Chapter Seven: Memories

I accompanied Bella after she ate breakfast, driving her to a few businesses in Forks where she asked for job applications. She still couldn't drive much because of the cast on her leg, preferring to drive only to school and back, and that only because Charlie had insisted that I not take her to and from school. As he had left early for work this morning, I had volunteered to chauffeur her around town once again as Bella looked for a summer job—rather late as summer had already started, but she remained hopeful.

Wearing her one skirt as it was far easier for Bella to get on and off with her huge leg cast, and my favorite deep blue blouse (which distracted me to no end—she looked so incredibly beautiful this morning that I could barely keep my eyes on the road), she had a list written out of the places she wanted to apply, and although finding a job in such a small town seemed like a long shot, she was willing to try, willing to make Charlie happy, willing to keep the peace at home. Watching her work so hard to make Charlie happy made me feel ashamed at my own selfishness. I could never live for others the way Bella did—her unselfishness made me love her even more.

"Let's see," she said, looking at her list. I sat in the driver's seat of her ancient truck, idling noisily outside the little diner where she had just submitted another application. She made a check mark on her list next to the diner's name. "They're not hiring right now—although they really should consider hiring me since Charlie eats here almost every day for lunch." Bella laughed, reconsidering, "Maybe they don't want to offer him an employee discount every day if I worked here—they might lose money."

She glanced down her list again. "I have just one more place to check today: Newton's."

I couldn't help laughing. "You...work at Newton's?" My eyebrows raised as I teased her, "You're the last person they'd think about hiring, your cast notwithstanding."

Bella's brows came together in a frown. "Why do you say that?" she asked, obviously miffed. "My cast should come off Friday anyway, according to Carlisle." The removal of her cast was an event both of us were very much looking forward to, she because the cast was heavy and awkward, and myself because the cast was a constant reminder of the events in Phoenix...when I had so nearly lost her.

"Bella, you aren't exactly the outdoor type. Have you ever set foot inside their store?"

Her frown deepened. "No, not exactly." Then her tone brightened. "But Charlie is a great customer; he's always buying his fishing stuff there. And I'm sure they sell other items besides outdoorsy stuff."

I laughed again. "Yes, sporting goods, Bella. And we know how interested you are in sports, love."

She laughed too, reluctantly. "Okay, okay. But have you ever seen Mike's mother? She looks like the least outdoorsy person ever, and she obviously works there. So being 'sporty' doesn't seem like a prerequisite for working in a sporting goods and outdoors store." Bella had a point: Karen Newton, with her professionally manicured nails, her perfectly coiffed blonde hair, her stiletto heels, and her fashionable clothing, seemed the absolute antithesis to the great outdoors.

"Perhaps you have a chance, after all," I conceded, grinning widely at her.

Bella's eyes unfocused for a few moments, and her breathing stopped.

"Bella?" I asked anxiously.

Her eyes closed, she shook her head, trying to clear it. "You've got to stop doing that," she rebuked me.

"Doing what?" I asked, shocked.

"Dazzling me." She deliberately refusing to look in my direction, so I shifted her truck into gear and backed out of the parking space of the diner's tiny lot. Making a right turn onto the main highway, I directed the truck toward Newton's Olympic Outfitters just outside of town.

We didn't say much on the way. Bella's lips were folded in a thin line, as if she were a little peeved at the power I still seemed to hold over her. I loved that I could "dazzle" her, even after these months together, and she certainly dazzled me. I knew that her hold on me had grown even tighter since our time in Phoenix. I remembered how desperately I had tried to find her that day.

I remembered deplaning that morning in the Phoenix airport, immediately seeking her face among the crowd, blocking out the many thoughts bombarding me from every direction, so it took me a few moments to hear Alice and Jasper's panicked thoughts: They couldn't find Bella.

I had ghosted to them immediately—much, much more quickly than I have ever moved in public, weaving through the crowd in mere seconds.

"What's happening?" I had growled at Alice, noting that her face was far paler than usual.

"Bella went with Jazz to get breakfast, and she stopped at the ladies' room. He waited outside for her, but she didn't come out. I came to find out what was taking them so long, and when I checked the bathroom, she was gone. I followed her scent through another exit, down the elevator, and to the curb, but I lost it there..." Her thoughts trailed off, her panic and fear making her thoughts wordless.

"Show me," I hissed, and with Carlisle and Emmett on our heels, Alice showed us the second exit from the ladies' restroom, the one that Bella had used to escape Jasper and which was around the corner from the place Alice had been waiting for their return. Why had Bella tried to escape them? What could cause her to run away from her protectors?

I caught her scent easily outside the restroom door, and together we followed it to the elevators, picking it back up at the street level. I was frustrated beyond words at the human pace we were forced to assume as we moved through the airport because of the many human witnesses around us. The peaceful vibes Jasper sent my way did little to calm my frantic mind.

Just as Alice said, Bella's scent disappeared at the curb where taxis and shuttles picked up their passengers.

"Where could she have gone?" I attempted to control my voice, trying to hide my frustration and anger at Alice and Jasper for losing track of her. How could they let her get away? Carlisle glanced at me in warning, knowing too well how my temper often governed my words and actions, and I swallowed my anger as best I could

Alice looked at me, ancient sadness in her eyes. "The ballet studio. I saw..." her voice choked to a stop. "James is there, waiting for her. He must have somehow communicated to her; I don't know how..."

"Did she receive any calls beside ours?" I asked.

