Hey everyone!! Thanks for sticking with me!! Here's the next chapter like i promised!!

THANKS to everyone who sent their condolences for Eddie. It means a lot.

Only the Epilogue is left!!! it's almost done!!

Chap 7 - Ripples

Previously:

I took an unnecessary deep breath before heading towards the stairs. The room suddenly dropped in temperature. She knew I was here.

This was it. It was now or never. I had to tell her everything.

I needed to tell her that I still and always will love her……but it was time for her to let go.

EPOV

The room had cooled to the point that once again I could see my unnecessary breaths.

"Bella. I came here to apologize for earlier. I didn't mean to upset you. I had no idea you felt that way and I'm sorry."

Slowly I walked to the staircase and grabbed the banister. I had 11 steps to get up again.

I lifted my foot and placed it on the first step. I could feel the stairs give a light shake and the light on the table near the living room window flickered on and off.

"Bella I'm sorry. I didn't mean for any of this to happen."

Step two. More shaking.

"I left so I could protect you. I wanted you to be safe."

Step three. The steps gave a violent shake and I could hear the table in the kitchen flip.

"After what happened with Jasper at the party I realized that I was putting your life in danger every moment you were with me. And then when we killed Victoria we had to leave. It seemed like no matter how hard I tried I couldn't keep you from the darker side of my world. I didn't want that."

Step four. The shaking was beginning to subside. The stairs no longer felt like the moving boards in a fun house.

"I couldn't let you get hurt because of what I am again. I couldn't live with that. I had to do something. I had to make sure that I couldn't hurt you anymore. That I couldn't lead something to hurt you anymore."

Step five. The shaking came to an abrupt stop. I knew however that she wasn't done.

"When Jake asked me to come here I had no idea what for. Had I known what was going on I would have come back immediately."

Step six. Still nothing.

Step seven. Small shaking. Why wasn't she doing anything?

Step eight. Shaking.

Step nine. The shaking started getting more violent so I stopped.

"Bella. Please just hear me out." Shaking.

Step ten.

"I just want to talk, that's all." I was answered with quietness. No shaking, no sounds. Just quiet.

Step eleven.

"Please? All I want to do is try to help you. To try to understand what I did. Why you did what you did."

Top landing. I was now on the second floor of the house.

"Just talk to me. We can sort all of this out." I was pleading with her now. I needed answers and so did she.

Her bedroom door slowly creaked open slightly.

Taking caution I walked to the door and opened it the rest of the way.

And there she was.

She was sitting on the bed just like the last time I saw her.

Sitting on her bed staring out her window, Jake had replaced the window already but she had left it slight open. As if waiting for someone.

As if waiting for…me.

I stood there, waiting for her to acknowledge me.

As I waited I was looked at her and saw what she looked like now compared to what she looked like 50 years ago.

Her brown hair, which used to be so healthy and shiny, had become a dull brown. Her eyes, which were once a warm brown, were now a dull murky dark gray. Even through the slight thickness of her shirt you could see that she had lost a considerable amount of weight. And the darkened circles under her eyes showed that she had spent countless nights without sleep.

After a few minutes of no response from her I decided to start the conversation.

"Bella, I'm just here to talk. We both want answers to question that we can't answer ourselves. We're both in a lot of pain over this and…"

"Pain?! You think that what I'm feeling is pain?!" she said through clenched teeth. The room got bitter cold again. Even to me the room felt chilled.

Her gray eyes flashed to mine, anger in their depths. She stood from her bed, hands clenched at her sides. Her body tensed as she gave a sarcastic agitated laugh. "No, Edward. I'm WAY past pain. That pain turned to anger years ago."

I didn't want to push her but both of us needed to get everything out in the open. "Then what are you angry about? What caused the anger?"

"You did! You promised me you wouldn't leave me!" she screamed her voice getting louder with each word. "You said that you'd never hurt me, yet you did! Why Edward? Was I not good enough?" she shoved the rocking chair into the wall, "Did I get to boring for you?" she slammed a light on her nightstand onto the floor, "Or was I just some play toy you could drop when you got bored?" her yelling got softer as she finished.

It hurt to hear that. That she though those things. I closed my eyes trying to figure out why she thought that.

