Rosalie is my dream girl, but there’s one thing I know I can’t give her. I could pay for a million credit cards, buy her a mall, purchase a garage full of broken cars for her fix, hire a legion of men to compliment her on her beauty, everything she wants out of life – and still there would be one thing that would be missing, the thing she wants the most.
I can feel it when we use our bed for the only reason we own one – how often she calls it off before it’s over, how sometimes she’ll cry or get mad when it’s done, how bitter she becomes when Bella, Edward, or Nessie star in our broken conversations. She’s all I want, but I’m not good enough for her. I know she’d give me up to have a child. It doesn’t bother me most of the time, because I know she can’t, but it still hurts when I think about it.
Last night when I lounged on my bed watching movies, Rose came in. She climbed into the bed and leaned against my chest, sighing contentedly. I had been thinking about how little I seemed to mean to her if she’d ditch me to be human again. She leaned in to kiss me, and I let her, but I wasn’t into it like I usually was (well, always was, I mean, she’s Rosalie) and she could feel it. She pulled back, looking at me with concern. “You okay, Em?” she asked.
I debated on whether or not to tell her that I was, in fact, far from okay, but I lied instead. “Yeah, Rose, I’m fine.” I leaned in to kiss her, forcing myself to act like I wanted to.
Okay, I’m weak when it comes to her. Pretty quickly acting like it felt good was out the window. Or on the floor with our clothes, maybe.
Hours later, when the first hints of dawn were visible outside my floor-to-ceiling window, Rosalie lay on my chest, practically purring with contentment. I gazed at her form, so still but for her breathing that she could have been asleep. Through my haze of happiness, I started to remember why I’d been pissed before. Feeling even angrier, this time at myself for still wanting to love her so physically when she didn’t love me enough to want to be immortal for me, I turned to the side so she was dumped off my chest. Her expression looked like that of a model’s that had been fired.
“What was that for?” she snapped.
“Rose…could you just go?” I asked, feeling tired, even though I knew I didn’t need sleep. I rubbed my temples, not wanting to yell at her even if it was totally her fault.
“Emmett Cullen, I am not going to leave until you tell me what the heck is your problem!” Okay, I substituted a kinder four-letter word there, but you get the point. Rose was really ticked now. I’d never given her attitude in bed before.
“Rose…I don’t know why you’re still here,” I grumbled.
Rose looked dumbfounded. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
I rolled over to prop my head up on my elbows so I could look her in the face. “Rosalie…” She flinched here – I never used her full name. “I know I can’t give you another Nessie, which is what you really want. So I don’t know why you’re here.”
“Where does ‘here’ refer to exactly?” she spat through her teeth.
I shrugged. “In my bed, in my room, still with me. Still sleeping with me every other night when you just blow me off halfway through because you’re so bitter.”
Rose looked shocked. “Emmett…Even if we can’t have a baby, I still love you.” She trailed her fingers down my jaw in a way that made my skin tingle.
I refused to be distracted. “But you’d dump me to be human.”
She couldn’t deny that. “Em…”
I got up and shrugged back into my shirt. “Just…just go, Rose.”
“Shut up and listen. Emmett, I would not give you up to be human.”
“Liar,” I hissed under my breath as I climbed into my jeans.
Rosalie hissed in frustration and grabbed my shoulders as I straightened up. “It’s true, Em. Seeing Nessie and Bella made me want a baby even more…but when I saw Edward’s face as he watched her die…as he watched Nessie kill her…as he watched me let it happen…I realized I couldn’t do that. Let myself die. I love you too much to die, even for a baby. I want to be immortal so I can sleep with you every other night and blow you off halfway because I’m bitter, forever. I’m too selfish to be human. Now I know how much more I want you than to be in Bella’s shoes.”
Staring into her eyes, I knew she was serious. She wasn’t bluffing. Everything was nothing but the truth.
“I love you too, baby,” I said, wrapping my arms around her.
Rose slid her hands under my shirt and dragged me back to the bed. “I think you blew me off this time, mister. We have some unfinished business to attend to.”
I laughed and allowed her to pull me down onto the bed, glad the pattern was back into practice. Because as long as she blew me off, she still went halfway.
