Soul’s Fire (3)

 

I loved watching him play with her. She loved to be thrown up, in the air, over his head, then caught when she came back down.  I could’ve listened to the sound of her laugher for days. The grin on Edwards face was precious. I was worried a little bit about how their relationship would go with Jacob’s imprinting in the mix, but her heart seemed to be big enough to hold the world if she wanted it to. Even with forever in her grasp, it seemed like there was not enough time to love all the things she loved. For now, she played with her daddy, and I watched the bond between them grow.

 Edward had spent most of his life in a type of sleep. Not human sleep, of course, but when you finally find your soul mate, you realize how much of a stupor your life had been before. He had gone to and from one thing to another, never experiencing any of it with any fire or passion, at least none that was comparable. Now he was at peace, in love, and free to see other things and people through the new eyes of this love.

 Even though I’d only known Edward for two years, and the majority of the time was remembered through weak human eyes, the difference in him was obvious. The journal he’d given me made his change even more pronounced to me. There had been awareness and mild curiosity for life but no defined passion. He wrote almost without positive emotion, or very little of it. It had been the first journal he’d written after becoming a vampire and there was…acceptance, and maybe even a hint of frustration, as to what he was and how he had to live, but definitely an absence love.

 I hated to think of him living in that state for so long.  Part of me got depressed reading his thoughts because it had to have been so lonely, and I’d seen what ecstasy his heart was capable of. With every page I read, I became more and more determined to do whatever I could to make him happy and feel loved. This numbness that surfaced within those pages made me wonder if he thought I would feel the same way. This was a new dimension in understanding his reluctance to change me. I couldn’t fault him for not wanting me to feel like that.

 Even during my human time with him, there was a sadness that I never understood, and was never able to define. I had known that he loved me deeply, but I could see now that he had been afraid.   The hope that was sparked by our love might have left him even more cold and alone if things didn’t work out between us. There had been no way for either of us to know that such an encounter would change us but it did. Once that change occurred, it was impossible for either one of us to go back – human or vampire.

 While we’d been together when I was human, I remembered a different look in his eyes sometimes that I couldn’t pin point. It was unconsciously met with another feeling that he was neglecting everything else that he could possibly have loved just to hold on to what we had.

There had been two times I remember seeing this cloud lift off of him and neither time was for very long. The first was when I’d watched him play baseball with his family. I remember seeing him let go for the first time since I met him. I mean, he just really, let go and enjoyed himself! It was wonderful.

The other time I couldn’t actually see him; I could only see Jasper. Jazz and Emmett had come to get him, from my house, for his bachelor party, and he was on the ground with Emmett. I had asked Jasper if they were taking him to a strip club and Emmett had yelled, “Don’t tell her anything!.” That response was met with a thud and a chuckle from Edward.  Edward had hit Emmett and knocked him down. It made me smile. I remember wondering at the time what it would be like to see him like that all the time.

I hadn’t realized that the tension in my body had grown as I thought about these things, until I felt an unnatural relief come from somewhere else. Jasper took a seat next to me. “You ok?” he asked.

“Yeah, sorry.” I replied as he eyed me suspiciously. “Edward gave me his first journal to read. It makes me a little sad to think that he was, well, depressed for lack of a better word, for so long.”

“Ah,” he said, “That’s the original reason I voted yes to you becoming a vampire. I forget that you really haven’t known him for that long. It feels like you’ve always been with us.  The change I saw and felt in him reminded me of what it felt like to find Alice. I knew that he needed you. There’s just no other way to put it. He’s totally at peace now. He’s in love…with you, with her, and…with everything. There’s hope now where there wasn’t before. I can’t even tell you how much that means to all of us.”

We both looked away from each other and toward Edward, who now had Renesmee cradled in his arms, kissing her cheeks as she laughed. Both of us smiled as we watched them adore each other.

Again, my desire to pour as much love and devotion into him and making him happy overwhelmingly overflowed.

I love you, Edward. Always and forever.

Bella