Happy Mother's Day!

2013 Part 5

September 2013

Bella's Apartment

Marine Drive, UBC

"Tell me another one," I laughed, stretching out my legs on our picnic blanket, though the 'picnic' part was just for me, plump white grapes, scarlet summer strawberries, and cold ginger ale in a wine glass. My shoes were somewhere nearby, kicked off so that I could feel my toes in the soft grass. "Please?"

"Lord Byron, or Thomas Moore?" Edward offered, as if he were giving me a choice between decadent desserts.

"Moore." I reached up and tucked a stray bit of hair behind his ear, watching as a sunbeam escaped from behind a cloud to touch a finger of light on Edward's cheek. "He was a songwriter, like you."

"Your wish," he smiled, stroking my face with a plucked wildflower, which was almost as pleasurable as his lips on my skin, "as always, is my command."

"Grow to my lip, thou sacred kiss,
On which my soul's beloved swore
That there should come a time of bliss,
When she would mock my hopes no more.
And fancy shall thy glow renew,
In sighs at morn, and dreams at night,
And none shall steal thy holy dew
Till thou'rt absolv'd by rapture's rite.
Sweet hours that are to make me blest,
Fly, swift as breezes, to the goal,
And let my love, my more than soul
Come blushing to this ardent breast.
Then, while in every glance I drink
The rich o'erflowings of her mind,
Oh! Let her all enamour'd sink
In sweet abandonment resign'd,
Blushing for all our struggles past,
And murmuring, "I am thine at last!"

God, how much did I have to drink last night? I didn't remember getting myself to bed, but surely I was not still so drunk that I was hearing what I thought I was hearing. Sure enough, though, there it was: humming. Cold arms clasping me close, so familiar yet so foreign. Something cool, affectionately nuzzling my ear, my throat. I hadn't had this particular dream in ages.

You're so soft. So beautiful.

Don't do this to me.

Do you want me to leave?

Does it matter what I wanted? You left anyway.

Bella, are you awake?

I clenched my eyes shut, forcing the red glow shining through my eyelids to appear black. It felt as though I should be waking up now, like I'd slept long and deep for a change, and yet…this dream was entirely too vivid and real. Ben's arms were never this cold unless he'd been out in the snow, and I never told him how much I secretly liked that. Mumbling for Ben to make some coffee, I inhaled deeply, a prelude to a yawn, when I smelled it:

Red Devil Roses.

No. No no no no no. No.

"Please, Bella. We need to talk."

I tried to shake my head NO, to tell him that I was entirely too hung over and sleepy to talk. It wasn't true—I was still somewhat drunk, maybe, but not hung over. I just didn't want to speak. I wanted the slowly filtering memories of the night before to be a terrible nightmare.

"Please."

"Fuck you," I groaned painfully, even as my body involuntarily snuggled closer. "Fuck you, Edward. Fuck your velvet voice, fuck your sex hair, fuck your amber eyes, fuck your piano fingers, fuck your beautiful face. Fuck. You."

"You never said 'fuck' this much when you were younger." He managed to sound almost amused. Magnanimous, even. Bastard.

"You never wanted to fuck when I was younger," I hissed. "You were content to drive me up the wall, toying with my hormones, making my brain and body and heart all scramble and melt for you, making me love you, and all the while you knew you were just playing a game. Just pretending to be human, isn't that what you told me?"

I felt him wince and press me closer. And to my shame, I couldn't pull away. "I'm sorry. That was cruel."

"Is that all you have to say? 'I'm sorry, that was cruel?' Are you goddamn kidding me? What do you think this is?" I demanded, trying to make myself pull my own body back but only succeeding in clutching his shirt and breathing in more of his scent. "Seducing me and then telling me you didn't want me anymore was far more than just cruel—it was life-altering. Discovering it was your money I stole, even though it was from Alice's room—I don't even understand what the hell that was. Your penance? You found out I was planning to break in, and you wanted me to think it was hers and snatch it so you would find absolution?"

He held perfectly still, barely breathing. "Not exactly…"

"You son of a bitch," I cursed him. "You used me as an experiment so you'd know what it was like to be a human, but when you didn't like the result you kicked me to the curb and took off, and then you fucking paid for me."

"Bella—"

"Shut up!" I snarled. "It's bad enough that you left me a pile of cash, tricking me into robbing your family to exact my payment. Finding out you paid my tuition not once, but over and over, that you've been fucking stalking me all these years—God, what is your malfunction, Edward? You just like to toy with me? You love me, then you don't, then you feel bad, then you find new ways to screw with my head. What is wrong with you? Is this how you get your rocks off? Watching me try to drink you away all this time and never doing anything about it? Playing your little goddamn piano to piss me off? Psychological torment? I bet I've been keeping you happy for the last eight years, haven't I?"

