6. Revelation

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I unthinkingly pinched the bridge of my nose. I was never going to make it through this part without her fleeing, and rightfully so. "That's a bit of a long story. I need to tell you some more about my existence first, then I'll get to that part. All right?"

"Okay," she agreed slowly.

"As I said, I hunted criminals for several decades. I had—still have—a very solitary existence. My experience with Tredan made me wary of other vampires, and thanks to my talent I have been mostly able to avoid them. I've only met four others over the years, and to be honest, I spent as little time with them as possible. They didn't seem malicious, but except for one very talkative one that I met in 1992, they weren't any more eager for company than I was. Any true interaction with humans was out, of course, because of my eyes, so I couldn't go to college or get a job, or do anything really interesting. The weather can be unpredictable, so that limited what I could do by day. I traveled to different parts of the world, seeing what I could by night and learning various foreign languages. I would break into libraries or book stores and spend the night reading new books and magazines. During the winters I would stay in vacant summer homes, read every book and magazine in the place, try and figure out the games or any new technology. I yearned to be mentally stimulated, to have challenges, goals to meet, and there was just… nothing. I had an eternity of monotony stretching out before me. Nothing was ever going to change; my existence was nothing but death and blood and hiding, without any end in sight."

"Edward," Bella said very quietly, without any inflection in her voice. "Please tell me you didn't change your methods because you were bored."

Her hand was gripping my arm so tightly now that I was surprised she hadn't broken her fingernails. I craned my neck so I could press a kiss to her head, while I still could, and closed my eyes. I confessed rapidly, "One day in 1956, some vampires were passing by about a mile or so from where I was hidden. I heard them, through my mind-reading, debating the merits of adrenaline in sweetening human blood. One of them was insisting that blood grew sweeter the longer adrenaline was in it and I thought that maybe I could experiment with the idea, that it would be a challenge to occupy my mind. I thought I could set it up like a scientific…" My voice trailed off as Bella let go of my arm and hand as though they burned her, and rolled away from me onto her back.

"You. Were. Bored." Her voice was low and outraged as she bit out the words, and I flinched. "You started killing innocent people because you were bored?!"

I squeezed my eyes more tightly shut. "I didn't think of it in those terms, but yes."

"Well, in what terms did you think of it then, Edward?" she snapped.

I opened my mouth, then shut it. With a growing sense of horror, I realized that I hadn't thought about it in any terms. I hadn't thought about the ramifications at all.

My voice was slow now, halting, as I tried to make sense of it for myself as well. "I hadn't thought of humans in terms of innocent or evil, or killing them in terms of right and wrong for a very long time. I was still hunting criminals, but it was more out of habit than any… any moral conviction. At that point, I had long stopped thinking of humans as anything more than food. All those years of needing to kill to survive… you get to the point where you're not even rationalizing it anymore. It's just something you do." I added, instinctively defensive even as I knew I was indefensible, "I mean, I have rules for myself. I don't brutalize people, I don't kill children, or the elderly, or parents—good parents, anyway—I try not to be a mindless beast, but I am a vampire, Bella! And humans. Are. Food!" I scrubbed my hands over my face and tried to make myself stop talking, but despite my efforts still flung at her, "My God, if there was anything else I could eat, don't you think I would have done it?!"

We lay there side by side for a long time, our harsh breaths sounding wrong against the peaceful backdrop of birdsong and moving water. I expected the next words out of her mouth to be a demand to be taken back to her truck, so it surprised me when she said in an unsteady voice, "I don't want to know about your experiments or what you did to… to increase adrenaline in people. Not now, anyway. That's not what you're doing now, so why did you change your… method again?"

I didn't want to put her through this anymore. I didn't want to put myself through it. I loathed myself more with every word that came from my mouth. How had I ever done such horrendous things? How had I gone from the vampire who tried to kill himself to the despicable creature I now am?

I had slowly transformed into the evil monster that I had feared I already was when I first woke to this life, and somehow I hadn't noticed.

I clawed my fingers into the earth, wanting to scream. How had I not noticed?

