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Emily took care of me for the first few months. She stayed with me almost all day to make sure I ate and didn't try to kill myself. For a while I didn't do anything but lie in my bed and cry, and then I didn't do anything. I hardly spoke unless it was absolutely necessary, and the times that I deemed to be necessary figured to be once every two or three weeks. I didn't sleep either. My body wasn't used to more than three or four hours at sleep at most and so even when all I wanted was to sleep and forget about everything, I just couldn't.

After the first three months Emily didn't need to take care of me all time. I would go and eat if I was hungry, take walks around the house and outside sometimes. I avoided the garden path at all costs and if someone even mentioned it to me it would send me into a nervous fit. Of course everyone in the house learned about what happened. Even if Jacob had wanted to keep it quiet he would not have been able to. It wasn't as if the rest of the house would not have noticed that I wouldn't stop crying or that I avoided other people at all costs or that sometimes I woke up screaming for no reason.

Jacob had left me alone for a few days. A little over a week after it happened he came to my room and made Emily leave so we could speak privately. I stared past him and let my eyes run dry as he apologized for doing something to hurt me and said he still thought we could make it work if I wanted to. I didn't know if he was expecting me to answer him then but I could hardly speak at that point. So he finally just got up and left.

As the months passed it got easier and easier not to think about Edward during the day. I could fill my time with reading and I even took up painting. It wasn't that I was any good at it only that I needed something to do with my mind for a while. The days were gradually getting easier as I was able to distract myself with more simplicity.

But as my days got easier, my nights became infinitely more difficult. They had always been harder than the daylight hours because I was always with Edward at night and so being without him at first was like going through withdrawal. But the better I got at not thinking about him during the day, the more I thought about him at night. I could go a whole day without feeling the ache in me but as soon as night fell and I was in my room alone it was back again, reminding me how alone I was with each aching beat my heart had.

Things didn't change for the half a year. Jacob called off the wedding, sighting some tragedy within the family for the cancellation at such late notice but refused to elaborate when anyone asked. We lived in a sense of oddity, Jacob and I avoiding each other as we learned to live with what had happened. Jacob had killed someone. He had taken the life of a human. But to me it wasn't just the life of that human that mattered—it was who that human was.

After the first six months it got marginally easier. I could eat more than once a day without feeling sick. I slept for more than five hours without screaming myself awake. I was able to speak to other people and talk with them without slipping into the safe place in my mind where I could stop thinking and stop hurting. It was easier to just go through every day.

At the end of those six months, Jacob's father died, finally succumbing to the infection he had sustained over a year before. He might have lived longer if Dr. Cullen had stayed, but he couldn't, and so even with the treatment of another doctor he could not last much longer. Jacob mourned for him, and truly so did I. It was a loss I hadn't been ready for and on top of the one I had not stopped grieving, I relapsed for a few weeks. Only at that time I let Emily focus on helping Jacob. I wasn't so needy a to require her constant attention at that point.

A year came and went faster than I ever thought it could. I didn't even realize it was a year to the day Edward had gone until Emily reminded me. It was just a small little remark about how far I had come since a year ago, but as soon as I realized a year had gone by, I felt the air leave my lungs. It had been a whole year since I had seen his face. It had been a whole year since I had heard his voice, watched him laugh, kissed him, held him. It had been a whole year since I had felt whole.

I spent that whole day in the sitting room, holding a book but not reading it. It had already been a year. At the soonest, Edward could be back here in a year. At the soonest, I could see his beautiful face in a year. I could kiss him again, hold him, tell him never to leave me ever again. In a year if he remembered me, which I prayed each and every night that he did, I could find my love again.

I didn't.

That second year was easier than the first. Maybe it was because that saying that time heals all wounds was true, but I had a feeling it was more because every day I got up I could almost count it down to the next year. I practically counted down the days. If two years came and went I was sure I would see Edward. I was positive that if he remembered me, if he still remembered that he loved me, he would come back for me.

But when that second year came—this time I didn't forget it for a single second—it went so much faster than I thought. And every day after that I lost a little faith. Days went by and then weeks. Those weeks turned into months. I didn't think I was ever going to see him again.

Jacob and I were speaking again regularly. We talked every day for hours usually. We never spoke of what happened those years ago. He never brought up Edward and I had held to the promise I made to myself. I didn't ever speak about him. Even if someone asked a point blank question about him I refused to answer. Jacob and I had a mutual agreement not to ever speak about it, even though I knew he had all the information about Edward's and my affair as he could want.

