Thank you thank you thank you for your words! I appreciate your time and responses.

This chapter is in Emmett's POV again and I loved writing a conversation between he and Edward that I imagined was necessary given the circumstances. For reference, the poem Emmett and Edward are discussing is called "The Clod and the Pebble" by William Blake. It is GORGEOUS. I loved getting to nerd out over it a little and insert it into a veeeeery topical conversation as well as some obvious foreshadowing that Rose and Em end up together.

I also deal with a little tease of Emmett and Rosalie's budding relationship in the future in contrast with his complicated attachment to his past. I can't wait to delve into the back story next chapter!

Please review!

Thank you so much for reading! Enjoy!

Hiding

I think you hide
And you don't have to tell me why
You cry a little, so do I

I know that you're hiding
I know there's a part of you that I just cannot reach
You don't have to let me in
Just know that I'm still here
I'm ready for you whenever, whenever you need
Whenever you want to begin

I know you've tried
But something stops you every time
You cry a little, so do I, so do I
And it's your pride
That's keeping us still so far apart
But if you give a little, so will I

so will I

Emmett - Cognitive Dissonance

I stared down at the letters in jumbling patterns. I was beginning to understand what they spelled and how the words fit together. However, they still didn't make a lick of sense to me.

My head got heavier and heavier as I stared at the page, trying to concentrate, but I got distracted seeing past the page and into the very makeup of the paper. I saw the edges of the ink, exactly how the book was printed.

This was hopeless.

"It's about contrasting viewpoints on love." Edward said aloud over his depressing piano music.

I sighed, exhaling the breath I'd been holding for the past hour and a half it felt like.

Reading this afternoon had me feeling slightly irritable and not understanding why in God's name Rosalie liked these poems.

They were complicated.

She was complicated, and I was anything but.

"These words just don't make any sense. Who the hell says 'seeketh'?!" I tossed my hands up.

"Apparently William Blake does." Edward attempted humor as his hands fell silent on the piano keys.

"All right smart ass." I narrowed my eyes, only half responding to his humor.

I was impatient and trying to remain distracted. Rosalie had been gone for five days, and I assumed it had been some sort of hunting trip because her eyes were black as night and she'd acted so oddly out of character.

I tried not to think of how my own thirst had made me act just a short while ago. I was still so out of control. My mind was not my own, and I wondered if Rosalie's thirst is what made her so upset.

It made sense she was thirsty…

My own throat burned at a manageable smolder now, so I went back to fixating on Rosalie's absence.

But, what peaked my interest was what had set her off. I was observant. I wasn't book smart, but I caught on to a lot more than I let on. Especially with her.

I was enchanted with her so I drank in all of the details.

Carlisle said he would never change someone with another choice so I knew now that Rosalie had been killed. She hadn't gotten sick like Edward, and it wasn't some conscious-less animal like the bear that killed me.

I think… someone killed her.

It sent a chill up my spine that tempted my inner monster as I imagined someone hurting her.

It burnt my thoughts in a red hot rage.

And she thinks Edward knew them…

Or at least would've known their thoughts…

Edward's hands fell on the keys and it jolted me out of my thoughts.

"Sorry." He mumbled.

Of course, he knew what I'd thought and it was disruptive enough to interrupt his music, but he didn't say anything to respond to my thoughts aloud.

It was dead silent before he picked up with a different song. Something impossibly more depressing.

The house was pretty quiet in general after she and Edward had their little outburst, so everyone was packing everything up in focus and solidarity. We were leaving in two short days, and no one had touched Rosalie's things so I figured she'd have to come back to pack them at some point.

I didn't have any belongings of my own, so I helped Esme and Carlisle with everything they needed, but even staying busy I was experiencing a heaviness I couldn't shoulder.

Rosalie was gone and she'd looked so… upset the last time I'd seen her, so this obviously depressed me, but I also couldn't help to worry about my family.

I would never see them again, and it was a hard burden to bear.

Would they be able to get on without me? Did I even have family left? Annie had been sick last time I saw her, and Dorothy…

God… Dorothy…

"What's a 'c-lod'?" I asked Edward aloud, trying to get back to this poem.

