𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐮𝐬𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐮𝐦 | 𝐜.𝐝 𝐟𝐟

𝙢𝙤𝙨𝙩 𝙞𝙢𝙥𝙤𝙧𝙩𝙖𝙣𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜.

Millions of questions swarmed my head. I wished I could conjure a quill and parchment to write down every single questions. Muggle way it is then.

"Does that happen often?" I asked.

He looked across the treetops, thinking through his response.

"I spoke to my brothers about it." He still stared into the distance.

"To Jasper, every one of you is much the same. He's the most recent to join our family. It's a struggle for him to abstain at all. He hasn't had time to grow sensitive to the differences in smell, in flavor." He glanced swiftly at me, his expression apologetic. My face probably did not hide my emotions at all.

"Sorry," he said.

"I don't mind. Please, go ahead. Don't worry about offending me, or frightening me, or whichever. That's the way you think. I can understand, or I can try to at least. Just explain however you can."

He took a deep breath and gazed at the sky again.

"So Jasper wasn't sure if he'd ever come across someone who was as" — he hesitated, looking for the right word — "appealing as you are to me. Which makes me think not. Emmett has been on the wagon longer, so to speak, and he understood what I meant. He says twice, for him, once stronger than the other."

"And for you?"

"Never." The word hung there for a moment in the warm breeze.

"What did Emmett do?" I asked to break the silence.

It was the wrong question to ask. His face grew dark, his hand clenched into a fist inside mine. He looked away. I waited, but he wasn't going to answer.

"I guess I know," I finally said. He lifted his eyes; his expression was wistful, pleading.

"Even the strongest of us fall off the wagon, don't we?"

"What are you asking? My permission?" My voice was sharper than I'd intended. I tried to make my tone kinder — I could guess what his honesty must cost him. "I mean, is there no hope, then?" How calmly I could discuss my death when I've been near it a month ago. Trauma had its way of desensitizing people.

"No, no!" He was instantly contrite. "Of course there's hope! I mean, of course I won't..." He left the sentence hanging. His eyes burned into mine.

"It's different for us. Emmett... these were strangers he happened across. It was a long time ago, and he wasn't as... practiced, as careful, as he is now." He fell silent and watched me intently as I thought it through.

"So if we'd met... oh, in a dark alley or something..." I trailed off.

"It took everything I had not to jump up in the middle of that class full of children and —" He stopped abruptly, looking away. I didn't bother mentioning I knew every plan he'd went through to kill me.

"When you walked past me, I could have ruined everything Carlisle has built for us, right then and there. If I hadn't been denying my thirst for the last, well, too many years, I wouldn't have been able to stop myself." He paused, scowling at the trees.

He glanced at me grimly, both of us remembering. "You must have thought I was possessed."

"I couldn't understand why. How you could hate me so much..."

"To me, it was like you were some kind of demon, summoned straight from my own personal hell to ruin me. The fragrance coming off your skin... I thought it would make me deranged that first day. In that one hour, I thought of a hundred different ways to lure you from the room with me, to get you alone. And I fought them each back, thinking of my family, what I could do to them. I had to run out, to get away before I could speak the words that would make you follow..." He looked up then at my staggered expression as I tried to absorb his bitter memories. His golden eyes scorched from under his lashes, hypnotic and deadly.