"Stop it," he hissed in my ear, making me shiver as his frozen lips grazed my earlobe. "It was nothing like that. I lied when I said I didn't want you, Bella. I wanted you so badly I couldn't see straight, but I knew I was all wrong for you, that I'd eventually kill you. I just wanted you to have a normal life, and you couldn't do that with me there to complicate your existence."

"Right," I groaned, rolling my eyes, even though they were closed. I didn't want to look at him—that way lay danger. "Because abandonment simplified my life. So that's what that was supposed to be."

"I just thought—"

"You thought wrong," I snapped. "You showed me your magical world, then you snatched it away, and you thought I could just go right back to a simple way of life? Forget there was more, that you were alive and breathing somewhere?"

"I wasn't sure," he said, obviously ashamed, or just trying to sound that way, "but I hoped you'd learn to be okay after a while. Humans forget things all the time. I thought life would be less problematic for you after that."

I huffed in disbelief and opened my eyelids a fraction of an inch, just enough to see an all-too-familiar white button-down shirt. I still had one just like it in a beat-up shoebox buried in the back of my closet. "For a mind reader," I said derisively, "you have a terrible grasp of human nature. Nobody's life is simple, or normal, or problem-free. Humanity is all complications and hardship, and life is the sum total of our experiences. I experienced you. Did you honestly think I'd forget you like a set of car keys? You were the brightest point in my life, and that dimmed everything that came after. I've relived every moment we spent together over and over again for years. There is no forgetting what we had. Ever."

I felt two icy fingertips under my jaw, and Edward pulled his face back, lifting my chin and coercing me to meet his eyes. The daylight shone behind him, giving him a reddish halo. "I know that, Bella. I loved you. I love you still. I will always love you." Without another word, Edward pressed his lips to mine, forcing my mouth open and sliding his tongue across my teeth.

And my tired, traitorous body molded to him instantly, craving the long-desired coolness after years of too much warmth.

Edward was every place at once, his essence seeping into my flesh, soaking into my muscles, filling my bones. We moaned and strained together, gasping at every new kind of touch, his tongue laving softly at my breasts and tracing every line of my tattoos, my hands sliding up his naked thighs, our panting breaths in symphony with our whispers, our hums and groans, our delighted and pained cries as I guided him to his first orgasm, to my best orgasm, joining each other again and again, slow and fast and slow, I'd never gone at such a gentle pace, marveling with each other's bodies, taking each other to a place we could only reach together, wondering at how I could feel such pure, unchecked ecstasy…

"Asleep! O sleep a little while, white pearl!
And let me kneel, and let me pray to thee,
And let me call Heaven's blessing on thine eyes,
And let me breathe into the happy air,
That doth enfold and touch thee all about,
Vows of my slavery, my giving up,
My sudden adoration, my great love!"

"Who was that?" I said into Edward's chest.

"Keats," he replied expectantly. "I used to whisper it to you at night, as you were falling asleep. Don't you remember?"

I didn't.

"Where did you go?" I asked, my limbs entwined with his, as was my post-coital habit. Every time I tried to adjust my legs between Edward's, he tensed up, probably restraining himself from crushing my knees. I wondered if he'd been doing so the entire time we'd been intimate. "When you were gone for those three years after…after Forks."

"Nunavut," he murmured, placing almost apologetic kisses on my head. "Greenland, Svalbard, Scandinavia. Ellesmere Island, Murmansk, Skaftafell. Places like that. I learned to speak Icelandic."

"I see." Shutting my eyes, I tried to picture a map in my head and realized I'd seen some of those names years ago, when he took me to the Nordic Heritage Museum for his birthday. Basically, he spent three years backpacking around the Arctic Circle. "Did you like it?" I asked, rubbing my fingers absent-mindedly against his skin, vaguely noticing that the friction felt different and didn't cooperate the way I was accustomed to. It didn't stick to mine.

"No, not especially." One of his hands pressed against my shoulder, and it was all I could do to hide the shiver. "There was nothing I really wanted to see."

"Oh." I didn't know what else to say. I spent most of those three years studying, working, drinking, and fighting with my mother…I found out I like Malaysian food…Why didn't you just come see me?

My eyes remained closed as I held him, my arm loosely wound around his waist now. No matter how I clung to him, he didn't warm up. Disconcerting. "Edward," I said slowly, still in awe of directly addressing him by name, "I have to know. Did you get me into grad school? Did you cut a check to the department or bribe Dr. West or—?"

"Stop." He kissed me sweetly, so tender. "By the time you applied for grad school, you could speak four languages other than English. Fluently. In your sleep. You didn't need my help to get accepted."

I released a breath I didn't know I was holding.

