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"That was then. This is now.
You can't run before you go learn how, and you won't."—City of Ocala, A Day to Remember

"Never give up on what you have. Always hope for the best."—Unknown


As soon as Rose put the car in park, the doors unlocked, but almost immediately, she locked them right back. With me sitting up front, it was the only way to keep me inside.

My eyebrows rose. "Seriously? My heart's not beating. You're not gonna let me get out?"

"In a minute," she assured me. "First, I wanna know what the hell is wrong with you."

I rolled my eyes and tried to unlock the doors, but she locked them right back. "Come on, Rose! We're supposed to be having fun."

"How is that fair?" she protested. "You get to have fun while my brother's heartbroken at home? No. Not until I can at least understand. You love him so much, yet you can't just tell him?"

"If I tell him, it'll mean things happen, and when things happen, more things happen, and when more things happen, he's gone out of my life forever!" I exclaimed, but this surprised even me. "You can't tell me things won't happen. We're not right for each other, Rose. We constantly fight, and we have nothing in common except our love for video games."

"The fact that you do fight tells me that you're more right for each other than you think," Alice input, and she poked her head up into the front. "I've seen couples who never fight, and you wanna know something? They never last. I've seen it plenty of times, and over all of my life span, none of them have ever made it in the end."

My eyebrows rose. "Uh huh. Says the girl who I've never seen fight with Jasper . . . literally ever."

She scrunched her nose. "No, no. We fight. Our fighting isn't loud and violent, though. We fight quietly, rationally. It still counts."

That sounded boring to me. She was right about that, though. Couples couldn't last if they fought, and I knew that. But there was such a thing as fighting too much. It's why my parents divorced and resented each other for the longest time. It's probably why I resented Bella so much, even though it was deep down at first.

The idea of being so much like my parents scared me. I didn't wanna make the same mistake they did. I loved Edward, more than I could even try to explain, and he loved me. As much as I tried to deny it before, he had said it plainly. It was beyond obvious.

Yet I couldn't let him know I felt the same way. My parents loved each other. Really. It wasn't true love, but a form of love that people felt for each other all the time. I wanted to say what I felt for Edward was the never ending love, but how would I know? I'm sure my parents thought the same thing.

"Maybe it's not the fighting," I said, and I immediately wished that I hadn't. I had, though, and I had to continue. They would just keep pressing for more until I did. "Maybe I'm just scared that everything will blow up, and my life will be a repeat of my parents' lives."

I saw sadness in Rose's eyes, a sadness she didn't have before. That . . . makes sense.

Before, she was just mad at me, thought I was being utterly stupid. Maybe I was, but now, she saw my reasoning. She saw the side of it that no one knew.

"Oh."

Alice still frowned at me. "Okay. So, that makes some sense, but come on, Cleo. You can't just do this to him. You have to at least tell him the truth. I mean it. Tell him that you love him. Tell him that you're scared. The only way to get past this tension you have between you is to tell him."

And as much as I didn't wanna admit it, I knew she was right. I had gone about this the wrong way. Instead of saving us both, I broke his heart.

I had to fix this somehow, and whatever happened . . . well . . . we would just have to see how things went.

*Edward*

Emmett shook his head slowly, eyes tight. "You shouldn't do this. This is absolutely stupid. If she finds out—"

"Unless you guys tell her, she won't find out," I said, and I pulled my jacket on quickly. "Look, call me paranoid, but I can't just sit here and let her go out there when she could very well end up dead."

"You've gotta learn to trust her," Jasper informed me, and I almost snapped right then. He noticed, too, because he rolled his eyes. Trust that she's capable of handling herself. She knows what she's capable of, better than you do.

I shook my head again, and I started looking around for my keys. "No. Right now, Cleo's pissed, and she's doing things to spite me."

Emmett snorted. "I wouldn't say that. She's doing the same thing she's always done, but she's actually gotten away with it now. Every time you tell her she can't do something, she's gonna fight you and prove that she can. Whatever it takes."

That sparked something in the back of my mind that I immediately began thinking about while I turned to Emmett with my eyes tightened so I could think.

His eyebrows rose. What's going on in this freaky head of yours?

"I know how to get her to talk about this," I said.

Jasper groaned. "No, no. Just like you had to come to terms with your feelings on your own, so does she."

I shook my head. "You weren't here last night. She got drunk out of her mind and repeatedly insisted she loves me. Cleo doesn't just make stuff up when she's drunk. At least she never has before."

"I didn't say she didn't have feelings," he reminded me. "If you force the issue, it's just gonna backfire and blow up in your face. Let her come to you."

"So you're telling me that I'm just supposed to sit here and pretend nothing's wrong?" I asked. "I'm just supposed to act like I'm completely and totally fine?"

