Saturday

I awoke this morning vibrating with nervous excitement, as though it were Christmas Eve and I still a child. She will come to me; today she will come to me; the words sang through my mind.

When I stepped in to the auditorium to address the current crop of new students, there she was in front of the stage, waiting for me. Irrationally I hoped that perhaps she'd chosen that seat on purpose, unwilling to be an further from me than decorum demanded. Did she feel it too, I wondered? She looked pale with nervousness, and there were shadows beneath her eyes. If she shared my bed, she would sleep better, with me to watch over her...

I have set foot in alternate worlds that were so like our own that I could not find the point of divergence, worlds so similar to my home that I hunted in vain for the difference (knowing only that there must be one, for why else would the worlds exist if not to play out different storylines). Yet even in these most similar alternates, I knew that I was not home. There is a feeling of wrongness when you cross over. I know the others have experienced it too. Alice says that to her it is like hearing a familiar song played with just one note wrong: jarring and unsettling even if you are not consciously aware of what went wrong.

Being near Bella is the opposite of that. I could feel the rightness of it seeping through my skin, even at a distance, until I was soaked through with contentment and a kind of restful joy. If I had faith that Gd had not turned his back on me-if I only knew for certain that I had not transgressed unforgivably in stepping out of my world, that I had not forsaken my soul in blending with the other Edwards-I would have said that this was His way of communicating that I was making the right choice.

But every time I blended-every time I eliminated some other-Edward merely by stepping into his world so that the two of us became one person-was I reclaiming a piece of my soul, or committing a murder? Is what I did forgivable? Or have I extinguished men as worthy as I was, and made myself an eternal outcast?

I know Carlyle wrestles with these questions as well, but he has a consolation I do not: Esme was at his side when he travelled beyond our version of reality, so he never left some poor other-Esme bereft.

But it is evening now, and the setting of the sun always leaves me gloomy and prey to melancholy thoughts. This morning I was not in so bleak a mood. Seeing her sitting there, trying not to blush beneath the heat of my gaze, made me feel more alive and playful than I have in years. So when I reached that point in the lecture when I always broach the delicate subject of who leads in a relationship, and who follows-and how immutable that is for most people, and, more importantly, how for many people the only hint they will ever have comes through their reaction to fiction-I called her to the stage.

She came to me, as I had known she would, and when I kissed her I felt her melt into my arms, trembling and helpless and oh, so willing to be mine. She may not have known it, may not have had any clear understanding of her own reactions, but every response was a declaration of her readiness to yield to my intent: each delicate shiver of nervous excitement; the way her lips parted beneath mine; her body, pressing itself instinctively against the length of mine. When I lifted my head her eyes were still closed, and the pulse in her throat beat visibly, quickening my own heartbeat.

I cannot describe, even to myself, how it felt to hold her. It was like catching a scent on the wind, delicate yet impossibly delectable, and knowing it is the one food that can satiate your hunger. (A clumsy metaphor, that, but now I cannot help laughing at the possibility that somewhere, in one of the parallel universes, there is an Edward who chooses his Bella by scent.) The rightness of us together was undeniable. She opened her eyes, and I read the confusion there, and wished I could explain it all to her.

How insane would I sound, if I tried to tell her that again and again, in a fathomless number of worlds, she and I are meant to be together?

But later, when the students were absorbed in one of the endless bits of work we use to try to make them understand the way things really are, I started to hate myself for daring to pursue her.

If she stays close to us, it's only a matter of time before she finds a threshold and crosses over herself.

Whatever moral peril we have put ourselves in, my family and I, do I really want Bella to share in it? It's one thing that I may have jeopardized my own soul; it's a far, far worse one that now I am on the brink of drawing her in as well.

So I went to her, and brought her to my rooms, and stood there-nearly overwhelmed with the desire to pull her into my arms and lay full claim to her, body and soul-and tried to warn her away.

I only succeeded in confusing her further, I suspect, and from the expression on her face she has no intention of giving up so easily. She thinks we may suitable subjects for a federal investigation; how can I convince her that we're more dangerous than she can imagine?

We cross from one storyline to another, as easily as most people enter and leave buildings. We have found worlds that this world thinks are fiction; we have been to places so beautiful they could never be captured in worlds; we have been to places so dark, so evil, that I worry to this day that blending with the Edwards of those worlds has corrupted me in some fashion.

Whereas she still thinks stories are just that: stories. How can I bear to complicate her life with mine, cursed as it is?