Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,72

she confirmed my theory about them.

I smiled gently as I wondered whether she had fallen in the ocean. I wondered if she’d had a pleasant time on the outing. I wondered if she’d thought about me at all. If she’d missed me even the tiniest portion of the amount that I’d missed her.

I tried to picture her in the sun on the beach. The picture was incomplete, though, because I’d never been to First Beach myself. I only knew how it looked from pictures.

I felt a tiny qualm of unease as I thought about the reason I’d never once been to the pretty beach located just a short run from my home. Bella had spent the day at La Push—a place where I was forbidden, by treaty, to go. A place where a few old men still remembered the stories about the Cullens, remembered and believed them. A place where our secret was known.

I shook my head. I had nothing to worry about there. The Quileutes were bound by treaty, too. Even had Bella run into one of those aging sages, they could reveal nothing. And why would the subject ever be broached? No—the Quileutes were perhaps the one thing I did not have to worry about.

I was angry with the sun when it began to rise. It reminded me that I could not satisfy my curiosity for days to come. Why did it choose to shine now?

With a sigh, I ducked out her window before it was light enough for anyone to see me here. I meant to stay in the thick forest by her house and see her off to school, but when I got into the trees, I was surprised to find the trace of her scent lingering on the narrow pathway there.

I followed it quickly, curiously, becoming more and more worried as it led deeper into the darkness. What had Bella been doing out here?

The trail she’d left stopped abruptly, in the middle of nowhere in particular. She’d gone just a few steps off the path, into the ferns, where she’d touched the trunk of a fallen tree. Perhaps sat there…

I sat where she had and looked around. All she would have been able to see was ferns and forest. It had probably been raining—the scent was washed out, having never set deeply into the tree.

Why would Bella have come to sit here alone—and she had been alone, no doubt about that—in the middle of the wet, murky forest?

It made no sense, and unlike those other points of curiosity, I could hardly bring this up in casual conversation.

So, Bella, I was following your scent through the woods after I left your room—just some minor breaking and entering, no need for worry, I was… exterminating spiders.… Yes, that would be quite the icebreaker.

I would never know what she’d been thinking and doing here, and that had my teeth grinding in frustration. Worse, this was far too much like the scenario I’d imagined for Emmett—Bella wandering alone in the woods, where her scent would call to anyone who had the senses to track it.

I groaned. She didn’t just have bad luck, she courted it.

Well, for this moment she had a protector. I would watch over her, keep her from harm, for as long as I could justify it.

I suddenly found myself wishing that Peter and Charlotte would make an extended stay.

8. GHOST

I DID NOT SEE MUCH OF JASPER’S GUESTS FOR THE TWO SUNNY DAYS THAT they were in Forks. I only went home at all so that Esme wouldn’t worry. Otherwise, my existence seemed like that of a specter rather than a vampire. I hovered, invisible in the shadows, where I could follow the object of my love and obsession—where I could see her and hear her in the minds of the lucky humans who could walk through the sunlight beside her, sometimes accidentally brushing the back of her hand with their own. She never reacted to such contact; their hands were just as warm as hers.

The enforced absence from school had never been a trial like this before. But the sun seemed to make her happy, so I could not resent it too much.

Monday morning, I eavesdropped on a conversation that had the potential to destroy my confidence and make the time spent away from her truly torturous. As it ended up, though, it rather made my day.

I had to feel some little respect for Mike Newton. He had more courage than I’d given him credit for.