His words continued to ring through her ears as she lay on the cold, damp ground that made up the lower half of the forest. The sequence they were spoken in no longer existed. It was as if someone had taken random pages from a dictionary and circled words that were lost on her, words that didn't make sense.
He didn't want her.
Bella's body hugged itself in a tight ball as she cried the last tear her body could produce before falling into a state of exhaustion. The cold had settled in long after Edward's departure, illustrating just how long she had been left alone. Hours that seemed like years. Her throat was dry and raspy, as if she had choked on salt water doused with cyanide - damaged, like the rest of her aching being.
He didn't want her.
A low mumbling could be heard off in the distance, well beyond the thick ferns and trees that surrounded her fragile self. Mumbles that sounded like thunder off in the distance. Thunder, being another thing she would have to learn to hate in spite of him. The mumbles grew louder and louder until she was able to distinguish the yelling of her name from the low rumbles far up in the clouds. Someone was looking for her, but she didn't want to be found. Not yet.
Her body recoiled from the tight ball it had held itself in all these hours, stinging from the sudden movement. Her muscles worked against her, causing her more pain on top of what already ate away at her. In fear that her weak legs would fail her, Bella's hands gripped the grass tightly as she began crawling further away from the voices that begged her to answer, further into the thick woods that wished to consume her until nothing was left. Further away from the life she had before he let it crumble to the ground.
He doesn't want me.
She repeated the words over and over in her head, trying to make sense of them. All of his promises to be with her forever, all of his words whispering he loved her meant nothing anymore. Nothing else existed but the four painfully simple words that stabbed at her entire being, growing louder and louder with each movement, with each breath...
"He doesn't want me..."
"Who doesn't want you, Bells?" The voice was familiar, urgent, as a set of tight arms wrapped around her weak body, pulling her up from the rain soaked ground and against a firm chest. A chest that smelt of the same musky cologne she had grown up with. Charlie.
She hadn't the strength to walk, let alone go over the last conversation she had with Edward. She hardly had the will to continue breathing. Instead, she allowed herself to be carried to the rest of the voices that continued screaming her name, most dying out as she and Charlie came into view. She wanted so badly to apologize for disappearing like she had, though the words were lost, they no longer had meaning. She knew that if her voice was as monotone as her conscience, they would assume she had lost her mind. The truth was, she lost her everything.