You know the drill…Twilight is owned by Stephenie Meyer, not me.

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It's awesome.

xXx

Chapter 4.

Edward

To say I was incredibly irritated would have been the world's most understated understatement. It wasn't enough that she practically plowed me over at the hospital and didn't say anything to me at all, except a meek sorry. Not a thank you. Not even a freaked out 'what the hell just happened.' She met me with nothing. And that was annoying. Because she was all over the board as far as portrayed emotions go. Coupled with the fact that I can't read her mind; I was ready to shake her until her thoughts trickled out of her ears.

So, what pushed me deeper into my state of perpetual madness was when she didn't show up to school on Tuesday. Or Wednesday. Or Today. Had that van really injured her, her missing school would have been acceptable. However. I saved her madness inducing ass from eminent death. And all I want to know is…what's the fucking deal? She seemed like the kind of girl who did things to prove a point. Like she would have shown up the next day just to punctuate the fact that she was here. And not even Tyler's inattentive driving could get rid of her; let alone whatever bad clique drama Laruen and Jessica had planned for her.

My last thoughts brought me an even more irritating reality. I know nothing about Bella. Of course, I knew a few things about her; she was the Chief's daughter and she hailed most recently from Arizona. But she had never told me anything about herself and I hadn't really observed anything about her. Except that she doesn't like to be told what to do. And she loves to pair sweatshirts that are too big for her with jeans that are just the right size too small for her. Oh, and she likes to do things that are dangerous; exploring the woods solo and going up against the most popular bitch in school.

Nothing about her met any kind of expectations. I was burying my face in my hands when I thought of the stupidest and smartest idea I had had all week. To deliver her homework to her. Personally. At her home.

Normally, this would be a terrible idea. Especially because I would have to tell all her teachers that it was my intention to take her the work. Think about that particular formula. Me. Alone. With a girl's who has a biological pull on me that makes my monstrous mouth water in several socially unacceptable ways. And this unexplored electricity that we shared. Work that out on paper and let me know what the solution is.

Instinctively, I knew that was a terrible idea. But, there was something over-powering that instinct. Probably a different instinct. Maybe that part of me that was still a human blood lusting vampire. Or maybe it was the part of me that would always be a silly teenage boy. After all, I had been searching for her every day for the last three days. I no longer put a time limit on how much I could think about her, because it was useless. My limit was reached and surpassed each time. I was infatuated with her.

I should really stay away from her.

Because if I scared her off with my Superman van trick, maybe it was for the better.

Unfortunately, it didn't feel like that was the case. But, Bella is difficult to read in any capacity. Suddenly, my wanting to see her. To feel her pulse. To smell her scents. My want turned into a need. It should have scared me but I pushed it to the back of my mind. Instinct and emotion was taking over logic and reason. The gauntlet was thrown and the battle had been won. I would go see Bella tonight. But first, I would hunt.

Actually, it was only first period. So first, I would make it through the school day. Then I would hunt.

Then I would go see Bella.

Worst. Plan. Ever.

I silenced my inner voice and basked in my new resolve. Once I had solved that nagging issue, another one came to the surface.

And it was a good thing I had already done the whole high school thing from start to finish nine or ten times, because I remembered that Alice had been avoiding me for almost a week. My plans for the day changed again. Find Alice. Finish the day. Mind rattle the truth out of Alice. Hunt. Bella.

Satisfaction, guaranteed.

Bella

The last few days were excruciatingly boring. But, I had to remember that I had almost been the victim of vehicular manslaughter. Girls that look death in the face probably don't go back to school the next day. So I spent some time pwning noobs at Halo. But that lost its glory after one of the kids started crying.

Homeschooled little babies.

I spent copious amounts on the internet, looking up the details of these so-called animal attacks. I didn't learn anything I didn't already know. After some time, I googled maps of hiking trails in the area. Maybe I'd take one of my free days to go check it out.

I even did Pilates for so long I was able to hold the plank position for almost ten minutes by Thursday.

I mastered the art of Thai cooking.

I even had a very serious conversation about the rite of passage I was about to complete with my mother. For a few hours. While she told me all the wonderful things I was to expect this fateful Saturday. It was worse than the puberty talk she gave me when I had my first period. But, it was not as bad as the sex talk we had after she caught me making out with a shirtless boy in my bedroom.

Probably because when she found us, I was entirely clothed and he had the pleading look in his eyes.

You know that look. The one that is just begging for more. Anything. A peek. An unclothed touch. An unadulterated kiss that wasn't on the lips.

