Carlisle had adapted to not believing in love after he spent half of his life with one girl, only for her to slip through the gaps between his fingers that he forgot to tighten his hold on once he didn’t wish to be in the Volturi anymore.

It was a cult to him. A place that would haunt him if he continued to watch a pair of vampires dictate the way specific humans or half-breeds went about their day. He couldn’t exactly deal with it anymore, and despite having this little rendezvous with you on the side behind closed doors while you both worked with the Volturi, he had to leave. Sure, he was a vampire now, but the guilt consumed him far too much for him to deal with things as such anymore.

It was like a part of him still felt for the ones they were condemning to a fate worse than Hell. A part of him remembered how it used to be, still loathed the way things went about if you weren’t a pure creature who survived on blood of those you never really wanted to slaughter, but it was just the way of life.

So, he left. He left without you, and fled as far as he could for as long as he could, but, of course, his son’s actions had the Cullen’s in quite the predicament. The predicament being back in Italy, on their knees for the Volturi, praying to whatever God above to come in and save them from the wrath of the elders. Carlisle, for the longest time, had been over you. And he was okay with that.

He was okay with living with the sin of fleeing without the woman he would’ve turned the world upside down for, because it was better to be alone than to be trapped in a cage like a bird that swatted at the bars to try and fly away and find freedom. It was all alright, since he had built his own little family that understood each other in their own little ways. In fact, it was so goddamn comforting.

But the moment he walked in to that damned building he had spent so many years of his forbidden existence running from, his eyes landed on you, immediately trying to save his family and their case, and he could’ve sworn something in him cracked.