focused on Bella's face. Whether she was trying to avoid looking at the blood oozing out of my arm or trying to reassure Bella that she wouldn't hurt me, I couldn't be sure.
"Too much glass in the wound." Carlisle shook his head. Tearing a strip from the bottom of the tablecloth, he twisted it into a tourniquet above my elbow. The bleeding slowed.
"Edward, do you want me to drive you to the hospital, or would you like me to take care of it here?" I took a deep breath, forcing my thoughts back into focus.
"Mom's working in the ER tonight," I remembered. "You know how she got the last time I ended up there." Carlisle chuckled lightly, the sound strangely out of place in the tension-filled room.
"Yes, Level-Headed Lizzie did get a bit off-balance didn't she?" He smiled and turned toward Alice, but she answered before he could speak.
"I'll get your bag," she told him, and then she was gone.
"Let's take him to the kitchen table," Carlisle said to Bella.
I was used to being carried around by Bella by now, so my male ego didn't suffer too much when she scooped me up into her arms and carried me toward the kitchen. Carlisle walked beside her, keeping the pressure steady on my arm.
"How are you doing, Edward? Any dizziness? Do you feel light-headed?"
"I'm okay." Bella didn't look okay, though. Her expression was tight. I could see pain in her eyes.
She sat me down carefully in a chair at the end of the table. Alice had already returned with Carlisle's medical bag—it was sitting on the table now, along with a desk lamp that had been plugged into the wall. I wondered why she had bothered with the extra light. Carlisle's eyes wouldn't need it, and there was no need for pretense here. She must have done it for my benefit, I decided, and I was momentarily grateful that she'd thought of it.
Carlisle sat down in the chair beside me and began to work. I glanced up at Bella and Alice. This couldn't be easy for either of them.
"You don't have to stay," I said. "It's okay if you go."
Bella shook her head. I knew how difficult this must be for her, trying to resist the pull of my blood, so much more appealing to her than it was to the others. I glanced at Alice, trying to gauge her reaction, but Alice's attention was still focused on the side of Bella's face.
I tried not to wince as Carlisle injected something into my arm. Anesthesia? Antibiotics? There was a flicker of something in Bella's eyes, and the wrinkle between her eyebrows deepened. Something painful twisted inside me. Watching her suffer was worse than the actual injury.
"Bella, could you do me a favor?" I asked. "Could you please go find Jasper? He's probably back to himself by now. He'll feel bad about what happened, and I don't want him to. Tell him I said it was okay. I'm not mad at him or anything."
Bella shook her head. "Alice can—"
"Maybe you should both go," Carlisle suggested. "Edward is right. Jasper will be upset with himself. He'll be wanting Alice, and I doubt he'll feel any better unless Bella tells him Edward isn't angry. He'll know Alice would tell him that just to make him feel better."
Bella frowned down at me, her eyes meeting mine for several heartbeats before she let Alice lead her through the glass door. I waited a few moments before I spoke, hoping they were far enough away that they wouldn't be able to hear me. I wondered if either of them had taken a breath since the moment I'd bitten my lip.
"Thank you," I said to Carlisle. I could feel the numbness creeping toward my elbow. I already couldn't feel my wrist.
"It would only have distressed her," he answered. "There was no reason for her to cause herself further pain."
He was bent over my arm now, and every few seconds I could hear a gentle clinking sound as he extracted another piece of glass and dropped it onto the tabletop. I wasn't usually squeamish, but I kept my eyes focused on my uninjured left hand as it rested in my lap. It probably wasn't a good idea for me to watch what Carlisle was doing.
"This wasn't exactly what I had in mind for Bella's birthday, you know," I told him.
"We all know," he assured me, glancing up. "It was a very nice gesture, trying to give her something she'd never had. It isn't something any of us would have thought of. Our point of view is so different."
I thought back to the past spring, to all the days Carlisle had shown up at my house to help me shower. I had discussed it with him then, my ideas for prom and an eighteenth birthday party—my attempts to give Bella the experiences in life that had been stolen from her. He'd been surprised, but pleased by my consideration.
I may not have won over Chief Swan, but Bella's uncle seemed to approve of me.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the top of Carlisle's head as he bent over my arm once more. His eyes had been dark, not golden like Bella's. He was due a hunting trip, but still, this didn't seem to affect him in the least.
