CHAPTER TWO.
MATE
I didn't even bother with a car, it would take too much time to get the key, to start it, to back out of the garage. I needed to run as fast as I could, for as long as possible, to fill my lungs with clean air. There was probably a direct parallel here about literally running away from one's problems, but at the time I didn't care. I just needed to feel free.
Somewhere in Canada my thirst drove me to hunt, but even the serenity of feeding was destroyed as I remembered the girl's scent. I drank savagely, trying to feed the monster inside me an alternative. I would have done almost anything to quell this beast, but nothing would satiate it.
Briefly, I imagined it was the girl's blood sliding down my throat, not that of this flavorless stag. Never in my life have I wanted something so badly. The simple involuntary imagining renewed my desperation and I floundered. It would be so easy to let the animal inside me win. Why should I have to abstain? This is what vampires were built for, after all.
This internal argument was counter-productive. I howled out viciously, funneling my anger and frustration into the sound. I didn't turn back toward Forks. I kept hunting. Finally, a towering moose crossed my path that fought me fiercely. I took him down with glee, but found even he tasted poor with the memory of that girl's blood so fresh on my mind.
Her scent haunted me over the next two days. I reached Denali but couldn't bring myself to call on my friends in their giant homestead. Instead, I cowered in a snowbank, holding my breath, and willing my mind to cease spinning in circles.
Snow piled around me as I lay back to stare at the stars. Little snowflakes danced across my flesh like miniature kisses. They didn't melt as my flesh had cooled to the same temperature as the snow. Eventually the breeze would blow them away.
The sky was brilliantly clear. The view astonishing, and yet the only thing I seemed to be able to see was confused, dark eyes surrounded by swirls of blue black hair. I tried to see past her, to the awesomely swirling shapes in the cosmos. I tried to think about neutron stars, and black holes, and about the unfathomable size of the universe. My problems meant nothing by comparison. One little girl meant absolutely nothing.
So, then why couldn't I get her out of my head?
I flipped over onto my stomach, burying my face in the snow and made a lopsided snow angel, by wiping my right side arm and leg through the powder wider than the left. My limbs cut through the powder easily, creating perfectly shaped divots in the bank.
This wasn't getting any better. I'd been out here playing in the snow for five days and I was no closer to any possible answer than I had been when I first arrived.
The Denali coven had come out to check on me the first couple of days, but my consistent unresponsiveness had forced them to leave me alone. I knew it was rude, and yet I couldn't bring myself to tell them how badly off I truly was. How weak I had been.
As if the mere thought had willed them into existence soft footsteps crunched through the snow toward my hiding place. I groaned. I did not want to talk to anyone. As the footsteps approached I considered at least sitting up to face this intruder head on, but couldn't be bothered.
"What are you doing?" The crunching footsteps came to a halt close by. I recognized the amused voice, but didn't answer. Tanya plopped down in the snow next to me. The sound of snow sifting around unyielding flesh could be heard from the place she disappeared. She was making her own snow angel.
Of all the members of the coven, it wasn't surprising that Tanya had followed me. The two of us had been close when our families had cohabitated. We hadn't been mates, precisely, but whatever it was had been fun while it lasted.
"This feels nice," she commented, voice muffled. I sat up to appraise her. She was face first in the snow as I had been, her angel lopsided on the opposite side, complementing mine. Her long blonde curls were tangled up in the drifts above her head. She turned to glance up at me, and offered me a hand.
I took it and pulled her up. We stepped out of the angels we'd created and stood back from them admiring our work quietly. The silence stretched for a long while. It was nice to not be alone, to be in the wilderness with no one but another of my kind. No need to force shifting, or fidgeting, just to be still and quiet. Not even a breath of wind.
"Irina and Kate think I should leave you alone," Tanya ran a hand through her hair, brushing little bits of snow out of the strands. "They think I'm annoying."
"Not at all." I took a few steps away from the angels to lean up against a tree. "I'm the one being rude, hiding out here, not talking to anyone."
She followed my steps and came to a stop directly in front of me, expression very serious. "You're going home, aren't you?"
"I don't know." I shut my eyes and saw the girl's face.
"But you're not staying here?" She seemed a bit wistful. I opened my eyes to peer at her.
"Do you want me to?"
She shrugged, and purposefully increased the space between us. "I miss you." A moment later, "…I miss us."
Wait, what? "I thought you didn't…"
"I'm starting to think that was stupid."
I opened my mouth to protest.
"Fine, but it was definitely naïve." She blew an errant curl out of her face. "Just because we're surrounded by people that have found their mate doesn't mean it's common. It's not. And it was dumb of me to break off a good thing with you just because it wasn't what Carmen and Eleazar have. I may never find that."
