DISCLAIMER: I do not own the Twilight series.

WARNING: This story contains references to sexual violence.

THE HEART'S GREATEST PARADOX

I was not math-brained. I recognized this in high school, but I had always managed to make up for my lack of natural capability with sheer hard work and practice. After all, very few people are actually born with the ability to easily pick up differential calculus without some serious effort.

It didn't help that the parole hearing was looming closer and closer with each passing week. Vera said I didn't have to go, but the fact that it was happening at all was enough to make me break out in a cold sweat. I continued to soldier through my classes, even my calculus tutorial, through sheer force of will. It was too easy to feel sorry for myself, and I did, a lot more than what was healthy. But I also made a point of trying to remind myself that I wasn't the only person going through something difficult right now. In fact, I was downright lucky. I had food and nice clothes and I was pursuing higher education. I was lucky.

But the fact that I knew this to be true only made it all the more pathetic when I had to leave my physical chemistry lecture because a boy sitting a few rows in front of my had flyaway blonde hair that glinted and shifted in the artificial light like specks of dust in a mote. I had retreated to one of the library study hutches, and willed myself to cry. I'd read in a book that it was much healthier to let all of those toxic emotions out — it gave one closure. But as I sat there and felt the bubbling, caustic fear burn away, I was physically unable to give into tears, no matter how much I wanted to. Instead, a dead sort of numbing acceptance that felt like a lead weight spread through my chest, and I got up and left the library, recognizing my own weakness, and vowing that it could not happen again.

At my next calculus tutorial, I decided to buck up my courage and finally ask for some help. I had taken a very passive role in the class, just sitting in the back and letting everyone else do the talking and asking, only because I did not want to have to deal with Emmett McCarty and the resentment and hostility that I was sure he harboured against me. But when I received a 46% on my first calculus test, I realized I didn't want to sacrifice academic success for the sake of my pride.

I waited until about ten minutes from the end of the tutorial, when most of the other students' pressing questions had been asked and answered, before I nervously approached Emmett's desk and cleared my throat. He was working on deriving something that looked like pig latin to me, his handwriting tiny and neatly-formed, utterly controlled and contained just like the rest of him.

"What can I do for you, Rosalie?" he asked politely, but there was a wariness in his eyes that made me nervous.

I'd never stuttered in my life, except, it seemed, in conversation with Emmett McCarty.

"I-I was h-h-having some trouble with one of the derivatives. I t-think it's because of the l-l-logarithms. I'm not really used to them yet…," I trailed off, wanting to bang my head against a wall. I sounded like a scared fourth grader in front of the principal.

I could tell that Emmett was a little weirded out by my stuttering and general awkwardness, when the Rosalie he remembered was a smooth-talking prom queen always ready with a witty reply.

I sat down in the chair beside his, and tried to focus on nothing but the problem as he explained the steps to solving it. It was hard though, because I hadn't been this close to him since before everything, and I felt cold fear creep through my limbs. I reminded myself to be rational. He hadn't been there. He hadn't been one of the ones who had hurt me. Just because he was Royce's friend, it didn't mean he was capable of what Royce was.

I thought I was doing a pretty good job of being nonchalant, until Emmett's arm brushed mine as he reached over to grab an eraser. My reaction wasn't wild, but it was instantaneous and uncontrollable. I flinched visibly, pressing my arm in to the soft hollow of my stomach and rolling my shoulders forward in a self-protective pose. Emmett stilled for a moment as he took in my posture. He withdrew his arm quickly and scooted his chair away from mine, and when he spoke, his voice was flat, his hazel eyes hard as chips of moldavite.

He finished explaining the solution to the problem, but I knew I was not overanalyzing as I recognized the real anger in his voice. It scared me, but I didn't blame him. It seemed everything scared me these days.

I got up to leave, murmuring, "Thanks for your time. I appreciate the help,"

I waited for his response, but he studiously focused on his own math problem, and a bone-snapping tension emanated from him and filled the air in the now empty lecture hall. I waited another few beats for him to say "you're welcome", or "no worries,", just something polite! But he didn't, and I felt my own anger and sadness and fear rise like a tide from the corners of my heart.

My voice cracked through the air like a whip. "Emmett, I know you blame me for your best friend being locked up in prison like an animal," I paused to rub my hand across my cheek, realizing tears were leaking from my waterline.

