Humans were constantly desperate to feel normal, to fit in. To blend in with everyone else around them, like a featureless flock of sheep.
Would I drag them away, out of her sight, and leave her alone here? It was a long shot that another psychopath would be prowling the streets of Port Angeles tonight, but it was a long shot that there was even a first! Here was proof positive that I was not insane-like a magnet, she drew all things dangerous toward herself. If I were not close enough to provide it, some other evil would take my place.
I guess that wasn’t the best idea,” I muttered, feeling like an ass.
Everything Austen, though I’m not a huge fan of Emma – ” Austen I already knew, having seen her battered anthology the day she read outside, but I wondered at the exclusion. “Why not?” “Ugh, she’s so full of herself.
How did it go? he wondered warily. “Nobody died,” I mumbled.
You really shouldn’t do that to people.” Bella interrupted my thoughts in a disapproving tone. “It’s hardly fair.
For this to be the twilight of your life, though your life has barely started. You’re ready to give up everything.
It was strange how much I hadn’t understood before Bella. She had changed me more than I’d known it was possible for me to change and still remain myself.
I could kill every spider in her home, cut the thorns off every rosebush she might one day touch, block every speeding car that got within a mile of her, but there was no task I could perform that would make me something other than what I was. I stared at my white, stone-like hand – so grotesquely inhuman – and despaired. I could not hope to compete against the human boys, whether these specific boys appealed to her or not.
I fall down a lot when I run,” she said sheepishly.
I could imagine how lovely the place would be on a day like this. I could smell the wildflowers, sweeter in the warmth, and hear the low burble of the stream on the far side. The insects hummed, and far away, birds trilled and crooned.
A word I’d never said before in the presence of a lady slid between my clenched teeth.
She would enjoy that. And her happiness had become the most important thing. More important than my own.
It felt as if a new sun was bursting into being where our mouths met, and my whole body was filled to a shatter point with the brilliant light of it.
The monster was stronger than before, rejoicing. He embraced this dual future that gave him a fifty-fifty chance at what he craved so viciously. The third, shaky future I’d tried to construct through willpower alone had collapsed – destroyed by common jealousy, of all things – and he was so much closer to his goal.
Her virtue, my vice, the two opposites binding us together.
Happy. Perhaps this was the reason for her unusual kindness – she was one of those rare people who had what she wanted and wanted what she had.
Alice snagged it. She could see I was likely to put my fist through the card reader as I was to wait patiently for the machine to work.
As a man of peace, Jasper struggled. But as a man of war, he was more that I’d ever imagined.
Beat the element of desire entirely out of myself.