Once she knew her baby girl was calling the shots the conversation wasn't awkward. It was empowering, but I wasn't sure which one of us she was trying to empower. There was something about the role of my mother being unclear that made me very uneasy.

She yammered on and on. And on. And on.

It's not like I was going to wake up levitating or turn into a werewolf at the first full moon. Although, if that were the case, at least I'd know what to expect. All my mother would bestow upon me was this cryptic and vague advice to 'expect the unexpected.'

Between my anxiety over my eighteenth birthday and my unnerving dreams about Edward, I wasn't sleeping. Since I wasn't sleeping and I wasn't going to school, I was able to master and overcome the aforementioned tasks. Unfortunately, the lack of sleep was leading to more delirious dreams about Edward.

Mostly, it was the golden eyes that flashed before my closed eyelids. Sometimes, I got the big picture. Once in awhile, his eyes were onyx. For some reason, he always seemed to be looming or running. Yelling at me. I think they were supposed to be warnings, but they were always unintelligible. His face was sometimes twisted in some weird combination of terror and amazement. Other times it was this emotionless visage. But generally, I never saw the whole face. The color of my dreams was unpredictable. There would be this unconscious feeling of vertigo as the dream started in neutral shades of sepia and catapulted into psychedelic neon.

The dream I was trying to pull myself out of was one I hadn't experienced in the two weeks this had been going on. He was running away from me. I was chasing him. Loud screaming emitted from every direction. A constant strobe of light kept the image going from black to overwhelmingly bright.

I managed to escape from the dream. Not because I was able to pull myself out of it. But because I had to throw up. And I did. I almost didn't make it down the hall to the bathroom.

It felt like I was physically running the entire dream. And my voice was hoarse from screaming. Feeling like I had just run two more miles than I was able to and smelling like I had just taken one shot too many of tequila, I jumped into the shower. The water was too hot, but I hardly noticed. I was trying to remember to breathe. Sinking down onto the floor of the bath tub, I let the water wash over me as I pulled my knees up to my chest. Then I noticed my arm.

I was born, like a lot of normal people, with a birthmark. Mine was gawkable. That is to say, you would like to gawk at it if you saw it. There weren't purplish blobs all over my face or anything. I had this minute crescent shaped mark on my right wrist. But it wasn't purple or brown or fading over time. It looked like a nasty battle scar sometimes. Usually, you'd never be able to notice it if you didn't know it was there.

Still. I covered it up with bracelets and long sleeves. Make up during desperate times. No one could tell me what it meant. Why it sometimes swelled and hurt. Or why I had it at all. No one else on my mother's side had anything like it. And that's the only place it could have come from. I've tried to link the changes it went through to my emotions or danger or vampire presence or changing body vitals.

No luck. Nothing made sense. I hardly noticed anymore, but I still tried to keep it covered.

As I turned off the shower, I realized it had flared up. There wasn't any pain, just a steady burn that was more comforting than anything. Relaxed, I stayed pulled against myself for a few moments longer. As though the tub was some safe sanctuary from real life. Because hanging out naked in the shower was going to save me from my eighteenth birthday and vampires and whatever else was out there waiting to become the history making being that caused my eventual demise.

At the rate I was going, I decided that teen angst was a definite possibility for my over all failure to survive.

Because life was fucking hard enough with just the regular coming of age drama. When you know what to expect out of puberty and heartbreak and school dances and underage drinking and sampling the illicit substances that cross your path and unprotected sex. But when you don't have a god damn blue print it makes the whole girl-becoming-a-woman story a little bit more complicated. My forehead leaned against the side of the tub as I relaxed my body.

I am so much stronger than this.

I do not have some kind of teenage girl break down in my shower.

Fuck. I felt tears streaming down my face now. Between the shower and my birth mark, I wondered how long I had been distracted from my own tears. As I wiped my eyes, it felt like I had been crying for hours. Gripping the tub where my forehead had been resting, I pushed myself up. I stood in front of the mirror naked and inspected the rest of me.

My eyes were fucking puffy. The rest of me looked the same. But what did I expect? To see some cryptic demonic carvings in my skin? Some kind of sign that I was living in a B-horror movie? I wrapped a towel around myself and slapped myself hard across the face.

Get a grip, Bella.

The walk back down the hall to my room was dark. It was a little after eight at night and I didn't remember when I fell asleep. It was still light out then. My skin was pruned so I guessed I spent about an hour in the shower. Maybe longer. Instead of turning my bedroom light on, I turned my desk lamp on. The soft lighting calmed my nerves as I got dressed. I threw on a pair of shorts and a tank top and let my hair fall uncombed over my shoulders.

