Whispering Dusk/Emmett Cullen (COMPLETE)

Chapter Nine

      I stood up and cleared my throat. His eyes lingered on my low-cut tank top and shorts. I dropped my arms to my sides and snapped my fingers. He looked at my face and smiled.

      "Aubrey... I haven't gotten to talk to you since the day you moved in." He smiled and stepped forward.

      "About the fight and the way I acted toward your mate... It was wrong and I am deeply sorry. But she has had it out for me since the day I met her." I held my head high and he chuckled.

      "Rosalie is obviously not my mate. There is something between us. I won't deny it so why are you?"

      "I, uh, well... Because she loves you. And we are family," I sighed.

       "Alice had a vision about us once. She told everyone and Rose got ticked. I didn't think much about it because I loved Rose at the time. But I also thought I owed her because she saved me. I think that debt is paid." He was standing right in front of me now and if I had a heart, it would be beating wildly.

      "I think so, too." I whispered.

    "I would like to get to know you, if that's okay with you." He looked at me from under his lashes and I smiled. I nodded, sitting on the floor and crossed my legs.

      He sat in front of me, drawing his knees up a little and folding his hands on top of them. God, he was so muscular...

      "So, where are you from?" He asked.

    "I was born in Millcreek Township, Pennsylvania. That's in Clarion County," I informed him.

    "What year? And what year were you changed?"

    "I was born in 1815 and I was changed in 1832. I'm seventeen-years-old, though I tell everyone I'm sixteen when we move. What about you?" I laughed.

      "Well, I was born in Gatlinburg in 1915. I was changed in 1935. I'm twenty-years-old forever." He looked kind of sad and I reached forward and touched his hand lightly.

      "I was born Aubrey Lynn Roerig. I liked my name. It was cute. You know the Barsoumian's raised me?" I smiled and he raised his eyebrows, indicating that he didn't really know. I nodded.

      "I was five when Marcus found me. He gave free checkups to the orphanage I was in at the time. I don't remember my father, but my mother had three children younger than me and her husband wouldn't take care of all of us. So she sent my four-year-old brother and I to separate orphanages.

  "I was malnourished and had no one. There wasn't enough food to go around and it was terribly cold all the time. He took me in and I grew up spoiled and loved by all of them. I didn't plan to be changed until I was twenty-five. But something happened and Marcus made a decision..." I looked down and folded my hands in my lap.

      "What happened to you?" He whispered.

   "Much worse than what happened to Rosalie," I whispered venomously. Rose thought she had it bad the night Carlisle found her on the brink of death, raped and beaten in that alley. She had been lucky compared to me...

      "I was only able to find one of my siblings after I was changed: the brother that my mother gave away. Fifty years after I was changed. He was fifty-four and living with his wife in some town in New Jersey. They had three children who were grown. I watched them for months before I had the courage to introduce myself. I mean, how do you tell your brother that you're a vampire?" I shook my head, remembering that day...