Author's Note: Hello all. I am SO sorry it has taken such a long time to update - all kinds of health related disasters. Anyway, I know how frustrating the wait can be, so I'm glad I can post something quite long. On with the drama...hope you enjoy it : )

Chapter 10

The following afternoon, Renesmee dropped her rucksack by the front door and headed straight for the kitchen.

"Hey! I'm back!" she called out to whoever was in the house.

No answer. Nevermind; she needed to dive into a vat of Belgian chocolate ice-cream and trigger a brain freeze of such impressive magnitude that Devon's incessant questioning would cease to echo in her head. Is he a good kisser? How far have you two gone? When is he coming back to Juneau? Are you in love with him? School had seemed never ending, but she was finally home. She opened the freezer and retrieved the tub, pulled a spoon out of the cutlery drawer. Ten minutes later, she sat at the kitchen table halfway down the tub, showing no signs of relenting. The lid lay on the surface of the kitchen island, the chocolate ice-cream that had lodged itself into its corners had long since melted and seeped out from beneath the lid's confines. It puddled, sweet and sickly on top of the island. Renesmee stuck the chocolate covered spoon, wrong side up, into her mouth, sucked the chocolate off and thought of Jacob.

He had still not been pacified when they had said goodbye the night before. He had still been mad and, despite his insistence to the contrary, she knew that he still had every intention of returning to Juneau on Friday; part of her longed for him to do just that, the other half knew that the ramifications would be wide-reaching and terrible. In the end, the longing and the pull would triumph; she knew that as well as she knew him. She needed him; that was the bottom line. It seemed that being apart from him became worse with each passing day and was directly connected to her age: the older she got the worse it became. Her mobile phone vibrated on the island's surface, the screen lit up: new message from...Jake it announced. An almost unbearable tingle sparked its way up her spine; she smiled and opened it:

Told you I'd b in constant contact. In class. Boring as hell – thinking of ur lips : D xxx

Renesmee's skin flamed. Her mind synchronised with his; jumped to his mouth. Immediately, she recalled the feel of his lips against her own, the heat of his hands as he held her. She dropped the chocolate covered spoon back into the tub, picked up her phone. Her fingers flew over the keypad. She hesitated for a split-second then pressed the send button:

Ur making me blush...keep going : ) xxx

She imagined his reaction: a smile would pull at the left corner of his lips and his dark eyes would light up and dance. It was an expression she knew well, one that never failed to steal her breath. Seconds later, the phone vibrated again, her heart lurched in her chest. She opened the message and read:

Exactly WHERE are you blushing?

Her breath caught in her chest and her heart swelled. She bit her lip, unsure of whether to respond with the thought that had entered into her mind the second that she had read his message. It was easy to be brazen by text, but she knew what she was risking. She probably wouldn't even be able to speak to him later that evening; she'd be too embarrassed by her behaviour. She could not explain it – the thought of him set off a chemical reaction in her body. It was as though something had been galvanised in her the night that he had pressed her against the tree and told her he loved her.

All over, she typed and pressed send before she could change her mind.

The seconds ticked by as she waited for him to respond. Maybe that last text had gone a little too far. Embarrassment engulfed her; it was like being suddenly plunged into an ice bath. Then,

Sorry honey – got caught. You have no idea how much I'd like to see that blush : ) Better go before I get busted again. Call you later xxx

Renesmee exhaled in relief, then promptly blushed scarlet when she realised what Jacob had implied. Fingers shaking, she typed:

Definitely. Later xxx

By six o'clock, the others still weren't back and Renesmee's attempts at her algebra homework had died a death. She lay in the middle of her bed in the shadowy silence of her bedroom, lost in thought, lost in Jacob. It was no use, her desperation to see him, for him to return to Juneau, was all-consuming; her father's reaction to his return would be equally vehement. She resigned herself as an image of a frowning, disapproving Edward swam in front of her eyes. She squeezed her eyes shut and turned onto her side, curled into a ball. Edward's image blurred then disintegrated. In its place a picture of the ancient yellow cedar tree bloomed and filled her mind. She remembered in abstract: the roughly gathered bark of the cedar pressing into the bare skin of her back, the insistent pressure of Jacob pressing against her through the fabric of her dress. Then: the warmth of his breath fanning against her mouth, under the yellow cedar tree, later as he lay on her bed. She frowned, hot on the heels of affection had come anger, Jacob's anger, after a heated exchange with her mother. Up to that point, she had never seen him so incensed. His fury had rolled off of him in waves, threatening to sweep everything before it; then he had seen her at the bottom of the stairs, and it had vanished instantly. It unsettled her. She did not know that Jacob.

