Chapter 8
"Are you sure it was cocaine?" he asked, desperation in his voice.
She nodded.
That could only mean they had wanted her to shift into a vampire if Edward didn't kill her.
And if there's one thing Edward wouldn't let happen, was exactly that.
They must have wanted to see Edward kill an innocent soul.
"Why are we still waiting?" she sobbed suddenly. "I'm just another ordinary human. You said it yourself."
Her broken heart was aching his.
No, he wanted to say.
You're not, he needed to say.
I was utterly and completely mistaken, he had to confess.
He had to tell her.
But he didn't.
"I'm human again, you're a vampire again," she continued. "So what are we waiting for?"
Instead he quoted from Austen, to avoid telling her the truth that he was waiting for that kiss.
"Which of all my important nothings shall I tell you first?"
She kept her eyes on the stars, but he saw her surprise in there.
He quoted again, "And sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to describe them in."
He decided he'd continue quoting Jane Austen, if it pleased her. Except he didn't know if it pleased her. He still didn't hear her mind.
And by then he'd learned he never would.
Because she wasn't ordinary.
"I wish nature had made such hearts as yours more common," he quoted again.
She had a hell of a night. She had grown silent, but her heartbeat kept a fast rhythm.
"It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy; it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others."
Her heartbeat went even faster.
Yet, she asked him a completely different question, catching him of guard again.
"Are you going to take my life or no?" she asked hurriedly.
No, he thought.
"I'm waiting to see what your future will bring," he lied instead.
He regretted his lie.
She said timidly, "I should go?"
She stood on her feet, and he followed her stance in a confused daze.
Go?
What about the final vision?
Her scent was undeniably still calling him.
But he no longer wanted her blood.
"Little girl, you've been through much tonight-"
"I promise I won't say anything to anyone," she interrupted him. "I swear, I won't tell anyone about you. Or what happened tonight. Your name, what you are, anything- I- I'll stay silent."
He blinked. He thought he feared she would expose his secret?
"I don't care about that," he said quietly, speaking truthfully once. Admitting that his secret was not as important as something else.
Someone else.
He waited for the final vision to happen.
The final vision showed - A kiss between them, initiated by the tiny human.
He waited for her to come forward.
She didn't step forward.
Instead she stepped away from him, slowly, walking away.
"Little girl, come on, you won't get far with you human little legs," he quipped.
"It's okay, I'll find my way back home."
Edward's heart sank.
Did she really think he'd let her walk home, alone, at this hour? She wasn't even wearing any shoes.
"Tiny human," he said quietly. "Wait."
She halted
"I'm sorry," he said, "for the pain you felt when my venom burned you. I promised you numbness, but I swear in my entire vampire life since 1918, I have never encountered a human that reacted the way you did when my venom touched your skin."
He stepped forward. He was confessing to her now. He had to. She wanted to leave, in obvious hurry.
"I'm sorry," he said, "that tonight, three vampires tried to use you as bait to extinguish me. I thought they injected something supernatural, that made me react to your blood and made you react to my venom. But I thought wrong. They injected you with cocaine. Human drugs. And the reason you're now sober and not in withdrawal, is because of my venom. And it healed you. I don't know why, but it did."
He swallowed at his own nervousness.
"Also, once I realized it was drugs they injected you with and not something more supernatural. That's when I knew that I won't ever be able to read your mind, foresee your future or shift your emotions. Because you are anything but another ordinary human. You are-"
Talking to her back was started to become more difficult, so he reached her and stepped before her, meeting her brown eyes once again.
"You are special," he finished.
She glanced away.
"New born vampires," he said quietly. "Have a raging, uncontrollable urge for human blood. When I was a new born vampire, I killed innocent lives."
He thought back at those times with remorse.
"The scent of your blood is intoxicating me," Edward said, stepping forward. "It awakened an urge even stronger than that of a new born vampire. I came very close tonight to become a monster I once was."
The tiny girl took a timid step backwards.
"To be honest, your blood is still calling me strongly," he said.
She took another step backwards, and it was alright with Edward.
If she needed distance between him and her, so be it.
"But what's calling me stronger, is you," he said. "That is why I will resist the urge to take your blood and that is also why I can't take your life. Even if I can't see your future or promise you the best."
She froze.
"You'll simply have to have faith, tiny human," he sighed. "For your future."
Kiss me, he thought.
"I don't have a faith," she said hopelessly.
"Neither did I, but I prayed tonight to God to save you, and God did," he said. "It had to be God who saved you from those foul men, and not me. I refuse to tell you, tiny human, what I foresaw in the minds of those men for your future. In those visions, I was too late. You were greatly hurt. So I prayed to a God I didn't know I believed in to save you from them."
Her heartbeat went faster and she took a few shallow breaths.
"And to save you from me," he said. "And I'm thankful you didn't die. That for some unknown reason, you were spared tonight."
Her cheeks reddened and her eyes showed that same reservedness. Something was bothering her, but what?
"Okay then," she said, even if she didn't seem okay. "I'll have faith."
She gave him a smile, that wasn't a real smile.
What's she thinking?
Edward Cullen sighed and realized the third and final vision - A kiss between them, initiated by the tiny human - would never happen.
She wasn't stepping forward.
And she didn't seem to be inviting him.
Perhaps it had been a glitch in visions.