Sweet Pain - Chapter 3

Sweet Pain - Chapter 3

3.
Life is unfair, and a kiss last forever

“Of course you don’t know what I’m talking about, Jasper, or should I say ‘Captain Whitlock’.” He said with a chill in his voice everyone could feel creeping up our spines. He really didn’t like Jasper. That was clear. But what had Jasper done to disserve such dislike from another vampire? He seemed to be utterly on the good side with everyone, not the favorite or most interesting, just with ignorant politeness. Well, that was except Alice of course. His gaze on her was just as breathtaking as the gazes from Esme to Carlisle or Edward to Bella. It was just meant to be.

“Oh, no, you don’t. He is just Hale these days,” Alice sang playfully as she appeared on top of the porch stairs and walked slowly down the steps to go take her lovers hand. Her expression was mild, but serious all together. Her joke didn’t make anyone laugh. “Huh, you really dragged all of them down as you came here, didn’t you? They always use to at least smile of my jokes.” She laughed at the newcomers with effortless humor, and jumped up to kiss Jaspers cheek. She knew how bad I hated romance and therefore had learned to never use his lips whenever I was close. She was so thought full, yet really annoying if you gave her the opportunity.

I still had to look away, and of course I caught Minni’s eyes staring at me. It gave me chills, but I wasn’t entirely sure if it was from pleasure or annoyance. I didn’t care at the moment.

“Benjamin! Why are you mad at me? Did something happen after I left? Is that it?”¨

“Of course it is. What did you expect? That everything would go smoothly for the once you left behind just because you found the love of your life?” Benjamin’s eyes had flashed over to Jasper’s again, this time with full fury in them. He looked as if he really struggled to keep his temper down. He stared at Alice for a slight moment, this time with deep envy in his eyes. Then he looked back at me, and something changed. The wrinkles in the corner of his mouth and between his eyebrows were a little decreased, he looked calmer, and that somehow scared the hell out of me. Why would he look at me with such eyes? It didn’t make any sense.

“What happened?” Jasper was just as tense as he tried to make Minni explain himself. He concentrated hard; his eyebrows were nearly touching as he creased them.

I could imagine how hard it was for him to feel all the emotions on a daily basis, but now it really must’ve been killing him. All Minni’s emotions were smashed in his face, and even though Minni must’ve been aware of that, he couldn’t control himself.

“He is really having a hard time,” Alice muttered. Her little face was also tense in worry for Jasper, but she also noticed Minni’s trouble. She hugged herself to Jasper, cautiously watching his face as his wrinkles got deeper.

“You were gone, and Maria was furious,” Minni started. “And of course she let the fury out on us. She was mad and unstable, almost like her newborn were before we trained them. Most important she gave me your rank. She replaced your loss with me. But everything had changed; nothing was as it had been once. We were all cautious, but temped by the new ideas. That we could leave her was nothing anyone of us had imagined. And that you had abandoned us didn’t help either.” Then he stopped, chuckled without humor and lowered his gaze. He exhaled once and looked at Jasper again. “You know, I always looked up to you, you were our leader, our trainer. We trusted you, all of us. But you should only know what happened after you left, how many of us you doomed.”

“Doomed? What happened to you?” Jasper started at him. The ‘news’ from his old life seemed somehow interesting for him. But I thought he hated those days.

“Many, many of us were killed in the battles, or just by Maria herself; you remember how you slaughtered the ‘unuseful’ ones, right? Less than a month after you’d left we were only 5 left, plus Maria. We had even changed about 2 every day those days, but were still left with so few. Everything was so hard, and it only became worse. I should’ve left much earlier.”

“What do you mean? Why should you have left earlier?” Jasper looked like a big question sign; still weary and not quite following.

“I mean that I should have left with you, you were smart or maybe it was just lucky. What do I know? But what I do know is that it cost me too much to be lingering left with Maria. Do you know how much pain and suffering she has made me feel? Too much, and it’s too fucking unfair that it should all happen to me!” he nearly screamed, but his eyes were different. They looked glazed, as if he was about to cry, or as if he wanted to be crying. I understood him, more than I liked.

“What happened?” Esme asked. She sounded anxious, and by the way she held Carlisle by her side, it was easily detected that she was. Her sweet eyebrows were tightened so faint wrinkles appeared between them. The heart shaped face of her looked just as worrying as if some of her children were in danger, or me for that sake.

