I didn't sleep a wink that night. It was too hot in the room, but it wasn't the heat that kept me up so much as my fears. I thought about Charlie and wondered if there was something I should have done to warn him. But—warn him about what, exactly? Nothing he did could make the slightest difference. We just had to hope James didn't go looking for my house. And Edward assured me constantly that Alice had made my father's future and the Cullens' her top priority. But nothing eased my mind.

Sometimes I took a break from worrying about my dad to worry that James would somehow track down my mother instead. It wouldn't exactly be hard, not for someone as resourceful as I was sure he must be. My parents never talked and they never emailed, but what if Charlie got suspicious and contacted my mom? Did he even still have her number? What if they realized I'd tricked them, and started to panic? They might call attention to themselves, and James could easily use that to his advantage. There was nothing for me to do, either. Edward told me that someone would call with news as soon as there was any. All I could do was wait.

When I finally gave up on trying to sleep, the sun was already rising. Edward had sat mutely in a corner of the room the whole night, not moving an inch. He looked as tense as I felt, though nowhere near as tired. He watched me sit up and stretch. I decided to pretend I'd slept peacefully—no point giving him one more thing to worry about.

"You look exhausted," was the first thing he said to me, and I slumped.

"Yeah, okay," I admitted. "I'm exhausted. I couldn't sleep. I shouldn't have slept on the plane, I guess."

"Come here," he said, holding out his arms. I tripped into them, feeling 86% better the instant I fell into his embrace. He lifted me up till I was level with his face, and delicately nuzzled my throat. I stroked the side of his face with my palm; his cool skin felt good for once, instead of too-icy. In this humid heat, he had warmed to the temperature of a human fresh out of a cool swimming pool. I remembered what Esme had said once about vampires being no different from lizards, and giggled, my mouth pressing against his neck.

I felt quiet laughter rumbling through his throat and into my lips, and then I laughed harder and harder, and then all of a sudden I wasn't laughing, I was crying, hard. Big grotesque sobs ripped through me, and Edward just held me and held me and let me cry.

It took me a long time to cry myself out. I'd lost all feeling in my feet; they'd fallen asleep from dangling so long. When Edward tried to put me down I staggered and clung to him. I wasn't ready to be put down yet. I was afraid that if I stopped touching him, something terrible would happen to…someone, him or me or Charlie or Alice. Someone.

"Please, just keep holding me?" I asked tearfully. He nodded solemnly and, arm around my waist, led me over to a simply-upholstered settee. We sat down together, me tucked under his arm against his side. I didn't try to ask him anything. I didn't make him talk. I just tilted my head up and started kissing his neck, tentatively at first and then with increasing eagerness.

"Bella, please—" he said in a strained voice. He swallowed thickly a couple of times and then, abruptly, he began kissing me back.

I could feel him trying to be gentle, trying not to push my head back or break one of the arms he was holding loosely, but it still hurt. It hurt about as much as getting knocked to a wooden floor might: not enough to make me cry, but enough to demonstrate that in a battle of strength and endurance, the floor will always win. But it would have hurt more to stop. I was so sad and so scared and so, so horny. They were probably all connected, but I wasn't really thinking about that. I just smelled him and tasted him and felt his smooth, firm skin under my hands and against my face. I opened my mouth against his, but he kept his lips firmly closed. I was used to that, though. I'd had the same boyfriend for a year and we'd never Frenched once, let alone gone further than that. I understood why he was being so careful, and I was grateful, but I was tired of being so cautious. If he'd been a human we would have at least made it to the dry-humping stage by now, if not actual naked hugs. But Edward never let it go further than some light petting, despite a full year of him spending most nights in my bed. It was a little ridiculous, even if I did understand. I didn't want all of this to end with me getting bitten by a vampire anyway, although of course if it had to happen, better Edward than anyone else…

I twisted around so I was straddling his lap. I was still wearing his shirt, which he'd lent me for sleeping in. I was wearing underwear, too, the ones from yesterday. I hoped they didn't smell awful, but what could I do about it? Instead of focusing on that admittedly small-time worry, I kissed him harder. I felt bruises blossom where his hands slid around to grasp my waist and cup my bottom; I felt his skin touch my upper thigh and practically combusted. I had never wanted anything as much as I now wanted Edward. I wanted him in ways that confused the hell out of me. I wanted to sink my teeth into him.

