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But this was no dream, and unlike the nightmare, I wasn't running for my life; I was racing to save something infinitely more precious. My own life meant little to me today.

So it didn't matter to me that we were surrounded by our extraordinarily dangerous enemies. As the clock began to toll out the hour, vibrating under the soles of my sluggish feet, I knew I was too late--and I was glad something bloodthirsty waited in the wings. For in failing at this, I forfeited any desire to live.

I could not do anything else. I had to keep moving. If I stopped looking for him, it was over.

Love, life, meaning...over.

Time passes. Even when it seems impossible. Even when each tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does. Even for me.

I was not allowed to think of him. That was something I tried to be very strict about. Of course I slipped; I was only human. But I was getting better, and so the pain was something I could avoid for days at a time now. The tradeoff was the never-ending numbness. Between pain and nothing, I'd chosen nothing.

As much as I struggled not to think of him, I did not struggle to forget. I worried--late in the night, when the exhaustion of sleep deprivation broke down my defenses--that it was all slipping away. That my mind was a sieve, and I would someday not be able to remember the precise color of his eyes, the feel of his cool skin, or the texture of his voice. I could not think of them, but I must remember them.

Because there was just one thing that I had to believe to be able to live--I had to know that he existed. That was all. Everything else I could endure. So long as he existed.

That's why I was more trapped in Forks than I ever had been before, why I'd fought with Charlie when he suggested a change. Honestly, it shouldn't matter; no one was ever coming back here.

But if i were to go to Jacksonville, or anywhere else bright and unfamiliar, how could I be sure he was real? In a place where I could never imagine him, the conviction might fade...and that I could not live through.

Forbidden to remember, terrified to forget, it was a hard line to walk.

This had to be it, the recipe for a hallucination--adrenaline plus danger plus stupidity. Something close to that, anyway.

I was like a lost moon--my planet destroyed in some cataclysmic, disaster-movie scenario of desolation--that continued, nevertheless, to circle in a tight little orbit around the empty space left behind, ignoring the laws of gravity.

One thing I truly knew--knew it in the pit of my stomach, in the center of my bones, knew it from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, knew it deep in my empty chest--was how love gave someone the power to break you.

I'd been broken beyond repair.

I thought about what Jacob had said earlier this morning, about hypocrisy. I thought about that for a long time. I didn't like to think that I was a hypocrite, only what was the point of lying to myself?

I curled into a tight ball. No, Edward wasn't a killer. Even in his darker past, he'd never been a murderer of innocents, at least.

But what if he had been? What if, during the time that I'd known him, he'd been just like any other vampire? What if people had been disappearing from the woods, just like now? Would that have kept me away from him?

I shook my head sadly. Love is irrational, I reminded myself. The more you loved someone, the less sense anything made.

Would it be so wrong to try to make Jacob happy? Even if the love I felt for him was no more than a weak echo of what I was capable of, even if my heart was far away, wandering and grieving after my fickle Romeo, would it be so very wrong?

Could I betray my absent heart to save my pathetic life?

I couldn't anticipate anything, either. Maybe, if I were very, very, very lucky, I would somehow be able to save Edward. But I wasn't so stupid as to think that saving him would mean that I could stay with him. I was no different, no more special thatn I'd been before. There would be no new reason for him to want me now. Seeing him and losing him again...

I fought back against the pain. This was the price I had to pay to save his life. I would pay it.

It took me less than half a second for me to realize that, as long as I was truly insane now, I might as well enjoy the delusions while they were pleasant.



"And I'll make you a promise in return. I promise that this will be the last time you'll see me. I won't come back. I won't put you through anything like this again. You can go on with your life without any more interference from me. It will be as if I'd never existed. Don't worry. You're human--your memory is no more than a sieve. Time heals all wounds for your kind."

"How can I put this to that you'll believe me? You're not asleep, and you're not dead. I'm here, and I love you. I have always loved you, and I will always love you. I was thinking of you, seeing your face in my mind, every second that I was away. When I told you that I didn't want you, it was the very blackest kind of blasphemy."



"I bet she's tougher than that. She runs with vampires."



"Leave it to you, Bella. Anyone else would be better off when the vampires left town. But you have to start hanging out with the first monsters you can find."



"Do you think I'll ever get better at this? That my heart might someday stop trying to jump out of my chest whenever you touch me?"
"I really hope not."

"Which is tempting you more, my blood or my body?"
"It's a tie. Now, why don't you stop pushing your luck and go to sleep?"

"Will you please try to hear what I'm telling you? Will you let me attempt to explain what you mean to me? Before you, Bella, my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars--points of light and reason. ...And then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly everything was on fire; there was brilliancy, there was beauty. When you were gone, when the meteor had fallen over the horizon, everything went black. Nothing had changed, but my eyes were blinded by the light. I couldn't see the stars anymore. And there was no more reason for anything."
"You're eyes will adjust."
"That's just the problem--they can't."
"What about your distractions?"
"Just part of the lie, love. There was no distraction from the...the agony. My heart hasn't beat in almost ninety years, but this was different. It was like my heart was gone--like I was hollow. Like i'd left everything that was inside me here with you."
"That's funny."
"Funny?"
"I meant strange--I thought it was just me. Lots of pieces of me went missing, too. I haven't been able to really breathe in so long. And my heart. That was definitely lost."

What if you sincerely believed something was true, but you were dead wrong? What if you were so stubbornly sure that you were right, that you wouldn't even consider the truth? Would the truth be silenced, or would it try to break through?

Option three: Edward loved me. The bond forged between us was not one that could be broken by absence, distance, or time. And no matter how much more special or beautiful or brilliant or perfect than me he might be, he was as irreversibly altered as I was. As I would always belong to him, so would he always be mine.

Was that what I'd been trying to tell myself?

"Oh!"
"Bella?"
"Oh. Okay. I see."
"Your epiphany?"
"You love me."
"Truly, I do."



"I look at my...son. His strength, his goodness, the brightness that shines out of him--and it only fuels that hope, that faith, more than ever. How could there not be more for one such as Edward? But if I believed as he does... If you believed as he did. Could you take away his soul? You see the problem."
"It's my choice."
"It's his, too. Whether he is responsible for doing that to you."



"Here's to responsibility. Twice a week."
"And recklessness every day in between."

"Sorry I called you a hypocrite."
"Sorry I called you a murderer."