Minni took a deep breath, it was clear that he didn’t enjoy talking about this, but I must admit even how much I knew we were gonna hear something bad, maybe terrible, I was a little bit curious about it too.

“I left her of course, but that was only in the end, when we had no chance of surviving. She was stupid, she insisted that we could keep it going, but I ran off, tired of her sick game of power. And that only made her even crazier. Finally I met this female. Her name was Jessica and she was beautiful.” He stopped a second and fasten his eyes on me again. It made me wonder even more. Did he really like me? No, that was absurd; he was mocking me all the time. How could he like me? After thinking about it for half a second I cast it aside and tried to focus on the story again.

“We could’ve had a life together, just Jessica and me, but of course things wasn’t meant to end as in the fairytales, especially not for a vampire like me. One day Maria and two remaining loyal vampires crossed our path, and even though she called it a coincidence I’m sure it wasn’t. She got furious when she saw Jessica, said I’d abandoned her. She…” he stopped, again took a deep breath, as in trying to calm himself, but I had already heard his sobbing. I wasn’t sure if I’d like to hear the end of his fairytale. “She killed her! Maria killed my true love, the person I was supposed to be with for the rest of eternity! She did it because of jealousy. She said she loved me and that no other woman should stand in our way, so she killed her…” when he said the final words his voice was barely a whisper. It made me want to cry. And I wasn’t the only one.

Alice little face was terrified, and she clenched the arms Jasper had put around her shoulders. Esme hid her face in Carlisle’s shirt as he held her tightly. His expression was serious, at the border of furious, but not quite that strong. He held his mask better than any other of us.

Those of Benjamin’s clan looked just as shocked. Hadn’t he spoken to anyone else about his former life? That was weird, but maybe he wasn’t the person to make other suffer for his memories.

Something clicked in my head. It was so unlike me. How selfish I was. I’d always let the family know my feelings, at least Edward, but I hadn’t thought about how he might’ve been suffering along with me. My eyes held the ground. I was so afraid of meeting the others gaze. The shame burned my inside as bad as the thirst did. How selfish I was!

I almost didn’t notice the dead silence that followed after his voice had died out. My thoughts were occupying all my attention, but I shook it off and lifted my head.

Everyone’s attention was either on his or her loved one or somewhere else than Benjamin anyway. He was still, faintly breathing as he tried to concentrate on keeping himself calm enough to stay civilized. He seemed stronger in my eyes, his figure had changed entirely in only one minute. I couldn’t possibly imagine what was going through his head, and as I in a moment of weakness wished I had Edward’s ability of mind reading I also thanked God I hadn’t. My pain was enough for me, and I didn’t need to hear everyone’s thoughts, that sounded just even more painful. Listening to him telling about it himself was more than enough for me.

We were still silent, but suddenly the front door opened and I could hear Emmett’s voice: “Where did everyone go?” and Rosalie answering him: “I think their out in front of the house,” she looked a little more enthusiastic as she walked through the front door and stared at all of us standing there in silence.

“Hey, you guys. Who are the pretty boys?” I could hear Emmett’s grin in his voice as he walked past her, and somehow it didn’t annoy me at the moment. That was weird, and hardly explainable, but I didn’t care. Everything was so changed, the atmosphere at least. It was full of sadness thick enough to touch.

“Wow, who died?” Rosalie said in a moment of amusement, but as her love she also noticed this was something too serious to be laughing about.

“Shouldn’t we all go inside? It’s going to be a wet night, if you’d rather not continue your journey of course.” Carlisle suggested with a friendly smile this time. The silence must’ve gotten to him.

The young one, Bjorn, nodded and followed Carlisle up the stairs and inside the house. They all sat down in the couches around the living-room table, a brown antique with a glass covering the top, one of those furniture Esme loved in the house.

I didn’t go sit down with them. I was tired of all the new things that had filled my head with questions, Benjamin most of all. He had walked behind me as we walked inside the house, and his presence burned in my neck. I somehow looked up to him now; because I knew what he had been through and that he had handled it with such grace, when I had only been a baby about my problems. He was bigger than me, and older, and maybe that had something to do with it, but it shouldn’t have. I should’ve been perfectly able to do the same thing. I would never complain about anything anymore. It was so human.

There was a bathroom upstairs and I turned to walk up the stairs as in a reflex. The bath was one way to calm me, and to get my thoughts cleared out. I didn’t think about our guests, I honestly didn’t give a shit.