I heard her sigh and I looked back up. She was leaning against the window staring at me. And I could finally see some emotion in her eyes. It was confusion…and sadness?

"All I want to know is why? What did I do to make you walk away from me? To leave me here alone, to suffer? What did I do?"

I could faintly see tears running down her face. She turned her head to look back out the window.

I had to explain. I didn't want her to feel like this anymore. I couldn't stand feeling like it was my fault that she was like this.

Not wanting to go near her bed incase I upset her more I sat on the floor. She did the same but on the other side of the room. She sat there watching me. Waiting for me to answer her.

"I had to. It was nothing you did. On your 18th birthday when Jasper tried attacking you, it scared me. I had finally found someone who made me happy and made me feel whole again. But when that happened I realized that it wasn't safe for me to be around you so I left. When you came to Italy to save me, I figured that everything would be ok again. That it was a slip and it wouldn't happen again." I sighed. "Then when Victoria started causing trouble I knew that once again I was putting you in danger because of what I am. Because you were with me you were exposed to my world. That meant the dangers as well. I couldn't bear the thought of something happening to you."

I looked up as I heard a shift. Bella had moved from her place on the floor to just a foot from me. Her gray eyes almost softening, encouraging me to continue.

"So my family and I decided that the best way to protect you was to kill Victoria and cut off all ties to you completely. If there were no us, you weren't exposed to the vampires. Just like the first time I spent most of my time away from my family. My family didn't seem like a family without you there. It hurt to know that I couldn't go back to you. It hurt to know that you trusted and loved me and I couldn't even keep you safe. So even though it hurt to leave, I felt better in knowing that you were safe. I didn't realize that it would have this much impact on you. I didn't realize that that small of a decision would have that much affect on you."

There was silence in the room until the sound of running water filled the house.

Bella got to her feet and began walking towards the door, "Follow me."

I stood and followed her into the bathroom.

The first thing I noticed was that Jacob had fixed the mirror. Then I noticed that the bathtub was full of water.

I looked over to Bella. She sat on the edge of the tub and pointed to a small stone on the floor.

"I want to you take that stone and just drop it into the water."

I reached down and grabbed the small stone, no bigger than a pea and dropped it into the water.

It made a small splash as it hit the water. Sending ripples through the once calm surface disrupting and destroying its stillness.

I looked to Bella not sure of what the point of this was. "I don't understand."

She looked up from the water to me.

"Did you see how calm and still the water was?"

I nodded.

"Did you see what happened when the stone hit the water?"

Again I nodded.

"Did you see how even thought that stone was only the size of a pea it had a huge effect on how the water reacted?"

I still wasn't getting it. She must have noticed because she began to explain.

"Picture it this way. Picture the water as someone life. It's calm and comforting and content. Now picture that small stone as a decision that someone made on another persons life. Though the stone was small and seemingly inconvenient to the person that dropped it, the person whose life is symbolized by the water is damaged." She looked to me. I was finally able to understand what she was saying.

"My life was like the water. Calm, content, and relaxed. I was fine with how everything was. I wasn't moved or jostled by anything that was thrown at me. I was always able to bend around it. But when your decision to leave, symbolized by the stone, was dropped from seemingly nowhere it disrupted the balance. I was fine in the beginning. But when a stone is dropped ripples disrupt the surface causing waves that can move things. Ripples go on long after they disappear on the surface. That small decision that you made sent off after shocks and the waves got bigger and bigger until I wasn't able to hold on anymore. That's why I let go. I felt as though I was being hit with the waves over and over. One after the other, until I made it stop. I quit fighting them and let go." (sorry if that seems confusing. i wasn't sure how to word it.)

I understood now. My decision to leave had cause more problems and backlashes then I could even conceive of. She let go because she couldn't handle the after affects anymore.

I heard a gurgling sound as the water rushed from the tub.

Bella turned and walked out of the bathroom, and I followed.

She sat down on the bed and stared out the window again.

