Twilight: But it's a Thriller and I Never Read Twilight

Chapter 41: Miles and Miles

I lost track of time. Days turned into weeks and when I woke up, I couldn't tell what day it was anymore. Every waking hour was spent with Edward, alone on this island, miles and miles from anyone human. Edward and I had been alone together before, but never this alone. It felt as if we were the only two people on the planet here, like all my friends, all my family, all of Forks had ceased to exist and it was just us. It should have felt like a blessing, but it just made me feel trapped. I didn't know how long we would stay here, and I was getting lost in all the time.

Edward never slept. When I woke up, he was there, looking at me with those wide black eyes like he was a crow looking at something particularly shiny. When I fell asleep, I knew he'd be there, lurking around the corner, around all the crevices of the island, just waiting for me to wake up. Even as he insisted on taking care of me, on carrying me about the beach and cooking my meals for me, he felt suffocating.

I had no idea why it made me feel so nervous to be alone around him. The soft, warm fog that had wrapped around my brain with every moment we were together in the Cullen house was gone now, having dissipated the further we got from the mainland. Now, I looked at him with a sense of worry. When was he going to turn me into a vampire? When was he going to touch me like he had again? When was he going to take me home? Every so often, I imagined he was never going to take me home, that he'd made this place for us away from everyone in the world, to make a life here. The thought of never going back to my beloved Washington turned my stomach even in the sunshine of mid-morning.

In actuality, we weren't alone. The boat captain and his wife came back to the island once a week, bringing food, just enough for me to eat. Edward was taken care of with the small animals that lived on the lush island. So the captain's wife would bring boxes and bags down from the boat and leave them on the dock. She never came any closer than that. Once, when I watched her leaving food from my vantage point on the beach, I waved to her. She looked directly at me, covering her brow with her hand to block the sun. Even as she recognized me, she didn't wave back, but instead stepped back into the boat, never stepping foot on the island proper.

We lived like this for a long period of time, and even with the weekly drop offs, I couldn't be sure of how much time had passed. It all felt like a blur, an unending march of time that didn't seem to signal itself with a shift from day to day. I wasn't sleeping well. Every moment I closed my eyes, I imagined Edward's unblinking ones. I couldn't seem to put together why the man I loved so much turned my stomach to be so isolated with.

As I sat in the living room one morning, looking at the yellow wallpaper where a television would have normally sat against the wall, I thought I heard Edward calling me from outside. I was so preoccupied in my fleeting and drifting thoughts, that I barely registered him stepping inside at all.

"Bella," he said.

I continued to stare, occasionally blinking. My gut turned in my belly. It had been doing that for quite some time, but it was starting to hurt. I felt shaky, but I sat there, trying to ignore the pain.

"Bella," he repeated and stepped around the couch to crouch in front of me. He paused in thought as he looked at me, like he'd lost something he'd been wanting to tell me. "You look tan. Like when we first met."

I finally turned my attention to him, straining to keep myself from giving away the illness I felt. "What?"

"You were tan," he said. "When you moved from Arizona. You look like that now." He smiled a toothy grin, his fangs touching to tip of his bottom lip.

I swallowed down the feeling of bile in my throat. I hadn't looked like Arizona in a long time. The heat in Washington summer never turned me as dark as I had looked in Arizona. I imagined that girl, getting off a plane and finding a Dad I hadn't seen in years waving me down. I imagined a girl who was sure of herself, who looked Edward dead in the eye and told him I had problem with his stare. I held myself as still as possible as I looked at him. I didn't feel like the same girl anymore.