Reading something Rosalie recommended was important enough to distract me from the dark thoughts about my family.

Edward corrected my pronunciation.

"It's a piece of clay, like molding clay." Edward answered.

"And what's that got to do with love?" I was so close to giving up completely.

"Well… The first stanza is suggesting the clay believes love is selfless and when you love someone you devote yourself to making life better for them." Edward was obviously struggling with finding a way of explaining this to a simple mind like mine.

"It's not simple." Edward answered my thoughts which I still found amusing. "It suggests that the clay believes when you're in love even Hell can be Heaven."

I frowned.

"And… it's a piece of clay talking?" I widened my eyes, unable to believe this.

"Well, it's a form of personification. Or… um… well, it's the author assuming the thoughts, personality, and characteristics of the clay into a human form. It thinks about love in this way of optimism and selflessness, because it is malleable and…"

"What does malleable mean?" I asked.

"Easily molded." Edward found this to be the simplest question I'd asked. "But, the author believes the clay would possess this viewpoint because it does mold itself and change and it has potential to keep growing and changing…"

"I get it." I half-lied.

Edward paused, waiting to make sure I'd made the necessary connections in my slow brain.

"And… the last stanza is a mirror of the first, but it's a pebble talking about selfish love. And the pebble says this because it's stone.. Hardened… Finished. A pebble can be nothing else. It's in its final form. Innocence versus experience."

My brain was mush already, but I caught on enough not to feel like a total idiot.

"You're not an idiot." Edward argued with my thoughts again and this time I chuckled honestly feeling a little lighter already.

"Tell me what you think now that you understand." Edward encouraged.

I was mostly not very enthusiastic about this, but I proceeded at his eager request.

"Well… I guess the clay's kinda being childish, but the pebble's a little harsh so it's a meet in the middle kind of deal as far as good love goes." I felt a furrow in my brow as I looked down at the page.

I felt self-conscious, but I mean there was nothing I could do about it now. I already said it.

"Sure!" Edward seemed excited by my thoughts, a happy teacher pleased with his student. "But, it's a very deceptively deep poem to be so short - two conflicting ideas existing all at once - a sort of cognitive dissonance. On deeper reading, I concluded that I believe instead of two separate types of love, William Blake might have been talking about two sides to the same love so it's a bit more nuanced. Love can be selfless and selfish at the very same time. There's not necessarily a good and evil, but the light and darkness of love being inextricably linked."

I wasn't going to ask what some of those words meant, because I understood the gist of what he was saying any how, and he wasn't finished.

He was getting carried away.

I was too, but in a different direction.

He and Rosalie were both intellectual types.

I bet they talked about books and ideas all the time. Esme and Carlisle too.

There were a lot of barriers between Rosalie and I, but class seemed to be the biggest one I could process and understand.

But now that we were vampires, there was no class. It was us, and then the humans…

Predator and prey.

Right?

"I suppose it's about how sometimes we can think we're giving people this selfless, innocent love, but it does have a dark undertone." He tried simplifying and redirecting my thoughts back to the poem.

"The clay is being molded and shaped and changing into whatever it needs to be. It is literally being stepped on in the poem, and is that passivity truly a good experience of love? That seems pretty oppressive and horrible to me. Or is the pebble, unmoving and formed, experiencing a facet of love that is full of selfishness but not inherently... intentional, because we are pleased by what the person we love does for us, and how they make us feel? So, it's an unintentional and unavoidable selfishness. I think it's interesting to think that maybe love is never innocent."

"Or you could say it's also saying when you love someone… you're taking it all. The bad and the good." Edward went on. "You're going to exist together in this perfect balance of selflessness and selfishness."

I thought of Rosalie of course even amidst the tangle of my brain.

"Why doesn't he just say all that then?" I half-growled. "If that's what he means… Why does it have to be a riddle?"

I knew I was honestly more frustrated with my lacking abilities at reading Rosalie more than reading William Blake.

"Because it's literature." Edward laughed freely, something it sounded like he didn't do very often.

It was more than literature. It was also… Rosalie. She was like that too.

She wasn't outright and she drove me crazy with her secrets and withdrawal. I still felt so much like a stranger that she wouldn't let in. She was full of riddles and distance.

