Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,66

hold her in my arms without risking her life. So that I could be free to spin my own fantasies, fantasies that didn’t end with her blood on my hands, her blood glowing in my eyes.

My pursuit of her was indefensible. What kind of relationship could I offer her, when I couldn’t risk touching her?

I hung my head in my hands.

It was all the more confusing because I had never felt so human in my whole life—not even when I was human, as far as I could recall. In those days, my thoughts had all been turned to a soldier’s glory. The Great War had raged through most of my adolescence, and I’d been only nine months away from my eighteenth birthday when the influenza had struck. I had just vague impressions of those human years, murky memories that became less real with every passing decade. I remembered my mother most clearly and felt an ancient ache when I thought of her face. I recalled dimly how much she had hated the future I’d raced eagerly toward, praying every night when she said grace at dinner that the “horrid war” would end. I had no memories of another kind of yearning. Besides my mother’s love, there was no other love that had made me wish to stay.

This was entirely new to me. I had no parallels to draw, no comparisons to make.

The love I felt for Bella had come purely, but now the waters were muddied. I wanted very much to be able to touch her. Did she feel the same way?

That didn’t matter, I tried to convince myself.

I stared at my white hands, hating their hardness, their coldness, their inhuman strength.…

I jumped when the passenger door opened.

Ha. Caught you by surprise. There’s a first, Emmett thought as he slid into the seat. “I’ll bet Mrs. Goff thinks you’re on drugs, you’ve been so erratic lately. Where were you today?”

“I was… doing good deeds.”

Huh?

I chuckled. “Caring for the sick, that kind of thing.”

That confused him more, but then he inhaled and caught the scent in the car.

“Oh. The girl again?”

I scowled.

This is getting weird.

“Tell me about it,” I mumbled.

He inhaled again. “Hmm, she does have a quite a flavor, doesn’t she?”

The snarl broke through my lips before his words had even registered all the way, an automatic response.

“Easy, kid, I’m just sayin’.”

The others arrived then. Rosalie noticed the scent at once and glowered at me, still not over her irritation. I wondered what her real problem was, but all I could hear from her were insults.

I didn’t like Jasper’s reaction, either. Like Emmett, he noticed Bella’s appeal. Not that the scent had, for either of them, a thousandth portion of the draw it had for me, but it still upset me that her blood was sweet to them. Jasper had poor control.

Alice skipped to my side of the car and held her hand out for Bella’s truck key.

“I only saw that I was,” she said—as was her habit—obscurely. “You’ll have to tell me the whys.”

“This doesn’t mean—”

“I know, I know. I’ll wait. It won’t be long.”

I sighed and gave her the key.

I followed her to Bella’s house. The rain was pounding down like a million tiny hammers, so loud that Bella’s human ears might not hear the thunder of the truck’s engine. I watched her window, but she didn’t come to look out. Maybe she wasn’t there. There were no thoughts to hear.

It made me sad that I couldn’t hear enough of her thoughts even to check on her—to make sure she was happy, or safe, at the very least.

Alice climbed into the back and we sped home. The roads were empty, and so it only took a few minutes. We trooped into the house, and then went to our various pastimes.

Emmett and Jasper were in the middle of an elaborate game of chess, utilizing eight joined boards spread out along the glass back wall, and their own complicated set of rules. They wouldn’t let me play; only Alice would play games with me anymore.

Alice went to her computer just around the corner from them and I could hear her monitors sing to life. She was working on a fashion design project for Rosalie’s wardrobe, but Rosalie did not join her today, to stand behind her and direct cut and color as Alice’s hand traced over the touch-sensitive screens. Instead, today Rosalie sprawled sullenly on the sofa and started flipping through twenty channels a second on the flat screen, never