26
Eclipse
S h a k e s p e a r e a n L o v e
SPRING QUIETLY SNUCK upon the snowy winter and melted it away with flowery kisses, promising to leave sanguine blossoms in its wake. The change of season did wonders when it came to uplifting the sullen moods of the Cullens, who found themselves increasingly anxious after the battle with the newborns a week ago. Ever since Jane spat that threat at Bella, everyone including Edward was on edge. This, of course, only fueled Bella's rash decision to be Turned, but that wasn't Adele's problem anymore. She promised herself that she would step back from the Bella and Edward drama for the sake of her own personal life and her sanity.
Paul wasn't helping her case. She hadn't reached out to him or heard from him since the night he got hurt and the suspense of knowing whether she scared him off or not was enough to drive her insane. She never told Carlisle about what she did for Paul, about how she let him into her mind, and decided to keep it that way. She wad close to her father, yes, but she was also an adult with a life of her own. He didn't need to know everything. Besides, like a teenager, she enjoyed keeping him on his toes.
Seeing as she couldn't find anything else to pass the time, she was looking through her closet for things to donate to the less fornuate. She found out through Bella that the police station was hosting a charity drive where all of the townspeople could donate new or somewhat new items for the homeless and poor in their town. The little things like that was what made Forks such a friendly town -- of course, without the gossip.
She was just beginning to put things I to a third cardboard box when there was a tap on her glass window, then another, and another. Paul. She tossed the shirt she had in her hands into the box and ran out of her bedroom. She ran all the way to the front door, but opened it casually so she didn't appear too eager. Paul stood on the lawn with gravel in his hand, but when he saw her, he dropped them.
"Hey."
She leaned against the deck railing and crossed her arms, when really she wanted to run at him and yell at him for staying away for so long. "Hey."
He shifted awkwardly on the spot kicked at the gravel wirh his hands in his pockets. After a moment of him fidgeting, he looked right at her and said, "I was too smug to say it before, but you were amazing on the battlefield." She blinked. She never thought she'd here him say that after learning how proud of a man he was. "You proved me wrong that day, you know."
She raised her eyebrows and smirked. She wanted to make him sweat. "How do you figure?".
"After everything you've showed me about your life before I met you, I thought you were a survivor, but you're not." He approached the deck and she shifted uncomfortably. "You're a fighter."
She scoffed and shook her head. She wasn't a fighter. She didn't fight for her one true love, the only thing that mattered, but instead wept for three centuries about it. She tried time and time again to fight every battle with skillful strategies and clever words, but at the end of the day, she only does it to try and clear the red on her ledger.
"You are." Paul stepped closer to her and she bit her lip.
He used to hate vampires before he met her and she guided him into her world. Just as any outsider would think because of her devastating beauty and riches, he expected her to be perfect, but she wasn't. She was a girl who grew up too fast, a girl who spent her entire childhood on the run with her vampire father as she raced against time before the venom that lingered in her veins caught up with her. She never had any of the real milestones in life.
"You never hold back and you never, ever let anyone keep you from what you want to achieve, not even yourself." She crossed her arms and averted her gaze. Maybe she made a mistake when she let him in. Maybe she'd never be ready for this... "That's why I just don't get it..."
She glanced wearily at him. "Get what?"
He stepped up onto the deck until he was onky a few greet from her. She fought the urge to back away. She didnt want to face the harsh truth she knew she'd have to admit to. "You've fought through so much, for so much.... so I don't get why you won't fight for us."
She sighed and leaned against the railing again, staring at her shoes so she wouldn't have to meet his analytical gaze. "I just...I don't know how, okay?" She peered up at him to see confusion plastered across his charming face and huffed. "I was eighteen when I met Jace. My childhood consisted of running from place to place when people got suspicious of my father being a pale one, of suffering through dozens of bloodletting rituals to slow down the process of becoming like my father. I never learned any of this. I didnt have the chance, so when I met Jace and knew I was his mate, as he was mine,..."
"You thought your whole life was planned out."
She nodded. "When I lost him, it was like my life had no direction. I got comfortable with that, and then you come along and fuck everything up."
He chuckled and her lips crack into a smile before it fell again. "I am scared of the unknown which will be the path we would follow if we pursued this. I didn't fight for Jace and I lost him. I do not want that to happen to you and I."
With no regard for anything around them or for anyone eavesdropping from within the house, Paul took her hands into her own. "It's as simple and as complicated as this: do you know you want to be with me, to be live a long and happy life with me?"
She gazed into his loving eyes which promised her an infinity of happiness in return for love and friendship. She said that very word that scared her more than anything. "Of course."
He smiled jubilantly, but contained his ecstasy so he wouldn't scare her away. "So do I, and that's all we need." Uncertainty flashed in her golden eyes. She had that with Jace, they wanted to be together more than anything, but in the end it wasn't enough. He smiled, "Take Romeo and Juliet. They belonged to two entirely different families that despised each other, but despite that long-held hatred, the two of them fell in love. And though it was only within the span of three days, they knew they wanted to be with each other and that their love was all they needed to move forward."
Her astonishment at the fact he read the novel was overshadowed by his misinterpretation of the story entirely. "But they didn't move forward. In the end, they both died in the name of love." She didn't know whether to frown at her pessimistic attitude or laugh at his analogy. "It was written to be a tragic romance."
"Yeah," he shrugged, still smiling like an lovestruck idiot, "But if there is one thing I know, it's that you've always written your own endings to your own stories. We can write our own ending for ours."
She smiled at him as she realized she was waeming up to the naive idea of a happy life with Paul. She deserved it. She wanted it. She wasn't going to live in a melancholic story anymore. "A story isn't a story without a few hardships, is it?"
He shook his head and took her face I to his hands. His suddenly warm touch against her icy flesh sent an involuntary shiver through her body. "And we've had a few hardships already."
She shook her head and leaned into his touch. "No, our story has not begun yet, Lahote."
His eyebrows knitted together in smoldering confusion. "Then when?"
"Now." She whispered and leaned hungrily in to press her lips to his. When he returned the kiss passionately, deliciously, time did not stop nor did it slow, but instead it continued as it always would and those seconds that passed by were the best seconds of their lives.
Adele pulled away with a graceful, youthful smile he'd never seen her have before. "You read the book."
His smiled widen as he quoted, "Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight. For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night."
Her smile lit up his world as the sun lights up the earth and so naturally, they leaned in once more. Their story had finally begun at last. It was about fucking time.