PREFACE
The seconds ticked by, seeming more like hours. It had however, been hours since I found her in her car, shaking and crying uncontrollably. I didn't know what to do, what could I do? For all I knew, the next time she spoke she would change my existence forever. Part of me never wanted her to speak again – maybe I could live forever not knowing.
I thought in all my years I'd come to understand the meaning of real pain; I've had the experience of becoming what I am today, and the pain of what brought me to Italy last year, pain enough for me to face what the Volturi would do to me, want them to do destroy me, thinking she had died – I'd thought these moments would have been the worst I could have experienced, especially as an immortal.
I was wrong, very, very wrong.
This was an entirely different type of pain, throbbing, numbing, unbelievably excruciating. The suffering I'd been subjected to then had been merely a drop in the ocean of despair I felt now; waiting to understand what exactly was happening – the ache of waiting was unexplainable. The question of 'what if' in this moment was far worse than anything in my past – what if I lost my entire reason for living today, what if she chose him?