I slid forward in his lap and ground myself a little bit against his groin, and felt him get hard almost instantly. That was more than enough encouragement for me, but it seemed I'd gone too far, because the action elicited a sharp inhalation from him, and then suddenly I was sitting alone on the settee and he was on the other side of the room.

I was instantly struck by remorse, looking at him: he looked tortured, tormented. His beautiful eyes stared at me with naked hunger in their golden-brown depths. A very particular hunger.

"…Edward?" I said cautiously. "Are you…okay?"

He took several deep breaths. He wasn't smiling. Neither was I.

Slowly, rustily, he nodded. "Yes," he said in as raspy a voice as he was capable of producing. "I bruised you…" He was staring at my arms, where there was indeed a fast-growing cluster of purply bruises. I shifted a little so that my shirt would cover what I suspected was a humdinger on my lower back.

"I don't care," I said defiantly. "I don't mind, I honestly don't. I just bruise easy."

He squinched his eyes closed and shot me a forced smile. "Bella, if you think that's going to make me feel better about it, you're mistaken. Now you just sound like a domestic abuse victim making excuses for her crummy boyfriend."

Okay, so he had a point. I took a deep breath. "Listen, Edward," I said, trying to be calm. "I don't know if there's any way for us to be, you know, together without me sometimes getting bruises. And there's no question of us being together, and I know the risks, and I still want to try. Don't you?"

He looked away from me. "Of course I do," he mumbled. "But there's got to be some way around this. I can't just accept that being with you will inevitably lead to hurting you. That's horrible. That's not love, that's codependence."

"Okay, maybe if we were both humans, yes," I said. "That would be wrong. But you're Superman! Superman and Lois Lane totally did it! And she probably had some doozies afterward, but—"

"That's a comic book series," said Edward. "This is real life."

"Oh yeah?" I said. "What about any of this feels real to you?" Oh god, all I wanted to do was put indiscriminate parts of him onto and into indiscriminate parts of me, and instead we were arguing.

"Bella," he said, "part of it is that I'm worried about what might happen if I lose control with you."

"Then don't move too much," I suggested. "Just stay as still as you can and let me do all the work. There are ways around this, Edward, there've gotta be—"

"That's part of it," he repeated. "I'm also worried about…why you want this. Whatever it is."

"It's sex," I clarified. He looked shocked that I had come right out and said it, and I remembered once again that he was really really old and probably still thought storks are delivered by Cabbage Patch Kids or whatever.

"You're afraid and you're tired and you're looking for a connection," he said, sounding frazzled. "You don't have to just give this to me without taking some time to think about it."

"Okay, first of all," I said, "let's clear up the part about me giving you anything. I may be a virgin, but that doesn't mean I have to agree with this idea that the state of a woman's hymen determines some aspect of her worth. I honestly could not care less about that. I'm not saving it for anyone. Well, okay, I'm saving it for you, now. I'm not saving it for anything. Second of all, we've been together for a year. I've had plenty of time to think about it. I've always known I would just do it when the time is right, and the time is so totally right, Edward, why can't you see that? Don't you realize how hard it is always having to hold back just when I want to devour you? Don't you want this too?"

"Bella, you're the only person I've ever wanted like this. You're the only person I'll ever want."

"Then why can't this happen?" I said pleadingly.

"I'm just…not ready yet," he said, sighing. "I need to wrap my head around it first, you know?" He looked so young in that moment that I realized with a pang how strange it must be for him, coming so close to sex after so long without it, being so old but still feeling so inexperienced.

"Would it help if we talked about it more?" I asked, my voice softening in pity. Edward looked at me slantwise.

"It might," he allowed. "I just need to feel that there's no pressure, you know?"

"Okay," I said, scooching over on the settee to make room for him again. "Hands to myself. Let's talk."

He sat down beside me.

"If you don't mind," I said when he made no move to speak, "I do have sort of a question. Um…how did you…I mean, how can you…" I gestured vaguely at his crotch. "…if you don't have any, you know, blood?"

Edward laughed. "Venom just takes the place of blood," he said. "It does everything blood does. Just, you know, much better."

"Okay," I said, "but you don't have a heartbeat, either. How's all that work? Because it totally just worked like five minutes ago." If Edward looked any cuter than his present state of embarrassment, I thought I might actually go ahead and die for real. My mom had always talked to me very openly and frankly about human sexuality, and it took a lot to shock me, but it wasn't hard to imagine that his upbringing must have been...different.