Rosalie was complicated and played games. With her, I was tested and tried, and mostly I failed.

I felt like I'd barely scratched the surface of her, but impossibly in spite of it all I think I loved her.

When I saw her so brokenly upset, out from under the veil of pleasant, put together, perfection she always wore, I realized I never wanted to see her that way again. I would make it my existence's mission to make sure she never showed a flash of displeasure on her beautiful face if I had to.

I'm pretty sure that's when I realized I loved her.

Edward and I paused for a moment, as he undoubtedly processed my thoughts.

"Have you ever been in love?" Edward asked me evenly, a question sparked by the thoughts he'd heard.

"I don't know." I shrugged, and would've been a little embarrassed if I got embarrassed that easily.

"Have you?" I turned it around on him.

"No." Edward wrinkled his nose as if the thought repulsed him.

"Oh, so you just read a lot about it?" I teased, trying to avoid seriousness as my thoughts trailed.

"Not the way you mean it." Edward's eyes innocently went wide at the very suggestive thought in my head. "That's not love that's…"

"Sex."

Edward looked like he was going to throw up at just the thought. Poor kid.

I would've laughed and shifted into lightness, but a heavy thought intruded.

"Has Rosalie been in love?" I asked, knowing I wasn't going to get an answer, but I tried anyway.

"Emmett, see you already know I can't answer that." Edward looked at me with scolding eyes.

It was a yes, and it irrationally devastated me. I'll bet he was smart and could talk to her about her fancy books and play fancy songs on a fancy piano wearing fancy clothes and…

"It was a you're going to have to find that out for yourself by getting to know her." Edward pushed the thoughts out of my head.

That was definitely a complicated but definite yes.

"No, Emmett, I just truly don't know." Edward responded. "I read thoughts, not emotions…"

"All right." This satisfied me for now.

"Do you think she could ever be in love with me?" I asked selfishly.

"That's between you two." Edward shrugged.

I groaned.

It had never been this difficult for me before. I wasn't arrogant, but I knew I'd gotten a lot of women's attention in my human life. I seemed magnetic to women for reasons unknown, but not one of those reasons were attracting Rosalie. In fact, I think I repulsed her.

I would've been entranced by the hunt before, but not when I saw just how disgusted she was by my pursuit.

I was afraid she'd already made up her mind about me, and I failed her tests before I'd even given it a real shot.

"You just have to wait for her…" Edward encouraged my thoughts then shifted into a comparison I'd identify with. "Like a deer… You have to let her approach, or you'll scare her off."

The way she'd looked at me the other day when I'd reached out for her… The way she'd stiffened in my arms the day I'd killed all those people and apologized to her…

Before I could even ask the question I'd been trying not to ask since Rosalie left, Edward answered my thoughts.

"I really didn't know she was going to die, Emmett." Edward said with grave seriousness in his golden eyes. "She knows that too."

"But you used to kill murderers, and you didn't kill hers?" I said in a half-statement half-question.

I tried not to sound accusing, but it did come across that way.

"No. I didn't." He confirmed, darkly. "And that genuinely devastates me. She knows that."

Curiosity and a wish to just… know, plagued me.

"How did she die?" I asked again.

"Emmett." Edward said impatiently at my insistence.

But now, I knew.

Later in the afternoon, as I laid in the floor flat on my back, tossing up a box and catching it again and again and again against my chest, I heard a stir of air outside the top floor window.

Her window.

I heard her enter through the window, all cloak and dagger, to avoid the doors in which she would've crossed my path. She was purposefully avoiding me, and I stubbornly wasn't going to let her do that.

It almost made me angry.

How dare she?

On a mission, I ascended the stairs. Anxiousness built in my stomach.

She paused, sensing my presence.

I felt her on the other side of the door as I lifted my loose fist to knock.

The same oxygen filled both of our lungs as we inhaled in perfect synchronization.

"Rosalie," I said her beautiful, perfect name in a voice I reserved specifically for her.

She didn't answer and she didn't move a muscle.

I opened my mouth, willing better words than the ones I said.

"Do you need any help?" I asked, vibrating with nervous energy.

