A/N: Sorry it's been so long since I've updated! Real life has gotten away from me. Also, sadly, this fic is starting to wind down, so it's possible I've been procrastinating a bit. I think ther may be one or two more chapters than I'd originally planned. I didn't get as much covered as I had wanted to in this chapter, but I felt it needed to break where it does. I was originally going to give a brief recap of these events, but I just couldn't. I'm not trying to drag it out as much as it is in the book, but we are hitting that crucial point where Edward just gets shoved aside. He's apparently still a little bitter about that, because he wouldn't shut up again.
You may notice that there is a lot of dialogue from the book here, but I wanted to go into Edward's reactions to what's going on. It's not an attempt to plagiarize, I promise, just to explore EPOV.
Disclaimer: I don't own it. I borrow it for my selfish pleasure.
Not enough time for all that I want for you
Not enough time for every kiss
Not enough time for all my love
Not enough time for every touch
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Make time stop
I wanna make time stop
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Not enough time for all that I want for you
Not enough time for every kiss
And every touch... and all the nights
I wanna be inside you
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We will make time stop for the two of us
We will make time stop
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Not Enough Time ~ INXS
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Early the next morning, I laid back against the pillows in our oversized bed as Bella struggled to disentangle herself from my body. This had quickly become another favorite morning ritual to me; watching the pure indecision on her face was always priceless.
The whole process usually took her around two hours. Our lovemaking would always begin to slow and grow languorous as the sun came up, leaving Bella to cuddle against me when we finished as if she were holding on to a lifeline. Every morning I could see the very moment she remembered her motherly duties and that's when the ritual began.
First she would look at the door, undoubtedly thinking of our daughter sleeping in the next room and wondering how much longer she would continue to do so. Then she would look at me. Then the door again. Then she would look at our entangled bodies. Then the door. Then she would bite her lip invitingly. It was usually at this point that one of us would cave and attack the other one, depending on who was feeling more aggressive that day.
Today it had been her.
She had gotten that predatory look in her eye that I was becoming very familiar with and thrown me back down against the mattress, climbing on top of me and sliding herself onto my shaft in one quick motion. Regardless of who started it, we always made quick, fierce work of it as if we were living on borrowed time, about to be separated for months rather than a few hours.
Today had been no different, and as I laid back propped up against the pillows afterward I looked down to find her starting the whole process over again. This time I could tell that her motherly duties were going to win. She hugged me closely, kissed my chest, sighed deeply and finally managed to pull herself away and stand up. I was watching her walk away from me towards the closet to get dressed when I noticed something that made me sit straight up and call out to her.
"Bella, stop!" It was no more than a loud whisper, but combined with my sudden gasp it sounded very desperate.
"What's wrong?" She turned towards me quickly, immediately scanning the room for any cause for alarm.
"Turn around for a moment... slowly," I interrupted as she had started to spin in front of me.
"Do I have something on me?" she asked, glancing down at her nude form as she slowly spun for me in the center of the room. I couldn't answer her for a moment. I was completely mesmerized by the breathtaking sight before me. "Edward?"
"So... beautiful," I almost moaned. The sun had broken through the clouds early this morning and fallen in a large patch through our French door windows. Bella had walked right into the bright early morning light and stood before me now, completely illuminated.
I had never seen her like this before. There had been brief moments of small patches of light on her flesh, but nothing like this. There were bright prisms of light reflecting off of her skin, shooting faint rainbows on the walls. She was glowing in more colors than I had ever realized existed and her perfect beauty almost hurt to look at. I felt a tight squeeze in my chest and my stomach felt as if I had swallowed a thousand butterflies.
This was my wife.
This... otherworldly... absolutely perfect creature standing before me was my wife.
"Edward?! What is it?" She was beginning to get frustrated from the sound of her voice. I stood up and approached her slowly with my hand outstretched, almost as if she would disappear if I moved too quickly.