My brain had gone entirely empty. No visions of murder, no desperate thirst, simply dumbfounded. Right before the Cullen family had moved away Tanya had very clearly admitted she was no longer interested in romantic involvement with me. We weren't mates, and that's what she wanted to find. She's right, of course. It was naïve of her to think she would eventually find her soul mate, but I hadn't been offended then, and it wasn't something I had even considered now.
Tanya looked at me seriously as I dithered. "At first I thought that's why you came back… When you never came in, never spoke to anyone… I didn't know what to think."
"No," I jostled myself back into the conversation. "I'm sorry for confusing you. I should have been more open with you."
She took in my blank stare unhappily. "I am really not used to rejection," she stated, but I didn't get the impression she was actually upset.
Tanya and her sisters tended to prefer humans- it was how they eventually developed their consciences. At first, part of the conquest had been in the kill, but as hundreds of deaths mounted over the years the luster of that type of conquest began to fade. In time what had once been a thrill became repulsive. As Tanya put it; it gets harder to look in the mirror with mountains of the dead behind you.
This was something we had in common, that need to be better than we were- to be able to look in the mirror again. The three sisters had stopped killing their lovers some time in the last century. Now the men and women they loved lived.
"Of course not," I grinned at her. "Why should you be? You are the most beautiful woman in the known universe."
She swatted at me and grinned back playfully. "But it's not enough," she said with the most appealing of pouts.
"No," I repeated.
"Then why did you come here?"
"I have some things going on at home. I needed a break."
"Hang on." She eyed me suspiciously through narrowed slits. After a split second of consideration she threw herself at me, hooking her feet on my calves to climb up and fling her arms around my neck. Her lips whispered against mine, in light seductive butterfly kisses, the type of which used to make me melt under her touch. I wrapped my arms around her waist out of reflex, but I wasn't in the mood for a make-out session.
She pushed away from me, landed on her feet light as a cat, and glared at me.
"You've met someone!" She declared.
"I… what?"
Her face softened in wonder. "Oh my god," she whispered. "You've found your person."
"No," I shook my head and backed away from her slowly. She smacked away my upraised hand and gripped my arm to hold me in place.
"You have," she accused. "Is that why you're here?" She was starting to yell. "Did you run away from them rather than admit you found your partner?"
"No!" This was ridiculous. I'd nearly killed a room full of people to eat this human. There was no possible way I could then be in love with her, and the last thing I needed was to be yelled at about an impossibility from an ex-lover.
"Tell me," she said, and plopped back down into the snow. She was still gripping my arm tightly. The look on her face told me she wouldn't give this up, so I relented. I told her everything; every detail falling from my mouth in a rush. I admitted how weak I felt, how cowardly my actions had been. How scared I was of disappointing my family. She shifted in the snow and pulled me into a hug, resting my head on her chest as she squeezed me.
"I'm so sorry, Emmett," she whispered into my hair. "You're not a coward. Running away was the bravest thing you could have done. Most of us wouldn't have had the strength to do it."
I gave in to the hug and wrapped my arms back around her waist. My eyes tightened and burned. If I could, I would have wept.
"Here's the thing," she continued. "You have to go back. She's your mate. You need to find her."
"How can you possibly still believe that?"
"Because I've never seen her and I could pick her out of a crowd of a thousand. You remember her every detail from before you ever caught her scent. What does that say to you?"
"That I have vampiric memory?" I mumbled. She chuckled.
"It tells me she was the first woman you've actually seen since I've known you."
"I nearly murdered thirty innocent people to get to her. If I go back I could kill her." I shifted away from the hug to sit up. "I will almost definitely kill her."
"Or you won't," Tanya lifted her hands to demonstrate scales. "You could either stay here in this snowbank forever, making ugly snow angels, or you could go back to Forks, and figure out what to do about this with your family supporting you." She dropped her left hand level with her bent knee. Her right hand was lifted level with her shoulder where she waggled the fingers practically.
She was right, again. We sat in comfortable silence for a while, feeling the velvety snow drift across our skin, watching the stars make their trek across the night sky.
"It's possible," she added quietly.
"What's possible?"
"To love a human," she said simply. I thought about the thousands of humans she'd loved over the millennia. I'd even met one or two of them in our years together.
"None of those people smelled like she does," I corrected her.
"No," she agreed. "But you're strong enough to control yourself. I have faith in you."
"Thanks," I muttered and stood, pulling the lithe vampire with me.
"It's a shame, though," she said. "We made a cute couple."
"You're too good for me anyway," I winked at her. She laughed and gave my shoulder another smack.
"If I don't see you again before you leave," she dusted herself off. "Goodbye and good luck, my friend. Oh, and one last thing," she tossed a tiny object my way. I snatched it out of the air and peered down at it. It was a key to a motorcycle.
"Bye, Tanya." She was gone before the words had finished leaving my mouth. I watched her run, then listened to the fall of her steps once she'd vanished from sight. When I could no longer hear her I slumped back into the snow and resumed staring at the stars.