He had wanted to know about it—how long it had been going on and how involved we were—almost a year after it happened. But I wouldn't talk about it. So Emily informed him. I had told her the whole story over a period of time. She knew enough about it to give him an accurate depiction of what our circumstances had been. After that he never asked for my side of the story or any questions he might have had. I didn't know if that was out of courtesy for me, or if he knew I wouldn't answer. Either way, he never asked and I certainly never offered any information.

I wasn't completely sure why I continued to live there. Sometimes the familiarity of the place and the feeling of kinship between everyone there was a comfort. Other times the overwhelming memories and the things I felt for some of the people there made me want to scream and run away. But I never did. I was waiting. I knew it, but no one else did. I never gave Jacob any sort of answer about the wedding because he wouldn't ask for one and I surely was not going to bring it up. I was waiting for Edward.

So maybe, in two years, if you are still here he could come back to see you.

I clung to Carlisle's words, as inaccurate as they already were, like my life depended on them.

It wasn't until my birthday of the third year anything changed. September 13th came and went like it did every year, a small party with everyone in the house, my father coming to visit and my favorite meal served for dinner. It was small but it was enough.

Jacob gave me a small gift. He and my father were the only people I would actually accept gifts from. My father bought me new watercolor paints for my most recent dabbles in the artistic world, and Jacob got me some new books he had gotten from town. I accepted both gifts a bit begrudgingly, but understanding it would have been those things or something else. At least I knew I would use them.

I spent the next few days reading my new books and using my new art supplies. But somehow, as the third year approached me, I felt strangely liberated. I had just reached my twenty-first birthday, and I was trying my hardest to just live again instead of lamenting each and every day I wasn't with him. Of course I still thought about him, but it was easier not to fall apart when I did.

So when I found the rose on my bed a week after my birthday, it was a shock.

At first I felt strangely sad, a reminder of something so sweet made me feel a pang of remorse again. I hadn't forgotten about the sweet gestures he was so able to give me, but it was painful to be reminded of them again when I was doing so well not thinking about them all day.

But then I got angry. Why would someone leave me roses on my bed now? If I didn't even like talking about Edward, who in their right mind would think to do something he had done for me? Why would they want to stir up more feelings after all this time?

Emily certainly wouldn't be insensitive enough to do something so obviously hurtful. No one else would have known about it but Jacob. So I took the rose in my hand and went to find him. He was in the sitting room alone, staring out the window, a book in his lap. I could tell he was deep in thought about something. He had the same look on his face as though he wouldn't know it if you hit him over the head with something as he always got.

"Do you think this is funny?" I asked, my voice hard. Jacob looked up at me, completely confused.

"What are you talking about?" he asked. I waved the rose at him.

"Why would you do this?" I asked. He looked further perplexed.

"I didn't leave that for you," he replied.

"Like hell you…"

But in the middle of my accusation it occurred to me that I did not think I had ever told Emily about the roses. It had been one thing that I wanted to keep to myself, one thing to have just for me, even if it was small and seemingly insignificant. If she didn't know about it, then she could not have told Jacob about them.

"Bella, what's―"

"It must have been Emily, just being nice. She does things like this all the time for me. I'm sorry I got angry. I just…I'm not having a good day," I told him. I needed to get out of there as fast as possible. I had to make sure I didn't look insane so Jacob wouldn't insist I stay and talk with him.

"Well if you want to talk, I'm here," he assured me. But I shook my head.

"I think I just need to take a walk for a while. Clear my head," I told him. He nodded and then went back to looking at his book and not reading.

As soon as I could I clamored outside and began running.

I hadn't been to the meadow in three years. I hadn't even walked on the garden path for fear of being reminded. The only things for me there were bad memories so I avoided it at all costs. But today I was sure that if I couldn't get there I would just fall apart.

I stopped in my tracks on the garden path when I saw the bronze hair shifting in the breeze. But other than that, everything was different.

His features were the same in general structure, but everything seemed more refined, perfected, beautiful. I thought he was beautiful before, but this was just unfair. The crooked smile that played on his perfect lips when I saw him literally kicked my heart into the next gear. I couldn't breathe. But what surprised me the most were his eyes. I was used to the startling green that had looked back at me on so many occasions. Now I was confronted with a warm butterscotch staring at me from across the small opening.

