While my family's mental chatter was usually easy enough to tone down, now it was almost totally silent.
My own head had more than enough to chew over without six other inner monologues.
Thoughts swarmed me like a nest of angry hornets.
The stingers they left throbbed and itched, demanding attention.
We had come dangerously close to having sex, and while my own old-fashioned ideas of chastity were worthy of attention, it was my least pressing concern.
Bella seemed just fine to indulge in a physical relationship, but emotionally she was as remote as Venus.
My original intention had been to allow her to open up on her own terms.
Now I feared that day would never come if we allowed things to progress at their current heading.
I had to understand what constituted a healthy relationship.
It wasn't my previous behavior - namely disregard for her thoughts and opinions and lies of omission.
But dancing around her wounds like she was a fragile flower, blithely nurturing her traumatized psyche; that was no better.
I had no foundation to build upon. Which left me only one avenue I could rely on.
Carlisle had never let me down before.
So I wrote Carlisle before but then changed it to books and thought I changed it back and, yeah. It was supposed to be Carlisle.