"Is this what it feels like for you?" I whispered, holding my own aching chest with one hand as if I could keep my silent heart from exploding to life and bursting through my ribcage. I gently reached out my other hand the rest of the way and stroked the taut skin of her stomach with featherlight touches. "I've never seen... I didn't know..." I couldn't form a lucid thought, let alone an entire sentence.
"What are you talking about?" She looked down just in time to see my own skin hit the same patch of light as I stepped even closer to her. "Oh... wow... this looks even more amazing with my new vision." She began touching my chest with the same light touches that I was giving her. She glanced at the soft light reflecting on the walls and smiled. "We make one hell of a disco ball."
"Bella..." I choked. I still couldn't speak. I felt a lump rising in my throat that was impossible to swallow. I dragged my fingers higher up her torso until I was lightly cupping her firm breast. I ran my thumb across the darker rose of her areola, marveling at the new reflections that were created as the tissue puckered under my touch. "I've never once... not in my entire life... I've never seen the beauty in our skin. It's always been a curse to me, a reminder of how wrong we are. But this?" I leaned down and softly kissed her swollen nipple. "There is nothing wrong about this."
I felt Bella's fingers slowly lace through my hair and turned so that I could look up at her, my head resting against her breast. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the feeling of her stroking my hair for a moment before opening them again to meet her loving gaze.
"This is not bad." I lifted my other hand from my chest and cupped her other breast, repeating the soft stroking motion with my thumb. "This is not evil." I followed my thumb with my lips, kissing so lightly it could have been a whisper. "This is perfection."
"Edward."
I raised up slowly until I was level with her delicious mouth and kissed her lips. I felt her tremble against me as I lowered my hand again, pulling my fingers down across her belly until they were slipping through the soft hair at the apex of her legs.
"And this?" I said as I slid my fingers inside her, watching my own skin shimmer as it moved between her thighs. "This is paradise."
"Oh God!" Bella threw her head back and pulled me to her, holding on for dear life as I stroked her tender flesh. I couldn't take my eyes off the sight of our skin glowing together. I wanted to take her away to some secluded place and lay her down in the brightest sunlight imaginable and kiss every single sparkling inch of her skin. I wanted to worship this woman who had taught me how to love not only her, but also us and our new life together.
I knew that we didn't have time for that right now, so I would settle for worshiping her body just one more time before I let her go back to the world around us.
I pulled her down with me to the floor, covering her body quickly with my own and loving the way that her legs wrapped around me eagerly. We were both bathed in the bright sunshine and it took all that I had to keep from crying out loudly at the brilliant sight of my own body entering hers. We weren't frantic with our lust this time as much as we were eager to completely love each other in the small amount of time we had left.
We moved together expertly, bringing each other to the brink within a matter of minutes. She felt so amazing, clenched tightly around me, gripping me with her arms... her legs... her sex. I knew we were both so close... so close... so fucking close.
~Momma? Daddy?~
Shit!
My head shot up and I looked at the door, making sure it was still firmly shut. She wasn't up yet, but she was slowly gaining consciousness and realizing that we weren't in there already. I leaned back down and kissed Bella quickly, whispering against her lips.
"Hurray, baby... she's almost awake." I ground my hips harder into her, feeling her begin to tighten around me, knowing that bliss was only seconds away for the both of us.
"Should we stop? Should we.. Oh fuck!" she moaned against my shoulder. I knew there was no way I could stop at that point, so I did the only thing I knew how and thrust even faster, bringing my hand between us and rubbing against the tight bundle of nerves that I knew would send Bella over the edge.
"That's it, baby," I whispered as she began shaking underneath me. "You're almost there. Come for me one more time... please... Oh God!" I felt her inner walls clamp down on me at the same moment I heard tiny padded footsteps on the floor in the other room.
"Momma?"a tiny voice called out.
"Wait right there, sweetheart!" I yelled out towards the hall, trying not to let my voice crack from the restraint as I pounded Bella even harder, slamming into her now as I felt her finally coming undone. "Just a minute, Nessie... Mommy's... coming!" I practically yelped before covering her mouth with my own and swallowing her cries of pleasure as I spilled myself inside her.