"It's hard to explain," he said. "It's hard even to study. Basically, our venom doesn't require a heart to move around our body. It's self-propelled. There are things in venom that keep it moving throughout the body, so that instead of needing a muscle to pump it through, it pumps itself. The venom flows steadily, each molecule of it propelled by a discrete power source, bringing the cells of our bodies whatever is needed to keep them strong and invulnerable. When I was first turned, it took me a long time to get used to this body; it felt like it wasn't mine anymore. And then Rosalie started doing all these tests and experiments, and she actually kind of proved me right: the venom occupies our bodies and keeps them running smoothly, without age or weariness, but it's not the symbiotic relationship that human bodies have with blood. In the human body, the blood receives oxygen from the lungs and brings it to the cells, pumped along by the heart. If the body dies, the blood cells die; they are mutually dependent. In my body, though, the venom does whatever it does mostly on its own. It keeps me alive, in a manner of speaking, but it doesn't seem to require much input from me to do so. Not food or air or anything. As far as we can tell, the venom doesn't even technically need a steady supply of blood. Carlisle tried to starve himself to death when he was turned, went years without a drop of blood, and it didn't even weaken him."

I was leaning against him by now, my toes dangling against the cool stone floor. He sounded calm again. I loved to hear him talk like this. It was fascinating, and he sounded so earnest, so excited to share everything he knew or guessed about his world.

"If you don't need oxygen," I asked, "what powers your cells? Is it magic? Fate? Dark wizards?"

"Not sure," he admitted. "We're kind of still working on that one. There's a whole lot of weird stuff in venom, and not all of it can be found on the periodic table. About ten years ago, while we were living in Alaska, Rosalie took up semi-permanent residence in a lab she built from scratch, just studying vampire biology. She isolated this one bizarre little molecule in our venom, highly complex but shockingly elegant in its design, with not a wasted atom. It's one of the only molecules that is one-hundred-percent common to every vampire Rose tested, although admittedly that was a small sample, just us and the Denalis and a few of Carlisle's friends who came by to visit. Her theory is that it retrieves molecules from the blood we drink and compresses them into radioactive isotopes, which power our bodies at an atomic level—" He stopped abruptly and laughed ruefully, swiping one hand through his hair till it stood on end. "I'm not explaining this right," he said. "I wish Rose were here to explain it to you. She understands it way better than I do. But even if she were here, it's still just theory. It'll take a long time to prove, assuming we ever do."

"But hey," I said encouragingly, "if anyone's got the time to work it out, it's you."

Edward laughed. "Yes, I suppose so. Rosalie thinks that this one molecule is so efficient that it can create enough energy to power a body for a decade out of just one pint of blood. But to test that someone would have to go without drinking for, you know, well over a decade. Strangely, our people haven't been clamoring to volunteer for that case study. So as far as we know, it's impossible for one of us to starve to death. Even then, what occurs might not be actual permanent death, but merely stasis. As you know, we can lose body parts and have them reattached with no degradation, even after many years have passed. It's possible that if one of us went long enough without blood, he would power down, as it were; but the introduction of blood into that vampire's body might very well have them up and running again, none the worse for wear. All I can say for sure is that I'm some weird alien, possibly nuclear-powered, who can't get sick or die or starve easily, and I can run really fast."

"Sounds about right," I said, snuggling closer to him and resting my head comfortably in the hollow of his shoulder. "My very own atomic superhero. You know, Edward, I wouldn't mind getting in on this superhero business..."

"We've talked about it, Bella," he said wearily. "Becoming a vampire isn't something you can just undo if you find you don't like it. Have you not been listening? This stuff is permanent."

"Why wouldn't I like it?" I pressed. "It sounds amazing! I mean, think about what I could do if I had forever to live. I could read every single book ever written in the English language! I could learn all the other languages, and then read all those books! And I mean, I really want to see the future, Edward. I want to be around for the next Voyager. I want to see flying cars! And I can't wait for holographic television."

"Well, you should know, holographic television won't be much use to you if you become like us. Vampires see things too fast for human film; we see the flickers each time the picture refreshes in a movie. You won't be able to have pets, because most animals don't like the way we smell. You'll never get any older; when you're a hundred years old, people who haven't even been born yet will be looking down their nose at you, not taking you seriously. And what's worse is you'll always feel the age you are when you're changed. I still feel seventeen half the time, on top of all the other ages I've been. Do you really want to be eighteen forever?"