"Just her mother. She was frantic, asking for Bella, so I passed my cell to her and Bella spoke to her in the other room. But I listened to Bella's side of the conversation; she said nothing that seemed out of the ordinary. But she was very upset afterward. And then I saw it..." Her voice trailed off, and I saw what she had seen then: Bella being attacked by James. Bella, lying in a pool of her own blood as he approached her... But I couldn't let Alice's visions sidetrack me from my single-minded purpose: finding Bella.

I felt my face harden into ice as, with incredible effort, I pushed Alice's vision out of my mind. "James must have been coaching her somehow; we know that Bella can't act. Where is this ballet studio, Alice?"

"58th and Cactus; Bella told us the address when I first saw it."

Emmett had slipped away when we reached the curb; now he reappeared, pulling up in front of us in a BMW that would give us the speed we needed. We all slid into the powerful car, myself in the passenger seat. The GPS locator was on the dashboard; I quickly entered the address and turned the device toward Emmett so he could read the directions. The GPS had stated that it would take 23 minutes to reach our destination; I hoped and prayed that we could get there quickly enough.

From her purse, Alice pulled a long envelope that was blank except for a hotel logo on the front and handed it to me. "Bella gave me this to give to her mother."

I ripped open the sealed envelope and quickly glanced over Bella's scrawled note, her writing barely legible from stress. "James has her mother," I hissed. "He must have allowed her mother to talk to you and to her first, then he gave Bella directions to meet him."

Alice spoke from the backseat between Carlisle and Jasper, "I didn't see her mother in the studio—just James and Bella." She was quiet for a few moments, her eyes unfocused as she tried to see the events unfolding. "Bella is in her mother's house right now, calling a number James left for her." She moaned with impatience, "We have to hurry, Emmett!"

Jasper sent a feeling of peaceful resolve over us all, and I used the calm to think, to plan. What if I were too late? What if Bella died because of me, because of her proximity to my world? How could I exist without her? I knew how difficult, how impossible it was for a vampire to kill himself, and I knew that none of my family would ever help me to destroy myself so that I could possibly be with Bella in the afterlife...if I even had a chance at such an afterlife. But I couldn't bear the thought of living without her. There simply was no way I could go on without Bella.

Then a thought crossed my mind: the Volturi. They destroyed vampires who flouted the rules. I could go to Italy, do something that could possibly reveal myself to the humans there, and let them do what my family would not do, what I could not do. I smiled to myself, feeling somehow more at peace knowing that I had a plan to follow if we were too late to save Bella. Jasper sent me a puzzled look, feeling the change in my frantic emotions but unaware of their source.

I remembered finally pulling up to the curb, all of us flitting out of the car and into the studio just in time to hear Bella scream in agony. Reaching her first, I pulled James off of her, throwing him toward Emmett and Jasper. Carlisle, after seeing how much blood Bella had lost, directed my brothers into the smaller room, away from the blood pooling on the shiny dance floor, where they could destroy James without the distraction of Bella's blood.

And the images seared forever into my memory for all eternity: Bella lying there, unconscious in a pool of her own blood gushing from a head wound, her right leg lying at an odd angle. I remembered sobbing tearlessly, thinking she was dying...or dead. Then I heard her heartbeat: faint and irregular, her breathing weak and shallow. Carlisle was immediately assessing her injuries, applying pressure to her head wound, stopping her blood from flowing, and then stitching the long, jagged opening along her hairline closed.

And her hand...I had felt such fury that James had dared to bite her, to do what I had refrained from doing. I don't know how I ever managed to make myself stop as I sucked the venom from her. Her screams echoing in my ears helped me to tear my mouth from her skin as soon as I could no longer taste the venom, the morphine Carlisle had given her for the pain adding a strange, numbing taste to the sweetest blood I had ever tasted. And Bella lay there, so pale, so weak, so broken...the images would always haunt me, no matter how many centuries I would live. And then her whispered thanks to me were burned into my memory as well, her thanking me after all I had put her through...

I was suddenly aware that the truck had stopped, and Bella was staring at me, concern and pity in her beautiful eyes. Somehow I had driven to Newton's practically on autopilot as the memories had taken me two months and hundreds of miles away. I'm sure the expression on my face was filled with the pain that these memories always brought me. Twisting in her seat, Bella reached up to cup my face in both of her hands. "Stop," she whispered.

I attempted to smile, but her worried expression told me that my face remained pained. "I'm all right, Bella. Really."

"So am I," she reminded me. "You can't keep obsessing over the past, Edward. It's over. It's done. I'm fine." She took a deep breath, and looked into my eyes fiercely. "You can't keep blaming yourself, Edward. I was the one who stupidly ran off. I was the one James fooled into thinking he had my mother. I didn't tell you or anyone that he called, and I should have."

She took another breath and stated, slowly and emphatically, "You have to forgive yourself, Edward. You can't let what happened keep eating at you. I'm fine. We're all fine. We have a beautiful summer ahead of us to spend together. Let's not let the past ruin our present ... or our future. Forgive yourself, please. For me, if not for yourself."

I shook my head slowly. "I'm not certain that I can," I whispered, my eyes looking down at my hands frozen on the steering wheel, not meeting hers.

"Please?" she whispered back, her hands still on my face, attempting to force me to look at her.

I took a deep breath, too, trying to ignore the burn in my throat as I did so. "I'll try," I sighed unhappily.

"Thank you," she said quietly, bending upward as best she could to lightly and briefly press her lips to mine. She pulled back, smiling, and I tried to return her smile.

"Wish me luck," she said as she opened the truck door, slid out, and walked across the small parking lot of Newton's Olympic Outfitters as best she could, her cast causing her to walk more awkwardly than usual.