I had promised I wouldn't lie to her and I would keep that promise, but I didn't want to spend our last moments together inflicting pain on her. I just wanted to lay here beside her for as long as she would allow it, before I must spend the rest of her life so far away from her that I couldn't smell her beautiful, floral scent or feel the warmth from her skin.

"Can't we just stop this?" I asked, the desperation of my thoughts staining my voice. "What are we accomplishing here?"

"You promised you'd tell me," she replied stiffly.

I rolled over, leaning up on my elbow so I could see her face. Her eyes were closed but there were tears on her lashes. "This is hurting you. I don't want to..." make you hate me, I thought helplessly, knowing it was already too late. "...burden you with this."

"If you don't tell me, I'll always wonder. I'll just imagine something worse. It won't kill me." Her voice turned scathing. "Unlike you."

It felt as if she'd reached over with her small, powerless hands and somehow ripped a gaping hole in my chest. I blindly lay back down and tried to remember how to breathe.

Long seconds dragged by before her breath hitched once, and then again. After the third time I heard her roll towards me. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." She was crying now. Again. How many times would I make her cry? "I shouldn't have said that. I'm just having a hard time with… you spent time with me, and got to know me, and slept with me, and it was all just because you were bored. You didn't… I mean, I already knew it didn't mean anything to you, that you didn't actually care about me, but I—"

"I love you," I interjected dully.

I hadn't intended to ever tell her, but it was unconscionable to allow her to think that knowing her was meaningless. Knowing her was the most important, the most marvelous thing that had ever happened to me.

There was a long silence. Finally, she whispered, "What?"

"I love you. I realized it last night after you fell back to sleep, realized that was why everything was so different with you. Because it was different, Bella, from the beginning. I would hear myself do the most bizarre things, like tell you my real name, or tease you, or give you a genuine opinion rather than what I thought you wanted to hear, and I'd be completely taken aback. I felt so… unsettled, so unlike myself the entire time, and everything you did and said was so surprising, so intriguing. I told myself it was because I couldn't hear your mind, but it wasn't." I turned my head to meet her eyes. "It was just you. You fascinate me."

She replied faintly, her eyes wide, "I thought it was just all your plan?"

I snorted. I couldn't help myself. "I tried to stick to my plan, but I would end up so far off it and have no idea how I got there. It was bewildering. I planned to kill you four times, Bella. Four! The first time was here in the meadow two weeks ago, and had I done it then it still would have been longer than I had ever spent with any of… well, with anyone at all, since Tredan. When I left on Monday, and said I'd be gone for a few days? I wasn't going to come back. I didn't know what was wrong with me, but I didn't like it and I just wanted to get far away from you. But the farther I got, the more uncomfortable I felt. I was edgy, anxious almost. I thought maybe it was because I hadn't finished things here, so early last evening I began running back…" I closed my eyes, feeling ashamed. "You know what happened then."

Her fingertips drifted over my cheek, leaving trails of heat in their wake. I had felt the warmth coming or it else it might have startled me. It was still so strange being with someone whose mind I couldn't read, whose actions I couldn't foresee.

"Edward?"

"Yes?" I muttered, my eyelids firmly shut.

"I love you, too."

My eyes flew open, and I stared at her in horror. She had the gall to smile at me. "You can't! How can you— after what I—you know what I am and—"

"I can, and I do," she interrupted calmly.

"But—"

"Edward," she interrupted again. "I love you. Just accept it."

I gaped at her, and she flopped back down with an exasperated huff.

After a minute I gave up both trying to understand her unfathomable mind and trying not to touch her, and rested the back of my hand against hers.

She turned her head and smiled brightly at me, her fingers twining with mine. She was a completely irrational, incomprehensible creature. "I've been wanting to tell you, there were new kids at school on Wednesday."

What on earth had that to do with anything?

"Yes?" I prompted.

"I think they're vampires."

A/N: Vampires at her school? How could that be? ;) Do you think Edward will believe her? Bit of a rollercoaster of a chapter, I know. The dates in this are kind of important- his nomad timeline is 1919-1956 hunted criminals, 1956-1980 adrenaline, 1980- 1992 betrayal via criminal, 1992-2005 betrayal via "relationship." Next chapter will be up on Monday- hope you all have a great weekend!