saving one another. I want to save you, Fredward! Why won't you let it be my turn? We have to turn equally! I mean we have to have equal turns! I want a turn, Fredward!!" I was gnashing my teeth and my heart monitor was beeping so hard that it threatened to fall off the table.
He folded his arms on the side of my bed, lowering them to just below his stomach. His expression was smooth, the anger reined in. Evidently he'd decided that I had a point. I hoped I'd get a chance to brag about it to Alice.
"You have saved me," he mumbled.
"In what way?"
He growled. "You don't know what you're asking." His voice was soft; he buried it in the pill'o'case.
"I think I do."
"Bella, you don't. I've had almost ninety years to think about this, and I'm still not sure."
"Do you wish that you hadn't become a vampire? Do you wish that Carbomb hadn't saved you from dying?"
"That's different, Bella. You aren't dying."
"I'm dying every day that I'm still alive, Fredward. Every moment brings me closer to my end. And even before that I'll be old, and then I might as well be dead because you won't find me attractive anymore. You'll be seventeen forever and someday, if you don't change me, I'll be thirty. And then I'll be forty. By the time I get my first grey hair, I'll basically be rotting in my grave..." I sniffled. "I'll be old and grey, and you'll find the first excuse you can to not love me anymore... Is that what you want?"
"No, that's not what I want." He paused before continuing. "But my life was over when Carbomb saved me. I wasn't giving anything up."
"You are my life, Fredward. You. This is the only thing it would hurt me to lose." I gestured between us: "This." I was getting better at this. It was becoming increasingly easy to admit how much I needed him.
He was very calm, though. Decided.
"I can't do it, Bella. I won't do that to you."
"Why not?" My throat rasped and the words weren't as loud as I'd meant them to be. "Don't tell me how hard it is! Don't tell me it's too hard! After today, or I guess it was a few days ago... anyway, after that... it should be nothing."
He glared at me.
"And the pain?"

475

Chapter 24

←

→

main contents contact