Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,292

like it. Someplace where I couldn’t hurt you anymore.”

She stared at me with a blank expression, as though I’d answered her in Latin. I waited for her to process my meaning. Then her heart started to beat faster and her breathing shifted into hyperventilation. She flinched with every breath, her expanding lungs pushing against her broken ribs.

An echo of the grieving future Bella flashed across her face.

It was hard to watch. I wanted to say something to ease her pain, her terror, but this was supposed to be the right thing. It did not feel right, but I couldn’t trust my own selfish emotions.

Gloria walked into the room, just in for her afternoon shift. She appraised Bella with an expert eye.

I’d say she’s about at a six. It’s good to see her poor eyes open, though.

“Time for more pain meds, sweetheart?” she asked kindly, tapping the IV feed.

“No, no,” Bella objected, breathless. “I don’t need anything.”

“No need to be brave, honey. It’s better if you don’t get too stressed out; you need to rest.”

Gloria waited for Bella to change her mind. Bella carefully shook her head, her expression a mixture of pain and defiance.

Gloria sighed. “Okay. Hit the call button when you’re ready.”

She glanced at me, not sure how she felt about my constant vigil, and then looked at Bella’s monitors once more before leaving.

Bella’s eyes were still wild. I put my hands on either side of her face, barely touching the broken left cheek. “Shh, Bella, calm down.”

“Don’t leave me,” she begged, her voice breaking.

And this was why I was not strong enough by myself. How could I cause her more agony? She lay here now in taped-together pieces, struggling with pain, and her one plea was that I stay.

“I won’t,” I told her, while I mentally qualified my answer. Not until you’re whole again. Not until you’re ready. Not until I find the strength. “Now relax before I call the nurse back to sedate you.”

It was as though she could hear my mental caveats. Before—before the hunt and the horror—I’d promised her many times that I would stay. I’d always meant it, and she’d always believed. But now she saw through me. The rhythm of her heart wouldn’t settle.

I stroked my fingers along her whole cheek. “Bella, I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be right here as long as you need me.”

“Do you swear you won’t leave me?” she whispered. Her hand twitched toward her ribs. They must be aching.

She was too fragile for this now. I should have known, and waited. Even if Renée had just offered her the perfect option for a vampire-free life.

I took her face in my hands again, let the consuming love I felt for her fill my eyes, and lied with all the experience of a hundred years of daily deception.

“I swear.”

The tension in her limbs relaxed. Her eyes did not release mine, but after a few seconds her heart eased into its normal rhythm.

“Better?”

Her eyes were wary, her voice unsure when she answered. “Yes?”

She must have sensed that I was still holding something back.

I needed her to believe me, just long enough to let her safely heal. I couldn’t be responsible for complicating her recovery.

So I tried to act as I would if I were hiding nothing. As if I were exasperated by her agitated response. I made an annoyed face and muttered the words, “Overreacting just a little bit, don’t you think?”

I said them too fast; she probably couldn’t understand.

“Why did you say that?” she whispered, a tremor in her voice. “Are you tired of having to save me all the time? Do you want me to go away?”

I wanted to laugh for a hundred years at the idea of me tiring of her. Or cry for a thousand.

But the time would come, I was sure now, when I would have to convince her otherwise. So I tempered my response, made it lukewarm, moderate.

“No, I don’t want to be without you, Bella, of course not. Be rational. And I have no problem with saving you, either—if it weren’t for the fact that I was the one putting you in danger… that I’m the reason that you’re here.”

The truth had found its way into the end of my speech.

Bella scowled at me. “Yes, you are the reason—the reason I’m here alive.”

I couldn’t hold on to the lukewarm. I whispered to hide the pain. “Barely. Covered in gauze and plaster and hardly able to move.”

“I wasn’t referring to my most recent near-death experience,”