I'm home before my nerves start to jangle. Standing in the center of my living room, looking around at my furniture, the art on the walls, the dust on the carpet. I suddenly can't imagine why I suggested he come here. This is my sanctuary. This is the life I built without him.
There is a tentative knock at the door. I think about the Edward of old, content to let himself in my bedroom window while I slept, to invade my space without asking. Maybe neither of us is the same person any more. I take a deep, slow breath to calm down before I answer. He's changed out of his scrubs, and he's wearing jeans and a faded grey hooded sweatshirt. He looks like a teenager again, but I've never seen him like this: defenseless, exposed.
I leave the door open and turn on my heel. He hesitates behind me, clearly unsure if he's supposed to follow, but I ignore him and head back to the sofa. I need to sit down before my rapidly weakening legs betray me.
He sinks into the armchair opposite, a low, green number from the 1960s with wide arms that I found in an antique store north of here and immediately fell in love with. He looks uncomfortable, out of place.
"I don't really know what you're doing here."
I play with the edges of my shirt sleeves. He doesn't belong here, not in my house, not in Hollis, and not with me. Not anymore. He made that perfectly clear.
"Bella-" he starts, his eyes anguished. He doesn't finish the sentence. The silence fills the room like a fog.
"You forget, Edward," I say, my voice icier than I expect, "not everyone can read minds."
He lets out of a small, frustrated huff. "I can't read yours. And that's the only one that ever mattered."
I wonder briefly if these last years would have been different if he'd been able to, if he had seen into my mind the way he could everyone else's. Would he have left then? I shake my head. There's no use in playing what-ifs. What's done is done. He wanted nothing to do with me.
"I don't understand the gifts."
He looks glum, fiddling idly with a coaster on the table beside his chair, spinning it on its end. His gaze flicks briefly to the framed illumination above the mantle.
"They were things I bought for you," he says with sigh. "After."
"No, I understand that. Peru, Dublin, Rome... I don't understand why. Rosalie told me what happened in Italy." A pained expression crosses his face. "If you were so hell-bent on destruction, what on earth were you doing shopping for obscure souvenirs?"
He laughs humorlessly, leaning forward, staring at the floor. "Maddening, isn't it? Even as I wanted to leave this life for what I had done to you, I could do nothing but think about you. Everywhere I went, every place I tried to lose myself, there you were. I blamed Rosalie, but the truth is I didn't need her tracking me down to remind me of you, I was perfectly capable of tormenting myself. I never stopped loving you, Bella. Not for one breath. If you'd kept the journals you'd know that."
My chest tightens. It feels like my ribcage is collapsing in on itself. "If that's true...then how could you leave?"
"I didn't believe there was a future for us, not after what I'd done. I knew you couldn't forgive me when you understood, truly understood, what you'd become. The best I could hope for was that you would move on. I knew my family would look after you. Staying away was the only thing I could do."
His logic is so twisted I can't take it anymore. All the hurt and the betrayal, every agonizing moment without him, rise up inside me and threaten to explode.
"How do I get this through your unbreakable skull?" I cry, my voice too loud for the small room. I'm tired of listening to his ridiculous wallowing. "JAMES did this to me, not you! So he found me because I was playing baseball with you. So what? They were headed to Forks anyway! He could just as easily have taken me leaving the diner, walking between classes. Those nomads weren't exactly picky. There are only so many ways for me to say this, but it is NOT your fault."
He won't look up, and it is starting to irritate the hell out of me. The defeated slump of his shoulders makes me want to shake him.
"I made bad decisions. I thought if I sacrificed myself, I could save my mother. But Edward, they were my decisions."
He peers up at me slowly; agony and ruin rolling off him in waves.
"You don't understand," he croaks, sounding ravaged, studying my expression closely. "If I'd been strong enough, I could have stopped this. Carlisle told me how. If I'd been able to suck out the venom, you would have lived."
I suck in a surprised breath. His eyes are cautious, and he freezes, as if he expects me to break down or run. I blink slowly, revelation spreading like ice water through my veins.
"Are. You. Insane?"
Whatever reaction he was expecting, this wasn't it. Confusion washes over his features.
"Let me get this straight." My voice is low and even, controlled, despite the world starting to spin off its axis. "Carlisle suggested that you try to suck the venom from my blood."
He nods once, still looking like a deer in headlights.
"Oh for fucks sake, Edward. That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard! You would have killed me." He starts to shake his head immediately in protest, but I keep going, "Yes, you would have. Emmett has told me, Edward. What it's like when you meet someone whose blood calls out to you like mine did. He told me what happened to him."
"La tua cantante," Edward whispers.