What I didn’t notice was that he was following me. Not until I touched the handle on the bathroom door he spoke to me.

“Ginny,” I think I jumped 3 meters. The scariest part was that I hadn’t noticed him. I was a vampire! My point in life was detecting people following me, and still I had been too occupied by my own thoughts. I should be more careful.

“Gees, you scared me!” I breathed and my hand flew up to my throat, a habit I had from my human life, but my thoughts swiftly ran away again as I looked up and met his eyes. Those beautiful, scary, mysterious, yet sad eyes colored with red blood; they were so tempting.

My mouth fell open and my tongue desperately tried to soften my dry lips. Everything was suddenly so unreal. I wasn’t aware that vampire could feel this kind of attraction to anything else than blood. Even now the blood thirst was aching in my throat, I still wanted him more than that. Screw the blood, my mouth demanded, I want HIM! But I couldn’t, it wasn’t appropriate kissing a guy you’d met some hours ago. I don’t want to be appropriate! All my senses screamed, but I didn’t listen. I took a deep breath.

Benjamin’s look was again mysterious, and the slight smile only made me want to hug him closer to me, as close as possible. To have air between us were in truth cruel. We belonged to each other.

“Weren’t you expecting me?”

“Should I?” he overall made me curious. He had this weird way of making everything seem so perfectly clear and so incredibly vague at the same time. What did he mean ‘weren’t I expecting him’?

“I honestly don’t know. You seem different to me than most vampires,” So, he also noticed my freaky-ness. That was sort of sad. He saw me just as everyone else saw me, as a freak that didn’t fit in anywhere.

“Thanks, I guess,” I said sighing and rolled my eyes, as I was about to close the door behind me.

“No, I didn’t mean it in a bad way. It’s kind of relieving, actually. All the vampires I know is somehow distant from me, but you…” He held the door so I couldn’t close it, and looked at me with a penetrating gaze, as if he was trying to look through my façade into my deepest secrets. It gave me chills, but this time they were good ones. My heart should’ve been racing like hell by now. I wanted it to be, but of course you couldn’t expect that much when you were a vampire. Being in love made me want to be human again. I wondered why.

“I don’t really understand what you are talking about,” I giggled and looked away from his face. He really made me act 14, didn’t he? That was unnecessary. I was already making a fool of myself, why make it even worse?

“Never mind,” he said with his beautiful accent, making the ‘N’ in ‘Mind’ deeper, and that also made me want to smile. All about him were all in all wonderful.

I lowered my gaze again, this time letting my gaze fall over his figure. It was different light in here than it had been outside, and I could faintly detect his scars now, all over his upper body. It looked just like the ones Jasper had once shown me, so what he had been talking about was the truth, no question about it.

“I can’t imagine…” I said and looked at his face again, his mouth this time. I appreciated keeping my focus while I tried to talk civilized with others, and meeting his eyes was no good way to do that.

“Yeah, it’s pretty weird, isn’t it? ” He said dreamy, and I was pretty sure we weren’t talking about the same thing. I only thought about his dead Jessica, how cruel Maria had been to him. I didn’t know what I would’ve done if someone had killed the one I loved most in the world. It truly was unbelievable.

“What did you do after she had… killed your Jessica?” I asked quietly, trying not to sound too impolite, but my curiosity was getting to me again.

“Oh!” Minni said as he caught his breath. A swift moment his face was tight with pain, but he gathered himself and looked at me with sad, but friendly eyes once more.

He dragged a hand through his hair once, the first time I had seen him touching it. The movements made it look even softer than I thought it was, and it gave my hands a terrible urge of touching it themselves. It took me 3 seconds to sharpen up, because I wanted to know the answer on that I had asked, and my lust wouldn’t screw everything up just yet.

“Isn’t there anywhere we could go to make this a little more private conversation?” he glanced down the stairs into the living-room where we could hear the others talk clearly as if they had been talking directly to our faces. I caught my breath. ‘Private’ did not sound as innocent as he might have been meaning. It didn’t sound innocent at all, actually. But I thought about it. It was in fact a better idea. If I was as weak as I thought I was it would make it a lot less embarrassing to kiss him if not all of our families were watching us. And if I by some miracle could resist it at least would make our conversation a little more private, as he had said already.

“Sure,” I said doubtfully. “We could go to my room.” Minni eyed me suspiciously with a slight smile on his lips, something that took my breath away in itself. He looked like he had meant the bad version ‘private’, the type of private I was terrified of and which I at the same time felt an absolute joy of thinking about. I almost made myself vomit by thinking like that. I had to get some grip.