What she'd said had been absolutely ludicrous. I couldn't be in love with someone I'd never met. Disregarding that, though, maybe she was right about running away. It had been the right decision at the time, but was I making the right decision by staying away? Was I now being a coward by hiding out in Alaska?
The more I thought about it the more wretched I felt, the clearer it became that I was being a coward by staying here. Who was this Delilah person that could scare a hundred year old vampire away? Who was she to push me out of my home, away from my family? I would go back, and I would know that I was stronger than my desire for her blood. I would win this fight.
I raced after Tanya, flying over the snowfield toward the Denali Clan household. When I arrived the motorcycle was parked out front, already facing the long drive away from the house. There was a note on it:
"You've got this."
"I'm going to be fine," I said again for the umpteenth time.
"Mmhmm," Alice agreed and continued to skip down the hall beside me.
"You really don't need to come to class with me," I repeated.
"I know." She made a little twirl mid skip.
"Alice," I stopped and waited for her to turn to face me. "Please don't come to class with me," I said firmly.
"Okay," she agreed easily and continued toward the door we'd been headed for.
"What are you going to do?" I rolled my eyes and followed her into the empty classroom. "Hide behind my seat for an hour?"
"Yes." She climbed the wide stairs to the top row, scooted behind the last row of seats and sat down. I couldn't even see the top of her head over the back of the seat.
"No wonder you didn't smell her from up here! All the air blows down." Alice piped up as I flipped the bottom of the theatre-style seat down and fell into it. A small desk attachment hung between the seats on the left side. I flipped it up and out of it's cubby, folded it over my lap, and pulled my notebook prop out of my bag.
"Are you going to talk through this whole class?"
"Maybe," she answered, solemnly.
Alice was too good to me. I didn't deserve her. I reached back and ruffled her hair. "Thanks, kid."
"Hey!" She caught my wrist to pull my hand away from her head. "I'm older than you."
The class trickled in by twos and threes. I forced myself into a relaxed posture, and pretended to doodle. In reality my entire body was tense with stress. I was fairly certain I could handle being near her again, but I was glad for Alice's presence nonetheless. If I could make it through this, lunch would be a breeze. If lunch went okay, I would try to go to lab. Breathing would be difficult, but hopefully I wouldn't have to use my air on speech and wouldn't need to breathe for the hour.
The other students filled the bottom three rows first, then slowly filled in the seats higher up. Not a single student chose a seat within three rows of me. This was not unusual, but for some reason I was surprised by the lack of interest in me. Was it possible she didn't tell anyone about our encounter?
Edward had mentioned that she seemed to keep her head down. Everything he knew about her he'd fished out of her head from the odd reaction, or from conversations during break. La never seemed to speak about herself, she never talked about why she came here, and she never offered up any other personal information. She didn't even think about it. Edward was as bemused by this as I was, but not terribly interested in finding out why. I supposed it didn't affect him past my own interest.
Heavy footfalls climbed the steps up past the invisible line that separated me from the rest of the class. They came to an abrupt halt and didn't move again. Alice's hand snuck up between the seats to give my elbow a brief squeeze. I kept my eyes trained on the piece of paper on the desk in front of me. My fingers moved the pen in swift figure eights so violently the ballpoint tore the paper. The whole time I was fighting the desire to look at her. Why wasn't she moving? Was she looking at me? Was she scared? Angry? Suspicious?
The professor began her lecture and La still hadn't moved. The pen I was holding gave a slight crack as its structural integrity finally gave in to the pressure I was exerting. La stumbled a little, then moved to a seat several rows up, directly on the aisle.
Finally I could look at her. She'd kept her jacket on. The weather was genuinely horrible, and there were still pieces of ice and snow dusting her shoulders from her walk to class. Strands of her hair were dancing around her head creating a fuzzy halo. Long coils of it swept down her back, while others stuck to the fabric of her jacket around her shoulders. She kept pulling long strands of curls through her fingers, straightening and smoothing them into one long tendril, twirling it, then dropping it in favor of another section.
Twice she started to turn toward me, and twice she paused halfway through and returned her attention to the professor. Her notebook sat open and empty before her. Occasionally she would write a page number down, or a keyword. It took me a moment to realize she was trying to keep up with only the important points to study later. Had she already taken this class? Was she familiar with the material?
I wanted to bellow in frustration. This was so dumb. I should just go sit next to her and ask her. Alice's fingers tightened on my elbow. Right, I remembered. Maybe don't go strike up a conversation with the woman you almost killed last week. Not my best plan.
The hour felt interminable. I was fidgety and on edge; shifting and tapping, and behaving like a human in almost every regard. Alice's firm presence was more of a help than I ever would admit out loud, and thankfully, she didn't speak during the entire class.
As soon as the professor dismissed the class La jumped up from her seat and ran for the door. I exchanged a look with Alice who had jumped over the back of the seat the moment La had gotten up.