"What?" I snap. I hate this. I hate that he is such an idiot for believing this for so long, for wasting so much time.
"My singer. That's what Aro called it. Your blood sang for me."
"Call it whatever the fuck you want," my exasperation levels are reaching new heights. "You could not have done that."
Edward looks as if he is about to object, but takes in my expression and slumps back in his armchair. We sit silently, the moment stretching out between us.
"No," he murmurs finally, looking away from me. "I don't believe I could have...But I wish to God that I had tried."
"You'd rather I'd died?" My head is pounding, I have no idea which way is up any more.
"I'd rather I hadn't let you down when you needed me."
I pull my feet up under me, tucking myself into a small ball and leaning into the arm of the sofa for balance, my mind reeling. I hear Jasper, years ago: that's what Edward genuinely believes. And if he had the opportunity to prevent you from being damned, well, that's what he would have wanted. The pieces of this incomprehensible puzzle are starting to click into place.
"I thought I could stay away from you. I tried for two years. But then Rosalie planted this seed of doubt in New York. When you left, she went straight to Chicago, and so I followed. I didn't know what I was doing any more. I'd lost my way. Suddenly I just needed to see you, to see if she was right, if I'd blown my chance. It was weeks before Alice slipped, and months before I found you.
"And being here was even more confusing than being apart from you. You've changed so much. God, Bella, as a human you were beautiful, but as one of us you're breathtaking! Seeing you again, like this, it's...astonishing. I realized instantly my mistake. There is no way I can exist without needing you."
I feel like something cracks inside me at his words. I focus on my lap, my eyes itch and my throat convulses in a desperate mockery of tears. He gets up and comes forward slowly, crouching in front of me.
"And I know I gave up any right to be at your side the day I left you. I know you're...you're seeing someone else now." His voice catches. "That day at the ballgame. I hated seeing you with him. My jealousy became monstrous, all-consuming. When he hugged you, the thoughts that were going through his mind...I ran." He shakes his head slightly at the recollection. "I missed three of my guys up at bat before I made it back, and realized you were gone."
I think of that day, just the memory of it lighting up my thirst, reminding me of the misery I'd endured. And he'd had no idea.
"I've let you down in every conceivable way. Not by failing to save you, I see that now, but by failing to stand with you every day of your life since. I had it wrong, all this time. I've been ruled by my guilt and consumed by self-loathing. I've been so wrong, Bella."
The ache inside of me is taking on a life of its own. I can't move, can't breathe. Edward is so close, in so much pain, and I am torn between wanting to comfort or slap him.
He reaches forward tentatively and takes my hand, passing his thumb lightly back and forth across my knuckles. It still comes as a shock that his skin is no longer cold and unyielding. His touch is incendiary, branding me. Grounding me.
He sees the bracelet, turning my hand slightly so that the dark red charm lies against the soft skin of the inside of my wrist. His expression is unreadable, his jaw tightens.
"Talk to me, Bella. Tell me. I'd give everything in this world to know what you are thinking right now. If you've...moved on...the way you appear to have, then that would be fair. I'll leave you here. I won't bother you again. But I can't go until I've asked you. Until I know I no longer have any chance. Until you tell me you could never love me, after everything I've done."
"Even if...even if all this is true," I say quietly, looking down at our joined hands, pale fingers intertwined. My voice sounds clear, steady. I have no idea how I am even forming these sentences, but there is only one thing I want to know. "How could I ever trust you? How could I ever know you wouldn't leave me again?"
Edward rocks back slightly on his heels, running his thumb lightly across my palm, causing every atom in traitorous body to collide. His expression is grim.
"I'll never be strong enough to leave you again."
I exhale unwillingly, afraid my trembling breathing will reveal my tenuous grip on my sanity.
"Every part of me is drawn to you, Bella. But I don't know you anymore. All I'm asking...and believe me when I say, I know I have no right to ask...is for the chance to get to know you now."
He's right. I am no more the Bella he left in Phoenix than he is the Edward who ran. I think about my new life, my childhood in Inuvik, my adolescence in New York. I think about the life I've carved out for myself here in New Hampshire. About Julian and Scott.
I think about Edward's hand in mine, tethering me to him.
There's no going back.
"I guess...we can try."
Dawn breaks in his eyes, and he presses my hand softly to his lips, before releasing it. He gets to his feet, and reaches down to tuck a loose lock of my hair behind my ear.
"Thank you," he says, his voice rich with genuine gratitude, no hint of a smile. "I can only imagine what it costs you to say that."
Edward fills the whole room; he fills all the spaces within me and without. I feel engulfed. Confounded.
He can tell this is all I have for him for now. He lets himself out.