-Edward-
I’d been back in Forks for seven days.
Seven days of shadowing the only girl I would ever love. Seven days of pretending I didn’t exist.
In a way, I didn’t anymore.
Alice and I had agreed: stay hidden, observe from a distance, wait. The Volturi’s movements were erratic—strategically indecisive. And though the idea of staying out of Bella’s life even one more hour made my throat close, I’d held my promise.
But I was cracking.
I couldn’t stay away from her—not really. I followed her through the thoughts of her classmates at school. Watched her with aching silence as she limped to Jacob Black’s car every afternoon. I trailed her from the shadows when she got home, scaling the trees behind her house like I had a lifetime ago. But I never crossed the threshold. I wouldn’t dare.
Still, the memories of others had shown me everything I needed to know.
I hadn’t left Bella better off. I had left her broken. Ruined.
Charlie’s memories were a collection of horrors I couldn’t have imagined. Bella catatonic, curled in her bed in the middle of the night, staring blankly at the wall as he begged her to speak. Her shrieks when she woke from nightmares that shattered the silence of their house, over and over again. Her weight dropping. Her voice hollow. The moment she vanished into the woods, and they found her collapsed and unresponsive hours later. He’d thought she might never recover.
And maybe she hadn’t.
The guilt was endless. It poured into me like concrete, hardening in my chest with every remembered scream Charlie relived, every flash of her pale, glassy face. It was unbearable. I had wanted to protect her—but all I’d done was devastate her in a way no monster ever should.
And then there was him.
Jacob Black.
He wasn’t supposed to be a threat. He was just a boy. Just a friend.
But from what I saw in his mind, he was no longer satisfied with being “just” anything. His thoughts swam with her face. Some of it was innocent—worry when she looked tired, a spark of joy when she laughed. But not all of it. Not even close. There were dreams of her in his arms. Fantasies where she looked at him the way she used to look at me. Images of their mouths meeting, of her whispering his name the way she used to say mine. Over and over, like it belonged to her.
I didn’t breathe—couldn’t.
I wanted to rip something apart. I wanted to be rational, calm, mature. But every time I saw his hand brush her shoulder or his thoughts stray to her body, rage flared up so hot and fast it burned. I could barely control it.
He thought she was falling for him.
And the part that made me feel like I might collapse?
Maybe he wasn’t wrong.
Bella laughed with Jacob. She leaned on him. She let herself feel something around him—maybe not love, but relief. She looked less hollow. And though I knew that comfort wasn’t the same as love, it was more than I had left her with.
Could she be slipping away from me—piece by piece—without even realizing it?
Could she forget what we had?
I didn’t deserve her. I had no claim. I knew that.
And still, if he touched her again, I might kill him.
That thought terrified me. Because it wasn’t noble. It wasn’t selfless. It wasn’t love. It was obsession. But then again, maybe love and obsession weren’t so different after all. At least not when it came to her.
“Edward, you have to calm down,” Alice said, watching my jaw clench and my hands curl into fists. Her eyes were distant, focused on a vision I couldn’t see. “You’re coming apart.”
“Because I’m watching him take my place.”
“Jacob is just a distraction to her.”
“You don’t know that,” I snapped. “You can’t see her when she’s with him.”
“She still loves you. You know that.”
“She did. But love fades. Especially when you abandon it.”
“Not hers,” Alice said softly.
I wanted to believe her. Desperately. But fear had rooted itself too deeply in me now.
Later, I returned to the tree behind her house. I hadn’t fed in two days. Not that I could. Not when Charlie’s thoughts replayed that moment again and again—when he found her motionless in the woods and thought she was dead.
She nearly had been.
And it was all because I’d believed a lie—that leaving her would somehow keep her safe.
Tonight, I listened as Charlie suggested Bella and Jacob go see a movie. My throat locked up. She said yes. A casual “that’s not a bad idea” in a tone I’d once adored. Now it stabbed.
Then the phone call. Billy Black—frantic, overly forceful—insisting Jacob was sick, that Bella stay away.
Charlie relayed the message, and she collapsed in front of him.
“I have to see him,” she cried, the panic rising in her voice.
“You can’t,” Charlie insisted.
“It hurts—he makes it go away—I need—” Her words dissolved into sobs.
And then I broke. Something inside me shattered.
Because I had done this. I had forced her into needing someone else just to survive. I had taken everything we had and left her clinging to someone who didn’t love her the way I did—who couldn’t.
I thought of the vision again—her standing in the meadow, her hand hovering over the jagged, gaping hole in her chest. “This is yours, I think.” My voice, cruel and distant. Her heart in my hands.
Her heart. Not beating. Not whole.
And the worst part?
That might still be better than what I’d left her with.
If Bella chose him… if she let go of me…
I wouldn’t stop her. I couldn’t.
But I would never forgive myself.
That night, I didn’t go home. I ran until the moon gave way to dawn, farther north than necessary, trying to outpace my own mind. It didn’t work.
Her scream stayed with me. That collapsing sob when Charlie told her Jacob was unreachable. That wild, broken tone—the one that sounded exactly like it had the night I left her in the woods.
I left her alone in the world. And now, I was watching her attach herself to the only piece of warmth she could find, even if it wasn’t real.
I stopped just outside a frozen ridge, the trees coated with frost, and crouched into the snow-covered ground, hands tangled in my hair. I didn’t breathe. I didn’t move. I just pictured everything that could go wrong.