The second she finished shaking, Bella jumped up and flew to the closet, throwing on the first thing that her hand landed on, a simple blue dressing gown. She then ran down the hall for damage control and I listened to her in the other room as I took my time getting dressed. I knew that we'd have to switch off in a moment if she wanted to change into something a little more appropriate for visiting before we left.
"I'm sorry baby, Momma's here..." a brief pause, meaning that Renesmee was most likely grilling her with her hand on her cheek. "Daddy's getting dressed, he'll be here soon..." another pause, "No, we didn't forget about you, sweetie, we were just a little... distracted this morning..." I couldn't help the quiet chuckle that escaped my lips. "Mommy and Daddy were just... wrestling... and lost track of the time."
I knew it was probably time for Bella to have a little backup, so I walked into the blindingly pink bedroom and smiled, holding out my arms.
"Morning, baby girl! Where's my hug?" Renesmee jumped out of Bella's arms and leaped at me, kissing me soundly on the cheek and squeezing my neck tightly. "Why don't we let Momma go finish getting dressed?" I saw Bella visibly relax, and I knew without a doubt that her face would have been a violent crimson if she still had the power to blush. Almost immediately after Bella left the room, I felt a tiny hand settle on my cheek and I was dealt my own round of questions.
"Yes, wrestling. We were having such a fun time wrestling that we didn't notice it was time for you to wake up..." I could see her little mind working before she hit me with another one. "No, it's a special kind of wrestling. You can't play like that until you're all grown up. Actually, now that I think about it, you probably shouldn't even think about it until your at least 35... maybe 40."
I was suddenly hit with a new-found respect for Charlie. How he had avoided trying to kill me yet was beyond me, knowing what I did to his daughter on a nightly basis. Just the mere thought of future 'wrestling partners' for my daughter had me quaking in my shoes.
I found myself wanting to hunt down the nearest imprinted wolf and beat the living shit out of him.
Fucking mongrel!
When Bella and Renesmee were finished dressing, we all made our way back to the main house to start our day; when Jacob showed up a few hours later, he might have wondered why I scowled at him so harshly.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Later that evening, we were deep into our planning for our trip to South America. Bella had convinced me that it was in everyone's best interest for Jacob to join us. Ever since her run-in with Irina, Jacob had barely left our land long enough to sleep and check in with his pack. We all knew that there was no way we could take Renesmee away from him for that long now without a fight.
I appreciated his added protection, but I still couldn't fight off the nagging sense of resentment where he was concerned. She was my daughter. This was my family. Their safety was my concern, not his. I could tell that he felt similar towards me at times. None of us knew how long we would have Renesmee in our lives and it made all of us that much more possessive of her time.
I hated to admit that I was a little glad he wasn't here tonight. He had actually left with Seth and Leah for a while to run over a few final details with Sam's pack before he left with us in a few days.
The house was buzzing with activity, even without his hulking presence taking up his usual perch in the living room. Carlisle and I were going over maps again while Emmett and Jasper were arguing over what big game they were anxious to hunt. Rosalie and Esme were deciding what to pack and Bella was sitting on the couch next to a sleeping Renesmee. It was much later in the evening than we usually stayed and well after her normal bedtime, but we were all eager to get things finalized.
I looked over in time to see Bella brush a loose strand of hair off of our daughter's forehead and tuck it back behind her ear. I couldn't help smiling to myself at the loving caress. These were the two halves of my soul, right here before my eyes. I tried to make eye contact with her from across the room, but she was too engrossed in watching Alice flit around the house.
Alice had been very jittery all evening, arranging and then rearranging every knick-knack in sight. I tried to see what was obviously troubling her so much, but her thoughts were a jumbled mess. She was trying to see something that was as yet unseen. I saw Irina flash in her mind again, and I realized that she was still trying to find out what her intentions were regarding us. She had been trying off and on for days to lock onto her, but she was still wandering around somewhere, torn with indecision.
"Give it up, Alice." I felt a large wave of calm spread throughout the room as Jasper called out to her. "If you haven't seen what she's planning on doing by now, I doubt it's going to come to much." Alice stuck her tongue out at him playfully and continued to wander around the room, this time attacking a vase of flowers for not looking perfect.
