Chapter Nineteen
Confessions
Edward

As soon as Alice turned around, her eyes zeroed in on my scars. I suppose she just hadn't paid enough attention to see them, and I braced myself for the worse.

She took a sharp intake of air and her green eyes went wide for a short second before they changed and expressed her curious nature. She gently reached one of her dainty hands up towards my face and ran her fingers along the worst scar on my jawline. It's the scar I've always hated the most and her favorite scar of mine. Even now she's showing me compassion I don't deserve.

She had just opened her mouth to say something when I turned on my heel and ran from the house. I sat on the back porch and put my head into my hands to grieve in peace.

I heard the others inside telling Alice all about my past that she had missed, of my time spent fighting in the vampire wars. I desperately wished they would stop but another side of me begged them to keep talking, to keep telling her every last detail so she would finally see the monster in me and run away.

To my surprise, when they were done speaking in the kitchen, Alice quietly opened the backdoor and took a cautious seat beside me on the porch, allowing a foot of space between us.

I could feel her sharp green eyes cutting into the side of my face, carving their way along my scars and creating even deeper emotional ones. The love of my life who has always refused to see me for what I am is finally beginning to see the truth and it's destroying me.

"I think they're beautiful."

Her words stoped my dark thoughts immediately. Her quiet and soft voice had spoken the opposite of what I expected to hear come from her mouth. I was stunned and I didn't think I had heard her correctly.

"What?" I questioned, still staring at the ground and refusing to make eye contact with her.

"The scars, I think they're beautiful." She paused. "They tell your story, wether you want it told or not. Yes, it's hard to suffer through but in the end it makes you a better person." She nodded, looking off into the trees.

"And how would you know that? What tells your story?" I asked her, not understanding her mindset at the moment. How can such a wonderful strong woman think that she understands this?

"You." She whispered, sounding heartbroken. "And Anthony." She added on a lighter note. "You both tell my story. He's told the mystery of my human past and you have always told the story of Mary Alice Cullen, both human and vampire." She explained. "I would've disappeared without either of you." She sniffed and I looked out of the corner of my eye to find silent tears rolling down her face.

"Alice, you never would've disappeared. Our family loves you too much, no matter what happened or will happen they will always remember you, just like I will." I promised her, wanting to hold her but I decided it was a bad idea at the moment. "You're not happy here." I stated, it was obvious.

"I'm not." She shook her head. "I'm just so confused, everyone just expects me to be Alice Cullen and I have no idea who she is. I'd give anything to go back to July 3. It seems like just a few short months ago to me." She sighed deeply. "You've had a decade of wonderful memories to replace the bad ones. We've created a new life together, the life we were supposed to have had, and now I don't even remember it. I destroyed both of our chances."

"Alice, you didn't do anything wrong. It was entirely my decision to leave, nothing you did caused it and nothing you could have said would've stopped me. I truly believed I was doing what was best for you, I'm such an idiot sometimes Alice, you know how I get. Nothing I can say can ever take that back but I'm not going to sit by and let you think this is your fault. You got scratched by some strange plant-"

"No I didn't." Alice shook her head, cutting me off from my passionate rant. "I got attacked."

"What?" I questioned quickly, wondering what she was remembering from her human life.

"We were dancing. I remember I was slipping into a vision when I was grabbed. I remember being in the ally and that strange vampire stuffing something wet into my mouth and biting me. He scratched my arm with his teeth and cut me." She spoke dreamily, like she was re-seeing a vision, before she shook her head and returned to reality. "Everything's blank after that." She frowned.

"Do you remember anything else about being a vampire?" I asked quickly, desperately.

"No." She shook her head. "I only remember it because I had a vision a little while ago about it."

"When?" I asked. I knew I had been keeping indirect eyes on her since she awoke and I didn't remember anyone noticing a vision.

"When I was upstairs with Bella earlier." She shrugged.

"So you can see the past now?" I asked curiously and she shrugged again.

"It started after I found out about Anthony. I got little flashes from my past. I haven't seen anyone else's." She admitted.

"Have you told Carlisle?" I asked.

"No." She replied quietly.

"Why?"

"Because he looks at me the way everyone else looks at me." She sighed, beautiful green eyes locked on the tree line.

"And how is that?" I urged her to keep talking. I didn't want to stop hearing her voice and getting an insight into her brilliant mind.

"Like I'm a trauma patient!" She cried. "No matter what I do or where I go I'm treated like a fragile thing that might break at any moment. Everyone's apologizing for useless things I could care less about. Why can't you see that I'm stronger now? Why can't you just love me like I love you?!" She stressed and I could obviously tell the last of the conversation was directed at me.

"Alice, I do love you." I promised her, taking her hands in mine and forcing her to look at me.

She smirked and was about to say something when we were interrupted by the backdoor being thrown open.

"Alice?" Tom cried and she jumped up onto her feet.

"Thomas?" She questioned, studying his face carefully, a strange expression of disbelief on her face.

"They told me you were alive again but I didn't believe it!" He cheered and picked her up, throwing her around.

I expected her to laugh like she normally does but she just stayed very quiet. Even when he set her down she stayed silent.

"What's wrong Alice?" I asked her gently.

"Why didn't you kill me?" Alice asked Thomas angrily before storming off into the house.