I started walking down the hall. In the end of it Rose and Emmett’s room was lying. As we entered their room I could hear Minni’s approving “hum”. I didn’t blame him. Their room was all in all pretty amazing. Alice’, Esme’s and Rose’s sense of fashion and class hadn’t skipped this room either, on the other hand maybe consumed it more than any of the other.

There was a beautiful, white, Victorian bed placed in the middle of the room. As any other of the Cullen’s bedroom’s this wasn’t big, and there was faintly a meter from the wall to the bed’s edges. It wasn’t a problem though; they didn’t need any more space. What they used to do in the bedroom’s hardly required anything else than a bed.

Else than the bed, the two floor-to-ceiling windows were covered with deep, purple colored drapes that matched the floor and wall color. The Floor had some dark-brown colored wood and the walls were red. It matched astonishingly well, by some stupid reason.

I rolled my eyes at him, and grinned. I was sure he wasn’t going to enjoy my room as much, but he would have to live with that.

“So, this is your room?” he commented, but stopped as I walked around the bed, and opened the other door placed at the bed’s right side.

“Nope, I’ll have to disappoint you there. My room is up stairs,” I shook my head in amusement as his expression changed to something less amazed. I pointed with my left forefinger up the stairs behind the door I’d just opened. He followed my gaze and made another “hum”. This time it sounded interested, as if saying: “I wonder what she might be hiding up there,” That kind of creeped me out.

“We’ll have to see about that. It’s not easy to disappoint me, just as you know.” He winked at me, and it sent another icy shot down my spine. I was far too easily taken off guard with this guy. I didn’t know that I could be this shaky for anyone. It made me want to hit myself, and that a guy should make me masochistic was seriously not good.

“I guess not,” I said shrugging as I ran up the stairs, taking in the room before he could, mostly to check if something was out of place; a bra lying around or dirty clothes. But it was clean as always; one of Alice’ morning routines was to check if all our rooms were in proper shape, and she cleaned them if not. It made me want to kiss her right now.

“Wow, this is different!” He said smiling, as he stepped up from the last step onto the floor in my “room”. Yeah, it was different. My room was big, really big, or long. I’d gotten the loft apartment, which meant the house’s width, only lower under the roof. I personally loved it. I had one circled bed on the floor close to the steps. In truth it wasn’t a real bed, it was a mattress placed on the floor actually, only Alice had made Emmett and Edward make me a frame to it, so it would “match the surroundings” better, as Alice had pointed it out. I had no idea how she forced them to do it though, but I was grateful, and it did match better. The rest of the room was more a storage, but I had of course a mirror and a dresser next to the bed.

“It’s Alice idea,” I said, as if speaking to myself. “One of her birthday gifts to me. The best!” I was talking about the room, but again he had other things in mind.

“Yeah, what a bed! I’d be grateful for something like that as well, if I were you,” he swiftly threw a glance at me, before taking in the rest of the room. “But the loft? Isn’t that a little sad, to be away from all the other, stored away up here?” He sounded kind of amused, but I went angry. How dared he say something like that about my family? I wasn’t stored away! It was better than no room at all. Wasn’t it?

“Shut up! They didn't store me away, I wanted this, and how often do YOU sleep? I only use this room whenever I need to be alone, okay? So don’t you come here and make judgments about something you doesn’t know anything about!” I turned around to face him as I spoke, and pointed my finger at him right under his nose. He should know whom he was dealing with. I didn’t care if he made fun of me, but he should never insult my family!

“Whoa, take it easy! I was only fooling around. I’m so sorry! Really, Ginny, forgive me!” That took my breath away, but I was high on adrenaline from the anger, and it didn’t make my mask crack as easily as ever. I had thousand things I’d like to tell him. But I sighed. I guessed “I’m sorry” was good an apology if he hadn’t meant it, which I actually couldn’t be sure about.

“Apology accepted, for now,” I said with a warning tone. He exhaled in relief, and that mysterious smile appeared again. I “humph”-ed, but my eyes were already lost in his. It was hard, but I somehow managed to stay civilized. Now the lust was even harder to bear. We were alone, on my room, and he was there, hardly 30cm away from me. My hands needed something to do, as in something else than wishing to be all over his body.