"How do you do this?" I asked. "Every day at the hospital you stitch up cuts and reset bones and perform surgeries, and it doesn't seem to bother you at all." Technically, everyone in Bella's family was a 'vegetarian,' but even so, it wasn't easy for them. Everyone else had still been affected by my blood. Carlisle was the only one who hadn't needed to leave, and now he was treating my injury without the slightest sign of discomfort.
"Years and years of practice," he answered. "I barely notice the scent anymore."
"Is it because you're always around blood at the hospital?" I wondered. "Constant exposure? Does that make it easier to ignore?"
He paused for a moment, considering. "That is an interesting theory. Perhaps that helps a bit, but I enjoy my work too much to stay away long enough to test it."
"Do you really enjoy it that much?" I asked. Aside from the gentle plink, plink as Carlisle dropped tiny slivers of glass onto the kitchen table, this could have been any of our conversations from the previous spring.
"What I enjoy the very most is when my enhanced abilities let me save someone who would otherwise have been lost. It's pleasant knowing that, thanks to what I can do, some people's lives are better because I exist. Even the sense of smell is a useful diagnostic tool at times."
He seemed to have finished pulling bits of glass from my arm. After a quick inspection, he turned to sort through his medical bag.
I knew the story. Carlisle's horror all those years ago at discovering what he had become. His vow to live off the blood of animals, instead of preying on humans.
"What about the others?" I asked as he turned back toward me. "I know why you do it, but wouldn't it be easier to just . . . follow the course of nature? I saw how much they struggled. One drop of my blood, and they could barely control themselves. Jasper . . ." The look in Jasper's eyes as he'd stared across the room came back to me. I decided it was best to let that thought go.
"Easier? Perhaps," Carlisle conceded, bending over my arm once more. "But we all have our own reasons for living the way we do. Knowing that you've ended the life of a sentient being is never easy." The vague sensation of pulling and tugging was different now. Stitches. "If it eases your mind, not everyone was struggling as much as you imagine."
I replayed the scene in my memory, trying to picture the exact expression on each of their faces. "What do you mean?"
"Charlie was fine."
I thought back to the tension on Chief Swan's face as he'd stared across the room at Jasper. I'd assumed his expression was because of the blood pouring out of my arm, but what if he'd just been focused on Jasper, on trying to counter any movement Jasper might make in his attempt to get to me? Now that I thought of it, he'd seemed more . . . preoccupied than anything else.
"So Bella's father could do this?"
"Oh, I don't know that he could do this," he answered, "but blood is unavoidable in his chosen line of work. There are always fights, accidents, injuries. He has taught himself a great deal of control in a much shorter period of time than it took me." I heard the snip of his scissors as he trimmed the thread.
"He had a good example."
Carlisle smiled. "Thank you, Edward." He swabbed my arm with some kind of antiseptic. It was dark, almost the color of syrup, and it stained my skin. "For Charlie, it's not so much about helping people as it is about protecting them."
"Protecting them?" I asked as he taped a long piece of gauze over the wound.
"It's who he is," Carlisle explained. "The need to protect is ingrained in him, just as my need to help others is ingrained in me, I suppose." I watched as he began to clean the tabletop. Every inch was wiped down with wet gauze. He did it once, and then a second time. I could smell the alcohol.
"Charlie was the first to join me in this life," he continued when he had finished. "I'd been alone for so long. Alone in philosophy, if not in company. The humans I spent my time treating could never really know me, and the others of my kind couldn't truly understand me. I'd been considering the idea of creating a companion, another creature who could really know me, rather than what I pretended to be, but I could never justify it to myself—doing what had been done to me."
There was a faraway look in his eyes as he cleaned his instruments. "Charlie was already dying when I found him. His wounds were too grievous for me to heal. I carried him back to an abandoned cabin I'd passed a few hours before, but he was suffering, and there was no way to prevent his death. His body was broken, and he was in unimaginable pain, but all he could think about was the pair of missing steers he'd gone in search of and the horse I'd had to kill in order to save him. He could tell there was something different about me, even through the pain, and talking to him seemed to make his suffering more bearable, so I told him the truth about myself. The entire truth. I'll never know why I did it—perhaps it was the years of loneliness bearing down on me—but there seemed no harm in telling the secret to someone who would never live to repeat it. I was surprised when he asked me to save him, to make him what I was and teach him to live as I lived."