"But I'm not going to apologize, because he deserves it. At least that's what I'm trying to convince myself of. A-and, if hating me is what you want to do, then I understand,"

My steam ran out, and my loud, angry, bitter voice was reduced to nothingness, my next words so garbled by tears and snot that I couldn't even understand them myself.

"But I really, really, wish you wouldn't. I wish you wouldn't h-hate me," I hiccuped, my voice breathy and weak and just as pathetic-sounding as I felt.

He looked so angry sitting there, like a caged animal with clenched fists, the tendons in his neck pulled taut. He looked like he was going to explode, and an exploding Emmett McCarty was not a storm I could weather.

So I turned, and I scurried out of the room like a kicked puppy with my tail between my legs, and tried to tell myself that everything was going to be okay.

Weeks passed, and life went on. I didn't go to any parties (not that I was invited to any), and I tried to focus on studies. I'd always read books about people who were able to lose themselves in their studies — to immerse themselves in a diet of equations and theorems and ideas. But for me, there was something very concrete missing. I was jumpy and flinchy and I felt tired all the time, the circles under my eyes dark purple and bruised-looking no matter how much concealer I attempted to mask them with.

I was surprised at the toxic bitterness tinged with a horrified jealousy that welled in my stomach when I saw Emmett McCarty walking with his arm around his girlfriend. Her beauty was like a beacon, and there was something about the gentleness of his hand on her waist that made me feel like a complete trollop. Boys had always liked my body — I had large breasts and a small waist, but in comparison to Crystalina's elegant beauty I looked overweight and stumpy. Everyone had hang-ups about their looks, I tried to remind myself, probably even Emmett McCarty's beautiful girlfriend.

What struck me most about the two of them was his proprietary nature towards her. He obviously cared for her, treasured her even, and there was something serious in the way he angled his body towards hers.

Something that spoke of devotion.

It was strange to me, because I had always regarded Emmett as someone who was too focused and ambitious for love. I remember thinking that the girl who ended up with him would have to content herself with playing second fiddle to his career and his Einstein-esque dreams. It seemed, however, that I had been wrong. This caused a pang in my chest, because it was obvious that Crystalina had a quality, an edgy sort of brilliance in her own right that made Emmett regard her as fundamentally important and above all other things. I'd seen this quality in other women so obviously adored by their men, and it hurt me in a deep, fundamental way, because I knew that it was not a quality I possessed.

The only relationships I'd had had been based on superficiality. Nobody had ever been interested in the most secret territories of my heart, and as I observed Emmett McCarty laughing in a way I had never seen him laugh before, holding his beautiful girlfriend, I came to the conclusion that it was more than likely nobody ever would be.

When Vera called and told me that Emmett McCarty had spoken at Royce's parole hearing, I hung up on her, smashing the phone into the cradle like I should've kicked Royce's face in when he put his grimy, murderous hands on me. I felt something deep inside me fracture. I tried to focus on the outcome — Royce King was still incarcerated, and wouldn't be eligible for another appeal until six months had passed. I had six more months to breathe.

But the fact that Emmett McCarty had tried to help free the man who had done so much irreparable damage to me was almost too much to bear. He had seen me stuttering and nervous and scared, humbled and vulnerable in a way that I had only been when terrible things were being done to me, and still, he had chosen to attempt to unleash the monster that had made me this way.

I knew that to him, the monster was just a man. In fact, he was a man that he had loved like a brother. But the fact that he knew of his monstrous side and hadn't given a thought to his victims, namely me, made my heart shatter in my chest.

Despite my pain, I walked to the threshold of that calculus tutorial. I stood there, on the outside looking in, and I could see Emmett's tall, broad profile. I was late. As I watched him speak, gesturing with his hands, another body superimposed itself over his sharp form, a smaller, leaner man with white blond hair and a cruel eye-teeth smile. He turned to look at me, and warm hazel eyes morphed into a frigid blue.

The sob that choked me was like a tsunami in a matchbox, and I knew I couldn't step into the room without setting it free.

I turned frantically, and I ran.

When I think back to this moment, I wonder what I would have seen if I had turned around one last time. Would I have seen Royce's brilliant blue eyes, so violent and horrifying in their beauty? Or would I have seen what really was?

Maybe, just maybe I would have seen the slightly broken-looking hazel eyes of a man lost in his own choices, swimming in the same helpless, horrified shame that Pilate must have felt as he sentenced the Son of God to death on a cross.

TO BE CONTINUED...