Chapter 7

RPOV

When Bella's heartbeat had slowed down, I headed up the stairs towards what I presumed was Edward's room. I figured he would be with her. Speaking of Cullen, I needed to talk to him.

I was correct when I knocked on the door quietly, so I wouldn't wake up Bella.

"Come in," a soft whisper came from the other side of the door.

I opened the door slowly, finding Bella asleep on Edward's chest. Oh God, these two are more serious than I thought. I wonder if they've had-

"I can promise you, we haven't," Edward said in a low voice. Oh yeah, mind reader.

"Can we talk?" I asked, keeping my voice down.

He nodded. He carefully untangled himself from Bella and slid off the bed. He kissed her forehead, letting his lips linger there for a second. I suppressed a growl that was threatening to break past my lips. He stood up and motioned for me to follow him.

He jumped out of the window and I followed. I kept up with him, thanks to my newborn strength that was left, but he was still fast.

We were about three miles from the Cullen's house when he stopped. I dug my heels in the ground to keep from slamming into him and stood next to him. He sat down on a rock and patted the spot next to him. I hesitated, but joined him.

"So what would you like to know?" he asked.

"All of it. How did you and my sister meet?" I asked.

"It's a very long story," he said with a smirk.

"I would like to know what's been going on with my little sister and how she came to acquire herself with vampires," I said, putting an emphasis on 'little' to show how protective I was of her.

"I'll try to do my best," he said.

"That would be nice," I said sourly.

"Okay, well I'll start with an introduction. I'm Edward Cullen. I was born in 1901 in Chicago and was changed by Carlisle in 1918 when he found me dying of the Spanish Influenza."

I stared at him with a gaping mouth that resembled a fish out of water.

"That's old!" I gasped.

"Well, damn don't you make me feel young!" he teased.

"I'm sorry, it's just….I didn't know that when they said forever they actually meant forever."

"I'm young compared to others of our kind. Carlisle is over three hundred years old."

"Wow. So how old are you physically?"

"Seventeen."

"How old was Bella when you two met."

"She was seventeen herself. It was last January actually," he said with a far off look in his eyes.

I cast my eyes downward. Something else I missed out on. I let that thought go and continued my questions.

"How did you meet?"

"We had Biology together. You could say our first meeting wasn't a good one. She's my singer so all I could think about was killing her."

I growled. If he hurt my sister, I swear-

"I didn't hurt her. I ran away for a week to keep myself from killing her. All I could think about was how disappointed Carlisle would be that I ruined his way of life he created for us. So I ran."

"Wait, don't you go around humans all the time? Why is Bella any different?"

"Like I said, she's my singer."

"What's a singer?"

"It's difficult to explain unless you've experienced it first hand. But I'll try my best. A singer is someone who has blood that sings to a vampire, you could say. Bella's blood is the greatest smelling blood I've ever come across in my ninety years of this life. Imagine the thirstiest you've ever been and multiply that times a million. It's like swallowing a white-hot branding iron down your throat."

I could imagine it, and it hurt to just picture that.

"Ouch," I mumbled.

He chuckled humorously.

"Tell me about it," he mumbled back.

"But how are you so close to her now?"

"It took some time. But once I returned, I talked to her. I tried to figure out why she moved here. I use to think God was punishing me for all the lives I took when I rebelled against Carlisle in the thirties. I thought she was sent to destroy me or at the very least torture me. But I now know she was sent for another reason entirely. She's my fate, my forever. I've lived on this earth for over a hundred years and never have I've even thought of a girl the way I think of Bella. She's everything to me."

I stared at him as he spoke of my sister. His eyes lit up like a thousand burning suns. A blind man looking at the sun for the first time in his life. I had come to realization.

"You love her."

Not a question, but a statement of fact. He turned to face me, a smile on his face that nearly blinded me.

"More than my own life."

I looked down at the rock and started carving shapes into it with my fingers. Then something from him earlier statement came to mind.

"You said you rebelled against Carlisle in the thirties. What did you mean by that?" I asked, looking at him.

He turned his head away from me and stared at starless sky.

"It was before I met Bella. My life before her, you could say, was meaningless, as cheesy as that sounds. But literally, I was just there in body. My family couldn't really be around me without feeling depressed by my mood. I had no reason to live. I hadn't found a reason too. Not until Bella at least. But in the thirties, I got fed up with trying to pretend to be something I wasn't. I was sick of pretending to be human. I got angry at Carlisle, for mostly saving me. I should have died in 1918, and I got angry at him for playing God. So I left and lived on my own for a decade. I only preyed on the murderers and rapists. The ones who tortured people and the ones who I thought didn't deserve to live. But then I realized, I was the one playing God. I had become something I told myself I would never be. Then I went back to Carlisle, and he accepted me with open arms."

"Does Bella know this?" I asked, wondering if he had kept these secrets to himself.

