"And, oddly enough, he needs me, too. That part worked out better than I could have hoped." - Rosalie, Eclipse, p. 165 (Stephenie Meyer)
Quick note: Here's another doozie! I'm so SO THANKFUL for your kindness and encouragement. Thank you for your in-depth reviews and your time! It means more to me than you know and it inspires me to keep writing even as I struggle. This chapter was another really indulgent one and is full of action-packed RxEm angst as they navigate how they feel about one another amidst Emmett's disjointedness in identity and how he's going to decide to live his vampire life and what diet he'll follow. Rosalie is also really struggling because she's not used to having to care for someone or pursue their feelings in this way. She also is harboring guilt and darkness over her assault that confuses her as she begins to truly fall in love with Emmett and begin to entertain wanting some sort of physical connection to him. It makes her feel flawed and impure to consider that after what she went through she could even want love and connection with Emmett to happen and it's creating quite the predicament here in this chapter.
So I found that Emmett and Rosalie's passion for one another might have a dark side as they try to navigate these extreme emotions during vulnerable point in time, so I have quite the chapter lined up on some growing pains in their relationship, but there is quite a corner that is being turned here and it is evident.
I also really loved this sentence from Eclipse and wanted to explore why Emmett would 'NEED' Rosalie. I think his background of being a 'nobody' and being constantly told he is worthless is an interesting contrast to Rosalie's background of adoration and worship, but both are inherently damaging because both of them just need to feel seen. He needs Rosalie particularly in this quest for 'self' and identity within his newborn stage, but also I think he could need her to make him believe he's full of worth and purpose after a life of abuse.
Even though this is a long one, please consider leaving a review and I'll post the second section of this chapter swifter ;) Every word means the world to me! Thank you immensely for your words thus far.
TW/CW: Strong language, Rosalie's reference to her assault, Abuse
Grace
And you, you were the one I treated the worst
Only because you loved me the most
We haven't spoken in a long time
I think about it sometimes
I don't know who I was back then
And I hope on hope
I would never treat anyone like that again
This is the only thing I've ever had any faith in
Grace, I know you carry us
Grace, and it was such a mess
Grace, I don't say it enough
Grace, you are so loved
Grace, I know you carry us
Grace, and it was such a fucking mess
Rosalie
I knew who he was.
He was warm… Like sunshine.
He was strong, but not in a way that made anyone feel inferior - rather… secure.
He was competitive, intensely so, and there was a fire in his eyes that was only there when he knew he deserved to win. He didn't win to defeat someone else. No one else mattered. He won for himself.
He'd always admit when he didn't know something. He didn't try to cover it up or come up with an excuse like so many people did. He had a willingness to learn.
He said curse words with familiarity and in a way that made the words all at once sound both sharply cutting and a bubble of innocent laughter.
He took up space, and not just in the physical sense. His presence was immediately felt in any room because he lived loudly, and not just in the sense of sound…
He was easily enchanted by the extraordinary within the ordinary - like forcing everyone to stop what they were doing just so he could show us an especially beautiful spider's web sparkling with morning dew. He knew that the world around us was beautiful and that we'd all just forgotten to notice.
He listened… really listened when people spoke, and made sure to look in their eyes and respond with sincere interest.
He let people ramble, but he never made them feel bad about it. He might've even liked it - hearing the stream of consciousness that happened after people stopped thinking so hard about what to say and just let it come out of their mouths.
He was brilliant at communicating exactly what he meant.
He was shockingly…. neat to be so wild. I'd seen him take the shoes Carlisle had given him. Five pairs. I'd watched him make sure the toes of them were perfectly lined up, not a centimeter off.
He was undaunted and never found an obstacle too challenging to overcome. He dove head first into everything, and didn't acknowledge any fear.
But he hadn't been any of that for a while.
It was a slow decline, so slow I hadn't immediately noticed it - like boiling water… I didn't know until I saw the bubbles spilling over the edges.
It was a slow burn, but now it was a forest fire.
It was evident now that he was so estranged from himself that he had to ask me who he was.
I didn't immediately answer him when he'd asked, but I could have. I'd never had such a clear head in all my life on that subject.
I knew exactly who he was, but for the first time, it was far from his own eyes. His self-assuredness had left his gaze, and the confidence that had exuded from him in the first few weeks after his change was not even a ghost in his gait.
And… the way he asked…
The desperation in his black, onyx colored eyes that he needed me to tell him who he was took my breath away. Emmett asked like I was looking at him and seeing him, but when he looked at himself it was all just a blank void.
He looked like a stranger.
But not just to me, to himself.
It reminded me of a time when I was just a little girl and put on my mother's high heels. I'd stolen some of her rouge, mascara, and lipstick and had grand plans to parade around in front of a mirror playing dress up. I was much too young for makeup and such things, but I imagined looking beautiful with ruby red lips.
I'd been so excited, thrilled even to imagine looking like a woman, but then when I looked in the mirror when I was finished… I wasn't happy. All that makeup… It looked absurd on a five year old girl, and I'd never felt more stupid…
He dropped to his knees in front of me as Atlas with the world on his shoulders.
But, Emmett had crumbled under it. Finally, it had become too much.
It seemed so wrong to see him that way.
He was strong… Invincible… Weightless…
He had finally been crushed though, and I wondered if it was my expectations that had crushed him…
He'd told me I expected too much… And I was so… so sure he was wrong…
Then, I realized… Of course it was too much when I'd expected him to do it alone.
The night that he'd seen his father hanging in the center of his family home, the night he'd learned his family had been gutted down the center and scattered across the country, the night he'd been confronted with what I understood as the darkest thing he'd ever experienced - that night he'd asked me to help him and I didn't hear it.
I didn't see it.
I didn't see it because I was so… so selfish….
And, it broke my heart because… because I cared about him, but I was just so damn bad at caring about people…
I wasn't good at caring about him like he was good at caring about me.
That night he'd asked me for help, but I hadn't heard it because I was leaning on him to help me.
Today, I saw him… really saw him for who he was, not for who he was for me or even who I hoped he could become…
The revelation impossibly made me want to… Touch him.
I'd never wanted anything like that before, but it didn't feel like an unnatural desire. I'd never felt about anything the way I felt about him, but it was also the most instinctual thing I'd ever felt.
I wanted… to touch him and not in any way departing from innocence. I just… think I wanted to be near him.
If I touched him, he'd be tangible. He'd be real.
He'd be mine; like the day I'd saved him in the woods and the days following during his transformation.
When I reached out for him on his knees in front of me, I'd been calm. In the anticipation of waiting for him to take my hand, my mind and my body remained full of ease.
My fingers tightened through his now, and I was still so serene.
The second we stepped outside, Emmett seemed to fill with an electric charge of energy. Like a slingshot pulled back with potential energy, he had been ready for this moment.
