VIOLENT DELIGHTS | Rosalie Hale

CHAPTER FOUR

EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE

IN MY DREAM IT WAS very dark, and what dim light there was seemed to be radiating from Rosalie's skin. I couldn't see her face, just her back as she walked away from me, leaving me in the blackness. No matter how fast I ran, I couldn't catch up to her; no matter how loud I called, she never turned. Troubled, I woke in a cold sweat, and couldn't sleep again until dawn broke. After that, she was in my dreams every night, but always on the periphery, never within reach.

The month that followed the accident was uneasy, tense, and, at first, hilarious.

To my sister's utter dismay, she found herself the center of attention for the rest of that week. Tyler Crowley was impossible, following Bella around, obsessed with making amens to her somehow. He was grateful to me after someone had told him I'd taken my top off to stop his bleeding, but his guilt extended from me to my sister, who would have inevitably been his victim had it not been for Edward Cullen. Bella tried to convince him what she wanted more than anything else was for him to forget all about it — especially since nothing had actually happened to her — but he remained insistent. He followed her between classes and sat at our now-crowded lunch table.

Mike and Eric were even less friendly toward him than they were to each other, which only served to make me tease Bella even more over her growing fan club. No one seemed concerned about Edward, though both Bella and I explained over and over that he was the hero — how he had pulled her out of the way and hard nearly been crushed, too. I was a little more convincing than my sister, and people ate my words up with delight. Jessica, Mike, Eric, and everyone else always commented that they hadn't even seen him there till the van was pulled away.

Adam became my boyfriend. There was no fanfare, just one night basking in the afterglow, he asked me and I said yes. It took up a few days conversation at school, though I wasn't sure what the big deal was. It was kind of obvious we were together anyway.

The Cullens and the Hales sat at the same table as always, not eating, talking only among themselves. None of them, not Edward, not Rosalie, glanced my way anymore. When she sat next to me in class, as far from me as the table would allow, she seemed totally unaware of my presence. Only now and then, when her fists would suddenly ball up — skin stretched even whiter over the bones — did I wonder if she wasn't quite as oblivious as she appeared. I grew indifferent to the cold shoulder. If anything, my suspicions over her family only grew.

I'd tried talking to her, on the first day after the accident. To pass along my thanks to her brother, for saving Bella's life. She was already seated when I got to Physics, looking straight ahead. I sat down, expecting her to turn toward me. She showed no sign that she realized I was there.

"Hey Rosalie." I said pleasantly, to show her I didn't mean any harm.

She turned her head a fraction toward me without meeting my gaze, nodded once, and then looked the other way. I was thrown for a minute, and then continued, undeterred. "I wanted to thank your brother."

Nothing. I took a bit of a breath. "If it weren't for Edward, I wouldn't be a twin anymore. So uh, tell him I owe him one."

She seemed angered by my words, if nothing else. Those fists clenched up tight, but she pretended like she hadn't heard me. I frowned, sharing a look with Adam who shrugged.

And that was the last contact I'd had with her, though she was there, a foot away from me, every day. Sometimes, I caught myself watching her — from a distance, though, in the cafeteria or parking lot, when I wasn't distracted by my boyfriend and his rowdy friends. I watched as her golden eyes grew perceptibly darker day by day. But in class I gave no more notice that she existed than she showed toward me. It was the same with Emmett Cullen and Edward in Spanish. I didn't even try with them. I grew more paranoid. And the dreams continued.