Chapter Text
When I first came to Forks, there was a strange emptiness inside me, one I couldn’t quite name. To be honest, I had felt that emptiness long before I arrived here—ever since I was born, really. I never believed in the nonsense that you’d be “complete” once you found your soulmate, yet I truly did feel incomplete. As if some essential piece between my limbs was missing, and no matter how hard I searched, I couldn’t put it back where it belonged.
After meeting Edward, I thought maybe. Maybe people were right, maybe every mortal really did have a savior in the form of a soulmate. Maybe mine was Edward. But if that were true, then why didn’t I feel at peace? Why was the emptiness still there?
After becoming part of the Cullen family, my life changed a little. I was running from one danger to another. My old monotonous life was long gone. Chasing constant adventures allowed me to push that emptiness to the background for a while. I tried not to care about it, treated it like a wound that needed to be covered. Wasn’t that what people always said? If you want your wounds to heal, don’t think about them bleeding. Forget they even exist… maybe then they’ll heal.
That’s what I tried to do. But just like with everything else, people were wrong about this too. The wound that emptiness had carved into me never closed…
“Bella, did you trip over your own feet again?”
Emmett’s teasing voice pulled my gaze away from the person I had been staring at, as he plopped onto the armchair right in front of me. Carlisle was wrapping a bandage around my wrist, and Emmett’s grin made me answer him with a shy smile. Still, my disobedient eyes kept seeking a chance to drift back—back past Emmett’s massive shoulder to the blonde, frowning young woman behind him. I resisted. I refused to let my gaze wander from Emmett’s face, though the magazine in her hands had been stuck on the same page for minutes now.
“So why did you punch Jacob in the face?”
I wasn’t sure if I should give that answer in front of everyone, but Emmett’s curious eyes didn’t leave me much choice. With a small shrug, I said flatly, “Jacob tried to kiss me, so I punched him in the face.” I lifted my bandaged wrist and gave it a small wave. “And this is how it ended up.”
The moment I said it, I could feel Edward tense behind me. My attention should have gone to him, but instead my eyes betrayed me—sliding to Rosalie. She had finally lifted her gaze from the magazine, and now, from between her furrowed brows, she was staring straight at me. I could almost hear the crisp sound of the cover wrinkling under her cold, pale fingers as she gripped it too tightly.
It was as if no one else in the room existed. Just us. Just her and the angry crumple of paper between her hands.
Emmett’s next comment broke the silence. The very instant Rosalie caught his words, she snapped the magazine shut and slammed it onto the chair beside her. Without a single attempt to hide her fury, she rose and strode toward the stairs, her footsteps sharp and fast. A heartbeat later, the sound of her door slamming echoed through the house.
Emmett had once said I’d make a beautiful newborn after marrying Edward. Rosalie, however, had disliked me from the very first moment we met, and I never understood why. Every time I thought about it, the emptiness inside me grew wider, making it harder to breathe.
“Don’t mind her, Bells. She’ll come around.”
I gave Emmett a polite smile, nodding lightly. Edward’s cold hand settled on my shoulder, but instead of comfort, it stirred an odd unease in me. I instinctively pulled back a little, offering Edward an apologetic glance.
“I’ve just been feeling unusually cold lately, I don’t know why,” I murmured. Edward smiled gently, withdrawing his hand before turning back to his conversation with Carlisle.
The two of them discussed the details of Victoria and the army she was gathering to hunt us down. Soon, Emmett and Jasper joined them.
At last, I was finally alone, away from all the attention that usually swirled around me. Esme and Alice had gone out to feed, and it was clear they wouldn’t be back for a while. I glanced briefly toward Edward and the others; the intense discussion they were engaged in didn’t look like it would be ending anytime soon.
Maybe I was making a mistake—I wasn’t sure. But even as the thought crossed my mind, I swallowed nervously and turned my face toward the staircase. Ever since the very first step I had taken into the Cullens’ lives, that woman had treated me like her enemy. She was up there now, somewhere in her room.
I couldn’t help wondering: if I went to her, would she kill me on the spot, or would she spare me because I was going to marry her brother?
In truth, I didn’t care about the answer. The only thing I wanted was to go into her room and talk to her. Otherwise, the noise in my head—this chaos of unanswered questions—would never fall silent.
Thank God Edward couldn’t hear my thoughts. If he could, I would never be able to explain why I craved Rosalie’s attention so badly. I couldn’t even explain it to myself. All I knew was that the first time I ever noticed the Cullens in the cafeteria, it wasn’t Edward I saw. It was her.
