22. The Beginning of Everything
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I hate that I've stolen so many things from Bella by the way I chose to live my other life.
I can't attend high school with her the way my new siblings can. I can't sit beside her and pretend to be human, can't walk her to class or carry her books.
I can't knock on her door, introduce myself to her father, and take her on a date. I can't court her in any kind of respectable way.
Even if my eyes weren't still orange-ish, in the way I carry myself, in the way I move and react, I am too obviously other. When startled I still tend to crouch and growl and hiss. I am practicing, but it will take time to overcome my instinctive reactions.
We can't share more than the simplest intimacy. Sexual gratification and feeding have been too long intertwined for me, and I will never be able to touch her the way I long to, the way she wants me to. Not while she's still human.
I will never be able to change our history, to approach her for the first time as I should have done. No matter how easily she seems able to, I will never be able to forget that I approached her with murder in my heart instead of love.
Then there are all the things that my very nature denies her, the simplest things— time spent together in the sun. A life free of lies. Children.
Yet, somehow, she loves me anyway. When my regret threatens to overwhelm me, when my grief for the hundreds of innocent lives I took curls me into a ball, she wraps herself around me and waits for me to come out the other side. With every time her warmth enfolds me, with every kiss she presses to my back or shoulder or head, with every song she hums to me, I am healed a little more. She sees a good man inside me and more than anything I want to be that man for her. I want to be someone strong for her, someone she can lean on. I want her to need me, too.
I wonder, sometimes, how different my life would have been had I not been stolen away from Carlisle. Had I been gently introduced to this life, been continually reminded of the value of human life and that there was another way, perhaps I wouldn't now need to work so hard to be worthy of being in Carlisle's family. Worthy of being Bella's mate.
No matter how much I wish to, I'll never be able to go back and change things, never be able to be a better man than I was. Yet my poor choices, my life of lies and betrayals, inexplicably led me to Bella. And I can never be sorry for that.
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I love her, and it is the beginning of everything.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald
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A/N: And that's it! Thanks for reading and if you have a moment I'd love to know what you think!