The Volvo purred along the winding roads of Forks, its sleek body humming under Edward’s hand. Rain streaked across the glass in languid threads, but his focus was nowhere near the road. He drove with the same effortless precision as always, yet his every thought circled back—inevitably, helplessly—to you.

Athena.

You sat in the passenger seat, your small frame folded into his car as if it had been built only for this, only for you. The scent of you filled the enclosed space, maddening and intoxicating. Almond biscotti and money, layered with some faint undercurrent of molding plastic. It should not have been pleasant—by all logic, it was strange, off-kilter. But to Edward it was perfection, unique and consuming. Every inhale was an agony he craved.

His golden eyes flickered over, drinking you in when you weren’t looking. Your emerald eyes sparkled even in the dim light, candid and unguarded in a way that disarmed him utterly. They didn’t see the monster behind his restraint. They didn’t flinch at the predator under his skin. Instead, they glittered with a kind of careless wonder, airheaded warmth that was maddening in its purity.

You fiddled absently with your sleeve, tugging at it until your strange, cherubic skin stretched, pliant in a way no human’s should. The gift in you already whispered of what you might become—what you already were, to him. Something beyond mortal, beyond fragile, though you laughed off your own oddity with a sheepish grin. Foolish, perhaps. Airy, yes. But gods, reassuring too, in a way no eternity of silence had ever been.

Edward’s hands tightened on the wheel, leather creaking under his grip. He could hear the minds of every creature around him—the caw of a raven, the fleeting thoughts of a deer beyond the trees, the endless stream of human worries in town just miles away. Yet beside you, his gift faltered into irrelevance. You were the one mind he could never touch. And that maddened him most of all.

You turned your head suddenly, catching his stare. “What?” you asked, wide lips curving with that cherubic mischief. He didn’t answer—he never answered easily when you caught him like that. His expression remained sculpted marble, solemn, even cold. But inside, he burned.

Your scent coiled through him again, making his throat ache with venom and hunger. He had never been closer to breaking than when you leaned toward him, filling the air with almond-sweet warmth. One careless move from you, one airheaded lean too close, and the restraint he clung to so desperately would shatter.

And still—he could not keep away.

To others, you might seem absurd, scatterbrained, a girl with strange gifts and a laugh that made no sense in the world’s quiet tragedies. But to Edward, you were gravity. Every flick of your wide lips, every careless thoughtless word, drew him deeper into an obsession that no span of eternity could erode. He imagined you walking into danger—some threat, some stranger’s hand upon you—and his control fractured in violent visions. He would tear apart worlds to keep you safe. He would soil the name of “vegetarian,” stain his eternity red, if it meant your angelic warmth was never dimmed.

The Volvo slowed. The forest thickened. The drizzle tapped in restless rhythm. Edward’s jaw locked, his eyes fixed on the road though every thought screamed at him to look at you again. To reach across the distance of leather and air and foolish laughter. To touch the skin that could stretch forever and yet seemed so fragile against time itself.

You hummed a tune absently, off-key, content. Airheaded, sweet, oblivious. He memorized it, tucked it into his chest as if even your smallest sound were sacred.

Edward Cullen—once boy, now predator, forever damned—had never prayed. But if the old gods listened still, he would ask for one thing alone: that the world never take you from him.

Because without you, eternity would not be long enough.