"That went well?" She asked. We walked to the pavilion together, Alice taking detours to jump in the little patches of snow along the sidewalk that hadn't melted yet. We took our usual seats at a round table for six set between two heating lamps.
"We're not downwind from where she'll be if we sit here, so it's perfectly safe." Alice sat daintily on the edge of her seat peering behind me to watch for Jasper's arrival. He and Edward joined us quickly, flanking us on either side.
"It's fine, guys," I assured them. "Seriously."
They both looked at Alice whose gaze went unfocused. Jasper was on guard, attentively watching our surroundings like a scout on first watch. Edward's eyes flicked from one person to the next.
"Yes, I really think it will be okay," Alice agreed, eyes coming back to rest lightly on me.
"I just said that." Everyone ignored me. It was an uncomfortable experience to be the focal point of their attention. This must be what Jasper went through with us every day. Ugh. I felt a genuine stab of sympathy for him. He gave me a questioning look having picked up on it.
I grimaced. "I feel for you man, all this protective hovering is a little extreme."
He smiled vaguely, but went straight back to scouting.
While I poked fun at them, my own nerves were drawn extremely tight. It felt like I could snap at the least provocation. Every screech of chair leg against the floor went through me like a knife, every laugh that was just a little too loud sent tingles down my spine. This was agony. More and more people entered the pavilion, all blissfully unaware of my plight. The Davis girl's usual table began to fill up. It was possible she would skip lunch, and all of this awkward hovering will have been for nothing.
"You know," Edward was still sifting through the minds of the surrounding humans. "I don't think she's said anything to anyone. I thought maybe she would have mentioned your odd behavior in passing, at least, but she seems to have given it up entirely."
All three of us turned toward Edward in surprise.
"Nothing new at all?" Jasper asked.
"No, not at all. Not all day."
Jasper turned toward me. "Are you sure she reacted the way you told us?"
I thought back to that fateful day in the classroom when I'd nearly upended our lives. There was no mistaking it, the girl had nearly fallen off her stool in shock at my black gaze. I could remember distinctly the way her heart had sped up, knocking around in her chest, her pupils were almost entirely dilated… "Yeah, definitely."
"That most certainly looks like a fear reaction, though the lack of scent in your memory makes it hard to know for sure," Edward agreed, plucking the picture of La right out of my head.
"Well, the lack of scent is the only reason any of us are sitting here right now, so…."
"Yes, of course," Edward allowed. "I wonder if I should pay her uncle a visit? Perhaps she said something to him."
"Possible, but I don't think it matters for now," Jasper added. "They don't live together, and it doesn't immediately affect anything."
"Wait," I cut in. "She has an uncle here? How do you know all this about her?"
"We did some research," Alice chimed. The two men looked at her blankly. "Okay, I did some research."
"You mean you stalked her," I grinned.
"Only a little bit," Alice admitted. "I was curious! She seems nice."
"It doesn't explain why she hasn't said anything to anyone," Jasper said.
We all shook our heads in mute agreement.
"She's coming!" Alice hissed. "Look human!"
Another silence followed this statement as we all stared at Alice.
"What?" I asked.
"How do you propose we do that?" Edward asked with a wide smirk.
"Like this," Alice threw a fistful of wet slush directly into my face. I ducked just in time and caught most of it in my hair.
"Oh you've asked for it," I grunted with an evil smile, then shook myself at her, spraying shards of ice and drops of water all over the table and onto her designer blouse.
Edward shrank back from the deluge while Alice swatted playfully at me. We were all laughing and flicking each other with the left over water when I finally heard La enter the pavilion. She stopped when she saw us laughing. I heard an indelicate snort, and her footsteps continued toward the table of her friends.
When I heard her chair move, and the soft thunk it made when she collapsed into it, I thought it was safe to risk a glance. Her back was to me again, the way it had been in class. She leaned forward to talk to a skinny male with greasy black hair, then answered a question thrown at her by the blonde male. They were all fighting for her attention, trying to one up each other with their trivial stories.
She couldn't possibly be interested in any of them, could she? I wanted to see her face! That way I could know for myself what her reactions to them were. Instead I watched her body language from behind. Noticed how her shoulders shifted when she was uncomfortable, how she flicked her hair when she was talking animatedly.
"Emmett Cullen is staring at you," the girl across from her said suddenly. I hadn't even noticed she was looking at me. The girl added a small giggle to her statement that sounded forced.
I listened harder for La's answer. I was far too invested in this.
La's shoulders went stiff at the girl's words. There was half a beat of silence, and then she said, "Does he look angry?"
Aha, I thought at Edward. She did notice. Of course she did. I knew she must have, it was impossible that she might not have noticed. Even after the discussion I'd just shared with my siblings, I think I was still hoping she hadn't. It would have been easier to move on. Now I would have to correct that first impression- which meant attempting a conversation in our shared lab after lunch.
"No?" Jessica asked. "Should he?"