I willed myself not to pull my hand away as I noticed how beautiful he was, though now it wasn't that hard to do. Now, watching him in this moment of the infinite, I let my hand be his, and he let his be mine.
I wasn't afraid.
The crisp Alaskan autumn air swelled around our joined bodies and the breeze played in our hair.
Emmett's hand vibrated at such a high frequency it even seemed too much for my vampiric senses to handle. I wondered if he was nervous, but I soon thought that was ridiculous. Pent up energy and need for the outdoors pulsed through his veins.
I saw the thrill of it in his eyes as we swam through the snow together.
Nevertheless, our fingers remained desperately intertwined like one of us was going to float away in a gust of wind, and if one of us was getting picked up in the gale, the other would follow.
I think I liked the feeling of being tethered to him, and it was something I felt warmly radiating from our point of contact all the way through the ends of my hair and the tips of my toes.
I was filled with wonder at the way he looked running next to me, getting further and further from the others. He was alive, running wild and free and… he was impossibly beautiful. It took the breath clean out of my chest as I looked over at him, unable to resist the temptation to do so.
My eyes drunk in all the details of his face, the lines of his jaw, the curves of his mouth, his round eyes and straight nose. The impossible innocence on a grown man's face…
Even now.
Though I took in the beauty of his face in the present, made perfect by vampirism, my mind trailed to the memorized details of his broken human face that day in the woods, the awestruck way he'd looked at me while I ran with him in my arms.
It made me strong enough to do the impossible then, and now that same power resided in his face...
"What is it?" Emmett caught me staring at him, and he took his hand out of mine to brush across his left cheek absent-mindedly, slowing to a walk and distancing slightly from me.
I saw the slight furrow of his brow and knew that something was troubling him. In some sort of subconscious response, he'd repeated this action a few times today. I'd noticed, and it became evident he didn't recognize the feeling of his own face.
He didn't recognize himself.
I remembered his human face had a long, jagged scar there.
"You had a scar there." I exhaled without thinking.
His black eyes darted over to mine and I felt emptied by the abruptness with which he pulled his hand from mine.
"On your left side." I told him, expanding a little though he knew exactly what I meant.
His hand came to his left cheek again absently, brushing his knuckles along his cheekbone in a swift motion.
He nodded.
My dead heart thudded in my chest with anticipation.
"And, diagonally along your right eye…" I said, and my nerves felt like they were on the outside of my body as I instinctually reached out to touch his face.
"And…" I reached out.
He didn't flinch back against my fingers tracing along his cheek bone the exact space where that scar had been the day I'd saved him.
Touching his face brought us close and neither of us dared to breathe or move in the slightest as our eyes locked into one another's.
His eyes searched my face and I felt him inhale.
He just nodded, agreeing with my observation, but something was brewing in his gaze.
"And… there." I let my thumb trace over the right corner of his bottom lip toward his chin.
His eyes stayed locked onto my face as I touched his own, and there was something so incredibly… intimate… about the moment that I shivered out of my trance of confidence.
Emmett noticed and pulled his gaze away then, reaching up to guide my hand back down beside me and away from his face, but he kept his fingers on top of mine. I let him.
But then, I realized. His hand was on top of mine to keep it down my by side and not touching his face.
"What are you doing, Rosalie?" Emmett mumbled like he was mourning.
What was I doing?
God.
I was mortified.
"Come with me." I said, lacing my fingers through his again as I guided him toward the edge of a cliff I'd found when I'd gone out yesterday afternoon.
Though he wasn't enthusiastic, he followed, and I felt the way his presence displaced the air around me. I was acutely aware of him, but it didn't alarm me.
"Can we sit?" I asked, turning and giving him a little smile.
He still wore an odd expression, like I had taken him all this way just to scold him and he was braced for it.
He just nodded. No smile.
"That's fine." Emmett said evenly. "But, wait."
Immediately, he shrugged his arms out of his jacket.
He also untucked his shirt, loosened his tie enough to slip it over his head, and pushed his sleeves up in a sort of ritual of undoing.
I watched him undress and muss his hair to dishevel himself in a way that made him more comfortable.
And feel more like himself.
I noticed the way his shirt clung around the bands of muscles in his arms.
My stomach did a somersault and I wasn't so calm in that moment.
"Don't get your pretty dress dirty." He said under his breath as he smoothed his jacket over a space at the edge of the cliff.
He offered me a little half smile. It barely showed the dimples in his cheeks so it didn't truly warm my spirit.
Though Emmett was burdened, he still dangled his legs over the edge as he sat at the cliff like an enthusiastic child. I gracefully lowered myself to mirror his position, letting my legs freely hang over the cliff's edge too.
I could jump right off unscathed, but the vastness of the fall still made my nerves flutter as I looked down from the height of it.
"Thank you." I acknowledged his chivalry and immediately, I ducked into Emmett's side, all but forcing him to put his arm around me.
He did as I'd insisted, but his eyes trailed upward into heaven again instead of to me.
The stars were especially stunning tonight in a sky with no light pollution and they danced above us in an age old waltz.
"You don't have to do this you know." Emmett grumbled darkly.
"Do what?" I asked, frowning a little.
I felt oddly exposed.
"Be nice to me, after I was horrible to you." He said through his teeth, retracting from me.
I took a deep breath, his scent filling my lungs and clearing my senses.
I didn't have to. But, I wanted to…
"Well, I'm returning the favor." I said, trying to keep my voice even.
He snorted.
"You're not horrible." He argued weakly.
"At least not incurably." The corner of his mouth turned up a little as if he were teasing me, but he didn't play games.
He spoke candidly. I knew he honestly believed it.
I couldn't help but laugh under my breath.
"And what would be my cure?" I tested, but he wasn't truly up for flirtation.
"Well…" Emmett sighed and didn't immediately respond with a witty one-liner so I could tell he was feeling off.
"Maybe… you could be happy." He said, speaking with such shocking honestly that it made me feel extremely vulnerable under his gaze.
"Maybe." I agreed in a tiny, mousy voice that didn't sound like my own. "Maybe you could too."
I frowned, feeling dismissive of the idea that he saw how unhappy I truly was. There was no way he understood my darkness to its fullest extent. He wouldn't still be looking at me the way he was looking at me right now…
"I shouldn't have treated you bad, Rosalie. I really don't know what came over me back there." Emmett said in a monotone mumble, but not as if he were starting to apologize for his behavior, but that he was letting me know there was a disconnect in him…
He didn't know what came over him, and he acknowledged this in the sort of shock and awe he'd acknowledged the way he'd killed all those hate monsters and terrorists.
His hand absently came to his cheek again.
"I don't know what comes over me at all anymore." Emmett ran his hands through his hair.
