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TWO CENTURIES LOVE

Chapter 4: Re-knowing you.

Standing in my doorstep was him. In the same outfit of this morning, minus the sunglasses. His eyes were no longer that beautiful green that matched my ring. They were gold, but they still held my heart.

His mouth stretched into my favorite smile. The one he would give me when he caught me staring at him from afar. The one that said he knew all my secrets, even the ones I hadn't tell.

He was standing there, in all his glory, and I all I could do was stare at him in shock. My throat closed with unshed tears.

"I knew it was you." He whispered as if in shock himself.

A sob escaped me, and once I let it out, another one followed, and another one, and so on, until I was fully sobbing, missing the moment where he pulled me inside the house and into his arms. I hung to him tightly, afraid that if I let go, he would vanish, and I would be left with the most unpleasant emptiness.

No one never understood the dimension of my feelings for him, not even my parents, whose feelings for one another were quite a thing. No one understood why I had to leave the city after his and his family's funeral.

I didn't know how much time it had passed, but eventually I calmed myself enough to look up from my hiding place in his chest and rested my stare on his face. He really was here; holding me as he did when we were alone and sneaked in a kiss or two. Kisses that were far more intimate than allowed in such an early state of a relationship. Stupid rules.

"How?" It was all I managed to ask.

One of his hands went from my waist to my face. He caressed my cheek with his index finger, tracing the contours of my face, my nose, and my eyes. "God, I've missed you so much." He mumbled and hid his face on my shoulder. Now it was my time to hold him as he shook with his own sobs.

It was resulting to be quite a sad reunion. Not at all what I would have imagined our reunion would be once I died and met with him in wherever it was we went after we died.

I held onto him with all my strength. I had missed him so much as well.

He recovered quicker than I did.

I was always the instigator in our relationship when we were humans. So, I instigated our first kiss again. I grabbed his hair and passed my hands through it as I had dreamed since I first saw him. I kissed him fiercely, lovely, hardly. I poured all my feelings into it, my love for him, my despair when they told me he had died. My confusion of this morning, and my confusion of now.

He laughed in my mouth and broke contact too soon for my liking. "You always had a thing for biting." I managed a smile.

I put my hands on his face and he closed his eyes, probably enjoying the sensation of my hands, as I had enjoyed his. "It really is you." I whispered.

He nodded and kissed the palm of my hands. "We have so much to catch up on."

I snorted, that was an understatement.

With our hands still intertwined he guided me towards the only furniture I had, a two-seat couch that was resting on the wall of the living room.

"Should I start?" He asked. I nodded. "There was a doctor there, I don't know if you ever met him, named Carlisle." It rang a bell, but I couldn't put the name to a face. "He's a vampire and he was tending to the sick in the hospital. Apparently, my mother knew more than she let on. She grabbed Carlisle one day and asked him to save me. To do for me what no other doctor could. She died because she was too focused in nursing me." He gave me a sad smile. "And Carlisle followed her orders. He waited until one night, he said I had died, and he was carrying me to the morgue. He changed me then. He had been alone for a long time and was already thinking about joining another clan just to have some company. That's what he intended for me. To be his friend and have company. It might sound selfish, but I understood his decision."

I sat in silence, thinking about what he had shared. I could easily see Elizabeth Masen begging someone who had a power no other person had, to use it to save her son. Edward had been his mother's pride and joy. And Edward had loved his mother deeply as well.

"What happened later?"

"Well, we moved, because I was supposed to be dead. And Carlisle had to train me and help me get over the newborn year. Four years later he found Esme, and they've been together ever since." I sensed there was more to that story than just finding her, as if she was lost, or as if it had been that simple. But I gathered it wasn't his story to tell, and he might be respecting someone else's privacy.

I played with his fingers the entire duration of the conversation. I couldn't bring myself to let go of his hands. He wasn't making any efforts to remove his, so I suspected he didn't mind.

"In 1933, we were in New York. After an accident, which is not my place to tell you about," he looked apologetic at that. "Carlisle turned Rosalie Hale, in hopes that she would be to me what Esme was to him."

I tensed, not sure I wanted to hear the answer, but needing to ask the question anyway. "What was that?"

He smiled amusedly and squeezed my hands gently. "A partner, a lover, a mate." He shrugged as if it was no big deal that his friend had turned another girl so that she could be his lover and all the other things he had said.