"Breathe," he said slowly. His voice was angelic, like a choir all melded into a single voice. I could hear it echo again and again as I followed his instructions, gasping air into my lungs.

"You're here," I whispered. He smiled again, and I felt myself melting. He nodded but did not reply.

"You left me a rose," I mumbled again. I was stating the obvious but my mind was not working correctly to do much else. Again my words were met with a stoic nod. I hadn't even noticed that I was walking toward him. My body was working without my knowledge. But I couldn't get too close to him. I was too afraid he wasn't real, just a figment of my imagination here to haunt me.

"Carlisle said two years, and it's been three and I didn't ever think I would see you again," I said, still reeling from the fact that he was here. Edward was here. He looked like an angel, like something someone would paint, but he was here.

"You always were impatient," he reminded me with something like an affectionate smile. I laughed, too loud for this place or this moment but my body was getting hysterical.

"Why are you crying?" he asked me. I was so focused on his voice that it took a moment to realize what he had asked me. I didn't even know I had been crying, but when I reached my hand up to my face I found there were warm tears on my cheeks. I wiped them away hastily without ever taking my eyes off the god in front of me. He was too real, too magnificent to be anything less.

"I've missed you so much," I managed to choke out. His face went instantly blank as though he was trying to forget something. I didn't know why but I didn't ask. It didn't matter.

"I know," he told me. He didn't say anything else for the moment and so I remained as silent as he was. But somehow my silence and his seemed so very different. Even while silent I seemed to make more noise than he did. He simply stood there, not moving, not breathing or anything else.

He wasn't breathing.

"Why aren't you breathing?" I asked. He smiled again, this one small and knowing, as though it was an inside joke I was not privy to.

"I don't need to. And you smell so…potent. Its hard to concentrate with your scent in the air," he said. I nodded, remembering for the first time why he looked so different and was behaving the way he was. He was a vampire now. I remembered Carlisle's features and their perfection the first time I saw him. I could understand why Edward's would look so godlike now.

"Carlisle said you might not remember me," I whispered, voicing a fear I had held for three years now. It was that fear that kept my heart on the constant edge of breaking. If you loved someone so fiercely as we did, it didn't make sense that you would ever forget them.

"Carlisle was preparing you for the worst. It's true, there are a lot of thing I don't remember about my human life. And even the thing I do remember are hazy. But Bella," he said, using my name for the first time. It sounded like some sacred thing the way he pronounced it. "How could I ever forget you?"

I shook my head. I didn't have words to explain how that idea, that he might not remember me at all, had haunted me. He smiled, and for the first time took a step in my direction. My heart was so startled by this sudden movement of an angel in my direction that it skipped a beat. I saw Edward smile when this happened, and I figured that meant he had heard it.

"My human memories consist solely of my family and of you. They are hardly more than flashes of things, but those are so much more than enough. Little moments between the two of us that build a feeling. Every single moment I could remember I have played over and over in my mind. And there you were, in so many of those moments. You were always smiling, Bella. In every memory I have of you, you were so happy. And for such a long time, I could not understand why. And then I thought, 'perhaps she and I were in love. It would make sense'.

"So finally I asked my father about you, the beautiful human girl I had in my memories. He told me the whole story. From the very first time we met to the last moment we saw each other. Some of those moments I remembered, some of them I didn't. But when I realized how they all fit together I understood who you were to me."

"And who was I?" I asked slowly. Edward took another sep in my direction, so close now that we could touch. I didn't dare reach out and touch this angel. It would be a sin just to have my skin connect with such perfection.

However it was he that took a chance to touch me. It was so incredibly slow, as though with every minute motion he was wondering if he could do it. I saw him concentrating, holding his breath at the exact moment of contact. He watched his hand touch my face and he immediately closed his eyes when our skin came into contact. He let go a slow breath, and it wafted over my face, the smell so sweet and intoxicating I grew almost dizzy.

But I fought through it somehow, holding myself up, unwilling to breach the contact. I felt my eyes, as they were so wide, looking at him as he simply breathed, in and out slowly his own two perfect eyes closed in concentration.

"Who were you?" he asked, still with closed eyelids. "I loved you. Enough to risk my life, which in the end was what I gave for you. My human life was forfeit because I couldn't stop loving you. I know you tried to break it off but I wouldn't listen. I know we had countless arguments about our circumstances and each time I convinced you that I simply could not live without you. Which was why I had to come see you. But I had to make sure it was safe. If I hurt you—the woman I died for, lived through days of never ending pain for, the woman for whom I struggle everyday against what I am just to make sure I could see her—I would never forgive myself."