"So it was his decision?" I asked.
"Well, in the end, it had to be mine." Carlisle glanced up to me briefly before continuing. "But he seemed like a truly good person, someone deeply concerned about the well-being of creatures that could not protect themselves, and it made me think that maybe he would be able to accept this type of existence."
"So you changed him, hoping he would be able to live the way you do, without hunting people."
"Yes, and I was fortunate in that he was. As the family has grown over the years, we've sometimes lived apart, but he's very much like the brother that I never had in my human life." I watched as Carlisle returned his newly cleaned instruments to his bag. "And he has never lost that desire to protect those who need protecting, just as I have always enjoyed helping those who need my help."
"So, is that why he does it? He's protecting human beings the way he used to protect cows on cattle drives?" I asked. Carlisle chuckled.
"No, not at all. It's more that Charlie believes the strong have an ethical obligation to protect the weak."
"Oh." That actually made a great deal of sense. I remembered the way Bella's father had gone into some sort of protective mode the previous spring, when James had targeted me to be his next victim. Chief Swan had not been fond of me, but he hadn't hesitated for a second.
"I wonder, sometimes, if I was right to doom the others to this existence, but Charlie was the first, and it was his choice. He has never expressed any regret."
I watched as Carlisle gathered the used gauze and the glass slivers into a crystal bowl, then lit a match. As he tossed the match into the bowl, the alcohol-soaked gauze went up in a sudden, impressive blaze.
"That ought to do it," he said.
"What about the others?" I asked, my eyes focused on the flames rising from the decorative crystal. "Why do they do it?"
"None of them really want to live that way, Edward. When you let yourself think about what you are doing, it takes its toll on you." He frowned faintly. "But sometimes, even we slip, even Charlie did, at the beginning." I noticed that he had included himself, even though he had never 'slipped,' never taken a single human life in all three and half centuries of his existence—so long as you didn't count the members of his family that he had changed in order to save them from certain death.
"What about Jasper?" I asked, pulling my eyes from the bowl. The little fire was burning lower now. "Is it harder for him because he didn't always live this way?"
"Perhaps," Carlisle conceded, "but still, he chooses this life. It was difficult for him, back then, especially with his unique abilities. The way he can influence emotion, it doesn't just go one way. Others' emotions can influence him, as well, and the lives he took were no exception."
He had felt their deaths, I realized as I watched Carlisle make his way toward the kitchen sink to wash his hands. That was what he was trying not to say. Jasper had felt their pain, their fear, every last second of their panic as he took each life away. My stomach churned, but I tried not to react.
"What about Bella?" I asked instead.
"Surely you've had this conversation with her before." Carlisle turned to give me a speculative look.
"She just says she doesn't want to be a monster."
Carlisle studied me as he dried his hands on a white kitchen towel. "Bella has such an innate sense of right and wrong. I've often wondered at how much alike she and Charlie are. They truly could be father and daughter in so many ways, although I suspect Charlie was already feeling a bit paternal toward her before the fire. I've always wondered if that was part of why he asked me to save her." He turned to gaze out through the kitchen window. "She is also, by her very nature, a caretaker."
"A caretaker?" I thought aloud, then smiled to myself. How many times had she shown up early on the weekends to make me breakfast? And then she'd insist on cleaning the entire kitchen as soon as she'd finished. She'd taken care of me once, when I was sick, and how many weeks had she insisted on carrying my books between classes this spring, even after I'd gotten rid of the crutches?
"Yes, and I'd imagine she feels very responsible for your well-being." He studied me for a moment. "How much do you know," he asked, "about Bella's human life . . . and the end of it?"
Bella hadn't told me a great deal about her life before, and I hadn't really felt comfortable asking.
"I know she worked at her mother's boarding house. There was a fire one night. She managed to get out, but only barely. She made it to a stream in the woods, but the burns were . . ." I let the words trail off. I didn't want to think about Bella in pain. About Bella dying.
"There's more to the story than that." He crossed the kitchen toward me and sat back down in the chair he'd abandoned only moments before. "The newspaper article said there were two survivors that night. Charlie was listed as a survivor because he couldn't very well tell the entire town that he hadn't been there at all. It was the middle of the night, and the three of us had been out hunting when the fire started. The only other survivor was Bella's younger brother."