A gentle knock at her bedroom door distracted her. She reached out and switched on the bed-side lamp, illuminating the room in hazy yellow.

"Hey," she called out.

The door swung open and Rosalie appeared. She smiled widely and crossed quickly to sit on the end of the bed,

"Sleeping?" she asked.

"Thinking," Renesmee smiled, "Where have you guys been?"

"Hunting – the others are still out there. I got bored."

"Rose, you need to eat," Renesmee insisted.

"I did eat!" Rosalie said indignantly, "They're hunting for the sport of it now…you know I hate that."

"I know about everything you hate," Renesmee laughed, sitting up and crossing her legs.

"So, how was school?" Rosalie inquired.

"Come on Rose, there's nothing I can tell you about school that you don't know."

Rosalie raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow, "True, but you get so much closer to the humans. Except for Bella, none of us remember what it was like to be human and go to school…if we even went to school. School has always been isolating for us."

"Until Mom…."

"Yes," Rosalie answered archly, "Until your mother and Edward's recklessness."

"Hey! Product of recklessness sitting right here!" Renesmee exclaimed with mock annoyance.

Rosalie laughed and reached across to grasp Renesmee's hand,

"Nobody could ever regret you Renesmee. You're the best thing that ever happened to us," she said tenderly.

Renesmee fully understood the sentiment. Jacob was the best thing that had ever, would ever, happen to her. The thought of him bought his ire-filled expression back to her mind. She had never seen him treat her mother like that before. She didn't understand; he and her mother were best friends. She knew she could not ask her mother or her father about it, since Jacob had become a sore spot between the three of them. But Rosalie...Rosalie had never lied to her. Rosalie would tell her the truth. Curiosity overrode caution,

"Rosalie?"

"Yes?" Rosalie responded, looking across at her niece.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Anything..."

"It's something Jacob said..."

Rosalie stifled the impulse to scowl at the sound of the mutt's name, "What did he say?"

Renesmee pulled her knees up to her chest. She considered how to begin,

"It isn't something that he said to me, it's something that he said to Mom."

"Ok," Rosalie prompted.

"They were talking in my room after Mom kind of...interrupted us at the party. He said that he couldn't believe that Mom and Dad were trying to stop us from being together after what they had both done to him...what did they do to him?"

"He said that to your mother in front of you?"

"No...I heard them when I was going down the stairs. Do you know what he meant?"

"Yes," Rosalie said, barely able to keep the triumph from her voice.

She had waited for an opportunity to reveal who Jacob really was to Renesmee, an opportunity to undermine the perfect image that Renesmee had formed in her mind. She resented the influence that Jacob had over her niece...the way that he had interloped into the family, the problems he caused. Impatient to seize her opportunity, the words tumbled out of Rosalie's mouth, careless and ill-considered,

"Your mother and father didn't do anything to him, at least not in anyone else's eyes; but if that's what he said then he was talking about when your mother was human. You see, when your mother was human, she spent a lot of time with Jacob. I always suspected that she had some misguided crush on him – but he was completely in love with Bella...he followed her around like a puppy. He even came to your mother and father's wedding and caused a scene. He spent you mother's entire pregnancy wishing you didn't exist. Then he imprinted on you and expected everyone to just accept it as if..."

Renesmee heard nothing more. She felt the bottom of her world fall out from beneath her, sending her into freefall. A series of phrases spun around her head, making her dizzy and nauseous: she had some misguided crush on him – he was in completely love with Bella - wishing you didn't exist - he imprinted on you...the implications of each of them screamed at her and crowded her mind, cramming it to capacity – Jacob and her mother...her mother...Jacob...he had loved her mother first, he had imprinted on her...he had hated her...imprinting... She was dragged fathoms and fathoms beneath the sea, drowning. She knew that she would never resurface. Imprinting and love – the difference between them was suddenly startlingly clear: he had loved her mother; he had imprinted on her. It equated to only one thing: Jacob's feelings for her had been forced on him. Jacob had not chosen her. Her soul, the very essence of who she had thought she was, disconnected itself from her body. It floated away; it left her devoid of meaning and definition. Jacob had not chosen her freely.

