He looks back at her when she starts talking, that too-attentive stare. Even going to high school ever day, he doesn't spend enough time truly around humans to remember all the little tells that come so naturally to Carlisle, blinking three times a minute, moving his shoulders as if he's breathing, shifting in his seat. He's a statue, listening to her words and to the flavor of her mood as it shifts from a decidedly acute empathy—she knows the feeling of what he's done somehow, and isn't that curious?—to the hard shell she grows around herself when she's hiding, but it doesn't last this time. It's almost as though she's taken it down herself instead of letting it fully form.

He straightens just a little when she stands, and swallows when she walks close to him. Her hand on his shoulder burns through the jacket. He can't breathe with her so close, doesn't want to risk that, but his head turns to look up at her as if drawn up to her face. "It matters," he says simply, and then he's gone, only a sharp breeze marking his disappearance. The chair hasn't even moved.

It isn't even the fresh air, although that helps cool the burn in his throat. He'd gotten the distinct sense earlier that she'd been a mite skeptical of the location of those birch trees, and he speeds his way through the trees now, to the edge of the creek where he'd found them, uprooted by the erosion of soil until they'd fallen to form a natural bridge over the water. He may not be as strong as Emmett, but he's easily strong enough to rip one tree away from its clinging roots and carry it back through the woods, a little slower now but still back at the house within ten minutes.

He slows when he's almost within sight of it, just for the satisfaction of walking out of the woods with a full-sized birch tree balanced on one shoulder like a rolled up carpet.