"It gets easier." I tried to comfort him.
"That's what everyone's telling me." He sighed exasperatedly as if he thought he was being lied to.
"Tell me what you see." I requested on instinct.
"What do you mean?" He frowned.
"What do you see right now? Just give me a list." I said calmly.
He puzzled, looking away and off into the distance.
"Snow… And a tree. Twelve branches. An empty bird's nest. Third branch from the bottom on the right side." He rattled off, then his focus turned to me, his eyes calmer. "And if it wasn't me talking, I'd say the most beautiful girl in the world."
"Well, why don't you say it?" I challenged with a little smile, my stomach hiccuping into my throat.
He responded, coming back into his eyes a little his own little half smile lifting up a corner of his mouth.
"Maybe I will." He said, and I watched his dimples deepen in his cheeks. "Now, why'd you?…"
Unlike him, he changed the subject.
"It's what I do when I get overwhelmed. It calms me down to look around me and say what I see. It makes it easier to get back in control…"
Emmett understood with a nod.
"I get it." He gave me a little smile as a consolation prize for trying to lighten his burdens.
He looked down towards the bottom of the cliff and I halfway thought he would jump and keep running until he reached the horizon. I noticed the pain in which he swallowed his thirst.
"Did it help?" I asked, feeling his arm tighten around my shoulders in response to something he was thinking.
"A little." He assured me. "I didn't know you could get overwhelmed."
I snorted a little amused laugh, feeling a nervous twist in my stomach.
It wasn't blood lust that burdened me now. It was… more than that that overwhelmed me.
His hand reached again absently to his cheek.
"How did you get that scar?" I requested, my eyes lingering on his perfectly unbothered left cheek.
It seemed important that he remembered he had a scar there.
He looked back over me and I immediately wondered if he'd ask about mine - and not the physical ones.
"I don't remember." He lied, turning back away.
He gazed out and over the cliff and looked like a nightmare ridden child…
"Emmett… You know, I know." I spoke quietly, suggesting to him that he didn't have to pretend with me anymore.
"What?" He was taken aback a little, his eyes darting over my face.
Obviously he saw something in my eyes then.
"Oh." He frowned, looking back to me with a sort of… disgust and moved his arm off my back.
His reaction took me by surprise a little. I saw that in his vulnerability and thirst he got harsher, but it still confused me. He knew I knew. Emmett had held me after the return from his family home as I cried about the undercurrent of violence in his house. I knew. I'd seen firsthand the bruises on his sisters. I knew. He'd told me flat out that his father hit him. I knew. And he absolutely knew I knew.
I was confused.
"Then why did you ask?" He narrowed his eyes, immediately skeptical of my motivations.
"I just… I just wanted you to know you can talk to me."
"There's nothing to talk about." He clenched his jaw and I could feel him getting defensive, but he wasn't angry with me.
To protect himself, he was dismissive. This I could see, obviously swimming in his black onyx eyes.
"I just thought maybe… Since your father's gone…"
"My father's dead and I'm not. Well… technically." A humorless smirk pulled at the corners of his mouth as he referenced the afterlife we currently inhabited. "That's all there is to say. We talked about it that night. He was awful, but I'm glad I didn't have to kill him. You know that. I told you that."
He was trying to keep the conversation closed, but it was like water at a weak, cracked dam. It would inevitably come rushing out.
"I shouldn't have pushed you to kill him, Emmett." I said in somewhat of an apology thinking about how much could have been saved if I hadn't thought I knew what was best for him.
"You didn't." He frowned.
"I did." I swallowed.
"No, I needed to go back and see what happened. See that my mom and my sisters got out." Emmett shrugged dismissively. "And plus, I got to kill those people. Those lousy excuses of human beings. I'm glad I went back."
Impossibly, his eyes shifted into a shade of black so dark I hadn't known it even existed.
He looked like the monster I'd damned him to be more in this moment than in the moment he'd killed them.
"But, now I'm worried about you." I blurted out. "We're all worried about you."
Emmett's focus darted to me and I watched it harden.
"Why?" He asked, genuinely wondering and not just pushing me.
"Well, Carlisle left some medical journals out in the library that I read through yesterday… There are these new medical studies about… about the long term psychological effects of child abuse."
"And what does that have to do with anything?" Emmett laughed a dark laugh, a weird expression on his face.
"Come on, Emmett, I know your father… I know he abused you, and your sisters, and your mother." I said as evenly as I could, treading lightly. "And that's going to make things complicated for you and…"
Emmett stiffened at the word abuse, something flickering in his eyes.
That's when it occurred to me that he hadn't thought he was abused at all.
I'd made things worse, and now I could see this was not what he thought of his father's behavior as. He'd thought of it as punishment he'd earned, and now just the thought of what it meant to be abused haunted him and haunted his father's legacy in his mind.
My words twisted in his new mind enough that doubt filled his eyes and my dead heart raced in my chest. He looked confused and overwhelmed by the thought that maybe…
Maybe I was right.
But, it was still painted in his irises now that he believed he was inherently flawed and not good enough to have had a good relationship with his father. He thought it was something he did.
Now, he was even more confused.
This was problematic.
"Don't… Ruin this." Emmett gritted his teeth, warning me.
"What do you mean?" I furrowed my brow.
"I told you… Just stop."
"Emmett, you…" I tried again.
"Why are you even bringing this bullshit up, Rosalie?!"
"Because you… haven't been yourself and I think that's why… You saw your father's suicide and it brought up some things you…"
"I'm not myself, Rosalie because I'm not myself anymore!" He tossed his hands up, obviously frustrated with me. "I'm a vampire. It has nothing to do with him."
"But, Emmett…" My throat felt tight and I was nervous.
I could feel him getting heated.
"Rosalie. My father's dead. I'm not. I'm telling you, drop it."
"But, I don't think you've dealt with what he did to you…" I argued, seeing his eyes light on fire. "And it's making you…"
Maybe I was just projecting… After all, who was I to say this? I hadn't dealt with what Royce did to me.
I thought I had by killing Royce, but… I hadn't dealt with anything.
Emmett's black eyes blazed angrily.
"Listen Rosalie, nothing's making me do anything. I was shitty to Carlisle because his righteousness drives me up the fucking wall when he smells like blood from a hunt. I can't stand Edward's know-it-all attitude, but then I can't stand it even more that he actually knows everything going on in your head and I can't even… And Esme… Well okay, Esme's all right. I can't say anything about her, but… I was an asshole to you because I'm thirsty… I'm so goddamned thirsty and you just happened to be standing there, so I snapped at you too. There's no other reason but that."
My dead heart sunk and rose quickly like when you're at the top of a ferris wheel at a carnival and you look over the edge.
I couldn't even open my mouth to speak before he began again.