I took off my leathery jacket, and I thought I could hear the breath Minni’s mouth drew for only a tenth of a second in astonishment again. I damned my choice of clothes to have under the jacket, now that I saw Minni’s reaction. It was a blue, deep, deep blue singlet with spaghetti straps, and it was too open, I noticed. But that was sort of too late now. He could just see too much of my boobs. This hadn’t been a problem before; all the other males in the house were already lost in someone, and didn’t notice me that way. It had been a good feeling, not having to look pretty or, as Rosalie had told me was the most important, sexy. Nope, this guy had come far too unexpected, and I hadn’t got enough time to prepare myself. That was bloody unfair!

“You didn’t answer my question back there,” I hinted in desperate need of another subject. I tried to tie my eyes to something else than him, but that wasn’t the easiest task. It was something else when we had been outside or with others, but being alone with him in a room, disturbed by no one… it was in truth madness.

“You’re right,” he said with a light tone. “I don’t like to speak about it, actually, but I think you can keep a secret, so I’ve decided to tell you anyway.” He exhaled. He’d got that troubled, painful look on his face again, and I wanted to smooth those painful wrinkles away with my hands, but it somehow felt wrong. If he were going to talk about his old love of eternity, I would have to change my set of thought. Maybe he was that kind of vampire that took the bad with the good. I would still not disrespect her memory by hooking up with him while he was talking about her. That was just plain cruelty.

“I got terribly angry of course, but I couldn’t make myself kill Maria, I still don’t know why. Maybe it was because she had made me, maybe because I knew her too well; I don’t know; I don’t care. So I ran off instead, leaving her, Jessica and my old life behind another time.” He looked even more troubled as he said the last sentence, and I was sure he had loath in his tone. He was furious with himself, I could see that. I wish he wasn’t. The fact that he hadn’t killed her sort of interested me.

“Don’t be mad at yourself, you have no reason to,” I said steady, while looking into his eyes, for the first time without almost loosing all consciousness.

“Oh, but I have. Don’t you think it’s awfully cowardly to just run away? Humans run, that’s because they are weak. If there’s anything I’m not, it’s weak. I could’ve killed her and her two companions, but I ran! Juvenile, stupid and cowardly! That’s what it was, and that’s what I am!”

“No, it’s not, it shows respect. You loved Maria, because she had created you, that is reasonable, and you loved your Jessica of course, and even though you didn’t kill Maria for killing Jessica, doesn’t mean you are weak or a coward.” I placed my hand on his arm and stared into his eyes. While we had been speaking we had moved over to the bed to sit down face to face on it. Minni didn’t look at me; he stared at his hand that was now tightened into fists. He might not have the same muscles as his brothers, but he didn’t seem any less powerful to me.

“Do you want to hear a theory of mine?” I asked as he continued to stare at his hands. I looked down on his, embarrassed over what I was about to say. It was just a theory, and even though it seemed stupid and silly, it was a relief.

“Sure,” he now lifted his gaze to look at me. His eyes were glazed again.

“I believe, that people you love walk around us when they dies, as their own chance to say good bye. Especially if they died unexpectedly, and your Jessica was certainly one of those cases. I’m sure she wouldn’t have like it if you killed Maria. She had already seen how much you grieved over her, and knew you loved her. I’m sure she was glad she didn’t have to see that mean side of you, because she knew how kind you were. Don’t worry about it; there are more between heaven and earth than you and I know about. I mean, just look at us!”

He looked dazed at me for more than a minute. His expression was sad, on the line with heartbreaking to watch. Then he started sobbing. It sounded terrible. He just collapsed. First the expression faded then his head dropped to his hands so I couldn’t see him. All the hair was covering his face now he sat bend like that. I wondered how such a beautiful person could feel so bad inside, how it was even legal. I wanted to take it away, but I didn’t know what to say. To be around mourning people always made me feel awkward as a human. I didn’t know how it was like, so I didn’t know what to say to make him feel better. That was killing me.

He suddenly lifted his head. His eyes were intensely focused in on me, and next to all the sorrow I could see a new emotion in them. It reminded me of my own lust, just different, more powerful. Whatever he felt, it was taking over.

In one second he was staring at me, in the other he pressed his lips against mine as he heaved me on my back towards the mattress. That was one of the most overwhelming things I’d ever experienced. Everything went so fast, and yet it seemed that we were stuck in the present. That first one hundred of a second seemed to last forever. But it was a good forever, a forever I could spend only with him.