Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,161

pressure as she started to try to lift my hand. I moved my hand in concert with her motion, knowing that it would take quite a bit of effort for her to heft even just my hand without my help. I was a little heavier than I looked.

She held my hand close to her face. Warm breath seared against my palm. I helped her angle my hand this way and that as the pressure of her fingers indicated. I opened my eyes to see her staring intently, rainbow sparks dancing across her face as the light moved back and forth across my skin. The furrow was there again between her eyes. What question troubled her now?

“Tell me what you’re thinking.” I said the words gently, but could she hear that I was begging? “It’s still so strange for me, not knowing.”

Her mouth pursed just a little, and her left eyebrow rose a fraction of an inch. “You know, the rest of us feel that way all the time.”

The rest of us. The vast family of humanity that did not include me. Her people, her kind.

“It’s a hard life.” The words did not sound like the joke I meant them to be. “But you didn’t tell me.”

She answered slowly. “I was wishing I could know what you were thinking.…”

There was obviously more. “And?”

Her voice was low; a human would have had a hard time hearing her. “I was wishing I could believe that you were real. And I was wishing that I wasn’t afraid.”

A flash of pain stabbed through me. I’d been wrong. I had frightened her after all. Of course I had.

“I don’t want you to be afraid.” It was an apology and a lament.

I was surprised when she grinned almost impishly. “Well, that’s not exactly the fear I meant, though that’s certainly something to think about.”

How was she joking now? What could she mean? I sat up halfway, too eager for answers to pretend nonchalance any longer.

“What are you afraid of, then?”

I realized how close our faces were. Her lips, closer than they had ever been to mine. No longer smiling, parted. She inhaled through her nose and her eyelids half closed. She stretched closer as if to catch more of my scent, her chin angling up half an inch, her neck arching forward, her jugular exposed.

And I reacted.

Venom flooded my mouth, my free hand moved of its own volition to seize her, my jaws wrenched open as she leaned in to meet me.

I threw myself away from her. The madness hadn’t reached my legs and they launched me all the way back to the far edge of the meadow. I moved so quickly I didn’t have time to gently release my hand from hers; I’d yanked it away. My first thought as I landed crouched in the shadows of the trees was her hands, and relief washed over me when I saw they were still attached to her wrists.

Relief followed by disgust. Loathing. Revulsion. All the emotions I’d feared to see in her eyes today multiplied by a hundred years and the sure knowledge that I deserved them and more. Monster, nightmare, destroyer of lives, mutilator of dreams—hers and mine both.

If I were something better, if I were somehow stronger, instead of a brutal near pass at death, that moment could have been our first kiss.

Had I just failed the test then? Was there no longer hope?

Her eyes were glassy; the whites showed all around her dark irises. I watched as she blinked and they refocused, fastening on my new position. We stared at each other for a long moment.

Her lower lip trembled once, and then she opened her mouth. I waited, tensed, for the recrimination. For her to scream at me, to tell me never to come near her again.

“I’m… sorry… Edward,” she whispered almost silently.

Of course.

I had to take a deep breath before I could respond.

I calibrated the volume of my voice to be just loud enough for her to hear, trying to keep my tone gentle. “Give me a moment.”

She sat back a few inches. Her eyes were still mostly whites.

I took another breath. I could still taste her from here. It fueled the constant burn, but no more than that. I felt… the way I normally did around her. There was no hint in my mind or body now, no sense that the monster was lurking so near to the surface. That I could snap so easily. It made me want to shriek and