I'd felt so close and enlightened like I knew exactly how to be close to him, but now, now I felt distant again…
And his voice rose to a point that made me want to retreat.
"Rosalie, I'm trying to move forward. And you're not letting me. I don't… I don't need you to fix me." He grumbled.
"The fact I was awful to you and Carlisle has nothing to do with anything my father ever was or ever did." Emmett insisted strongly. "I'm not letting any of that bullshit be the reason I do anything. None of that matters."
"But Emmett, it's okay if you…" I started to justify his learned responses to danger and authority.
"No! It's not okay. It's worse. Because if I let myself lean on whatever my father might've done or whatever brand of a bastard he was, then it means all that bullshit ruined me, and I… I don't want to be ruined. I don't want to be ruined… I'm not ruined."
I felt like I'd been hit with a ton of bricks and I watched him start to disintegrate.
"I don't think you're ruined. That's not what I meant." I tried to get him to see that's not what I meant, but then I realized that's what it had sounded like… "I just thought maybe it's why you…"
"Oh, I get it now… You would rather accept that there's a reason I'm such a screw up." Emmett said, his voice so full of darkness that it weighted his words to the pit of my stomach. "But, it's just me Rosalie. I'm not who you thought I was when you saved me. I'm sorry for the disappointment."
Suddenly, like a splash of cold water, I was awakened and I was angry.
I wouldn't accept that I was wrong about him, and I knew I wasn't.
And, he misread what I was saying entirely.
"No. I don't believe that's true. Emmett, I think you want me to tell you that you can be better." I told him, challenging his gaze. "Because you are better than just being a predator and you're better than the way you talked to Carlisle, or at least you can be. And, I wanted to give you a chance to identify why you're so awful to Carlisle. "
Emmett's anger flared.
"Carlisle is not my father, Rosalie!" Emmett argued with me ravenously, tossing up his hands in exasperation.
"I know that! He knows that too. But I don't think you do. He's just trying to lead you and you aren't letting him because of your experience with your father. You're not letting him help you." I said.
"I don't want him to lead me! I don't want him to help me and I don't want you diagnosing me with this bullshit because you don't understand anything!" He yelled.
"I want blood for Christ's sake and they're just humans, Rosalie! It's what I'm designed to do." His anger made dark rings seem to deepen around his eyes and his hands shook in anger as they clenched into fists.
"You told me you wanted to be the man I thought you were…" I recalled an earlier conversation. "You told me you wanted to be better. Was that a lie?"
Emmett exhaled exasperatedly.
"No. I mean… I… I don't know!" He groaned, shutting his eyes tightly. "I don't know… There's… so much in my head."
Emmett put both of his hands on either side of his head, hanging his focus and closing his eyes tightly.
We paused for a moment in our argument. Impossibly, I was physically exhausted.
I crossed my arms over my chest, turning my gaze away from him as I struggled with the conflict in my mind.
Maybe this conversation should have waited until he was well fed.
He wasn't processing rationally right now.
But then again, neither was I because I should have been more careful with my words, and I shouldn't have let there be a hanging space between what I thought and what I said.
I didn't like arguing with him.
It felt so wrong…
My stomach was in knots and my limbs felt heavy.
"I need you to be better." I finally said, but there was so much left unsaid that the incompletion set us even further back.
I should have said I needed him to be better because I needed him… In this awful, dark world, I needed him… and he needed me, and we could… do this burdened existence together.
This mistake… This withholding for my selfish self preservation would cost me.
"It'll never be enough for you though." Emmett mumbled venomously, looking up at me now. "Even if I never drink human blood again, it wouldn't be enough for you."
"What are you talking about?" I narrowed my eyes.
"You have impossible standards for me so that when I don't meet your expectations, you can justify pushing me away." He growled at me to turn the focus around, looking straight up into my eyes.
My jaw dropped and I felt fatally wounded by his venom.
"I do not." I panicked a little, wondering if what he said was true.
"You don't what? Have impossible standards or push me away?" Emmett raised an eyebrow. "'Cause either way I'd beg to differ, darlin'."
"Not drinking human blood is difficult, but it's far from impossible." I said, dismissing what he said.
I didn't miss that as we argued he got more comfortable calling me darling…
"If it's not blood it's something else." Emmett huffed, venom seeping out of his tone.
"Excuse me?" I was confused as he spoke in riddles.
"Even if I never drank human blood, even if I read every goddamned book in that goddamned library, even if I wore these stuffy clothes, even if Carlisle and I were thick as thieves, even if I said everything you wanted me to say, even if…"
"Oh my God…" I groaned exasperatedly.
"Oh my God, what, Rosalie?!" Emmett played into my exasperation, stepping forward to stand over me.
I knew it was impossible to produce tears, but I felt my eyes start to burn and my bottom lip start to tremble.
I was just so… frustrated!
We started yelling over one another so nothing was making sense and our words tangled together in angry strings of fraying yarn.
"You've got to be the most difficult person I've ever met." I growled, defending myself by jabbing at him.
The way he challenged me, looking down on me with fire in his eyes made me uneasy.
"Well, at least I know it." Emmett shrugged, but his eyes were strongly focused on mine like it was a jab.
"What are you saying?!" I gasped, absolutely awestruck that he'd even suggest I was difficult.
"I'm saying you're difficult! And selfish and cold and manipulative and…"
I turned over my shoulder and started to walk away from him because I was too weak to handle what his wrath revealed about my own shortcomings.
"No. No. No. Don't you walk away from me!" Emmett followed, cutting me off angrily.
I clenched my jaw, my stomach dropping to my knees as I looked up at him.
"You can't walk away from me!" He said through his teeth. "I'm not letting you."
"Well, I'm not standing here and letting you talk to me like that." I growled at him, my voice catching in my throat though I willed it to remain strong and unbothered.
"Oh, I'm not afraid of you, Rosalie." Emmett challenged and it sent a shiver down my spine.
"So what?" I snapped.
"So I'm actually going to be honest with you when you're being a pain in the ass!" Emmett roared. "Unlike everyone else that lets you get away with it."
"This isn't about me. It's about you. This is about you being awful to Carlisle and rejecting our diet because you haven't dealt with the issues you had with your father." I snarled.
"Oh, give me a break." Emmett rolled his eyes.
"And all the... debauchery... of your human years." I shot back. "You don't know how to follow rules. I mean, you were a criminal."
"And, what about you, Princess?" He challenged me, absolutely irate now, stepping forward in challenge. "What's your excuse?"
His words cut like a knife, trying to challenge me into justifying my own awful treatment of everyone around me.
I clenched my teeth angrily, breathing rapidly. I was panicked, but I tried to stay cool.
It was getting more difficult with each passing second.
I felt fatally wounded.