"Brother?" I asked, surprised. "She never mentioned her brother." For a moment, I felt like I was prying, snooping into things that weren't any of my business, but Carlisle continued on. Apparently this wasn't something he wasn't supposed to tell.
"He was nine years old. He survived because Bella kept her head and got him outside to safety, but her burns didn't happen when she was escaping with him. Her burns happened when she tried to go back in after her mother."
My heart sank. "But she couldn't save her," I said softly, my eyes falling to the crystal bowl that sat on the table. The flame had burned itself out now. There was nothing left but ash.
"No, the fire had grown too strong. By the time she accepted that it was no use, she was barely able to escape again."
"What about her brother? Did she ever go back for him?" But there was no point in me asking. I already knew the answer.
"No, she couldn't, could she?" He smiled sadly. "He was raised by distant relatives. He grew up and married, but he always believed his sister perished in the fire that night."
I stared at the ashes in the bowl. It felt like Carlisle was trying to tell me something, but I couldn't decide what. Had Bella felt guilty for not saving her mother? Did she blame herself?
"She's afraid of something happening to me, too, isn't she?" I asked. "And if that something had happened tonight, she would have blamed herself."
"I'd imagine so," he answered.
I glanced back toward the living room. From this angle, I couldn't see the remnants of the collapsed table or the ruined cake, but I knew they were there, just around the corner. "What happened tonight—what almost happened—is always a possibility, isn't it?"
Carlisle nodded.
"But there seems to be an obvious solution to that," I said carefully.
Carlisle studied me for a moment. "You've discussed this with her." It wasn't a question.
"I've tried to." I sighed. "It's kind of the elephant in the room, isn't it? Bella's dead set against it, but Alice seems to think it will happen eventually."
"I believe that Alice's visions have been fluctuating between several possibilities for some time now." That made sense. Alice's visions depended on decisions, but I hadn't made one, and Bella was adamantly opposed to anything but my continuing humanity.
"Bella doesn't really want to talk about it."
"And what are your feelings on the matter?" he asked, studying me once more. I frowned, remembering the dream.
"Undecided," I told him truthfully. "I don't know how I feel. Mostly I just . . . I wonder why Bella is so set against it."
"Perhaps she doesn't want you to disregard your humanity so lightly. None of us really had the option of living out the rest of our lives. You do." I watched as he reached over to turn off the lamp.
"There's something else, though, isn't there?" I asked. "Some other reason she doesn't want me to consider it."
He studied me for a moment. "I've told you all that I can tonight," he said slowly, carefully. "Bella has her own reasons, but those are hers to share or to keep. I won't break her confidence."
"No," I said quickly. I already felt like I'd invaded her privacy enough tonight. "That's okay. I wouldn't expect you to."
I glanced down at my arm, studying the dressing on my wound as I considered for the hundredth time why Bella was so intent on me staying human. I realized then that my t-shirt was ruined, the cotton stained in a way that would never come out. It gave a sinister flare to the Mariners logo emblazoned across my chest. The pink icing smeared along my shoulder added a touch of whimsy to the macabre.
"I should probably take you home," Carlisle said as I looked up from my shirt.
"I can take him." Bella was walking slowly toward me through the shadowy dining room. Her face was drawn, and something in her eyes made me uneasy.
"You don't have to, Bella," I said. "Carlisle already offered."
"No, I'm fine." Something about the tone of her voice was . . . off somehow. "You should probably change, though. You don't want to get any of that on the upholstery in your car." She frowned down at my t-shirt. She was right. It would make a mess. "Alice should be able to find you something." I watched as she walked back out toward the living room.
"She's upset," I said. I wasn't sure whether I was speaking to Carlisle or to myself, but he answered.
"Yes," he agreed. "This is exactly the type of thing that she fears the most. You being put in danger because of what we are."
I pulled my eyes from the empty doorway to meet his gaze. "She shouldn't blame herself for that."
"Still," he answered softly, "she will."
I looked away from the wisdom and sadness in his eyes and moved to stand. Carlisle hovered beside me, ready to help if needed, but I managed to get to my feet without bumping my arm or jarring any stitches. I followed him out into the main room, where the smell of bleach hung heavily in the air. Esme had returned and was mopping the floor where I had fallen.
"I'm sorry, Esme." I frowned, wondering how the evening had gone so wrong.