I caught the images at the very moment the vase shattered to the floor. The visions flooded my mind as they filtered through Alice's, whose eyes had completely glazed over. Irina had finally made her decision, and her choice had effectively sealed all of our fates.
She had gone to the Volturi... and they were coming for us. I had seen them all... the entire guard... even the wives. They were all coming for us, and their judgment would be fierce.
My gasp was louder than the vase breaking.
I did my best to fill in the rest of the family while Alice tried to work out as many details as possible. It was difficult to keep up with her visions; they were coming in at a more rapid, jumbled rate than I had ever seen before. It was as if she were searching out many futures at once.
The room went into a panic. Battling cries of 'why?' and 'when?' rang out from everyone at the same time.
"When?" Jasper asked again, grabbing Alice, visibly shaken at her distant gaze. I saw it when she did this time.
"Not long," we answered in unison.
"There's snow on the forest," Alice continued on her own. "Snow on the town. Little more than a month."
I could see the vision more clearly now. Irina was reporting us to the Volturi and it was as if they were already waiting for her, eager for the chance to jump.
"They're coming now," I whispered.
"But why?" cried Carlisle, still trying to process the news. "We have done nothing! And if we had, what could we possibly do that would bring this down on us?" None of us could answer him.
Except Bella.
I heard a deep moan from behind me and turned just in time to see Bella drape herself over Renesmee's sleeping body, covering her with her hair, burying her face in her curls. The way that she was instinctively trying to protect her made me feel frozen with fear.
"Think of what she saw that afternoon," she said in a low, haunting voice. My mind started racing, trying to replay the details, looking for any clues as to what she was realizing. I had never been angrier at my lack of insight into Bella's mind. "To someone who lost a mother because of the immortal children, what would Renesmee look like?"
No... Oh, God... no.
"An immortal child," Carlisle whispered.
I couldn't believe that I had never once put it together. Irina hadn't been mourning Laurent at all that day. She hadn't even batted an eye at the fact that we were still friendly with wolves. She had come here that day and seen an exquisitely beautiful child with powers that were clearly more than human as she had played and jumped high in the air.
This was the cause of her mental anguish over these last days. Irina had mistakenly thought we had created a child vampire, an unspeakable crime. Immortal children were vicious beasts beyond reason. They had all been hunted down and disposed of centuries ago, along with anyone who was foolish enough to create or protect them. Her own mother had been executed for such an offense, which was why she was in such agony over her decision and why it had taken her so long to reach it.
She thought she was reporting a perverse violation of the law. She felt she was doing what was right, her conscience finally winning out over the fact that our families had been friends for a century.
I wanted to be offended that she would even think us capable of such a feat, but I knew this was a sensitive subject with her and she already wondered at our strange interaction with wolves. For all she knew, we had all lost it. I understood her knee-jerk reaction, but she had just inadvertently signed our death warrants.
I couldn't keep my feet from carrying me over to the couch, and before I knew it I was kneeling on the ground in front of them both and wrapping my arms around my wife and child, as if I could somehow shield them even more by curling myself around them.
No. Not this. Anything but this.
"But she's wrong," I heard Bella moan from underneath me. "Renesmee isn't like those other children. They were frozen, but she grows so much every day. They were out of control, but she never hurts Charlie or Sue or even shows them things that would upset them. She can control herself. She's already smarter than most adults. There would be no reason..." her voice trailed off, as if she were waiting for one of us to jump in and agree with her. All she received was silence.
My heart sank with the words I knew I had to speak.
"It's not the kind of crime they hold a trial for, love," I whispered into her hair. "Aro's seen Irina's proof in her thoughts. They come to destroy, not to be reasoned with."
"But they're wrong!" she cried.
"They won't wait for us to show them that." No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't keep the pain and desolation from my voice.
