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In her final days as a human, Edward takes everything in: her heartbeat and warm skin and the color of veins and flesh; the pink blush on her cheeks; her little gasps and sighs; the sentences she strings together in her sleep; the sound the soap bar makes when she drops it in the shower; the way she pours her cereal in the morning.
He watches over her while she sleeps one last time, cradling her body in his arms, a quilt wrapped around her to keep the warmth in tight. Edward, she mumbles, and then, a couple babbles later he couldn’t quite decipher: Forever.
When she wakes, Jacob’s already on the landline, eager to talk to her. Until your heart stops beating, he would always say to her; and this is it. Edward allows them to talk in peace, and when he comes back into the kitchen Bella is sobbing into her bowl of cereal, her cheeks wet with tears.
“Oh, Bella.” He sighs, taking her flushed cheeks into his hands. Her body subtly flinches at his cold palms, a reflex she soon will learn to live without.
The date has been set for weeks, months; Alice has clued into the future to make sure no mishaps happen. They won’t—things will go perfect, Edward tells Bella each time she expresses doubt. Like another monster, a big animal or something stronger than Edward, will get to her blood before he can. Or it’ll rain and their clothes will get drenched, the fog clouding Bella right in front of his eyes, eyelashes flickering with rain water.
Bella Swan has never known perfection—something bad will always happen. Edward has realized through the months he’s had to vow himself to show her what perfect looks like. Now is the time.
“It’s not too late,” he tells her, sincere. His eyes ache. His promises to her feel bare and broken.
Her head bowed to her cereal, Bella shakes her head.
Edward starts to speak, but nothing comes of it, tongue fat in his mouth; a silent concede of defeat. Once again, Bella’s stubbornness wins. She wants this—Edward would never deprive her of anything.
One last tear drips down her cheek. A tear for Charlie, Renée, Jacob, her high school friends, the people she was destined to meet in the future.
When they reach the meadow, Edward calls Carlisle to tell him they’ve arrived; everyone is on standby in case something goes wrong—Bella reacts badly to the venom, or worse, Edward can’t control himself. Only so many pep talks from Carlisle can ease Edward’s worries and remind him of the amount of strength he possesses for this very moment.
A warm late summer breeze wafts through Bella’s hair. She settles her back on the ground, her eyes tracking Edward as he lays beside her. He strokes her cheek and waits for the patch of blush to appear.
“We’re in no rush,” he says, pulling her closer.
As if to respond, Bella’s eyes flicker down to his lips, and then she’s kissing him, her hands tangled in his bronze hair. He sighs longingly in her mouth, her sweet taste on his tongue.
His head is spinning. Bella’s eyes look like dark lakes, the white reflection of himself in them the moon. One last time, her breath so close to his, he asks, “What are you thinking?”
“I’m ready.”
The pain is excruciating, he knew it would be, but Bella’s shrieks and cries make his ears feel like they’ll bleed. She’s suffering. He holds her gently in his hands and laps his tongue over the bites, careful in the way his pointy teeth don’t touch her again. He kisses her forehead and lays her to rest.
Soon, Carlisle will check up on her. Edward will lay her back down in bed and watch her continuously. He’ll hum her lullaby in her ears, and coo to her about what he's thinking about, life stories he’s never told her before. He’ll read to her; her favorite passages of Wuthering Heights and childhood books like Tuck Everlasting to make the time go by faster. He may not believe he has a soul, but he wants to believe the Bella in there—the same Bella that will emerge on the other side—is listening to him. The heat of her skin will begin to disappear, and he’ll kiss her lips one last time before she turns to stone.
But for now, he holds her. The sun glistens on his face, sparkles and diamonds in the grass below. Even though her eyes are closed, her body writhing in pain, marks all along her wrists, he looks at her in absolute wonder as if she’s the angel sent from heaven to save him.