"I sat here and waited. Hoping that you would come back. I figured if I just waited you would come back. You never showed. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep because of the nightmares, and so I just sat here and waited. Charlie had finally had enough and sent me to a Depression Clinic outside of Forks to see Dr. Renaldo. By then my mind was pretty much gone. I didn't care what was happening around me. All I wanted was for you to come back. After what seemed like months of testing he prescribed be Anti-depressants and sent me home. Charlie had to practically hold me down and shove the meds down my throat so I would take them. Physically I felt nothing, but mentally the pain was unbearable."

She sighed before continuing now looking at the floor. "Then one day while Charlie was out I tried to get down stairs to get the Effexor. It almost numbed the pain a bit when I took it and I hadn't taken it that day so I went to get it. Unfortunately as I was walking down the stairs my legs just gave out. The doctor said it was because I hadn't been eating and my body just couldn't handle the stress. I fractured my jaw and had a pretty nasty concussion. To try to fight off the pain the doctor gave me Oxycontin. It also helped numb the pain. And that's how my life was for a few weeks."

"But why did you commit…do what you did? And why on your birthday?" I asked not able to put the word suicide in the same sentence.

She hesitated for a moment. "There is a saying. 'You don't lose by getting knocked down, you lose by staying down'. For me that was quite literally, with the clumsiness and all but in this case it had more meaning. That's a saying lots of people use to help others keep fighting. But to me the question is why keep fighting to get back up if you can't even get on your feet without being knocked back down? I fought for weeks trying to pull myself up and it got me nowhere. Then I decided that I would wait till my birthday. If anything you would be back by then if you were coming back at all. Charlie worked late night that evening and I decided that I would wait one last day for you. Finally at about quarter to midnight it was clear you weren't coming so I did what I had to, to insure the pain wasn't coming back. After taking the medications I got drowsy and laid down. I knew what was coming but at the time I didn't care, I just needed the pain to stop."

I looked at Bella. Her face was streaked with tears, her body shaking lightly.

"So why not leave? What's the point in staying?" There was the question everyone wanted to know.

When Bella looked back up to be I expected to see her murky gray eyes, but instead I was met with the brown eyes that I hadn't seen in 50 years.

"I'm not sure why. At first I thought it was just the pain. The unsolved questions as to why you left. But soon that pain just turned to anger. I was angry that I had wasted my life on someone who never even loved me. Someone who just played with my emotions for fun. I just wanted to know what I did. Even now the pain is still there, I can't seem to get rid of it. I just felt the need to know why or I couldn't move on. I just wanted an answer."

And there it was. She waited 50 years stuck in this house just to find out why I left. She's gone through all this pain because I wasn't here to give her that answer.

Guilt rushed through me quicker and harder then the winds of a category five hurricane. I left to protect her and in the process not only killed her but kept her in a living nightmare with no way out.

We sat together for a moment in silence. The rain outside was hitting the window at a soft melodic pattern.

Finally I had reached my decision. I had to finally let her go. I needed to release her from this nightmare.

"So why not go now? Why stay? You have what you needed."

She looked back to me then back to the floor. "I don't know if I can now. It's been 50 years."

"Don't you think you should try?"

She sat quietly for a moment with her eyes closed.

And then for the first time I saw her smile.

She opened her eyes and looked at me. "It's there Edward! I can go!"

Hearing those words was both a blessing and a curse for me. That meant she could finally leave. Get away from all the pain. But that also meant I was going to lose her forever.

I smiled at her. "Then what are you waiting for?"

"I need to say thank you to Jake and the others. Will you get them?"

I smiled and nodded before heading out of the house and getting the others.


IMPORTANT!!!!!! MUST READ!!!

My mother is obsessed with that show Ghost Whisperer so most of the ideas about 'spirits' or 'ghosts' are coming from there and from a friend who is like a huge ghost person. He's crazy. I really ahve no idea what is real about it and what isn't but for the sake of the story PLEASE GO WITH ME HERE!!!

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Any only the Epilogue is left!! please let me know what you think so far!! i would really like to know!!!

Thanks to EVERYONE who reviewed for my story..i know i can be confusing. REVIEWS MAKE ME HAPPY!!

ALSO: for those who have are reading my other story Trust Can Go A Long Way....the next chapter is with my BETA now and should have it back in a day or two and post it!!!

Thanks,

Nevy