I could hardly believe that it had barely been a year ago when I had begged these monsters to kill me after I'd thought Bella was dead, and they wouldn't even entertain the idea. But now... now that I had something that mattered more to me than myself... now that I actually had a happy future that seemed possible... now they were going to end us all without even one chance at salvation.
"What do we do?" Bella demanded. She was not going down without a fight. I envied her naïve optimism.
I had told her she was damned from the moment she met me. I knew there was no way I would be allowed to stay happy, but I was growing increasingly angry that I had been allowed to experience this happiness at all.
Why?! Why the fuck was I allowed to taste this small piece of paradise, only to have it snatched away?
"We fight," Emmett answered her calmly.
"We can't win," Jasper growled from across the room.
"Well, we can't run. And I don't know that we can't win. There are a few options to consider. We don't have to fight alone."
"We don't have to sentence the Quileutes to death, either, Emmett!" Bella snapped.
"Chill, Bella." Emmett was completely in his element now. He thrilled to a challenge, regardless the risk. He went on to explain that we had plenty of other vampire friends around the world that we could call upon. They didn't even need to fight with us, if we could simply convince them to bear witness that Renesmee did age. His thinking was that if we could get a large enough group to stand by us against the Volturi, it might give us just the advantage we needed.
"Yes," Esme jumped in. "That makes sense, Emmett. All we need is for the Volturi to pause for one minute. Just long enough to listen."
Alice started searching again, spitting out a long list of friends for us to contact: the rest of the Denali coven, Siobhan's coven, various nomads as well as others we hoped might be willing to help us.
"What about Peter and Charlotte?" Jasper asked, worried about his old brother from his past.
"Maybe," she replied distantly, her eyes clouded over again.
"The Amazons?" Carlisle asked. "Kachiri, Zafrina, and Senna?"
His question hung in the air as we all watched Alice. She seemed too engrossed in what she was seeing to have even heard him. I was keeping up with her to a point, but the visions started moving so rapidly that I lost it. I had seen quick snippets of me, Bella and Renesmee, and then it cut to a scene in the jungle with trees everywhere, but I couldn't tell whose eyes I was seeing through before it went black. She shuddered as her eyes cleared and she lowered her head.
"I can't see," was all she said.
"What was that?" I demanded. I had never seen her visions go black that suddenly before; it almost felt as if she was tuning me out. "That part in the jungle. Are we going to look for them?"
"I can't see," she repeated, avoiding my gaze. I had never felt so confused when speaking with her. "We'll have to split up and hurry," she quickly changed the subject. "We have to round up whomever we can and get them here to show them."
She began to zone out again and there was another heavy silence in the room as the rest of them waited for her to speak. I tried once again to follow her, but the images were so foggy and interchanging that it was futile. When she came back to us her eyes still looked blank.
"There is so much. We have to hurry," she said to nobody in particular.
Something is wrong here.
"Alice?" I asked. "That was too fast... I didn't understand. What was-?"
"I can't see!" she snapped at me. "Jacob's almost here!" I raised my hands in surrender, trying not to take offense at her tone, but my inner bullshit alarm was ringing loudly. She was keeping something from me, I was positive. I just couldn't be sure what it was or why on earth she felt that she needed to.
Was it that bad? Was she afraid to kill our hope by telling us what she had seen?
The second Jacob made his way toward the front door, Alice jumped on the fact that he blocked her visions as a reason to leave. She claimed that she needed to get away for a bit and see things clearly. She grabbed Jasper and ran out the back door, yelling back at us as she disappeared into the night.
"Hurry! You have to find them all!" And then she was gone.
"Find what? Where did Alice go?" Jacob asked as he entered the front room. When nobody answered him I could see the worry start to appear on his face. He looked around the room quickly at the blank staring faces, his gaze landing on the broken shards of glass on the floor where the vase had been forgotten. "What happened?"
Nobody knew where to start. Our heads were reeling with all of the information we'd just been given and we were all completely dumbstruck. Jacob stormed across the room and knelt down next to us at the couch.
"Is she okay?" he demanded, practically shoving us out of the way to get to Renesmee, touching her forehead and listening to her heart. "Don't mess with me, Bella, please!" I recognized the panicked tone in his voice; I was too busy trying to keep it out of my own.