Once I was finished putting myself back together I sat on my bed close to the window. And stared. Wishing that for one minute, everything would melt away and it would just be me. Just me and the rest of the world. Just me and Edward.

Edward.

There he was. Parking on the street in that silver car that was missing from the parking lot last week. Curious, I watched him. He was acting disturbingly human. Getting out of the car, opening the passenger door to grab some books, shutting the door, hitting the automatic lock on his key ring until it chirped. Then he was walking up to my door. I realized I wasn't breathing and that he was knocking on my door.

Because seriously, what more could life send me to get me running for the razors?

I wasn't sure what had made me so fucking melodramatic. The boredom, the bad dreams, the lack of sleep or my mother's unhelpful advice. Either way, I had to go answer the door. Because something was pulling me down the stairs to do so. So I did.

And he was even more beautiful illuminated by the porch light.

Edward

She looked like she had been crying for some time. Her hair was still wet and it was soaking through her white tank top. She was ridiculously pale and showing more skin than I was used to seeing on her. Something about her posture hinted at defeat and she was making a serious effort to keep her right arm behind her as she leaned out of the door way. Bella looked absolutely beautiful; even in the middle of what was probably a very bad melt down.

And then, I was suddenly taken over by an instinct that I had never even felt before. There was no scent, except for the strawberry and vanilla smell that was radiating off her wet hair and shoulders. The sound of her heart wasn't throbbing in my ears. My body was being pulled into her and I wasn't even trying to stop it. For one moment, the only thing I wanted to do to Bella was hold her. Comfort her. And hope that she would understand that everything was going to be okay.

So that's what I did.

For about five minutes, I held her close in the door way. We never said a word to each other during that time. Her shoulders gently heaved as she sobbed into my chest. The electric feeling of holding her in my arms and the fact that I didn't want to take her life was enough to keep me from being upset that I couldn't read her mind at that moment.

If it were anyone else, I would know why they were crying.

I felt helpless. Like there was something I should be able to do for her. What a waste this particular impulse was when I couldn't do anything to actually help her. The moment ended when she fell down to her knees and leaned her neck against my leg. Apologizing without looking up at me. I grabbed her waist and pulled her to her feet. Her eyes were hollow. We locked gazes briefly then her eyes fixed on my feet. Or her feet.

This was not the Bella I expected to find.

I thought I could come here, figuratively drink in her presence, illicit some sarcastic gratitude for my saving her and then leave. But now I knew I couldn't leave.

Not ever again.

The way her body folded into mine made me ache.

She had enough. Enough of what? I wasn't sure. But I was determined to stay there until I found out everything I could about Isabella Swan. Something was tearing her apart and I could feel it.

Physically feel it.

I grimaced, as I carried her into the house, thinking about what that pain might feel like to her. I walked her up the stairs, because that's where we were being pulled to. As I ascended the stairs, she wrapped her arms around my neck and held tightly. She was audibly sobbing again and her body was starting to go limp from exhaustion.

How long had she been at this? Crying and sobbing and draining herself of her tears? Hours? The last three days? I didn't ask. Something told me she just needed to be held.

And I held her. I sat on her bed with her as she laid her head in my lap. I stroked her hair and rubbed her back until she stopped shaking. Eventually, she was letting out gentle snores.

We stayed like this for hours. And I waited for her to wake up so I could ask her what broke her. While I waited, I wondered what was allowing me to be so…human. To touch her, be near her and smell her without all the usual connotations.

The light made it impossible for me to see anything in the room except what was on her desk. And there wasn't much. A lap top, a few pictures and the book she was reading the other day in the library. I could see the outline of a bookcase across the room and light slightly reflected off of posters on the wall. Like Bella, I could get no clear image of her room.

State of perpetual madness.

She stirred next to me and I hoped her dad wouldn't be home too soon.

She rolled over slightly at first. She must have realized where she was, because she shot up quickly after her face was buried in my stomach.

She stared at me. Her eyes still looked hollow.

"What are you doing here?" her voice was dry and it sounded painful for her to talk.

"I came to bring you some homework," I whispered, moving away from her a little.

Her hands rubbed up her face then she pulled her fingers through her hair. She let out a loud sigh.

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"That you had to…experience that," she was relaxing again, and leaning back against the wall, "I'm not usually like that."

"You don't always soak strangers' shirts with your tears?"

"Not usually," she smirked at me.

She pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her arms across the top of them. Then I noticed her right arm. It looked like a vampire bite.

But how is that even possible?

"What happened to your arm?" I asked, but it sounded more demanding than I intended it to.

She immediately brought her left hand to cover her wrist and looked at me.

"It's a birth mark," she replied, and I think she believed it.