Authors Note: OK, I got a suggestion for a response from Edward to the last Bella letter, but I think his own unsent letter may be better since I'm not sure she'd ever actually let him see the letter to respond.

My dearest Love,

You deserve to know why I left, but since I have removed myself so completely from your world I can no longer tell you. But I can write this and hope that one day I will have the courage to send it. No, you will never read these words, of that I am certain, I gave you a promise and I intend to keep it. It would be as if I never existed.

Sometimes I wish that statement was true for the both of us. That I could go back to the time before you, before us. Back to when things were simple for me, the eternal seventeen year old simply unable to find love. But I could never truly wish that I had never met you, my sweet Bella, never. You made me feel alive for the first time in a century. Sometimes you even made me feel human, and for that I will be eternally grateful.

I lied to you my love, that day in the woods was all a lie, the blackest form of blasphemy, there is no way I could ever not want you, not love you. But, Bella, how could you believe me so easily? How could you let one word cancel out all of the millions of times that I told how ardently I love and admire you? How could you? Maybe I'm simply a better liar than I thought. I don't know. But I do know why I left.

Your birthday. Eighteen years old and already talking of aging. Watching you with my family had always scared me, as wrong as it was my need to protect you was constant, is constant, and allowing you to spend extended periods of time in a house full of vampires, some more inclined to slipping than others, occasionally filled me with dread, but nonetheless for months you were fine, everything was fine.

Then you got that blasted papercut, and everything changed. I knew it wasn't safe anymore. I wasn't safe for you anymore. And I had to protect you, no matter the cost to myself, you would always come first. It took me days to realise how a way of making you safe. My four alternatives screamed at me.

The first was impossible from that first day in the meadow, I hoped that you would not return my affections, that you would turn from me, but you my angel, you loved me, turning your back on the chance for a normal life, a normal love. So, option two, it was simple, I could live out your human life beside you, enjoying the years together until the day you died and I would follow soon after. My third option is the one I am currently suffering through, removing myself and my world from yours in an attempt to give you the freedom to pursue that normality, the normal guy, who doesn't always fear killing you and who can give you everything you deserve. My fourth option was the one you would probably have approved of and yet is the most abhorrent to me, changing you, making you into a monster like me.

I could never do that to you my beautiful angel, I could never risk your soul like that. I could never. And no matter how much you said that this life is the one you wanted, you never really understood what that meant. What it means. And I pray, to whatever higher being there may be, that you never find out. For that would truly mean there were no justice in this world, nothing fair or true.

So, in my last effort to protect you I left. I told you I didn't want you. I convinced my family to leave with me. I hope it wasn't all in vain. It broke their hearts to leave you. Their collective pain and heartache however in no way compares to my own. No matter the reason or cause, the simple fact that I know I will never hold you again, never hear you speak, never see your eyes sparkle with joy, never be with you again eats away at me, every second it feels like I lose a little more of myself to the darkness of despair, to the blackness. Only you can save me love, only you, but that is a request I cannot make of you. I cannot risk your wellbeing for my own.

My darling, nothing will ever alter the way I feel about you, and I know that I shall never see you again, and never truly be able to call you mine, but in my thoughts you will always be mine, and we shall always be us.

As the darkness creeps in I bring this letter to a close and only hope that one day you can find it in yourself to forgive me, and that you try to understand why I left, you know me so well I'm sure you can figure it out.

Be sure of one thing. I love you. And even that isn't enough to truly say how I feel.

All that I am, all that I ever was, and all that I ever will be is yours.

Yours eternally,

Edward.