What if she tried something reckless again?
I saw her lying at the bottom of the ravine, twisted and silent, the way I imagined she’d looked when they found her in the woods after I left her. Her skin pale. Her heartbeat stilled.
My fault. Always.
What if the Volturi came early, and she didn’t tell anyone?
They’d cloak themselves in civility. She’d offer them tea. She’d be too trusting—too fragile—and they would take her life like they were flipping a coin.
One moment of kindness, and she’d be dead. Because I hadn’t warned her.
What if she did choose Jacob?
I pictured her hand in his. Her lips on his mouth. Her voice saying his name in the soft, sleep-thick tone I used to crave.
It wasn’t jealousy alone—it was terror. Because no matter how kind he might be, he didn’t understand her. He didn’t know her the way I did. He couldn’t see the way her mind worked, how she pieced her stubbornness into love. She wasn’t his. She was mine—and I was hers.
And I gave that up.
If she gave her heart to Jacob, it wouldn’t be out of love. It would be out of survival. He’d be a substitute—warm-blooded comfort. And when the illusion finally cracked and she realized she’d settled, the pain would return.
That would kill her in a slower, crueler way.
I couldn’t let that happen.
My hand trembled as I pressed my palm to the frozen ground. For a moment, I imagined it was her face. What would she say to me if I appeared at her door?
Would she scream?
Would she cry?
Would she collapse into my arms the way I sometimes still dreamed she would?
Or worse—would she look at me with that same blank, hollow expression I’d seen in Charlie’s memories?
I couldn’t bear that.
I imagined her saying nothing at all. Just turning from me with indifference, the way I’d done to her in the forest.
That was the nightmare I couldn’t outrun.
I stayed there until the sun rose higher in the sky and birds began to stir in the trees. I had no answers. Only this ache that wouldn’t subside, this slow drowning in the consequences of my own making.
She had every right to hate me. But God, I prayed she didn’t.
I didn’t deserve forgiveness.
But I still needed it.
I stumbled through the front door of our empty house just as dusk bled through the windows. My boots echoed hollow across the floors, the sound too loud, too sharp. Every step felt like dragging a coffin.
Alice was already waiting. She stood like a statue in the foyer, her eyes fixed on me, and I didn’t have to read her mind to know what she saw—something fractured. Something barely held together.
“I watched her, Alice,” I said hoarsely. My voice was threadbare. “Charlie… he nearly lost her today.”
Her face tightened with concern. “What happened? I thought Billy Black said Jacob was sick?”
“He lied.” I barely got the words out. “She ran to him. Panicked. Hysterical. When Charlie told her to stay away, she collapsed—screaming, like she was shattering from the inside. And she was. She’s desperate. And Jacob…” My throat locked. “He cares about her. More than I ever dared.”
Alice moved closer and gently guided me toward a chair. I didn’t sit. I couldn’t. The idea of resting felt insulting.
“Edward—”
“She needs him,” I snapped, my voice breaking open. “And I—” I swallowed, hard. “I left her. I broke her. I thought distance would protect her, but I only made her hollow. And now she’s clinging to him because he makes her feel anything again. Anything that isn’t me.”
“She still loves you,” Alice said softly, but firmly. “Jacob’s a distraction—he’s not you.”
“She shouldn’t love me!” I hissed. “God, why would she? I only remind her of nightmares. Of screams in the dark. Jacob makes her laugh. I saw it, Alice—he’s the only warmth she lets in.”
Her hand settled on my shoulder, grounding me. “You’re still her heart, Edward. You always were. She just doesn’t know if you’ll come back for it.”
I shook her off and backed away, unsteady. “I can’t face her. I can’t. She’ll see the guilt in my eyes and shut the door in my face. And I’ll deserve it.”
“You’re letting your fear write her story,” Alice said, voice sharp now. “You have one chance to tell her the truth: that you never stopped loving her. That you’d die to fix this.”
My knees buckled.
I hit the floor before I even realized I’d fallen.
The weight of it all—the memory of her screams, the image of her clutching Jacob like a lifeline, the note I left beneath her floorboards—everything came down at once. I was choking on it. My voice tore free like a broken thing. “I’m unworthy—undeserving—I’ve destroyed her life. I don’t know how to make it right.”
Alice dropped to the ground beside me, pulling me into her arms like she used to when she first joined us, when my grief first made me violent with self-hatred. “Listen to me, Edward. You’re more than your mistakes. Bella’s fighting her own battle—and she needs you. But you have to fight, too.”
I pressed my face into her shoulder, trembling. Her mind flickered with visions. The meadow, Bella standing there, a shadow surrounded by dark cloaks. Then again, Charlie hugging the ghost that had become his daughter. And finally, my family, sitting on a coach in the Denali house, surrounded by boxes and luggage – waiting. Her visions, were the only constant thing in my world. The room spun around me, and I stayed there on my knees, broken open.
And then I wept.
I let it happen. For the first time since I left her in that forest, I let the grief have its way with me. My self-loathing reached its peak and splintered.
But beneath it—buried under guilt and regret and every selfish choice I’d ever made—something stirred.
Resolve.
I would face her.
I would risk everything.
Because without trying… I had already lost her.
And with that final, devastating realization, everything faded and darkness washed over me.
1.7562 Billion Miles 