"I see through you." Emmett insisted, believing this whole heartedly as his black eyes stayed heavy on me.
"Because you asked Carlisle to change me, and you wouldn't have done that if something wasn't missing." Emmett saw straight through me and it terrified me. "You need me."
I clenched my jaw and my hands into fists.
"You arrogant bastard!" I gasped and growled a curse word.
"Why in hell did you ask him to do it then?!" Emmett roared.
"At this point, I don't know." I snapped cruelly. "You're insufferable!"
"You know you can take all this away from me because it's yours to take anyway." Emmett challenged, talking animatedly with his hands as his voice rose.
"You don't..." We tried screaming over one another, but he drowned out my voice easily.
"Start the bonfire now. Rip me to pieces and be rid of me since I'm not passing any of your tests." Emmett bowed up angrily.
"Forget it!" I shrieked. "I was just trying to…"
"To make me your project?" He went in for another dark hit with his words and I felt myself flinch back away from him. "You have been trying to fix me since you met me!"
"No! Would you stop it?!" I shrieked.
"Do you regret it then?!" Emmett growled.
My dead heart got heavy in my chest.
I would never.
"What the hell are we even fighting about any more?!" My mind was diluted as I diverted subjects. "I can't follow! I'm done. I'm going home."
We weren't talking about Carlisle… or blood… or humans…
We were talking about us.
And that scared me more than all of the previous subjects combined.
I turned to walk away again, but he caught me again.
"Oh don't you dare start that, I see through your cruelty, Rosalie. I do." He growled at me, pointing a finger in my face.
"You keep me aware of all the ways I fall short, all the ways I mess up, all these things about my past, my family, the human I was…" I felt his anger coming off of him in waves and it was pointed directly at me as he talked animatedly with his hands.
"You're trying to distract me." Emmett accused. "But I see you. I know what you're doing."
I shook with rage then.
"And you might've never heard this in your perfect rich girl life, but no. No, I'm not letting you take the easy way out. You can't."
"You smug son of a bitch." I growled. "Now I hate you."
"You don't hate me." Emmett challenged me.
We were arguing in circles and it scared me to have him close to me while we were fighting. I was breathing heavily, feeling physically drained by this, and he stood over me glaring down at me.
The darkness in his black eyes made me shudder.
"You just hoped I was someone else." Emmett snarled, referring to my insistence that he had reminded me of someone and that's why I changed him.
He reminded me of someone… But, he didn't know what that really meant.
I saw in Emmett's eyes his rage was masking his desperation.
"No. God, you don't… You don't get it." I gasped out the words.
"Then help me understand!" Emmett yelled desperately. "I need to understand!"
"Carlisle changed me because you asked him to. And he couldn't say no to you!" Emmett accused. "He wanted to make it up to you for not letting you die. I was his peace offering to you, but I've proven unworthy now that you all know what a goddamned fuck up I turned out to be."
"Carlisle made his own decision, and that's not what's going on here." I mumbled, panicking. "You're just being awful and I was trying to..."
"You deny it and you try to blame it on my father, on my human life, on Carlisle, because you don't want to acknowledge that you did this to me!" His words cracked like a whip and left a burning, gaping gash in my heart. "And now that you see what I am... you regret it."
I couldn't find words to speak though I searched desperately for some. I was taken aback.
"I thought you were pleased..." I tested.
I looked at his face now, hating myself and shaking like a leaf.
"I am pleased. I would like being a vampire if it weren't for you. And for the love of God, the only reason I'm thirsting to death is you. The reason I'm suffering is you. The reason I'm miserable and pent up in that house is you." He talked with his hands theatrically.
I clenched my jaw.
His words sliced through me angrily and I was trembling against them.
"When I leave, you could just stay here with Kate." I narrowed my eyes in challenge, hating that I'd said something so petty and stupid in response to his argument. "Since you're so miserable with me."
I felt like I was going to throw up in anticipation for his response. Maybe he really would.
"Oh my God, Rosalie." He laughed humorlessly.
It drove me up the wall and anger spilled out of my mouth in words I didn't mean.
"You'd be much better suited..." I stood at my tallest, tilting up my chin to feign superior removal from the situation.
"You drive me insane." Emmett growled at me. "I'm trying so hard, Rosalie, but my best wouldn't even be good enough for the worst of you."
"No you aren't." I argued heatedly. "You aren't trying to live on animal blood, because you already think you're going to fail!"
"This is not what this conversation is about and you know it." Emmett exhaled angrily, and growled in his breath.
I didn't know what this was about anymore at all. We were just fighting to fight.
I hated him, but I had this weird... desire for him which made me hate him even more.
I snarled, trying to shake the thought of crushing my mouth on his.
"Then what the hell is this about?!" I screamed.
Emmett was steaming with anger.
"I'm doing this for you. I'm thirsting for you. I'm suffering for you." He rephrased his statement as if this would be significant.
"I mean I saved you from your poor, miserable life that was leading nowhere. Your father hated you. Your mother was a coward and didn't love you enough to stand up for you. Your mother watched while you got beaten and broken to pieces. She sat there and watched. She didn't stand up for you. No one did. You were alone as you were that day with that bear. But, I saved you." My cruelty shot out. "What else do you want from me?"
He stared at me open mouthed.
"Oh, you can do better than that. You can be soooo much more brutal than that." Emmett stepped forward to challenge me, looking at me like no one had ever looked at me, like he knew just how awful I was.
My outer beauty wasn't enough to distract him from my inner ugliness and I could see it in his eyes.
I'd hurt him.
There was so much unsaid between us that it was heavy in the air.
He was shaking with anger, absolutely transformed into monstrousness by how I'd hurt him.
It just made me fume even more.
He'd prove he was just the same...
"Come on, don't hold back!" He screamed at me.
We screamed nonsensical things back and forth at one another, waiting for something exceptionally horrible to hurt the other person enough to make them back off. But we couldn't hear it because we were yelling over one another.
Nothing stuck in particular, but we were wearing each other down. I felt it, but I'd never show it.
"I can't do this!" He finally screamed. "I can't! I can't! Why? Godddamn it!"
He fisted his hands in his hair angrily. He shook with rage, hatred pouring out of his gaze.
"Why did you think I could do this?!" He yelled at me, on another level entirely that made my heart sink to the depths of my stomach because for a second I thought he might hit me. "I can't do this!"
"You want to hit me?! You don't scare me!" I growled up at him.
"What?!" He gasped in disbelief, but I still turned over my shoulder to walk away.
He screamed lethally, following me in rage.
It sent a chill down my spine. I'd never been in a confrontation like this before. It brought out the worst in me, and all I wanted to do was to hurt him to protect myself.
Every bit of my skin, hurt.
It was like his words had been a raging fire and had scalded me.