"Okay, first off," I said, "I'm allergic to dander, so I was never going to get a pet anyway. And who cares if some shadowy future strangers don't take me seriously? You will, and my family will, and that's all I care about. And I mean, I wasn't suggesting that I turn into a vampire this minute. But I don't want to just go on aging while you stay young, and then regret for the rest of my life that I didn't stop while we were at least somewhat equal. Lots of people die young, Edward. God, I've almost died young like a hundred times now, and I can't see my life becoming arbitrarily safer any time soon. Why can't you see how much better this would be?"

"Bella, when you become like us, you're done changing. You're done with everything new—"

"How can you say that?" I demanded. "I was new to you. I'll still be me, won't I? I'll still be alive, walking around and looking at things and learning things, right? The world will still have inventors and authors and musicians, all just going on and on, always creating new things, always innovating. That sounds pretty much like heaven to me, Edward. You have that even though you didn't want it, and I do want it, and you're telling me I can't?"

"You'll have to say goodbye to everyone you care about. Your parents, your friends...you'll never have children," he said desperately, raking one hand through his hair. "I can never give you children."

"Oh, please," I scoffed, "who says I have to give up my parents? Haven't you ever heard of Skype? And you know, your sister already explained all that stuff to me, about how you can't have kids. I don't want children, Edward. I want you. "

"You say that now," he said miserably, "but you may not always feel this way."

"I can't live my life based on what may happen someday. So what if I change my mind? I'll adopt. That's what Esme did. She's happy."

"Bella," said Edward, frustration hissing like a dry wind through his words, "this life isn't easy. It isn't the reward at the end of the rainbow."

"I know that," I said softly, laying my head on his shoulder. "You're my reward at the end of the rainbow. I would put up with way shittier things than eternal stamina and the ability to read twenty books a week, if it meant I got to keep you."

"Oh, Bella," he whispered. I felt his breath tickle against the part in my hair. "I love you so, so much. Too much to foist this existence on you. I want you to live your life the way god intended."

"Don't believe in 'im," I mumbled.

"Then I want you to live your life the way nature intended."

"Vampires are natural," I said. "Isn't that what you've just been explaining to me?"

"Bella, you're...you're tired," he said weakly. Well, he wasn't wrong about that. "Can we shelve this for a little while? I need time to think, and you look like you're about to drop off any second now."

"No argument there," I said. My eyelids were drooping. It seemed my adrenaline rush had left me, and now I felt worn out and exhausted. But at least we were talking about it.

"Come on, Bella," said Edward as he gently lifted me from the couch. He lay me down on the bed where I'd failed to sleep all night, and then he lay down beside me. I curled up right against him, my hands splayed over his chest. He played with my hair and hummed something beautiful, and I finally fell asleep.

*I almost gave this chapter a more dignified title, but then I remembered that I lost all claim to dignity when I decided to rewrite Twilight. Count yourselves lucky I didn't just title it Penises! And More, How To Give A Vampire An Erection Without Really Trying, or All About The Sperm Spout.*

Twilight canon decrees that venom replaces all the liquids in the body, and burns up your circulatory system so that you're just like, a body with venom sloshing around inside it. Or something. That means no erections and no sperm: the sexual sterility double whammy.

It wasn't actually hard for me to come up with solutions to these problems; happily, my solution includes solutions to other problems with vampire biology, like how they don't have to eat as often as humans and yet are somehow infinitely stronger. (I guess Smeyer's reasoning was that there's no such thing as the first law of thermodynamics. Science-based, indeed.) I did have to selectively ignore the part about venom destroying/collapsing the circulatory system, but that was easy, because it was an arbitrary rule anyway. Like all of them.

Other possible explanations for Smeyer's silly vampires:

1. Vampire hearts beat so rapidly and on such a small scale that their beating cannot be detected.

2. Vampire cells are powered by superciliousness and/or condescension.

3. Vampires are actually unembodied beings of pure energy who are really good at implanting the experience of touch, sight, and pregnancy in the minds of humans.

4. Vampirism is a Tantalus-like punishment which God reserves for the worst of the worst sinners. He reincarnates all the Hitlers and Pol Pots in human bodies and then causes them to be bitten and to lead an eternal life of burning thirst, warfare, boredom and doucheyness. By definition, vampires only change people they are divinely predestined to change, so if you are bitten it's because you are the reincarnated spirit of Rasputin and you had it coming. Their cells are powered by deific anger. The duration of their vampire lifespan (and therefore purgatorial torment) is related to how awful they were in life; they can only receive redemption by being a Cullen.

I'm starting to regret that I didn't go with that last one.