Yes, Rosalie was the first one I saw, and the strange rush of excitement that filled me made me blurt out to Jessica, asking who they were. I remember every detail: how Jessica whispered Rosalie’s name, how she told me Rosalie was married to Emmett, how Rosalie and I locked eyes the instant she walked into the cafeteria—and how Jessica forced me to look down with those last words.
I had followed them with my gaze as they crossed to the rectangular table, but Rosalie never once looked at me again. She was content with that single glance at the door. And I, foolishly, had kept glancing back at the table, hoping our eyes would meet again—only to find Edward’s gaze fixed on me each time. The memory makes me smile bitterly.
Edward. He was precious to me, more than I could put into words. And yet, that day in the cafeteria, he was the very last person I noticed.
Deep down, I think I know the real reason for this emptiness inside me. But I don’t have the courage to admit it, not even to myself…
It couldn’t go on like this. I couldn’t just sit downstairs drowning in my own thoughts. That’s why I stood up, headed toward the stairs, and lifted a hand toward Edward when he turned to me.
“I want to have a girl-to-girl talk. I’ll be back soon,” I said. That was enough to keep him from following me. I didn’t want him to follow, anyway.
This conversation needed to happen. At least, I needed it to happen. I needed to face her. I needed to face her to know how to go on.
I knocked on the door, but I didn’t wait for permission. Turning the handle slowly, I stepped inside, closing the door behind me. My back pressed against the wood, my hand still resting on the doorknob, and my eyes locked on the figure standing at the terrace.
She looked like a Greek goddess—tall, flawless, graceful, beautiful, heavy with gloom, and… unbearably arrogant.
Even without seeing her face, I could feel her eyes rolling when she turned her head slightly to the side. She always did that when she saw me.
“Did you come here just to stand and stare at me? Or do you actually have something to say?”
I pushed myself away from the door and began walking toward her, but before I could get close, she turned her head fully over her shoulder and caught my eyes.
“Just so you know, I have no interest in your little fantasies of marrying Edward and becoming a newborn. If that’s what you came here to talk about, you’ll find me a very unwilling listener.”
Her words cut sharper than any blade. She turned back to the view, while I stood frozen in place, fingers twined together, unable to move. I didn’t even know what I was waiting for. I hadn’t come here to stay silent, yet the courage that had carried me up the stairs seemed to vanish the moment I stepped through the door—leaving only the same yawning emptiness that grew inside me day by day.
“I don’t understand why you hate me, Rosalie!”
At last, I managed to speak, though the words scraped their way out of my throat like a choked-back sob. Still, I fought it. I didn’t cry.
“H a t e.”
Rosalie spelled the word out slowly, pressing on each letter with precision. I could see the mocking curve of her beautiful lips, the tension in her shoulders. Then, all at once, her expression shifted into something raw—like a soul trapped inside a narrow cage. Her face darkened. If she had needed to breathe, I was certain she would have sighed in that very moment. Because I knew that feeling. I felt it often. That suffocating sense of helplessness.
But Rosalie was supposed to be the farthest thing from helpless. She was beautiful, strong, immortal, anything but ordinary.
“I don’t hate you, B e l l a,” she said, giving my name that particular emphasis she always did. I so rarely heard it from her lips, and yet despite how seldom she said it, she always pronounced it with the most careful precision.
“Not that I particularly like you, either…”
Her lips curved into a wry smile as she dropped her gaze from the forest beyond to the terrace railing her pale hands were gripping. “Who am I kidding?”
When she turned back toward me, I saw it—the pain glimmering in her honey-colored eyes. Vampires weren’t supposed to wear their emotions so clearly, and yet Rosalie and Edward always could.
“I don’t hate you, Bella. I just… envy you.”
“You envy me?”
The words stuck in my throat. I swallowed, furrowed my brows, then lifted them again, still trying to process what she had just confessed.
“What exactly are you trying to say?” I asked. And for not understanding her, in one of the few real conversations she had ever granted me, I felt like the biggest fool.
As if she had guessed my thoughts, she smiled faintly, shaking her head. “You think I’m someone to be envied, don’t you? There’s no other explanation for the admiration in your eyes…”
I said nothing. I couldn’t answer that question. Because if I did—if I told the truth—I knew I’d lose her forever.
Stupid Bella — you needed to look her straight in the eyes to understand everything, didn’t you? You couldn’t read what was happening the moment you first locked eyes. So what would you do now? How would you decide while she kept looking at you like that?