I looked away from him, anger burning in my chest and escaping out of the ends of my fingers in a stream of rage.
He'd hurt me and all I could think of to do was to fight back.
That's when I did the most horrible thing I had ever done, and that was saying quite a bit. It was the worst thing I could have ever thought of, and it made me the monster I always knew I was.
My defensive rage took over and I slapped Emmett's cheek with a smack before he had the chance to finish his sentence.
I was too scared to let him finish.
"You want to hurt me?!" I raved, pushing against his chest.
"You can't hurt me!" I knocked my fists against him, swinging wildly.
He didn't fight back; he just looked at me, watching me swing at him.
"Nothing fucking hurts me!" I slapped my own face before I smacked him again with all my rage, cursing as I'd never cursed before.
He turned at the force of the blow, but of course he wasn't hurt. My hand was still hot from where I'd hit him and it burned, throbbing at my side.
After the crack that echoed through the air, we were hauntingly silent.
I was shaking, my breath shallow and quick as I watched him.
He remained frozen, his chin tilted away from me and down to where I'd hit him.
I hadn't hit him hard enough to hurt him, but I hit him… And that did hurt him.
"Emmett, I'm sorry." I gasped in a panic, reaching for him again with trembling hands.
He whirled around, grabbing my wrist tightly enough that it took my breath out of my chest.
I shrunk under his gaze, scared.
The look on his face scared me, truly scared me not because of what I was afraid he'd do to me.
I was afraid of what I'd done to him. I saw the depth of what it meant to him in his eyes.
He knew now that I was ugly and poisonous and awful…
"Don't you ever do that again." Emmett wore a dark, angry snarl on his face, holding my gaze captive in his.
He kept his grip on my wrist angrily and it panicked me, but I shook my head, letting him know I wouldn't dare hit him again.
Something I thought I saw in his eyes had already given up on me and it terrified me.
I nodded swiftly taking a deep inhale.
"I'm so sorry…" My voice shook and I wondered if I could ever come back from this.
"I… I…" I immediately broke down, panicking.
I realized then, maybe I was ruined and it scared me to my bones…
I needed no excuse other than that.
I was ruined.
He saw through me, and I was afraid that's what he was going to say. I was ruined.
I wasn't the Rosalie Hale he would've easily fallen in love with anymore. I was selfish, manipulative, cold, and calculating…
Why couldn't this go away?
I wanted to be the Rosalie Hale that I remembered before all this. I wanted to be the Rosalie Hale that I liked… before….
Now, I hated this girl.
My bottom lip trembled, and I reached both of my arms out to try and duck into his side, burying my face in him to cry. Maybe he'd understand how sorry I was.
"No. I'm not playing your games, Rosalie." He saw through my brutality and pushed me away. "I'm a lot smarter than you think I am and your cruelty isn't enough to distract me."
He exhaled, exasperated with my difficulty as he turned away from me, beginning to walk away.
I so desperately hoped he wouldn't give up, but it was evident he'd begun to, and I was screaming on the inside.
"Emmett please." I begged him as I reached for his hand.
I stood in front of him, looking up into his eyes, begging for him to see my sincerely broken heart over what I'd done to him.
His eyes changed then, like a calming storm.
"I'm so sorry. Emmett… I…" I tripped over my words. "Emmett, please forgive me."
He reached to tilt my chin up and he kept his fingers on my face as our eyes met one another's again.
I saw forgiveness in his eyes as his resolve weakened and he extended grace I didn't know if I deserved.
I was so deeply filled with remorse that I felt too heavy to be standing atop the earth. I kept my eyes attached to Emmett, but I wondered if I looked down at my feet I'd see they were sinking.
"I would never hurt you." Emmett told me with the deepest sincerity he could muster, his voice caressing my senses. "I need you to know that. I could never hurt you."
As much as I believed in him, he believed in me.
I could be better.
I had to be.
I was filled with guilt. I was filled with pain. I'd hurt him.
Not physically, but I hurt him nonetheless.
This time, when I reached for him, he let me and I ducked my head into his chest. I indulged in pressing my hands into his back, feeling like my cells could absorb him.
I took a deep inhale, closing my eyes.
"I'm so sorry." I breathed.
"Me too." His arms wound around my shoulders and after a long moment, he ducked his lips to my hair.
I felt it at every corner of my being.
"I shouldn't have said all that… that way." Emmett exhaled. "I… I wasn't really good with my words… And... I didn't mean to yell at you..."
Our eyes met in a moment like waves crashing violently against the shore.
"How did you do it?" I asked Emmett in a breathless whisper.
"Do what?" He asked, his voice calmed now.
"How did you keep from being ruined?" I swallowed, nervous.
I felt his breath fill his chest, then he exhaled and rubbed a circle on my shoulder.
"I guess I just always wanted to be more than what he did." Emmett said with honest simplicity. "I didn't want to be the poor kid that got the shit knocked out of him by a drunk, deadbeat father. I didn't want to be anything. I wanted to be Emmett McCarty and what I decided that meant. I wanted to have a story separate from the one forced on me."
I clenched my jaw, his words like alcohol on a wound.
His honesty was startling, even though he didn't have it in him be any other way. I processed his words in my ego, wondering if I could ever have a story separate from the one Royce had forced on me.
Or was it too late for me?
What about the story that Carlisle had forced on me. This existence...
The story I'd forced on Emmett even knowing all of the consequences...
"And… And… Rosalie, you know I could never repay you for what you did for me. This life… This gift…"
I frowned, pulling away to look at him now, convinced there was no way he was truly thinking this existence was a gift.
"But you know I've been…. havin' trouble… being… myself while also being a vampire. And… I do want to… be more than… this too." Emmett drug the toe of his boot in the snow, his focus going down as he spoke about his vulnerability. "I wanna be more than just… instincts and… blood... For you. 'Cause you... you should know the best of me if there's any of that left..."
He swallowed painfully after the word blood.
I noticed the way the snow collected in his hair made him especially handsome. I knotted my fingers together.
"And… And well, that's why I need you to tell me who I am. I don't want to forget. I worked real hard to be it." Emmett sighed, keeping his eyes away from mine. "I don't want to be a monster…"
"Especially not to you." He continued with clenched teeth and a darkness to his voice that made me shiver, but not out of fear.
My mind raced, and as we stood together in a full, heavy silence, one thought continually pressed at my mind. It was a thought that pained me, but I knew what I had to do.
I pressed my palms into his back, closing my eyes.
I was imperfect.
I was broken.
But was I… ruined?
Was I beyond repair?
I felt guilty, exposed, and vulnerable, but mostly I felt dread.
Was I ruined?… I certainly felt ruined, and this argument had almost proven it.
But, if I was ruined that would mean I was powerless for the rest of eternity.