The door knob turned and I felt butterflies the size of eagles before she opened the door to her bedroom.

I caught her beautiful eyes the color of liquid sunshine, but there was still a storm in them.

At the sight of her, I melted into a puddle.

I didn't know what I was going to say or what she was going to say, but the threat of conversation was heavy in the air.

"I've got it. Thank you." She finally breathed, looking up at me with something in her eyes I couldn't read.

Was it shame?

"I just wanted an excuse to see you anyhow." I blurted out the thought pounding in my head.

This seemed to please her, but she didn't pleasure me with a smile.

I felt like I felt looking at someone after a really bad argument, and before you've truly made up and solved anything.

But, we hadn't even argued…

My stomach still knotted guiltily though and I felt like apologizing.

"I'm sorry." I said instinctually.

"What are you sorry for?" She asked, furrowing her perfect brow in confusion, but her tone made it seem a little like one of her tests.

I swallowed nervously. Would I pass?

"Edward wouldn't tell me how you died." I started not how I would've expected.

I avoided her eyes as I said this because I was worried about her reaction.

"As he shouldn't." She snapped harshly.

God, I'd made things worse.

This caused my eyes to dart up to hers.

I saw the defiance of her vulnerability in her perfect face, but the longer we looked at each other in this loud silence, the more her eyes softened into me.

"But I figured it out." I said hauntingly.

Something I imagined was fear darted across her eyes like a terrible shooting star.

"Everyone else… it was just an accident – something they couldn't avoid like a disease or a bear or a vampire in the sewers of London… even Esme's grief made her do something permanent." I observed, trying to choose my words carefully but not doing a very good job of it. "But you… Your life was taken. It was stolen. But, not by someone of chance like Carlisle. It was someone you knew and someone you trusted."

She gritted her teeth, looking down and away from me as she reached for her perfect blonde hair to twirl in her fingers nervously.

Horror is the only word I could think of to describe what radiated off of her.

"You don't have to tell me anything, but whatever you went through, it makes you afraid of me now." I said as softly as I could muster, but there was still a nervous edge to my voice that I hoped she couldn't detect.

"And for that… I'm mighty sorry." I went to reach for her, but decided against it and put my hand in a loose fist by my side.

She noticed, and looked up, this being a key to her attention. She was surprised I'd retracted.

"I don't want you to be afraid of me, Rosalie." I told her, our eyes locked in one another's. "And, I swear I'm gonna prove to you that you don't have to be. I mean, I've apparently got all the time in the world."

I smiled to try and lighten the edges of the conversation, but her intensity kept us weighted.

"I'm not afraid of you." She offered evenly, but she had a stubborn note to her voice as if she was convincing the both of us.

Rosalie seemed extremely annoyed imagining I had this insight on her, so I knew it must've been true.

"Then, how do you feel about me?" I very boldly asked the question that had been haunting my mind since I woke up.

Rosalie again clenched her jaw like she was stifling so many unsaid words that I would've begged her to say.

She stared into my eyes in challenge, and I had the deepest urge to kiss her.

I wouldn't dare though, so I waited.

Rosalie still had one hand on the door knob and she looked at her fingers now, lowering them so I knew it was obvious something had changed in her mind.

She was opening just like her door.

Oh, how lucky Edward was getting to crawl up inside her beautiful brain.

I remained optimistic.

"Emmett?" She started, her voice newly soft and sweet as spring honeysuckle.

I was weakened so much I was afraid I was going to melt right to my knees to worship her.

I had a feeling she was going to answer my question.

"I was thinking while I was out." She swallowed, not shrinking under my gaze now.

I waited as she took a deep breath, watching for any hint of what was going to come out of her glorious mouth.

"I'll go to your family." She promised with the utmost sincerity.

My dead heart seemed to skip in my chest though I knew it wasn't possible.

I looked at her in disbelief.

"I'll make sure they're all right." She breathed, and her words caressed me like a kiss.

It was ecstasy, and I couldn't stop the smile from spreading across my face and beaming out the ends of my fingers and toes like I was glowing.

This was the answer to my question.

She'd just told me she loved me.