To Rosalie, who sat outside of the flood of thoughts that enveloped and choked her niece, Renesmee appeared calm. She looked up at her aunt, registered that she had stopped speaking.

"Oh...I guess that makes sense," Renesmee's voice sounded smaller.

She stood up and walked towards her bedroom door.

"Where are you going?" Rosalie asked.

"I need to use the bathroom – half human," Renesmee joked and slipped out of the room.

In the hallway, her internal monologue assailed her again. She did her level best and walked without incident to the bathroom down the hall. She entered it and locked the door behind her. She switched on the light, then stood with her back pressed to the door and stared across the room into the long bathroom mirror. She did not recognise herself. Her long bronze ringlets hung wildly around her face, dark black smudges were evident beneath her chocolate brown eyes...her mother's eyes. The eyes that Jacob had loved...no, that was wrong: the eyes that he had loved had belonged to her mother; these were the eyes of his imprintee, inherited from its mother. Not the same thing. Not now.

Now, the word, 'imprinting', sounded so impersonal, so devoid of emotion, mechanical, created for a function. Renesmee was nothing if not smart, she was advanced and she knew about the mechanics of imprinting in the animal kingdom – she knew its function. It was nature's way of selecting the most appropriate candidate to carry the offspring of a species. A few hours ago, imprinting had meant something wholly different to her – it had been romantic. But held up against love bestowed with freewill, towards her mother no less, its truth became clear. It became clear and made a mockery of her. She felt a fool. She had never seen Jacob with another girl, so she had always assumed that there had never been another girl until herself. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Again, the yellow cedar tree took form in her mind but this time it wounded her. She smeared it in her mind's eye and cast it aside.

Renesmee moved forward robotically to the sink. Her small hands clenched its cool sides with such force that her knuckles turned white. Her body heaved and she threw up, ruining the pristine white porcelain. Her fingers reached for the faucet, struggled to get a grip of it. She whimpered as the nausea arrived in a fresh wave, taking a deep breath, she tried again. This time, the faucet gave, cold water gushed from it, washing the vomit away. She watched it disappear down the plug hole, then she began to wash her face vigorously, trying to remove the smudged mascara, trying to remove the traces of lipstick, trying to purge the truth.

When she had composed herself, she returned to her bedroom with her brightest smile. The lie rolled easily off her tongue – a forgotten study date with a group of girls from school. She would be home before ten. She barely knew how she managed to travel from the house to the Volvo and out onto the road without faltering.

Renesmee moved in a trancelike state in the realm of what could only be described as a nightmare. The sounds of others, living their lives, going about their business was muffled and distorted, like being submerged in water. The bodies of the others that moved around her were like ghosts, as she walked along the streets of downtown Juneau. The buildings and neon lights seemed to warp and recede away from her at a rapid rate until her surroundings resembled an expressionist painting. She walked blindly, unsure of where she was headed. She felt weightless, every part of her fought to ascend into the air, into nothing. She had no idea of what kept her anchored to the world; not when she felt like she had lost everything. She hardly remembered her own name.

From essentially the moment she had been born she had belonged to Jacob, she had been defined through him, by their future; as she walked two questions insisted that she answer them: had everything she had believed in been a lie? If it had all been a lie, who was she? Suddenly, she felt as though she was being suffocated. She turned quickly and headed back to the silver Volvo.

At the wheel of the car, the questions continued to reverberate around her head as she drove along the highway. They drowned out the fifteenth missed call. He didn't choose you. Beside her on the passenger seat was her small brown leather satchel bag, its contents had spilt onto the seat: her purse, ID, mobile phone, a cherry lip gloss and the $1000 in cash she had withdrawn on her way back to the car.

Though she seemed to drive aimlessly, she was delaying. She knew where she wanted to go...to the airport. To La Push. She needed to see his face, she needed to look into his eyes to try and find some solace. She needed to look into his eyes so that she could judge for herself whether everything that he had said to her on her birthday had been a beautiful and beguiling lie – not of his making, but of her own.