I was nearly lifting out of my seat in my eagerness to know her answer. My elbows were on the table, resting underneath my chin where I leaned forward, entirely engrossed.
"Of course not," she answered easily, then glanced over her shoulder at me. She didn't have to hunt for me, she knew exactly where I was in relation to her seat. At first she started when she saw I was still looking at her. It was a sort of relief to finally be making eye contact. Her expression was a little tense, but it soon relaxed as we maintained the contact. Her eyes were so dark and deep they seemed unfathomable.
La lift an eyebrow into a high arch. The look was one of open curiosity and invitation. She wasn't mad at me for treating her the way I had. She wasn't bothered by the fact that I'd stormed out on her. She smiled at me like I'd told her a corny joke. I smiled back and wiggled my fingers at her from underneath my chin. I would have bat my eyelashes, too, but thought it might be too much. She made that indelicate snorting sound again. The sound was accompanied by the most delightful expression: her nose scrunched up, and her eyes turned to little crescents.
Jessica stole her attention from me again. "Then why did you ask?"
La turned toward her and made a tiny noncommittal shrug. "I just thought he might not like me so much."
Edward cleared his throat. I swept my eyes toward my siblings. They were all watching me with wide eyes.
"What?" I said.
"What just happened?" Alice asked.
"I thought you were supposed to have those answers."
"Your whole future just went grey and fuzzy…." Her eyes went in and out of focus. I looked at Edward for explanation.
"She was watching your future for the next class, and it sort of faded out when the two of you were making eyes at each other."
"We weren't…" I began to say.
"Shut up, Emmett. Of course you were," Alice interrupted.
"Uhm," I glanced back toward La. Her back was set rigidly against me. I couldn't be sure, but it seemed like the move was deliberate. Just like in class she would occasionally begin turn, catch herself, and resolutely turn back toward the table.
I directed my attention to the rest of the people at the table, hoping to glean some tidbits of information about La by the way other people reacted to her. The blonde male was at the far end, quietly planning a snow fight with a small group for the first snowfall of the season. It was expected over the next couple of days. Apparently this would be the snow fight to end all snow fights; the snow fight of epic proportions.
It seemed like a silly thing to plan in advance. Snowball fights were always best when they were a surprise. What a stupid person. A chime sounded from the table. La picked up her phone, and shut the sound off. The entire table got to their feet and slowly made their way in separate directions, promising to fulfill plans later on, or share notes.
Humans filed past our table on all sides. I stayed in my seat, trying to listen to the sound of her footsteps as she joined a group leaving through the front entrance. This was silly of course, there was nothing I could learn from the ability to distinguish her footsteps from a hundred others. But was I really pretending this was still about self preservation? Yes, it had to be. Nothing else made sense.
My family remained in their seats with me. When the last human had left, I still didn't stand. I wasn't sure if I was ready to sit so close to such an absurdly potent scent. To feel the heat of her blood radiating across the space between us. Maybe one class was enough experimentation for today.
"You've gone and mucked it all up, but I think it's okay," Alice said, but she sounded far from sure. "Your mind is pretty set on not killing her. I don't see her dying anymore…" She shared a glance with Edward.
"What was that?" I asked immediately. "What did that look mean?"
"I don't know, Emmett." She rubbed at her eyebrows like she had a headache. "It's all tangled now, and not much of it makes sense. I think you'll make it through the next hour."
I nodded. A part of me was still struggling to understand what the big deal was. I mean, I'd either kill her or I wouldn't, right? The next hour would bring the answer to that, and maybe it was just better to get it over with. One way or another, like ripping off a bandaid. It was always better to just face things head on, take care of problems as they arise. Nothing good ever came from indecision.
Esme came to mind all over again. If I messed up, I'd uproot the whole family… again, when we'd finally made it out of high school. Pushing it might be a terrible idea. Didn't we just have this discussion about Jasper?
"Why push it, Emm?" Jasper asked, echoing my thoughts. "Let's go home, take it slow. Don't risk it."
Those words decided me. Jasper was just relieved he wasn't the weak one anymore, but I'll be damned if I was going to be the weak link in our family. I would go to this stupid lab, and epically not kill this human that smelled better than every happy memory on earth. Besides, I really wanted to go to lab. I really wanted to see that smile again, and ask her what had caused it.
"There," Alice relaxed. "It's firming up. I am at least 93 percent sure Emmett won't kill anyone. Do you want one of us to come with you just in case?"
"Nah," I pushed away from the table and stood up. "Go to class," I called over my shoulder and strode toward the building labeled with a large number 3 on the corner. I could tell they were still trying to decide whether or not to follow me. I assumed Alice would be standing right outside the door, watching my future, looking for any signs I might give in. I wouldn't.
My confidence continued until I stood right outside the door. La was already at our desk pushing her bag underneath with her toe. She sat on the stool and gripped the fingers of her right hand tightly with her left. I took one last deep breath, held it, and walked in.