Or at least could think of it as a distant possibility.…

I started to reach for her out of habit, but again remembered and put my hands deep in my pockets.

With that, I'd told her I loved her too.

And she knew it.

She noticed and gave me a strikingly beautiful little half smile.

I beamed back at her.

Something changed then. It was small, but it was monumental.

"I have plenty of money. It'd last them for years. Really, I don't need it." She began, blooming for me like an Easter lily.

It took my breath how she let me see her, but immediately, I felt inadequate and unsure of being in debt like that.

"Really, it'll be all right." She nodded, reading my mood. "I can go to them and tell them… Well…"

Her words were a little quick now because she sounded nervous.

"I'll tell them you saved my life and it was a horrible accident. You pushed me out from in front of an automobile and you… Or you were running back into a burning building for a lost baby or something. I don't know something like that." She stumbled through her beautifully atrocious words.

My stomach felt hollow.

"They wouldn't believe that." I snorted, shame filling my entire being.

"But things like that happen all the time." She suggested lightly, seeming to think I was insulting her idea.

That couldn't have been further from the truth.

I got a little nervous, but knew it was in my nature to be boldly upfront.

"No, it's not that. It's just… I couldn't have done something like that."

I breathed, my voice rumbling in my chest nervously.

She looked perplexed, willing me forward with her insistent gaze.

"I'm so glad you didn't meet me in my human life." I settled on saying, Rosalie's eyes on fire as she tilted her chin up to look at me again.

Rosalie swallowed, obviously intimidated by my words but still remaining right in front of me so it wouldn't be too obvious she had flinched and looked down at her nervously twisted fingers.

She didn't like it. I could tell.

She began to withdraw.

She was dreading my words, and I was dreading telling her.

I just knew I had to if she was even talking about meeting my family.

"Why?" She finally asked with open, golden eyes.

This took me aback and let me know something was different. Instead of running, she pushed forward a little more.

I wasn't prepared for that.

"Honestly, when I was burning before I woke up, I thought it was just my judgment for all the trouble I caused. I deserved every bit of it." I recalled plainly. "Probably more."

Rosalie frowned at this, not liking hearing this.

"I don't believe that." She said confidently, but what she really meant to say was she didn't want to believe it.

I tried to come up with a better way to tell her what I needed to tell her.

She stubbornly looked at me like I was… better than I was. I wasn't used to that.

People never expected much from me in my human life.

And she… she expected the world from me.

I just knew I couldn't deliver.

She shakily exhaled as she looked over my face. She had just been intensely vulnerable about how she felt in her own way, and she was retreating now. My time was almost up.

I had to let her know what I meant.

"You saved me in more ways than one, Rosalie." I expanded. "Becoming a vampire is the best thing that's ever happened to me."

"I'm sorry." She said heavily, and this confused me.

This seemed to force her back into her shell, her eyes falling to her feet.

"I'm serious. Rosalie, this is… this is like heaven to me." I told her, fighting for her gaze and hoping she could feel my gratefulness.

"How can this be heaven? What you did… to that family… that little girl…" Her voice shook a little as she stubbornly denied me her eyes.

I wondered what I would've seen in them.

"I… regret that. I do." I told her, an odd pang in my stomach because I think I just lied to her and she knew it. "Okay, well, I am trying to get used to this whole vampire thing and remember why I should regret it."

I clarified because I couldn't lie to her. It just felt wrong. She narrowed her eyes, but couldn't be angry at my honesty.

"But Rosalie, before this… before becoming a vampire, I was just a worthless nobody. Now, I…"

I trailed off, knowing if it could, my heart would be racing.

I told her honestly.

"I really do want to be better. I want to be the man you think I am and I really think that now I can be. When you look at me like that, I mean…" I told her, feeling nervous like a little boy.

My skin tingled up to the top of my skull.

"Like what?" She breathed, playing a game as she hid behind her beautiful black eyelashes now.

She was baiting me, wondering if I'd pursue. Of course I would.

And this… this was the most honest thing I'd say to her yet.

"Like you see something in me." I said, in denial of withholding anything. "Like I can be something… something more."

A chill ran up my spine as I watched her look up at me with the most beautiful gaze I'd ever seen.

