We are sharing entries from our second-annual Literary Lovers Mash-Up Writing Contest — which offered you the chance to combine two romantic heroics from different books. We’ll be featuring all of the qualifying stories over the next few days, so check back periodically for all of these great submissions! Participants will also be receiving a set of Novel Novice bookmarks!
Today we have Elizabeth K.’s entry, featuring Edward Cullen from The Twilight Saga and Wanderer from The Host:
Pensive, I walked, expelling irritation with each stomp of her boots into the murky, muddy carpet of leaves winding lazily between the trees. I shivered against the persistent wind and zipped up her jacket. The bitter resentment I felt surprised me in its strength; I hadn’t known such violent feelings in my other experiences. But this was hot, vital, alive with passion. I hated the cold. I hated her. I hated this life.
The anger pumping, coursing through me blurred her vision and I almost missed him. Later I would wonder how I could have ever not seen him, the beautiful boy, the one who would tilt the axis of this life for every minute after.
The woods rang with a sudden stillness as I stopped. He was there, his hand resting on an ancient pine, seemingly human, but he appeared timeless, as though he had seen the world from the beginning. He was painfully beautiful; it panged me to search his face. Every part of me fell away and sealed together with fire all at the same time, and he came to me, grace in every movement.
I ached to reach for him when he stopped in front of me. My soul struggled, wanting to take his hand, wondering wildly and fearfully what is was that drew me to a stranger.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured. His penetrating honey-gold eyes looked deep into hers, but past them, it seemed. I thought of Melanie’s eyes, thought how all he could see of me was a ring of silver. The idea saddened me irrationally.
He bent his head to meet my downturned gaze. “No, not her,” he said. “You.”
I looked up into his face and gasped quietly at the truth. He means me. Not Melanie. Me.
“H-how…?” I stammered lamely.
He smiled gently and tilted his head as he looked deeper into my eyes. He seemed to be considering something.
“I can hear you,” he said finally.
I looked back into his eyes, confused. “You can hear me?”
He nodded slowly, gauging my reaction. “I can hear people’s thoughts. I heard you when you started hiking up the path.”
I believed him immediately, something I realized was unusual even as I accepted it. I felt warmth suddenly in Melanie’s face as I remembered what I had been thinking as I walked.
“I…wasn’t thinking very beautiful thoughts today,” I said.
His wide smile lit up his face. “Well, maybe they weren’t all pretty,” he said, laughing a little. “Some were. Even though you were angry, you noticed the drops of rain on flower petals and the smell of the loam. But the passion behind even your fury…I haven’t met anyone with a spirit as full of fire as yours.”
He reached for my hand and I eagerly wrapped my fingers in his, though his touch was like ice. Then the words tumbled from my soul: “I want you to know me.”
He smiled. “Will you walk with me?”
Forever, I thought. Forever.
Novel Novice 
How ironic. It seemed the only one for Edward was Bella whose mind he can’t read and the only one for Wanderer is Edward who can hear her, and just what is her, and truly know her. Sigh.