As I approached I could see she was very tense. Her knuckles had gone pale where her fingers bent into the grip of her other hand. Was she scared? Her heartbeat sounded normal, if a bit quick.
To announce my presence, I pulled my stool out heavily, allowing it to scrape against the floor. She didn't respond to the noise, outside of a slight crack in one of her knuckles, so I went about putting my things away, hoping she would look up from the glare she was pointing at her hands. When this continued, I decided to draw her out.
"Hey," I tilted my head down, trying to peer into her face. She waited a beat then looked up. Her face was carefully blank, like she was trying very hard not to communicate anything through her expressions. I swallowed, wholly unprepared for the intensity of her glare. While her expression betrayed no emotion, her eyes shot fierce questions at me.
"Hi," she said, still carefully devoid of emotion. When I smiled her eyes narrowed dramatically and roamed over my face as if she was trying to puzzle something out. When she didn't continue, I decided on a different tactic.
"I'm Emmett," I tried again. "You must be La."
She tilted her head and pressed her lips together lightly, eyes still very narrow. "Have we met before?"
Uhh, why…? "I don't think so, why do you ask?" I was nearly out of air.
"I just wasn't sure how you would know my nickname," she said casually.
Oh shit. I made a huge oversight. Why didn't I think of that? I scrambled for an answer, but I would have to take a breath soon. This would be very, very painful. "Oh," I said. Well, that's a genius response, and I was out of air. Shit shit shit. I turned away from her and took a small breath of air through my mouth, keeping my nostrils closed. As a test I took in just enough for a sentence or two.
Good god it was terrible. The pain of it seared through me. Even without smelling her, I could taste her. My throat was on fire, burning with thirst. This craving was every bit as consuming as the first time I'd encountered her. I concentrated very hard on Esme's face before turning back to her. Was it quick enough to keep her from noticing? I glanced back to find her waiting for my explanation. It must have only been a second.
"I heard someone use it in reference to you…" I finished lamely, and only just caught myself at the last second when I nearly lifted the last word into a question.
La's lingering confusion settled on her face as she tried to accept my words. Her determination to keep her face and voice expressionless was made very apparent over the next few seconds as she went through several different responses, then finally accepted what I said. She couldn't hide a damn thing. Her face would give her away every time.
I grinned at her again, but she'd already turned toward her work station at the TA's word and started setting up her buret with very deliberate in her movements. Everything she did had an air of methodical practice. Clearly, she knew her way around a chemistry lab, and was comfortable with all of the equipment. I watched her from the corner of my eye as she worked through the steps of our experiment, then slowly broke each piece of equipment down at the end of lab. She didn't talk to me during the whole lab, too focused on her work.
In that moment, I longed for Edward's ability. I suddenly wanted to know everything that was going through her head. The reason for every minute facial change, for every sweep of the hair, knuckle crack, and eyebrow tilt. I wanted to know why she smiled at the things she did, and frowned at others. I wanted to hear her laugh, but had no idea what she would find funny.
Once my station was clean I settled onto the stool to wait for the rest of the class, most of which were still working. La was spraying alcohol on to a cloth to wipe down her station when she turned suddenly on to me. Her eyes bored into mine, unflinching. How is she not even remotely frightened by me like a normal human should be? Am I losing my touch?
"Did you get contacts?" She shot out. The question was so aggressive and random it shocked me into answering honestly without thinking.
"Nope! Why?" She started wiping down the counter again. I wanted to stop her, to make her look at me so I could keep watching the emotions that flicked across her face.
"I could have sworn your eyes were a different color last time I saw you," she mumbled, then met my eyes again.
Fuck. That is not good. "Oh," I said again, and took in another small breath. Great, Emmett. Great conversation skills, today. "I don't wear contacts." WHAT? Or maybe, 'yeah! I was trying a new set last week,' or 'Yes, these are brand new,' how about literally anything else?
La frowned. I needed to get out of here before I gave anything else away. This was agony. Her scent was making me do stupid things, and I was quickly losing control of the situation. Just as I started to bend to get my bag, La spoke again.
"So, umm… What did you get for pH4 and 6? I'm not sure I calibrated my buret properly…" She had done it correctly. I had watched her. I opened my prop notebook, and moved hers closer to mine for "comparison."
"No, I think you've got it right," I said gently. "Those are definitely within the frame of error…." I quickly went through her list checking her calculations. They were all perfect.
"Shame about the snow letting off, isn't it?" There you go! That sounded normal, like a normal human would say it. Nothing to see here, folks, totally normal human talking about the weather…
She laughed. It was not a kind laughter. It came out in a sarcastic bark that sounded almost derisive. "No."
"No? Why do you say it like that?"
"If it's cold enough to snow, it's too damn cold," she spat. Was that a southern accent I detected? I hadn't heard it before that sentence. Maybe it came and went with particular words?
"And you don't like the cold, I take it?"