Her perfect, beautiful lips parted ever so slightly, and I had to fight every single instinct that told me to grab her and kiss her.

I bounced with the pent up energy, wanting so badly to feel her lips on mine.

God, to kiss her…

"No one's ever looked at me like that before." I said in a voice specifically reserved for her.

Rosalie bit her bottom lip under, looking down and away to avoid being prisoner to my enchanted gaze.

I was dizzy with her and there was no way not to make it obvious.

This moment felt so… right just to plant one on her. I could just about jump out of my skin with how badly I wanted to kiss her.

"Tell me about your sisters. What would they need?" Rosalie changed the subject with a jolt.

It was evident she'd felt awkward. She knew I was dying to kiss her.

Her insistence made me smile a little, but I had to seriously think about what they would need. I finally settled on a luxury that long had been forgotten.

"I want you to bring a chocolate bar to my sister Dorothy." I felt a pang in my chest. Of all the things she so desperately needed, just an escape from the normal awfulness that had become our lives was the top priority.

I felt better knowing Rosalie'd meet her. I felt better knowing Rosalie would be able to tell me all about how she was doing.

I prayed for a miracle

"She's my twin you know, so she's a lot like me, but she got all the good looks. I say I got the brains." I told Rosalie, fondly thinking of Dorothy.

Rosalie gave me a beautiful little smile, a giggle in her throat as she hid behind those impossibly long black eyelashes.

"But, that's probably not true neither." I teased.

"Now, Ruthie'll probably just want some penny candies or something, but she deserves to get spoiled a little." I said.

God… Ruthie…

Who'd take care of her now?

"Annie too. She's getting too grow up and tough for her own good." I felt wistfulness clawing a deep hole in my stomach.

Annie May would be all right. She was tough and smart. She'd be okay.

"And the rest of them?" Rosalie asked unknowingly.

My stomach dropped, and in this moment I didn't feel like what I was saying was real even though I'd most definitely lived it. I had the inner scars.

"They're… gone now." I nodded, finishing on a dark note. "This year hit our family pretty hard."

"I'm so sorry." She said genuinely, her eyes fiery and serious.

I sighed knowing my dark note had to keep going.

I had to tell her about my parents…

About me.

About what I'd done.

A frown looked so odd on her perfect angel's face as she looked down. I trailed off, deciding to switch gears.

"Rosalie, my family's real important. They were everything to me." I told her, willing my sincerity to be obvious in my voice so she could read it. " I could never repay you for something like that - taking care of 'em when I know now… I can't. Not anymore. It's not safe."

The words tasted sour and spoilt. I hated them, but said them to her all the same.

"You don't have to repay me." Her voice was small and unsure, but her eyes communicated far more.

She wanted me to know she was doing this for me…

How'd I get so lucky?

"I do." I suggested with a final nod. "But… before you… decide you're going to do something like that for me, there's something you should know… Well, a few things really."

I knew my tone suggested I was about to be painfully honest with her because I read fear and dread in her eyes.

"All right." She nodded, knowing I was about to trust her with something important.

She had no idea.

"First, I probably didn't grow up quite like the rest of y'all… We don't got much and my house isn't fancy or big or open or anything." I pushed up on my sleeve to keep my eyes busy and away from her.

I wasn't ashamed of my upbringing, but I was… insecure around Rosalie.

"That doesn't matter to me." She cut me off, something intense flickering in her eyes.

"It's gonna be different than what you're used to." I looked around this opulent house that we were just leaving empty.

"Emmett, that's fine." She told me strongly, and I couldn't get used to hearing my name on her lips.

"But… more than all that Rosalie, you should know why I was so far off the trail in the woods alone that day you found me. My Pa'll bring it up if you see him." I began in a heavy mumble.

"Okay." She nodded, reacting to the darkness she saw in me with alarm.

She still had no idea. I dreaded telling her, but I was painfully honest and it was something I couldn't change.

She had to know. It would protect her.

"I figured you outta know sometime, and… if you go see my family, then… It's… why they wouldn't believe your story…"

I worried she'd change her mind. I wouldn't blame her. It was hard.

I took a deep breath.