And, I hated feeling powerless again…
Like I'd felt when Royce shoved himself inside of me while I was lying flat on my stomach in the street, his hands pulling at my hair and groping at my body.
The sounds he'd made….
I reminisced instead on Royce's screams, his pain as I killed him…. I wasn't powerless then.
I had never felt more powerful.
But had it just been a temporary illusion? Had Royce truly ruined me beyond repair?
Would I have to carry it with me for all time?
Was my continued pain representative of his eternal power over me?
I couldn't let that happen.
God, no. I couldn't let that happen.
I wondered then if Royce knew… Did he know he was going to ruin me? Did he even consider it? Did any of those men?
Did they act without even knowing how it would affect me? Did they even care?
Or were they too drunk to even acknowledge I was a human being.
They certainly made me feel like an animal.
I knew what was wrong with me. Royce was.
He abused my body. He abused my psyche. He abused my trust.
I had scars that didn't go way with transformation.
I had to be perfect in every other way to make up for what I viewed as this fatal flaw. I couldn't be proud of my accomplishments. No matter how good I got at music or how many books I read or ways I could make myself look more devastatingly beautiful, I felt unworthy of praise.
I was still so filled with shame.
Royce and his friends had dirtied me. They'd broken me.
I found little peace in knowing he was dead.
I wanted to be able to laugh and take afternoon strolls and worry about the weather, but I couldn't.
I couldn't do that anymore.
I was too burdened.
I didn't want to be broken anymore. I didn't want to be filled with poison.
I hated feeling this way.
I was sick of living my life as a victim of Royce's monstrosity. I was sick of my immortality reminding me of what he did.
After I'd told Dorothy what happened to me, I decided I wanted to heal. I wanted to get better, but that honestly has just made it harder, because it made me much more aware of my weakness and powerlessness.
I'd told Dorothy she was not what happened to her, so why couldn't I separate myself from what Royce had done to me?
I didn't want to live my life as Royce's victim anymore. I didn't want to be broken anymore.
I didn't want to be ruined anymore.
Because it was ruining things with Emmett.
And God, he was the only thing I had any faith in anymore.
Now, if only I could've said those words out loud.
Emmett held me in his arms in a haven and I synchronized breath with his - slow, calm, and even.
"I was returning from the last of them – the death I'd saved so I could indulge and savor as I killed him, the one I thought would finally bring absolution – when I found you." I admitted and this time I looked up at him.
His black eyes searched my face with wonder, not resentment or disgust as he looked into my assassin's eyes and he reached out to touch my face. I stepped forward under his gaze, tilting my chin up as his fingers cradled my cheek like I was the most precious thing in the world to him.
The wounds of our argument were festering no longer. They were being soothed and tended.
"When I finally killed him, I thought that'd make me happy enough to survive the rest of this existence. But it didn't. It wasn't enough." I swallowed nervously. "I was still empty..."
He listened with openness and regard, and I let myself be tethered to the present as I leaned into his hand. It was warm, leaving a trail like sunshine on my skin.
My dead heart beat rapidly in my chest as I looked up at him.
"But, when I saw your face…" I began, my voice seeming small and unsteady, but he looked at me with depth and purpose and meaning that pushed me to continue.
"You reminded me of someone… someone I'd never met but knew so vividly as if I had always known them because… because I thought of them incessantly. I still do." I continued, knowing I was speaking in a riddle and resenting the fact that he couldn't just read my mind.
But, my mind was such a tangle I wondered if that would've even been easier.
He reminded me of a child I'd never have, but how in God's name would that go over if I told him that?
My riddle had confused him, but he waited.
"My best friend in my human life… Her name was Vera. Is Vera."
"That's who you sent Dorothy to see?" Emmett asked, his thumb tracing over my cheek as he looked over my face.
I nodded.
"So, she had this baby boy…" I started, my thoughts getting more and more convoluted. "And… I had never been jealous of anyone before, but… I was jealous of her."
"Because of the baby?" Emmett tried to understand patiently.
"Yes… and… well not just that." I frowned, trying to make sense of what all I was trying to say. "She was loved. Her husband kissed her… really kissed her. I'd never seen my father kiss my mother like that. I'd never…"
Emmett took a slow, deep inhale as I looked away from him in embarrassment.
"When I looked at you under that bear... I saw everything I'd lost. Everything that was taken from me. Everything Carlisle didn't consider when he changed me." I felt intensity rise in my voice that I didn't know if he was able to process or understand. "Vera's baby had dark curly hair… and… and dimples on his cheeks."
I sighed, exasperated at my painful vulnerability.
Somehow, miraculously though, understanding flashed over his face.
"In your face, I saw…" I trailed off not knowing how to phrase this.
But, he waited with openness.
"What I wanted… more than anything in my human life… the children I always wanted, the grandchildren playing in tall green grass…" I said, turning my face in embarrassment of my honesty. "I saw myself… For the first time in a long time, or maybe… maybe ever."
"You weren't a peace offering from Carlisle. I just... I wanted all those things I saw in your face to live, I wanted you to live. And before, all I had wanted were my own children, a husband to kiss me when he came home, to grow old with and drink lemonade on front porches with in the summertime…" I trailed off, my voice soft. "I wanted to love and be loved… I didn't think it was too much to ask…"
"And now, you can't have that?" He asked with a statement of intense heartache that signaled he had chosen to bear my burdens in a way no one had offered to do before.
It left me intensely vulnerable and my body's response to vulnerability was to panic and ice him out. I fought every instinct to do so as I looked up into his eyes.
"No. I can't." I admitted in deep heartbrokenness. "We're frozen in this state for eternity. I can't… have children."
"I'm sorry." Emmett told me sincerely, his eyes black as night, but endlessly deep as he offered his authentic empathy to me. "I'm really sorry."
He thought this was the depth of my brokenness, but he was so wrong. It wasn't even scratching the surface.
Emmett traced his hands over my face in reverence, not pity, and that's what made him different than the others.
If I tilted up my chin a little, I'd be close enough to kiss him, but of course I didn't dare.
"I told Dorothy how I died." I finally admitted to him in a way that rushed out of my mouth like vomit, and it felt like I'd just been burned alive. "But, of course I didn't tell her it killed me."
"You did?" He asked with a careful tenderness to his voice like he didn't want to scare me off; his eyes were searching for answers in my face that I hoped he wouldn't find.
"And… and I'll tell you too, when I'm ready." I swallowed, looking down and away. "But… But, I'm not ready yet. And… it's not because I don't…. trust you. It's because…"
It's because I think… it ruined me, and I don't want you to know I'm ruined.
My voice progressively got higher and more anxious before I trailed off in a breathless shrill. His arm returned to around my shoulders, pulling me back in even though I didn't say the part I'd hoped to say out loud and finally share what burdened me.