"I do not. Cold is nearly the worst thing," she explained with some heat. This was clearly a familiar rant. "The only thing that can make it more miserable is wet and cold."
I was laughing before she finished. "How on earth did you end up in Forks?"
"I…" her eyes dropped to her hands, which she was squeezing again. Her shoulders fell forward a little, and she let her hair fall into her face. For a split second I wasn't sure if she would continue, but eventually she pulled herself together and continued the sentence from where she'd dropped it. "Wanted a change and I have some family here, and this is a good school."
Not that good. Not good enough for perfect calculations on the first try. "Even though you hate the wet and cold?"
"It's pretty here," she rebutted. "Stunning, actually."
I wanted to shake my head in disbelief, or hug her, or ask a thousand more questions, but I couldn't bring myself to do any of those things. Instead I stared at her, trying to catch every flicker of facial movement, every tiny tilt of the mouth. Humans were not interesting. So why was I so interested? Why was I hanging on to her every word? Who was this girl?
She shook a little, and dug her fingers into her hair, then shook it out behind her. The motion sent a wave of fresh scent bombarding over me. It nearly knocked me backwards, it was so strong. For an intense second I thought it was over, that I would kill her right then, and I almost rejoiced, but then she spoke.
"Are you okay?" She asked. It was in the same tone of voice I'd heard that first day in the pavilion; carefully controlled, the question only being asked because it seemed like the thing to do.
Why did she sound like that? Curiosity may have just saved the cat.
With a quick nod, and a forced smile I ran from the room. Alice was outside waiting for me. Her eyes were wide and fearful.
"That close, huh?" I stalked down the hall away from her. Once she caught me she nodded, owl eyed.
"What changed?"
"I don't know, sis," I opened the door to the stairwell and flitted down to the first level. "I'm starting to think I might have."
"Hmm…" she grabbed my hand and lifted it to twirl underneath, expression still pensive. "Well, you made it anyway. Maybe it will get easier?"
I shuddered. I couldn't imagine a scenario where it could ever be easier to sit in the presence of that scent.
Alice, Jasper and I shared our last class of the day. As we made our way toward it Jasper approached from the other side of the hall. He didn't show any surprise, relief, or even disappointment, face carefully blank and disinterested.
"So," he said. "You made it, then."
"Yep!" Alice trilled for me. I smiled down at the annoying little pixie, and tried to grab her to muss her hair again. She dodged easily and fled into the classroom. The professor was the sole inhabitant inside. We each gave him a slight nod, or "good afternoon," then moved to our seats at the back of the class.
We sat in silence as students filed in. We arranged our props, placing our bags on the floor, pulling out empty notebooks. Alice had a leather pencil case full of ridiculously expensive pens. She set it carefully on the desk, assessing the angle against her notebook, then tried a different angle. I shook my head. Alice loved to pretend she was overly concerned with trivial things. We all had our ways of dealing with the monotony.
My life seemed far from monotonous now. This human female had dropped into my existence out of nowhere and thrown everything out of perspective.
"She has no fear," I suddenly whispered to Jasper. "It's like whatever internal warning system most humans have has been turned off in her. Why isn't she scared of me?"
Jasper remained quiet for some time. "It has happened occasionally…" he let the thought drift off.
"What does it mean?" I asked.
"Nothing," he said vaguely, and reshuffled the props on his desk. I looked past him to see Alice had gone still and starry eyed.
"Alice?"
"Well," she muttered quietly. "Her future is just as tangled up as yours. It looks a little like its tangled up with yours, but humans are hard to see sometimes. It could be her lack of instinctual aversion is because whatever is happening right now was always going to happen."
"Then why didn't you see it before now?"
"I barely see it now," she frowned at me. "And you know it doesn't work like that. From the way you've got the future all tangled up, it's still a possibility you'll kill her."
"Would that be so bad?" Jasper whispered. Alice and I stared at him, astounded. "I'm just saying you wouldn't be the first one to slip, and not a single one of us would judge you. I'm already impressed you've been able to hold out as long as you have."
Alice continued to watch him narrowly. Jasper took the scrutiny comfortably. "What do you know?" she asked.
The first signs of discomfort broke through his calm veneer. "I don't…"
"You know something?" I hissed just a little too loudly. The professor snatched his head around the class, but didn't quite look in our direction. Humans never did… which is why it was so weird that this La Davis didn't seem to notice how wrong we were.
"I've seen humans respond like her before," he finally admitted. "It was one of the things the southern tribes looked for."
Jasper came from a part of the country where vampirism was steeped in war and blood. Their clans had one purpose; to control more of the human population than the other clans. Larger territories meant better hunting. The wars were constant, and violent. Jasper barely escaped with his life after more than a century steeped in blood.
"Why did you look for them?" Alice prodded.
