Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,211

night he found another way to live, the compromise of animal blood, and his recovery to a rational creature. Then leaving for the continent—

“He swam to France?” she interrupted, disbelieving.

“People swim the Channel all the time, Bella,” I pointed out.

“That’s true, I guess. It just sounded funny in that context. Go on.”

“Swimming is easy for us—”

“Everything is easy for you,” she complained.

I smiled at her, waiting to be sure she was done.

She frowned. “I won’t interrupt again, I promise.”

My smile widened, knowing what her reaction would be to the next bit.

“Because, technically, we don’t need to breathe.”

“You—”

I laughed and put one finger against her lips. “No, no, you promised. Do you want to hear the story or not?”

Her lips moved against my touch. “You can’t spring something like that on me, and then expect me not to say anything.”

I let my hand fall to rest against the side of her neck.

“You don’t have to breathe?”

I shrugged. “No, it’s not necessary. Just a habit.”

“How long can you go… without breathing?”

“Indefinitely, I suppose; I don’t know.” The longest I’d ever gone was a few days, all of it underwater. “It gets a bit uncomfortable—being without a sense of smell.”

“A bit uncomfortable,” she repeated in a fragile voice, barely over a whisper.

Her eyebrows were drawn together, her eyes narrowed, her shoulders rigid. The exchange, which had been funny to me a moment before, was abruptly humorless.

We were so different. Though we’d once belonged to the same species, we shared only a few superficial traits now. She must finally feel the weight of the distortion, the distance between us. I lifted my hand from her skin and dropped it to my side. My alien touch would only make that gap more obvious.

I stared at her troubled expression, waiting to see if this would be one truth too many. After a few long seconds, the stress in her features eased. Her eyes focused on my face, and a different kind of unease marked hers.

She reached up with no hesitation to press her fingers against my cheek. “What is it?”

Concern for me again. So apparently this wasn’t the too much I’d been fearing.

“I keep waiting for it to happen.”

She was confused. “For what to happen?”

I took a deep breath. “I know that at some point, something I tell you or something you see is going to be too much. And then you’ll run away from me, screaming as you go.” I tried to smile at her, but I didn’t do a very good job. “I won’t stop you. I want this to happen, because I want you to be safe. And yet, I want to be with you. The two desires are impossible to reconcile.…”

She squared her shoulders, her chin jutted out. “I’m not running anywhere,” she promised.

I had to smile at her brave façade. “We’ll see.”

“So, go on,” she insisted, scowling a little at my doubtful response. “Carlisle was swimming to France.”

I measured her mood for one more second, then turned back to the gallery. This time I pointed her toward the most ostentatious of all the paintings, the brightest, the most garish. It was meant to be a portrayal of the final judgment, but half the thrashing figures seemed to be involved in some kind of orgy, the other half in a violent, bloody combat. Only the judges, suspended above the pandemonium on marble balustrades, were serene.

This one had been a gift. It wasn’t something Carlisle would have ever picked out for himself. But when the Volturi had pressed upon him the souvenir of their time together, it wasn’t as if he could have said no.

He had some affection for the gaudy piece—and for the distant vampire overlords depicted in it—so he kept it with his other favorites. They had been very kind to him in many ways, after all. And Esme liked the small portrait of Carlisle hidden in the midst of the mayhem.

While I explained Carlisle’s first few years in Europe, Bella stared at the painting, trying to make sense of all the figures and swirling colors. I found my voice becoming less casual. It was hard to think of Carlisle’s quest to subdue his nature, to become a blessing to mankind rather than a parasite, without feeling again all the awe his journey deserved.

I’d always envied Carlisle’s perfect control but, at the same time, believed it was impossible for me to duplicate. I realized now that I’d chosen the lazy way, the path of least resistance, admiring him greatly, but never