His hand had moved to cup the side of my face, his icy cold palm against my cheek. I wanted to turn into his touch, to reciprocate in some way, but somehow I knew it would not be wise.

"So far so good," I said softly. Edward's eyes opened and they were so warm that even though I was used to a different color, they comforted me. He smiled at me and I smiled back. He dropped his hand slowly with a palpable amount of reluctance.

"It's so strange to know you loved someone, and that you are sure you love them now, and not know why," he told me. "It is even more strange to want to love someone, but not be sure you know how. We are different now, Bella. You are not the woman you were three years ago, and I am clearly not the man you knew. I am not a man at all. And even if we weren't changed at all, I still don't remember exactly who you were. I have no reference, no idea of the person you are, only this feeling that I love you. But I want to know why," he told me.

"Let me tell you," I replied. He looked at me for a long moment and then nodded. I folded myself on the ground slowly. Edward followed suit.

I told him our story like Carlisle could not. I told him all the details, all the things we spoke of. I told him who I was when he met me, the predicament I had been in, the woman I became because of him. I told him a complete story of us, from start to finish. He didn't interrupt once. At certain points he would react, a smile, a frown, a worried look, but never once through the telling did he speak. When I was done he stared at me for a long moment, still silent.

"Did you marry him?" he asked. I shook my head.

"Then why are you still here?" he asked.

"I was waiting for you."

"I would have found you no matter were you were."

I smiled but said nothing.

"What happened after I was gone?" he asked. This was a question I wasn't sure I wanted to answer. But he asked, and I would not refuse to give a response.

"I cried for weeks. I wouldn't get out of bed. But eventually it became easier for me not to think about you so much. After a few months I only cried at night. I could sleep and eat again. It got easier as time went on not to feel like I was drowning here without you every day. But I haven't felt whole since the day you went away," I told him. He nodded and said nothing.

"I'm sorry to have hurt you so," he told me after a little while of us simply staring back at the other.

"You did nothing wrong," I reminded him.

"Without me, you never would have hurt like that," he countered.

"Without you, I might as well never have lived."

"Don't say that, Bella."

"Why not? Its true."

"Bella, you don't understand. What we had…cannot ever be again. I can't risk being that close to you. I would hurt you, even if I didn't mean to. I could live a hundred years as a vampire and never have enough control over myself to keep from hurting you. Not to mention the fact that you smell so unworldly. Most humans still smell the same to me, but yours is so strong that it is like wafting food in front of my face. With time I could become desensitized to that, but I could never be gentle enough to keep from killing you if we made love. I am sorry," he said, hanging his head in shame.

"I don't care about that," I told him. Of course I had missed making love to him. But that wasn't what I wanted most of all. Seeing him at all was like a miracle.

"What do you care about?" he asked.

"This," I said gesturing to us both, "being able to be near to you, to hear your voice, see your face, know that you know who I am, that I haven't lost you…" I trailed off.

"So if I can never be with you that way again?"

"I would rather sit here and talk with you for hours like we used to than that."

He nodded, as though he was mildly surprised. This time, I had to ask.

"Why do you look so confused?" I asked.

"Those are some of my most vivid memories," he replied. I felt myself blush crimson. I could only imagine Edward, not knowing much about his human life, remembering making love to me. I heard a little growl in his chest as a smile played on his lips. I looked up at him, sure that there was some danger. The fear must have shown in my eyes because he only shook his head and smiled.

"Don't worry, there is nothing to be worried about. It is just…that blush of yours is so very tempting," he said slowly. This only made me blush harder. Edward laughed and it was like a bell ringing, melodic and gorgeous. I smiled in return and Edward's expression softened. A second time he reached his hand to my face brushing his fingers across my cheek. The coldness of his hands was so unlike what I had been used to, but I didn't shy away. I closed my eyes and breathed in the scent of his skin so close to mine, let him touch me and be happy that it was even possible.

"My Bella," he whispered sweetly.

"Am I still yours?" I asked, opening my eyes slowly.

Edward said nothing for a long time. He looked in my eyes as though he was trying to figure out how to answer that question. Then he sighed.

"You always have been," he said. "That wont ever change."

"How do you know?" I asked.

He grinned, a crooked smile, that had I not already been sitting down, would have brought me to my knees. No one should be that beautiful.

"Because I have no intention of ever letting you go."