"Because it usually meant those humans would have a more positive capacity to take on vampirism. Frequently, these types of humans would have an unusual or hidden talent. Occasionally, it meant the turn was a little quicker, meaning they could join the army faster. They're rarer than those of us with talents, and once turned tend to be particularly powerful."
I switched my gaze to Alice. "So she's meant to be a vampire?"
"I don't think anyone is meant to be a vampire, Emmett."
"Says the Seer."
"I told you it doesn't work like that!" She said impatiently.
The professor was conjugating verbs at the front of the room. Jasper's word's tumbled around in my head, as though they were trying to make connections that I couldn't quite see.
Was all of this a sick coincidence?
"Has this ever happened to you?" I asked through the side of my mouth. I didn't look at him, didn't want to see the answer on his face.
"Yes, twice."
He didn't continue for quite some time. We pretended to listen to the professor in silence. The sounds of paper shuffling, and the light scritches of pens surrounded us.
"There was no reason for me to resist," he said. "This was before Alice found me, before we came to find the Cullens."
"What was it like?"
"It was every dream we can no longer have."
Thinking about her was becoming too much. I found myself savoring the memory of her scent, imagining what it would feel like to have her warm body in my arms as I drank from her. I imagined she would be compliant, and soft; happy to be near me. Emotions I didn't recognize stirred in my gut. I imagined the possibility that I could feel her skin beneath my fingers but not bite her, or maybe I could taste her and not kill her.
A groan escaped me. It was all becoming too much. The other two looked at me expectantly.
"I've got to go," I popped up and fled toward the door. The professor called after me, but I didn't answer. As I reached the front doors of the building, Edward caught up with me.
"Please don't," I said, and sped toward the car. He didn't answer, but he kept pace with me. When we reached the car I gave up.
Where is she? I opened the hatch and tossed my bag in, then slammed it shut and leaned against it heavily.
"Her biology class is just letting out," he answered.
Did you hear what Jasper said?
"Yes," he leaned against the car shoulder to shoulder with me. I appreciated the support.
What do you think? I felt him shrug. Students were starting to trickle out of various buildings and make their way to their cars.
"There's no use dwelling on it. We won't know unless she becomes one of us," he said.
Yeah, I can't imagine any reason that would ever happen. If I bite her, I will kill her, no question.
"Sure," he answered. "She's coming now."
A small gaggle of students made their way down to the parking lot. I picked her out immediately, eyes drawn to her as though she were the only one in a group of a thousand. It was raining very slightly. The dribbling water had soaked into my hair and was dripping down the back of my neck into my shirt.
La glared up at the sky and pulled the hood of her jacket over her head, keeping it right at her hairline, so she could still see around it to her companion. She was walking with the blonde enthusiastic fellow from her group of lunch friends. He was hovering around her proprietarily. La kept skittering sideways to create more space between them. Couldn't he see that she didn't want him around?
A particularly large drop of water splashed against her cheek. Little droplets caught in her eyelashes and shined like microscopic diamonds. She glared up at the sky again, frown so deep it cut crevices along the sides of her mouth. Next to me, Edward chuckled.
"She is cursing rather spectacularly at the rain," he murmured. I smiled, but continued to concentrate on taking very shallow breaths. Any moment she would be close enough for the wind to carry her scent to me. I needed to be careful. I had to be ready to stop breathing.
La and her companion were speaking animatedly, though La still looked uncomfortable as they made their way through the line of cars. The male tilted his head in my direction, and La followed his gaze, meeting my eyes for a prolonged second.
"I don't know what that's about," I heard her squeak, and watched as she fumbled her bag off her shoulder. "I'll see you tomorrow, Mike."
She jumped into the black Fiat Abarth they were standing next to, unceremoniously throwing her bag into the passenger seat, and turned the engine over without hesitation. Once the car was happily puttering she seemed to relax, taking the time to plug in her phone, queue some music, and get the vents turned in the right direction. The air was blowing so forcefully strands of her hair were flying around her head like a living thing, fighting to get free of the hood she still had pulled over it.
Alice and Jasper were now making their way down toward our car. I could hear them whispering sweet nothings to each other. It would have been sweet if it wasn't so vomit inducing.
Inside the car, La pulled her hood back and shook out her hair, pulling some of the mass through her fingers to untangle it in the blowing air. I shuddered, imagining the force of the scent that must be swirling around in that car. My mouth began to flood with venom involuntarily. To be surrounded with that scent would be the most delicious torture.
As Alice and Jasper reached us, La met my eyes in the rearview mirror one last time. She stared at me as I blatantly watched her, questions dancing around in her face, then she dropped the emergency break, put the car in reverse, and backed out of her space… right into a Corolla.
The Toyota only missed her by swerving dramatically. The driver honked its horn as an obnoxious reprimand then took off out of the north exit. Inside the Fiat La made an exaggerated grimace, and proceeded to back out much more carefully. She checked her mirrors, and blind spots several times before pulling entirely out of the space and taking off with a low rumble.