I was sure, though, in the instant our eyes met, that he didn’t look harsh or unfriendly as he had the last time I’d seen him. He looked merely curious again, unsatisfied in some way.

His liquid topaz eyes were penetrating — trying futilely, I assumed, to lift the truth straight from my mind.

I stared because their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful.

He must see how absorbed I was by him; he must not want to lead me on… so we couldn’t even be friends… because he wasn’t interested in me at all.

He was dangerous. He’d been trying to tell me that all along.

There was no rational explanation for how I was alive at this moment.

How did you get over here so fast?

I feel very safe with you.

I was consumed by the mystery Edward presented. And more than a little obsessed by Edward himself.

I couldn’t allow him to have this level of influence over me. It was pathetic. More than pathetic, it was unhealthy.