"Nothing's wrong with Renesmee," Bella replied, her voice cracking on a strangled sob.
"Then who?" he was looking frantically between us, hoping that our faces might provide some answer.
"All of us, Jacob." she sighed. Her voice sounded as dead as my hope for our future. "We've all been sentenced to die."
He looked at me, clearly hoping I could explain away her worry.
I couldn't.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
We sat there all night, afraid to move, all of us scared to walk even five feet away from each other.
I had sat there next to Bella as she held our daughter and stared deeply into her eyes for the entire night. Neither one of us could look away, not saying a word. It might as well have been our last night on earth because nothing else existed for us in that moment but each other. I felt as if I was being ripped apart, my soul shattering into pieces at the thought of not spending forever in the arms of the person who had come to mean more than anything else in the world to me.
I knew that underneath it all was an agonizing worry about Renesmee, but I knew that we would both sacrifice ourselves a hundred times over if it meant that she would survive. As long as we could leave this world together, we would go gladly in her stead.
I held her gaze greedily, memorizing every tiny detail in her eyes, drinking her in like a fine wine. We stayed lost in our own world until the early morning light began to shine through the room. As I saw the reflections begin to sparkle on her face I couldn't help but marvel at the difference between now and the last morning we had spent together.
Had that only been yesterday? It feels like a lifetime.
As I began to let my surroundings in again, I realized that something was nagging at me in the back of my mind. Something was wrong. Someone was missing.
She never came back.
"Alice." It was all I needed to say. The house began to stir again, all of the others seeming to break out of their own frozen mourning.
"She's been gone a long time," I heard Rosalie murmur.
Panic struck me immediately. This was not like her. She would never let us worry, especially not at a time like this.
"She's never taken so long before." I couldn't keep the worry out of my voice any longer. "What ifsomething has happened to her, Carlisle? What if Aro sent someone ahead... someone to keep her from warning us?"
"Fuck!" Emmett yelled, so loudly that Jacob jumped up from the floor where he had been sleeping in wolf form and growled.
We all jumped up in one huge rush and began running out the back door. I heard Bella yell at Jacob to stay with Renesmee and the next thing I knew she was beside me, running as fast as she could. On our
way through the forest Esme noticed a faint hint of Alice's scent, but we kept on until we caught a stronger one of both Alice and Jasper's and followed it all the way up to the Quileute border.
As we neared the border we caught a strong wolf scent and were surprised to find Sam waiting for us in human form. As he walked toward us I was able to read his thoughts and they chilled me to the bone. I stood back and tried to process what he went on to speak aloud.
Alice and Jasper had shown up there around midnight and requested to cross across their lands to the ocean. Sam had escorted them himself and obeyed her request to return to the border and wait for us with a note that she had written. She had made him promise not to tell Jacob anything before we had arrived. He did not look happy as he handed the note over to Carlisle.
Carlisle read it over slowly and turned to us. I was the only one prepared for what he was about to say.
"Alice has decided to leave us." Knowing ahead of time didn't make it any easier to hear.
He handed over the note to us, but I didn't need to read it. I already knew the gist. She merely reminded us of who we were to try and find to help us bear witness against the Volturi. A small list of names and a brief apology. They had left. She had seen something so bad that she had taken Jasper and run away, but because she was blocking me I had no idea what it was.
While everyone else panicked, I couldn't help picking up on Sam's negative thoughts about Alice. I had to restrain myself from snapping too harshly as I defended her.
"We don't know what she saw. Alice is neither unfeeling nor a coward. She just has more information than we do." While I believed what I said, it was still hard to ignore the sting of Alice's departure.
"We would never leave our family!" Sam spit out as if even saying the words left a bad taste in his mouth.
"You are bound differently than we are!" I finally snapped. "We each still have our free will."
Sam didn't agree with her actions, but he made it clear that he still intended to fight beside us if it came down to it. We tried to tell him that he was not required to stand beside us in this, but he considered anything less a failure to protect the loved ones of a pack member.