"Yes, she knows everything about me. I tried to keep her from finding out everything. I wanted her to have a chance at a normal life, the way it should have been for her if she had never met me. But as you can see, that didn't entirely work out."

"Bella said at one point she thought you didn't love her…." I trailed off with a confused look.

He tensed up and I could see his face grow solemn. I feared the worst. How bad was it?

"It was the biggest mistake of my life," he answered my thoughts.

"What happened?" I had to know. He took a deep breath as pain flashed across his face.

"I thought I was doing what was best for her, but in the end it only hurt us both. It almost got both of us killed," he whispered with his eyes closed.

Anger was seeping out of me. What happened that almost got Bella killed?

"I left her last fall," he said so softly, I almost didn't hear it.

I got confused. He left her? How did that almost kill them?

"On her eighteenth birthday, there was an accident at a party we threw for her. She got a paper cut and Jasper is still new to this life. He hadn't hunted that day and he lost it. He came so close to hurting her, and I knew then that I was putting her in danger. It opened my eyes to see how much she risked her life everyday to just be around me. So I did what I thought was best for her. I left. I lied through my teeth and told her I didn't love her."

My anger calmed down a little when I saw how much pain he was going through to just tell me this. Could I be wrong about how much they actually love each other? It was pretty obvious he would jump in front of a bullet for her. The way he talked about her and the look he got in his eyes.

"I told myself she would move on, find a human, get married, have children, grow old, then die. It's what was suppose to happen to her if I had never interfered in her life. But all it did was cause both of us pain for eight months. Then one day she decided to go cliff diving…." he trailed off with a small growl.

"What!" I yelled. Bella went cliff diving! Oh, her and I were going to have a talk when I see her again.

"Alice saw a vision of her cliff diving, thinking she was committing suicide. She came back to Forks to help Charlie get over Bella's suppose death, but only ended up coming back to find Bella alive. Alice can't see the werewolves, so she didn't see Bella get pulled out of the water. But it was too late. Rosalie had already called me, and I was on my way to Italy."

"Why?"

"Because I can't live knowing she's dead. While I was gone those months, I told myself that the day she died, would be the day I died. I can't live if she doesn't. And I thought she was dead, so I went to the Volturi. I'm sure Victoria told you about them," he said, glancing at me, growling on Victoria's name.

"A little. She told me that they're royalty in our world and that they enforce laws," I answered.

"Yes, well I went to them to ask them to kill me. Of course, they denied me so I knew I had to act to get them to do what I wanted them to do. I had to break the number one rule. Expose myself to the humans."

"But hadn't you already broken that rule with Bella?"

"Yes, but they, along with myself, believed she was dead. That's their rule. Tell a human about the existence of vampires and you have two options. Option one is to turn that human into one of us or kill them. And we believed she was dead, so technically they couldn't use that against me. So I had to act. I was almost to the point of revealing myself when a little human by the name of Bella Swan came slamming into me, literally at the last second. We barely escaped Volterra alive, but we escaped nonetheless."

"And Bella took you back, just like that?"

"Just like that," he confirmed.

"She is a selfless person," I murmured.

Edward chuckled.

"She's too selfless for her own good. Just one of the many things I love about her," he said.

It was silent for a minute before I thought of something.

"Why did Victoria want to kill Bella so badly?" I asked.

He stared at me with a serious expression on his face.

"Your sister is a danger magnet," was all he said.

I scoffed. As if I didn't already know that. He laughed at my thoughts and I laughed with him. But I couldn't let go why Victoria was after Bella so badly.

"You remember today, when I said she wanted to avenge her true mate, James?" he asked.

I turned to him and nodded.

"Before I left Bella, I took her out with my family to play baseball one day. There was a small coven coming through town that day. They heard us playing and got curious. There were three of them. James, Laurent, and-"

"Victoria," I finished for him. He nodded his head.

"James was a tracker, and he smelled Bella's blood. He wanted it so bad, I could see it in his head. He wasn't going to stop until he drank every drop of her. It was his most exciting game ever," he said darkly.

"What happened?" I asked through clenched teeth.

"We got Bella away safely, but somehow we lost the tracker. We didn't know he had followed Bella, Alice, and Jasper down to Phoenix. They went there to keep Bella safe, but he got around our walls. He managed to trick us all. He almost killed her, but not before I got there in time. But the damage was already done. He had bitten her."

I gasped. I didn't understand. Bella was still human. How was that possible?

"I sucked the venom out. It was the second hardest thing I had to do, next to leaving her, but I managed to get it out without killing her."

I stared at him with an open mouth and wide eyes. He drank her blood and didn't kill her? How is that possible? She's his singer. Even if he is over a hundred years old, wouldn't it still be impossible to stop?

"It almost was," he said answering my thoughts. "But my love for her overruled everything else. All I could think about was keeping her from turning. She wasn't ready for that. She didn't know what would come with being a vampire at the time."

I took a deep breath.

"Wow, she really is a danger magnet," I said.