"Was she?" I had to speak in past tense, not daring to think in present time.

He snorted ungentlemanly. "God no." He shook his head emphatically. "First, I was already in love with someone else. Someone I couldn't get out of my head. Someone I imagined was married and probably with kids of her own, following her dreams of being a teacher." He tweaked my nose, and I smiled. "Second, she is too entitled for my liking. She couldn't understand nor believe why I didn't consider her beautiful enough to be with her. She had always been the most beautiful of her social circle."

"Did you ever fall in love again?" I asked bravely.

"I could never get you out of my head or my heart. For me, you were…are, the only one I would ever love. I learned of your parents' death, but I could never find any records of you. I knew you had moved out of Chicago, but that's all I was able to find about you. I can see why."

I nodded. I hadn't left any records of myself behind once I had enough clarity of mind to understand the enormity of the situation. If Isabella Swan was meant to stay alive, then, there shouldn't be any accessible records. It was a fluke that he found out I had left, but I imagine it was the conversation of the social circle. 'She ran away after her boyfriend died.' They must have said.

"I searched for you, you know." He added noticing my silence. "I used Carlisle's contacts to look for you. If you were alive, I just wanted to know if you were happy. Carlisle asked on my behalf, never letting on why he asked. But the trail ran cold, and none of his contacts had ever heard of you." He shook his head, as if shaking a bad memory. "You are a hard little thing to track." He pecked my lips, and I enjoyed the freedom of doing it without the pressure of any chaperone appearing and being scandalized.

"I thought you had died." I sobbed. "I went one day to visit you and they told me both you and your mom had passed away during the night." I squeezed his hand hard, remembering my screams in the hospital entrance. The amount of people that I attracted with my crying. "I cried for days. You are the love of my life, and loosing you was the most horrible thing I had ever experienced. They took me away, and left me on my house, where I kept crying on my mom's arms. I couldn't believe it was happening to me. We had dreams, you were giving up the army and wanted to see if law was something you could learn to enjoy. You were going to ask my dad for my hand in marriage." I chuckled weakly and he smiled sadly. "I lost you, and I didn't know how to deal with it." I took a deep breath and continued. "My dad arranged your funeral, or that's what he told me. It was a lovely service, and you have side by side graves with your mom and dad. I saw your casket being lowered into the ground, next to your mom's. I didn't cry that day." I remembered. "I cried before and after, but not that day. That day I was numb, I was going on autopilot. I left Chicago the following week."

His expression showed his worry over me. But all the pain was just leaving me as I gazed upon him, sitting in front of me.

"I became a teacher to a set of orphan twins that needed education, but their grandparents were too elderly to move comfortably every day to and from school." I smiled softly remembering the munchkins. "They were great kids, mischievous to no end, but so endlessly sweet. They liked playing pranks on me, I often found out before they did it, but let them do it anyway. It was with them that I laughed again. But a part of me was still in that casket with you."

He smiled tenderly at me, passing his thumb on the back of my hand in an unconscious caress.

"I don't know what happened exactly. I was leaving the property one day, and I felt something grabbing me from behind. Next thing I knew I was crouched in a dark room and a vampire was standing in front of me. He told me he found me lying on a ditch somewhere. Probably an unexperienced newborn was trying to feed and instead of sucking, they changed me. I have travelled the world since then, but it became tedious, and I settled for Florida first. But there's so much sun there that I was tired of staying confined inside. So, I settled for Washington and this small god forsaken place."

He sat in silence, assimilating everything that I had told him. I did the same. I assimilated everything he told me. I would be forever grateful to this Carlisle for changing him, and forever grateful to whatever power decided that our story was not over, and even in death we would continue to write it. I sat playing with his fingers, imagining what it would have been like if we had gotten married in our time. He would have been sporting a golden or silver ring over his left finger. Our hands combined looked so empty.

I re-focused my stare on his face and noticed that he was looking at my neck. "You still have it." He pointed to my necklace. "I remember how that chain was the only piece of jewelry you ever wore."

I smiled, knowing that he might not think I still had his ring. As if could ever lose it. "It's not only the chain I still have." His mouth stretched in a beautiful smile as I pulled the chain from under my shirt, and with it the promise ring he had given me.

He lunged forward, knocking me backwards on the couch, and joining our lips in a passionate kiss.