Emmett shrugged. "You don't have to, but it would make things a lot less awkward. You know what you should do?"

When I heard the word "Bella" in his thoughts, I immediately knew where he was going, and my eyes narrowed. "Are you insane?! She'd kill me, not to mention, I have no desire to use someone like that!"

"I'm just saying," he said. "If she sees that you're not gonna wait around forever, she's more likely to come to terms with things and face the issue. Otherwise, she might never face it because she'll never have a reason to. You can't force it, but a little help isn't a bad thing."

Jasper frowned. "As much as I hate his plan, he has a point."

I pulled the door open and let out a groan. "Thanks for giving me so much to think about while I'm trying to protect her."

"You shouldn't be going!" Emmett called after me.

"Yeah, yeah," I muttered, and I closed the garage door behind myself before he could say more.

Shouldn't be going my ass.

*Cleo*

I could see the breath I let out while waiting on Rose to get back with the bait. She never seemed to have a problem finding people willing to help her out, and I don't necessarily mean just men. With Rose, her enchantment ability did the trick.

Alice was waiting down in the center of the back alley while I waited on the rooftops so that I could drop down behind them so they couldn't get away. I think she was listening carefully for my heart to stop beating because everyone knew my plan didn't involve me going back to the car, heartbeat or not.

Rose walked back through the alley to the port we were standing beside, and sure enough, there were a few people following behind her. She didn't wanna get too many because a vampire might not attack a large crowd, but a small group far away from everyone else?

It was the perfect bait—not that we were gonna let anyone get hurt.

Almost as immediately as we set the trap up, the vampires took the bait. There were two vampires, one with bright red eyes and the other with darker red ones. According to Carlisle, newborns had eyes that color, which meant he was the most dangerous. Unless the older one was a kung fu master or something.

The man with the darker eyes smiled at the boy, and I noticed there was something familiar about him. "Look at these three meals. Just begging you to find them."

The guy standing with him was shaking his head, and his entire body trembled. "I-I can't. They didn't do anything to me!"

"Remember, Caleb," the man whispered. "We need to get stronger. We must prepare for the coming battle. Start with the small girl. I'm sure you'll feel a lot better once you begin to feed."

Alice stepped out of the crowd and began to act really well. Her eyes were wide and confused. "Wh-Who are you?"

The man's eyebrows furrowed as he looked to her, so I knew he must've noticed her heart wasn't beating. That was Rose's cue to walk up behind them and clear her throat.

"You know, it's really not smart to walk right into hunter territory," Rose informed him.

A hiss escaped through his lips, and he pushed the boy at Rose. "This is what you were created for! Kill her!"

Immediately, it hit me. Like fire on a gas tank. This man was the man responsible for creating mutant vampires! He was the one who made it all happen.

I unfurled my wings and stood up to go, but something happened. For the first time, when my heart started beating, it hurt. Maybe it was the adrenaline rush and fear . . . but it hurt. I could scarcely breathe, but I had to.

Rose's eyes were wide while the man sucked in a gush of air. "Don't do it! Stay!"

"My first experiment," he breathed, and to my surprise, he didn't say another word. He took a few steps back, turned, and ran away.

Caleb started to attack Rose, but Alice jumped on his back and bit down onto his neck. Hunter venom paralyzed and blinded vampires, and vice versa. When Caleb fell to the ground, I saw they had it covered and took off for the man who created me—Kurt.

The wind messed up the braid Rose had put in my hair, but that was the least of my concerns. I couldn't fly faster than a vampire could run, but it wasn't hard to spot him when he stopped. His eyes weren't on the sky, but actually, they were behind him.

That's why I was able to tackle him onto the ground and snarl. "Why did you do this to me?!"

"To destroy the hunters!" he growled, and he shoved me off. I went flying back into a wall, and though it hurt—felt like I dislocated my shoulder—I knew this was it. This is what I had trained for.

He shot over towards me, and quickly, I popped my wings out and flew up in the air. Of course, he was a vampire, so he could jump after me. That's when I pulled my wings back in and fell right back down.

It gave me time to tuck and roll, to dodge his next blow. In the distance, I could hear Rose and Alice screaming out for me to stop, but I didn't stop.

Really, at this point, I didn't know if I could.

When I looked into his eyes, what I saw made my knees buckle. My heart seemed to almost rip right out of my chest right in front of me.

I saw just a small piece of his thoughts, but it was enough.

In his mind, he was purposely thinking through the details of the time he raped me. It was just once, but it was also the first time.

It was the worst of them all, and just the piece he played in his mind—the moment his penis ripped through me while his nails clawed down my arms and left the worst scars of all—brought me down to my hands and knees.

Edward was right. You weren't ready for this.