"You have nothing to apologize for." She looked up at me, a warm smile crossing her heart-shaped face. "How do you feel?"
"I'm fine. Carlisle sews fast. It's a good thing he isn't so fast at the hospital. None of the other doctors would have anything left to do."
They both chuckled.
Bella and Alice came into the room then. Alice frowned at my shirt, but came to my side nonetheless. Bella stayed by the back doors, her face still indecipherable.
"Come on," Alice said, "let's see if we can find you something else to wear."
I ended up in one of Jasper's t-shirts, which surprised me because I didn't think Alice allowed any of the Cullens to wear anything without a designer label. Then again, something about the shirt felt expensive, so it probably had one, even if it was just a t-shirt. I felt a bit guilty taking it, but Alice assured me Jasper wouldn't care—or notice, for that matter. Alice kept the closets so full that they rarely had a chance to wear clothes a second time. One less shirt wouldn't matter.
"Alice," I murmured as we headed down the second floor hallway toward the stairs. "How bad is it?" I was trying to be as quiet as I could, but everyone in the house would probably be able to hear me anyway.
She paused, her face tense. "I'm not sure yet."
"Is Jasper okay?"
She sighed. "He's very unhappy with himself. It's all so much more of a challenge for him, and he hates feeling weak."
"Did you tell him that I'm not mad at him?" She nodded. "Tell him again for me, would you?" She nodded again, smiling softly.
"Thank you, Edward."
Bella was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. She walked toward the front door and held it open for me.
"That's my job," I said, smiling gently. I was hoping to lighten the mood, but her frown only deepened. I would have to try something else.
"Wait." I hurried toward the piano, where Bella's gifts now lay stacked, and grabbed the CD I had made for her. The double-framed photographs sat atop the glossy black surface. Whether they had remained, undisturbed, throughout the entire episode, or whether Esme had only just returned them there, I didn't know. I said goodnight to Esme and Carlisle, thanked Carlisle one last time for taking care of the stitches, and followed Bella out the door.
Outside, the decorations were still in place, the roses and lanterns a sad mockery of an evening that had begun with such good intentions. Bella opened the passenger's side door for me, but this time I made no comment. My arm was still numb. There was no way I could have driven.
The car was silent as she drove back down the long, twisting driveway. I had planned to play the CD, but somehow it didn't seem like it would help the tense atmosphere of the car.
"Bella?" I asked after several minutes of heavy silence.
"I'm so sorry, Edward," she whispered, the words coming out in a jumble.
"No, don't apologize. It was my fault. I should have been more careful. I ruined your birthday."
"It wasn't your fault, Edward. I appreciate what you were trying to do, but it's my fault that everything went wrong."
"Your fault?" I asked. "Bella, I bit my lip. I should have been more careful. How is that your fault?"
"Because if it weren't for me, none of this would have happened. No party, no cake, no stitches." Her voice was unsteady, breathy. I sighed. The blame game would get us nowhere.
"Bella, it was no one's fault. It was just an accident." I tried to reach across the car to lay a hand on her shoulder, but she flinched away.
My temper flared for a moment before I could pull it back under control.
"Bella, don't be ridiculous."
It was a bad choice of words. Bella had a temper, too.
"Ridiculous? I'm being ridiculous?"
"Bella, that's not what I—" I stopped. An argument was the last thing we needed right now.
"The situation is ridiculous, Bella. You didn't do anything wrong. There's nothing to blame yourself for."
"Of course there is. None of this would have happened if you had a normal girlfriend, Edward, a normal girlfriend with a normal birthday party. You'd have had some cake, watched her open some presents. Maybe you would have bitten your lip, but nothing would have happened. You wouldn't have nearly died. Your lip would have been sore for a few days, and then you would have forgotten all about it."
We were parked in front of my house now. She cut the engine but didn't otherwise move.
I watched across the front seat of the car as she stared out through the windshield into the darkness.
"You can come up," I told her. "You won't even have to come in through the window. Mom's at work."
She sighed. "I should probably go home."
Somehow I had a feeling that her going home would not end well.
"It's still your birthday, Bella. Forget what you should probably do. What do you want to do?"
She closed her eyes for a moment, clearly having some internal argument with herself. "Okay, I'll stay." She glanced out the window. "But I'm still coming through the window, just in case the neighbors see me go in the front door."
