Wayward ➳ Edward Cullen

14. Meteors

Grasses and flowers swayed around us. A small gathering of butterflies hovered above a patch of tall purple cornflowers near Edward. The buzzing of other insects filled the silence that had fallen between us.

Edward stepped forward. "I'm better now."

I couldn't help but look to the red and black silk scarf tied around his bicep.

As if to prove his words, his other hand fell away. His injured arm continued to hang limply at his side.

I swallowed despite my dry mouth. "What happened?"

Edward's lips quirked. "Would you understand if I told you I was only human?"

My mouth stayed fixed into its frown.

His sights slid away, focusing on something beyond me. From the faraway look in his eyes, beyond the meadow, too. "Everything about me draws you in." There was a world of self-loathing in his words. "My face. My voice. My smell." A darkness filled his gaze—and then he was gone.

I started at his sudden disappearance. Then a pale blur smeared across my vision. Once. Twice.

His reappearance in front of me shocked me back a step. His mouth twisted into a frown that mirrored mine. "Could you catch me?"

Suddenly he back across the meadow, beneath the cover of the trees lining the clearing. "Could you fight me!?" he shouted before ripping a branch the size of most trees from a spruce standing beside him. Shards of wood exploded like shrapnel but bounced harmlessly off his skin. My heart dropped like a dead weight into my stomach. He tested the weight and balance of the giant limb in his hand as if it were a pool cue he were thinking of using instead of hundred-plus pounds of wood. After a moment, he drew his good arm back. The spruce's branch was so long it dragged along the ground. Despite that, Edward was poised like an Olympic javelin thrower.

His arm was a streak of white as he launched it forward. It flew like a missile across the clearing, the entire length of it. A hemlock tree standing on the opposite end was the makeshift rocket's apparent target. With a terrible crack that could have been mistaken for thunder, the spruce's branch exploded against the trunk of the hemlock, breaking it clean in half. The tree groaned as its branches pulled it further apart down the middle.

By the time I twisted about, Edward was back before me. He stayed outside of arm's reach, but as he'd just proven, that hardly mattered. His gold gaze burned. His brow pinched tight together. "Don't apologize for defending yourself, Sarah. Not ever."

I blew out a breath, sights drawn once more to the scarf tied around his arm. "I don't need to be faster or stronger, Edward. I just need an opening."

Edward's shoulders fell. His angelic face became fraught with tension as he wondered in a hollowed voice, "Is there no hope?"

I couldn't help but wonder the same. Was this doomed to end with one of us dead? As a hunter, wasn't it my responsibility to make certain it was him?

The notion made it hard to think past the way my throat closed as my eyes and nose burned. Soon, the tears began to manifest. The meadow wavered in my vision as I struggled not to let a single one fall. Mortified, I scrubbed at my eyes to wipe the evidence of their existence away.

Edward's expression turned pained. "I'm sorry." He took a step towards me before stopping. "I swear, I'll behave better." His voice took on that silken quality as he added, "You surprised me before. But I'm ready now."

I wasn't sure what he meant by that but found myself desperate to believe him. "Surprised you?"

Brows pinched together, Edward eventually nodded. "When you leaned in, exposed your throat so close to me." He grimaced, looking away as if embarrassed. "My instincts took over." He looked back, eyes burning. "But I stopped in time."