He chuckled humorously.

"You have no idea. I've saved her life more than I can count. Another reason I was put in her life," he said.

"What all have you saved her from?" I asked warily. How many times has my sister life been put in danger?

"Well, first there was our first meeting. Then a van almost crushed her…." he trailed off.

"Oh, God," I groaned. Only Bella would attract a van to almost crush her.

"It gets worse. There were men in Port Angeles," he said.

"What!" I shouted so loud, it shook the trees. I jumped up in anger, balling my up my fists, itching to hit something. I was seething. I swear to God if those men as much as touched her, I would rip them lib from lib.

"I got to her before they got their hands on her. Trust me when I say the only thing keeping me from ripping them lib from lib and feeding it to them was Bella. If she hadn't been sitting there, they wouldn't be breathing right now," he said, his own anger seeping through his voice.

I took a deep breath to calm myself. Then I felt horrible.

"I should have been there to protect her. I've missed out on so much of her life," I said, my voice breaking.

I went over and sat back down on the rock. I buried my face in my hands in shame. If I had never left, none of these horrible things would have happened to her. I would have been able to protect her. But I couldn't even do that.

I felt Edward put a hand on my shoulder.

"I'm sure you had your reasons for leaving, just like I did," he said.

I growled. My reasons were stupid and selfish.

"No, I left for my own selfish reasons," I spoke my thoughts.

A flash of that day shot through my mind. Bella crying, her black eye, punching Mack in the face over and over. I felt Edward's hand rip away from my shoulder. I felt anger coming off of him in waves.

"What. Was. That."

He seemed to be trying to control his anger, but he was failing miserably.

"The day I left. Didn't Bella ever tell you about that?" I asked, confused.

"No. I never even knew she had a brother until today," he said.

I was hurt. She never spoke of me? I guess I deserved that for abandoning her all those years ago. I deserved her hatred.

"She doesn't hate you. She seemed kind of down the past few months, but I never pushed her on what was wrong. I guess it's when they found out you were missing. She loves you, I can tell," he said, putting his hand on my shoulder again.

"I don't know why. I left her when I should have stayed and faced everything with her," I said.

"What happened that day?" he asked, his anger coming back.

"Renee was dating this guy named Mack. I didn't like him from the beginning, and I could tell Bella didn't like him either. There was just something about him that didn't seem right. And my fears were confirmed one day when it was just me, Bella, and him at home. Renee was out and he was down in the kitchen. Bella went downstairs to get something and she came back up with a black eye. I had to bug her about it until she finally cracked and told me. He tried to get her to lie and say she hit herself with the fridge door, when really he hit her because she spilled juice on his paperwork. I lost it then. All I saw was red. I went downstairs and just punched him over and over again. Renee found us and tore me off of him. She didn't believe me when I said what he did to Bella, and I left. I couldn't take her believing her own son over some creep. I haven't spoken to her since that day. I hadn't even spoken to Bella until today," I said, shame and guilt in my voice.

It was quiet for a minute until Edward broke it.

"Is there any way I can find this Mack guy and kill him?" he said, dead seriousness in his voice.

"You can try. I don't know what happened to him. I heard Renee and broken up with him a week later, but I didn't go back. I wasn't going to apologize for something I didn't do. I figured if she wanted to talk to me, she would contact me."

It was quiet again, neither of us knowing what to say. Soon, it became a little awkward. Edward chuckled at my thoughts and turned to look at the lightening sky.

"Bella will be waking up soon. I should be there when she does," he said jumping off the rock.

"Edward," I said before he ran off.

He turned to me.

"Please, take care of her. Promise me you won't ever hurt her," I said.

He smiled at me.

"If I hurt her, I'll be begging for you to kill me," he said.

"Just love her the way she deserves to be loved."

"I promise to love her for eternity," he stated so clearly, there was no way I could doubt him.

"One more thing. You have my blessing," I said with a smile.

He returning smile was so big, it would blind a human. He turned to fully face me.

"Thank you. You don't know how much that means to me," he said.

We ran towards the house after that. When we got inside, he ran up the stairs towards Bella's heartbeat and I stayed in the living room. I let everything he had just told me sink in, and I knew then, I had made the right choice in giving them my blessing.

Okay, I know it's been FOREVER! Life has been crazy! I was gone a month and I wasn't near a computer while I was away. So I made this chapter extra long because one, you guys deserved it for having to wait so long and two, it was kind of necessary. I knew that conversation was going to take forever to get out there. It's just one that made itself long. Edward had to fill Riley in on all that's happened up to that point and Riley had to explain to Edward why he left. Besides, who doesn't like Bella's two favoirte men bonding? :) Just putting a little Edward/Riley sibling bonding in there. So enjoy and I hope to update again soon! BTW, I guess you can tell I changed my penname, so don't freak out and think someone took over my story! It's still me, just a different penname! :) Until next time.

~Taylor~