“You’re making a mistake, Bella,” she said, as if, for a moment, she’d lost interest in the question she’d been asking. Then she fixed her gaze on mine. She looked at me so intensely it felt like the soul they denied even existed was drawing my own toward her. There could be no other explanation for that intensity.
I couldn’t resist. I quickened my steps, closed the last distance between us, and stood beside her. Like her, I rested my hands on the railing and turned my head to the left to study the view again, while glancing down at her honey-colored eyes.
“You shouldn’t marry Edward.”
For a heartbeat she frowned, then immediately returned to that expression of deep unease and turned her face back to me. When our eyes met again, we stood in silence, staring at one another. “It’s heartbreaking how eager you are to give up your life. Immortality is not as beautiful as you think, Bella.”
“What is it that hurts you?” I asked suddenly. She frowned slightly, as if there were more than one reason, and for a moment simply held my gaze. “Not being human,” she answered after a while, smiling sadly before turning her head back to the view. In the dark of the night she watched the smoky clouds drifting over the forests of Forks. “I wasn’t given a choice, Bella, but you have one. And yet you insist on choosing wrong.”
“I haven’t chosen anything yet,” I said, my voice sharpening with irritation. She didn’t know anything about me. I hated that she saw me only as a parasite craving immortality.
“In the end you will choose,” she said, and then fixed her eyes on mine again. “And believe me—when that day comes, your greatest passion will not be Edward. It will be something else entirely.”
I looked into her eyes for a long moment in silence. My greatest passion was not Edward, anyway. How bitter it was that, despite her looking so closely into my eyes, she could not see the admiration I felt.
“What will it be?” I asked, though I didn’t really care about the answer. I let my gaze roam as if expecting an answer.
“Blood.”
I froze. “That’s not true,” I blurted out before I’d thought about the reply. She grinned at me like I was mad. For the first time I saw her truly smile.
My answer seemed to intrigue her. She tilted her head slightly. “Then what is true?” she asked. As I looked at her, swallowing, the color of her eyes drew me like a magnet. Edward’s eyes had never affected me like that. The first day we talked, Edward told me that his gaze, his scent, and his voice affected me—but the strange thing was, for me, the only one who could affect me in all three ways was Rosalie, not Edward. Still, I couldn’t tell either of them that. I felt trapped in a strange paradox. I didn’t want to be the problem that entered the family. I didn’t want to be the bad woman who shattered centuries-old order and bonds.
“Don’t you have an answer, Bella?”
“My answer is standing in front of me,” I said, surprising Rosalie with the certainty in my voice. I slid my right hand close to hers, then reached out and covered her hand with mine. She stared, surprised, then looked from our hands back up at my face. Without saying anything, I moved closer, pressing my body against hers so my breath hit the bare skin revealed by her blouse. She swallowed and closed her eyes. I could see the tension in her jaw, the way her teeth clenched. But I wasn’t afraid of her. I had the courage to go a little further. I used that courage and took one more step—lifting myself onto my toes and pressing our bodies together completely. I pressed the right side of my throat to the corner of her jaw, not kissing, only letting her feel my warmth, and tipped my head to the left so my racing pulse brushed the corner of her mouth. She could have, in that moment, sunk her teeth into my pulse and ended me—yet I knew Rosalie wouldn’t. After Carlisle, she was the most resilient person in the family.
“Bella!” she breathed, in a whisper. “What do you think you’re doing?”
It wasn’t a rebuke. Her voice was so soft and melodic it sounded like surrender—and that surrender made the emptiness inside me close a little with every breath I took.
“I’m showing you,” I said, sliding my hands up from her forearms to rest on her shoulders. I knew she missed the warmth of human skin. I was now certain of her earlier confession. Rosalie missed everything about being human—even the smallest details.
When I cupped both sides of her throat, Rosalie turned her face and pressed her lips to my skin—but she didn’t part them, she didn’t bite. She didn’t attempt it. She simply pressed only her lips to my throat and held them there. I felt an inexplicable urge to be kissed. She wanted to kiss me but couldn’t. She didn’t cross the line I had already passed. Of course—Rosalie and her restraint. How could I forget?
“You could have that long-desired blood right now if you wanted—but you’re not taking it.”
I suddenly pulled my throat away from her lips, throwing my head back as I met those striking honey-colored eyes with open defiance.
“Your greatest passion isn’t blood, Rosalie! Which means even if I were turned, mine might not be, either.”
She gave no reply. She only leaned her head against the railing again, turning her face back toward the moonlight reflected in her eyes. I could see the faint curve of a half-smile on her lips.
“My greatest passion is something I can never have, Bella…”