Prologue
He told me he didn't want me and the realization sunk into my heart, leaving me with no idea how to continue. I spent weeks rotting from the inside out. No resemblance of my former self remaining in the fragments he left behind, my heart broken into too many pieces to count.
So when I encountered Laurent in the woods, I welcomed death. Not by my hand that's all that I promised him, surely leaving it to the hands of his kind wouldn't be against the rules. Not that he'd care. Charlie would care, but Charlie was resilient, he'd mend. Renee would be devastated, but she had Phil. I'd put everyone ahead of me for my entire life, not this time.
"Go on with it", I whispered to him, the last words I'd ever speak leaving my lips.
His crimson eyes glowed and he grinned; but before he struck, before he delivered the final blow that would end my life, I reached out with my mind and called out – for the first time in hopes that he'd hear my thoughts. That underneath the awful dream that had been my life these past weeks that he and I still held some sort of connection and that he would know he was on my mind in my final moments. Edward, I screamed inside, I love you.
And in that very moment, a searing pain coursed through my body, beginning at my shoulder - but no worse than my heartache, no worse then what I already felt, so I drifted toward the darkness like it was an old friend.