"Well here it goes." I made a face to lighten the mood, but it was obvious to her that this was something heavy I was about to tell her.

My stomach dropped to my knees. I wasn't used to having… expectations. She expected so much from me, and she thought I was… good. She thought I was so much better than I was and I was about to shatter her idea of me in one fell swoop.

"After my little sister Caroline died, then a couple months later it was my sister Molly, then my sister Elizabeth, then even my friends and acquaintances started droppin' like flies, so I hit rock bottom, and I hit it hard." Saying it out loud wasn't easier even all this time that had passed.

I ran a hand through my hair in stress.

"I just got… reckless. I chased… danger and escape and had too much fun for my own good." I snorted a humorless laugh.

Rosalie didn't even flinch, but I saw her wondering.

"I caused enough trouble people began to swear it was my middle name. I… don't deal with being sad very well, and everyone around me just started… dying, so I just kept getting myself distracted into deeper trouble than I could get myself out of." After turning in to a vampire and removing myself, I was able to gain a little perspective on what happened.

"I was… drinking a lot those days and doing some… questionable things…" The look in her eyes made me know I had to be specific because she was imagining the worst and that probably wasn't even close.

"I… stole some things we needed at home from the store. I… fought nearly every night at the town's fight club and would set up some pretty crooked gambling bets so I'd get the payout. I… was disrespectful to some cops in town and… I had some… pretty irresponsible relationships with some of the wrong women…" I saw she seemed to be attacked and wounded by every word I'd say, but she looked directly into my eyes at the end of my list, searching…

I took a deep breath.

"I finally got busted for… well, stealing a car, and driving around drunk." I admitted.

"But the real kicker was… I had taken all my family's hunting guns so my Pa wouldn't have them if he caught me out and tried to do something… permanent and…" - I know it looked like to Rosalie this was an excuse for my behavior, but it was a genuine concern at that point in time that he'd kill me if he got the chance…

Then, she processed and her eyes went wide. I had to finish. I was nervous.

"It just looked too good to a small town cop - a delinquent of society out late, angry, drunk, and armed."

"I… had recently got a real good reason to kill some people in town anyways… so it looked like that's what I was gonna go do… I was blacked out though so I don't know or remember… Maybe I was…"

I told her this with brutal honesty – so brutal she winced. Or maybe she winced at the murderous look in my eyes that I felt plain as day. I felt the return of anger and rage and worked really hard to squash it while I told Rosalie the rest.

"Either way, I already had enough stuff on my record that I finally got the big time."

I made a face, looking over at her to check that she hadn't been squeamish of my criminal past and checked out.

She hadn't though. Just like when I told her about that family… all that blood.. She remained strong and steadfast as she listened to me.

I saw that charming stubborn clench of her jaw as she willed me to finish.

The hard part was almost over.

"I hated prison." I recalled with a sour taste in my mouth. "I know that's the point - it's not supposed to be a holiday, but the laws had us all chained up in the woods just doing grunt work for no good reason other than to order us around."

"But you already know I'm not real good with rules and so every day I was there, I got smart with 'em and they'd unchain me from the rest of the guys and take me over to the side. A group of em would take turns just knockin' me senseless. I guess that made 'em feel better about their own lousy lives."

I laughed a little, but she didn't.

She grimaced. I think… she worried about me. It was cute. I couldn't help but grin

"I got wise though. I'm a pretty good fighter, so… one day I planned to be extra smart with one of 'em and I just… fought my way out and ran like hell." I said with a little proud smile. "I ran until I was face to face with that bear."

She exhaled as I chuckled.

In a warped way, that was the happy ending.

"In January, I got booked for three years which didn't seem like the end of the world, but still… I couldn't have saved you from a burning building if I was busy breaking my back working for the state penitentiary." I explained why she'd have to come up with some other story if she saw them.

All she could do was just nod.

"I hope I didn't scare you off, Rose." I went to reach for her again then denied my impulses, willing my hands back into my pockets.

She looked down at my hands in my pockets and took a deep breath.

Something changed in Rosalie then, and she looked up.

"I told you already, you don't scare me." She said with a stubborn nod.

I almost believed her.