As we headed back to the house, Esme pointed out the other scent that she had first noticed on the way there.
"It has to be from earlier in the day. It was just Alice, without Jasper." I reasoned. Esme looked sad, but we kept walking until I realized that Bella had fallen behind. When I turned around, she was standing still, staring down the path Esme had noted.
"Bella?" She looked up at me, but she was distracted. As I noticed her hesitation, it dawned on me that she had been acting strangely ever since Carlisle had shown us the note.
What hasn't been strange about today? She's probably just in shock.
"I want to follow the trail," she said.
"It probably just leads back to the house," I replied. I felt drained of all emotion and couldn't understand why she even cared right now.
"Then I'll meet you back at the house." Her eyes darted around a little bit as she turned away from me and started to walk the trail. Each step she took caused a pulling sensation in my chest, as if my heart was being torn from my body, one step at a time.
"Wait, I'll come with you," I whispered. "We'll meet you back at home, Carlisle." He nodded at me and continued on with the rest of them on the original trail. When I caught up to Bella I noticed that she was looking at me questioningly. "I... couldn't let you walk away from me. It... hurt... just to imagine it."
She smiled in understanding and held her hand out to me. I took it hungrily and kissed her fingers before we picked up our pace again and began running along the new trail, following Alice's scent. As it wound around in a direction that made little sense, I was shocked to find that it didn't end up at the house, but at our cottage.
"She left Jasper to wait for her and came here?" It didn't make any sense. Why?
Why is nothing making any fucking sense today?
"Give me just a minute," Bella said quickly as she pulled her hand free and headed toward the door.
"Bella?" I couldn't keep the worry from my voice. She was acting so strangely, barely looking me in the eye.
"Please Edward? Just give me thirty seconds." Before I could even respond she was gone through the door.
What the fuck is going on?!
I made it thirteen seconds before barging through the door, only to find her standing in front of the fireplace, watching a book burn.
"What's going on, Bella?" I was more than worried now. I was suspicious.
"She was here. She ripped a page out of my book to write her note on." She still wouldn't look at me. If I hadn't already been watching her closely I wouldn't have noticed.
"Why are you burning it?" I asked her quietly.
"I.. I..." She turned to me now, and I could see uncertainty on her face. If I hadn't been watching her close enough I would have missed it turn into determination. "It seemed appropriate."
"We don't know what she's doing, Bella." I could feel myself unraveling at the seams. I knew that something else was going on, but it was obvious that she didn't want me to know.
"I think maybe she saw something that scared her so much, she did what she had to do to keep herself and Jasper safe. When we went to Italy to save you, she lied to him to keep him away. She knew that if he faced the Volturi that he would die. She was willing to risk all of our lives except his. She has her priorities. I can't say I blame her." She seemed more comfortable now, as if she had settled on whatever cover she had chosen.
"I don't believe it. Maybe it was just Jasper in danger. Her plan would work for the rest of us, but he'd be lost if he stayed." I was grasping at straws, but I badly wanted something to make sense.
"She could have easily told us that, Edward. She could have sent him away."
"But would he have gone? I know that I would never leave you behind. Maybe she's lying to him again for his own protection."
"Maybe," she said vaguely. She grabbed my hand again. "We should go home. There's no time to waste."
I let her lead me toward the door, but it was with a heavy heart.
Something was wrong.
There was something that she had figured out that she wasn't telling me.
I didn't know what bothered me more... the fact that something was so bad that Bella was keeping it from me, or the fact that Bella was keeping something from me at all.
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I just wanted to give a big thank you to all the lovely ladies who voted on me for The Fandom Gives Back. I auctioned off a Winner's Choice Lemon, and I am eager to see what naughty things the winner wants me to write!
Also, I've been noticing a nice increase in the number of people who are putting this on alert, but there haven't been hardly any new reviews. Please please PLEASE try to leave at least one, just to let me know if you are liking it. I get such a great pleasure out of replying to them and it really makes my day!
I'll try to get the next update out sooner!