I was still too ashamed.
I exhaled into him, feeling calm all over again.
"The scar on my eye, I got for a pretty dumb ass reason." Emmett started softly in response to all I'd revealed.
He sensed it was difficult for me.
I looked up at him and saw it in the tenderness of his eyes. He wanted me to know him.
"I found this vine and had this bright idea we could use it swing out over the river and jump; everybody told me it wasn't strong enough. I told 'em they were cowards and I'd try it out first. It snapped and I fell face first into all these rocks below. I broke my nose for the first time that day too. Obviously I was most devastated about that you know… potentially ruining my good looks."
I couldn't help but smile as I noticed that there were dimples on his cheek now, deeply set in his skin as he remembered.
It put me at ease to feel him coming back into himself again.
"The one on my lip, I honest to God don't remember. Coulda been anything." He dismissed but this time it wasn't a lie. "I got my lip busted so many times…"
I winced.
"But, this one" he ran a thumb along his cheekbone, "that one" - he corrected himself to a past tense - "I was especially proud of 'cause I knew I didn't deserve it. I knew I'd done the right thing, and I didn't regret it one bit.… When Dorothy sewed it up, I was glad it left a scar because I knew it'd always be a reminder of that… What I believed in. Who I wanted to be. Who I was in spite of it all."
I watched his countenance shift, the cold air thick around us.
"There was a girl…" Emmett started his story and my stomach immediately dropped.
I was irrationally devastated and jealous.
"Her Mama had made her this new coat. It was just a bunch of tattered up rags, but it had these gold buttons on it and she was so proud of that coat." Emmett's eyes traced over the gold buttons on the front of my dress as if it was some sort of tangible connection to the memory.
I still shallowly wondered about the girl.
"While she was walking home from town, there were these stupid boys that were pickin' on her… They ripped the buttons off her new coat…"
My heart sank and my thoughts went dark as I thought of Royce ripping the jacket off my shoulders… The brass buttons scattering all over the street.
In a new reaction to trauma, I tried tying myself to the present with a connection to the tangible. I reached for Emmett's hand where it rested on my waist and it guided him to pull me closer.
I took deep, even breaths, the smell of tobacco and thyme braiding through my senses to keep me here.
He kept me here this time.
"So, I kicked their asses and walked her home…" Emmett went on. "My father had… a few words to say about it…"
"Bonnie." I recalled the story Dorothy had told me immediately, the details of it lining up.
That was the girl.
"Yeah… Bonnie." Emmett exhaled in a sort of awe that I knew.
The details of the story were sharp in my mind, so I knew how it ended… I knew how he got that scar.
"How did you?…" He asked.
"Dorothy told me…" I said softly. "She said you stuck up for her, even though you knew your father wouldn't approve…"
Emmett snorted a little humorless chuckle.
"Should I be afraid of all the things Dorothy told you about me?" He raised an eyebrow in faux worry.
It amused us both
"No. Not at all." I said with a little smile, turning to look at him now, to see the uninterrupted perfection of his face, no scars, no reminders.
I took a deep breath then took the plunge.
I stood on my tip toes to plant a kiss on his cheek where that scar once was, as his self-proclaimed reminder of the one right thing he'd ever done in his life, where I'd hit him and left an intangible mark of the worst thing I'd ever done.
This was his next right thing and my next right thing, and as I pressed my lips to his cheek, I felt refreshed with liveliness like a first spring.
I'd been dead, for longer than I'd actually been dead - maybe I'd died slowly long ago at sixteen or seventeen when I settled for less than love, just infatuation and admiration. Either way, I was made alive in this moment.
His hand slowly rose to cup my face and I felt him slightly tilt his chin down in a way that brought his lips to the corner of my mouth.
He waited, his breath sweet on mine, and I knew I needed to meet him halfway if I wanted to kiss him.
It didn't feel right to kiss him in this moment, but I wasn't afraid.
I felt my stomach tie in knots, and I tilted my chin up and away from his, denying his kiss but not sure if that was actually what I wanted. My dead heart felt like it was racing.
Emmett kept his hand on my face and I felt him inhale slowly before he pulled back to look at me. I didn't have to pull away and for this I was thankful, but I was also confused.
Why didn't he kiss me?
His black eyes didn't seem so menacing, but were black as a raven's feathers flying over my face, and filling with new enthusiasm each moment.
"I know you, Emmett." I told him, my words feeling burning hot on my tongue and I worried about their delivery. "And I very much like knowing you."
I referenced one of the very first conversations we ever had with one another when he insisted we were supposed to know each other.
Now, I was actually starting to believe it.
He remembered the conversation I referenced easily and found my eyes as he looked down at me in his arms.
My heart floated above my body as we became enchanted all anew under each other's gaze.
I'd told him he was enough for me then and he knew it. I just wanted to believe it, and I wanted to believe that even as broken as I was - I'd be enough for him too.
"And, I want you to know me too." I went on, feeling anxious but strangely at peace as I said it. "But… sometimes I can be quite… selfish and cold and manipulative."
"Rose, I shouldn't have said all that nonsense earlier… I…" He exhaled in an apologetic tone.
"No, I know I can be pretty… difficult…" I bit my lip, ignoring his attempt at an apology. He could leave that for Carlisle.
He frowned and shook his head, evidently disagreeing with me and the brutality of his bluntness earlier.
"But, I don't truly mean to be." I said in a shaky voice because I was anticipating the vulnerability I was going to have to show. "Especially not to you. I… Just need a little more time, and…"
What was I even asking for? It didn't make any sense. Was I asking him to be patient with me? To suffer through my mood swings and impossible standards and games? Was I asking him to accept me?
Was I asking him to forgive me?
"Whatever you've got, I want it. Rosalie, look at me. I want it all. I want to know you, all of it, even the bad stuff you think I won't like, I will because, I like you." He took my face in his hands and my heart rose to my throat. "And… I think you're… perfect."
His bold words sunk in and my eyes settled on his mouth wondering what it'd be like to kiss him.
He… liked me.
Like a silly school girl, I was enchanted by the fairytale of it, but as a woman jaded by experience… I was afraid.
I turned my face away from him, a frown settling absently over my features.
His eyes were impossibly blacker than night, and his skin was whiter than the snow. I sensed nervousness in him just like there was nervousness in me and somehow it calmed me.
I took a deep breath.
Then, true to my form, I deflected and distracted him when I felt vulnerable.
"Let's go hunt. You've suffered long enough." I said and at this all traces of him left his face and he was a predator again.
"What about Carlisle?" Emmett asked, but he was already vibrating with pent up energy and looking east.
"I'll deal with Carlisle." I shrugged, kicking off my heels to start sprinting through the woods.