"They'll see me getting out of the wrong side of my car," I reminded her, but Bella didn't answer. Sighing, I opened the door and made my way up the front walk.
By the time I'd unlocked the door—a bit of a challenge with only one hand—and made it up the stairs, Bella was already in my room, waiting.
Wrapping my good arm around her, I tried to pull her against me. I expected her to lean in, to slide into my arms the way she always did, but the movement was stiff, unnatural.
"Bella," I whispered into her hair, "please don't be angry with yourself."
She hesitated for another moment, then settled into my embrace. Something about the desperate way her arms wrapped around me set off alarm bells in the back of my mind.
"I'm sorry, Edward," she whispered. I pulled back just enough to cup her cheek in my good hand.
"No more apologizing," I told her, trying to soften my words with a smile. "I'm going to go change, but first . . ." I slipped her CD into the player and hit the button. The lullaby I'd written for her began to play as I pressed a quick kiss against her forehead. "I'll be right back."
Changing into my pajamas one-handed was a bit of a challenge in the little bathroom, but I managed to do it without pulling the stitches in my arm too badly. I frowned at my reflection in the mirror, wondering how long I could manage to hide the injury from my mother—or if I should even try. Brushing my teeth was also a bit of an adventure, but I managed not to bump the inside of my lip and re-open the wound. I could tell that it was already going to be very tender.
When I returned to the bedroom, Bella was sitting on my bed, her face turned toward the CD player that was still playing the beginning of her lullaby.
I'd been in the bathroom for a while. She must have restarted the song when it had ended.
I sat down beside her, my injured arm brushing against her skin. The numbness was starting to wear off, and it was beginning to throb. It felt warm, too, and I could feel the coolness of her skin seeping through. It felt good.
Bella frowned down at the bandages.
"How does it feel?"
"The shot is starting to wear off. I should probably take something, maybe get some ice." I started to rise, but Bella was already gone. Before I could take more than a couple of steps toward the door, she was back, a glass of water in one hand, and a bottle of Tylenol in the other. The ice pack my mother always kept in the freezer was hanging over her wrist.
I remembered what Carlisle had said about her being a caretaker and frowned. I didn't want to think about that now.
I downed a couple of pills and draped the ice pack over my arm. It helped.
"You should probably get some rest," Bella told me as her lullaby drifted to a close. I tried to remember what was next on the CD. Clair de Lune.
"You're staying, right?"
She hesitated, then nodded her head. "If you want me to."
I pulled back the covers, sliding my feet between the sheets and patting the blanket beside me. She smiled weakly, lying down on top of the blanket so that I wouldn't get chilled, and snuggled up against me the way she always did, our foreheads nearly pressed together on the pillow.
We lay in silence, listening as the song ended and the next began. Another personal composition, something light and happy that I'd written over the summer.
"What are you thinking about?" I asked in a whisper. I didn't know why I was whispering. My mother wouldn't be home for hours yet.
"Phoenix," she answered after a moment, "when you woke up in the hospital."
"What made you think of that?"
"I don't know. I was just thinking of how happy I was that you were going to be okay."
Something was creeping in the shadows at the edges of my memory. I forced myself not to remember what had caused that stay in the hospital.
"Do I at least get a goodnight kiss?" I asked after a moment.
She frowned. "It might bump your lip, reopen the wound, and start the bleeding again." She thought for a moment, then brushed her lips across my forehead. "That will just have to do for now."
"Every teenage boy's fantasy. I get the most beautiful girl in the world in my bed, and she kisses me like she's my grandmother," I teased. Her answering smirk helped, for just a moment, to ease the sensation of dread that seemed to be pooling around us.
"One of these nights, you're going to get us both into trouble," she answered. That teasing light flashed back into her eyes for just a moment, but then she sighed, and it faded away.
"Get some rest, Edward," she whispered, adjusting the ice pack so that it was better situated against my arm.
I closed my eyes, drifting toward sleep, relieved by Bella's teasing when her words floated back through my mind again. She had been thinking about Phoenix, she'd said, about how I had woken in the hospital with her beside me. She had been grateful that I would be okay, but that wasn't all she'd said that day as she had leaned over my hospital bed. She had threatened to leave, to step out of my life because she blamed herself for what had happened. I had only barely talked her out of it that time. I didn't know if I would be so lucky again.