"I wanted to tell you years ago," Edward said shyly, his bare torso pressed against mine, "your hair is pretty this way." His fingers combed through the strands, a movement that went much quicker now that I only kept it an inch or so past my shoulder.

"Really?" I whispered, pulling my bad leg away from his body and trying to flex it. It wasn't unusual for the muscle to feel stiff and achy when I'd been in bed too long. The pain wasn't in my tissue, though—it was in my bones, a common reaction to the cold, although I didn't usually feel cold at this time of year. "I'd have thought you wouldn't like it so short. You used to love playing with it."

"I do miss the length," he admitted, gently raking his hand down my back, a wistful gesture. "Don't you?"

"Not really." I rolled over and pulled on my t-shirt, quietly glad for its warmth. With a defeated sigh, I fished my despised cane out from under the bed frame and left the bed, making my way to the shelf that held my iPod. According to my alarm clock, it was three in the morning. Something was missing from my shelf. What was it? "My hair's easier to maintain this way," I told him, trying to fill up the silence by drawing out the pillow talk. "Long enough for a ponytail for when I ride, short enough that it's easy to dye it myself."

"Dye it?" Edward frowned, sitting up and throwing the covers off his pale, naked body. "It's still brown."

I found the playlist I was searching for: Chatterbox Jukebox. "To cover the grey." Feeling a little self-conscious, I ran my own hand through the strands at my left temple and tried to see Edward's reaction in my peripheral vision while Bob Seger wished he didn't know now what he didn't know then. Two months had passed since I'd last colored my roots, which might explain why Edward couldn't smell the chemicals. Renee had gone grey early in life, starting to dye her hair when I was only seven. Apparently I took after her in that regard.

"Ah." Edward looked toward the window, rubbing his hand along the back of his neck. There was no physical reason for him to need to do that, obviously, which meant his discomfort was mental. "Right."

Turning back to the bookcase, I finally clicked to the difference: my picture frames. Half of them were neatly stacked face down on the top shelf. I didn't remember doing that at all, and even if I did, I would never have lain them all the way up there. Then I realized which pictures were missing.

Suddenly uncomfortable myself, I crossed the room, hit the lights, and made use of the bathroom, brushing my teeth quickly and ingesting my birth control pill. Edward did not join me, but he took care to make noise as he moved around the apartment, the sound a courtesy for me, or perhaps a long-held habit. Still playing at being human.

While Edward had his turn in the shower, I noticed a folded up piece of paper held up by one of the magnets on my little fridge.

Dear Bella,
I don't know what will happen between the two of you, and I don't want to influence your decision either way. Whatever you need from me, be it my presence or my absence, I will give.
Love you, really,
Alice
(587) 555-1842

Unsure how to deal with that just now, I placed it back on the refrigerator and put my reading glasses in their case. The money was still on the counter, stacked neatly and pushed against the wall. I covered it with a dish towel and looked out my picture window. The two things I loved about my tiny top-floor apartment: it had some of the most stunning views on campus, and the windows didn't open. At all.

"Why do you always play this song?" Edward asked after we'd both cleaned up, listening as Ronnie Dunn warbled through the speakers of my iPod docking station. His hair flopped over in its glorious disarray as he leaned against the wall and peered through the window himself, seeing things my human eyes couldn't distinguish in the dark and wearing nothing but jet-black boxers. He looked good that way. Natural, like he belonged there. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on my part. "When I watch you at the bar, you look so sad when this song comes on the jukebox, but you keep playing it."

I tightened the sash on my raven-blue silk robe—an ill-fitting relic from Alice and Rosalie's collection, as I was never one to indulge in the purchase of this particular kind of clothing—and poured myself an ounce of whiskey in a glass of ice before adding a full can of soda. Just enough to relax me again. "It's our song," I answered, singing along softly to avoid elaboration. "The jukebox plays on drink by drink. The words of every sad song seem to say what I think…"

Edward looked a little hurt and embarrassed. "Right," he said again. His fingers went through his hair this time. Awkward. "This was the song playing the first time He asked you to dance. And for your first kiss."

We hadn't spoken of Ben at all—we hadn't talked much, period—but I knew this topic would come up eventually. I had avoided Ben's call, which he probably assumed was a reaction to Friday night. In a way, maybe it was, just a little.

"No, Edward," I sighed, taking a swallow of the weak drink in a stiff, practiced gulp, eliciting a disapproving frown in the process. Seven years I'd been talking to Edward in my head when I was drinking or heavily medicated—I didn't know how to hold a conversation with him any other way. "I mean it's our song. Yours and mine."

He smiled morosely then, his eyes liquid and warm as he ambled over to me and gently wrapped his arms around me, placing a kiss on my forehead. "We never did anything like that, did we? Have a song we could sing and dance to, make up pet names for each other, do cute couple things."

Excuse me, cute?

"It's not cute," I murmured, lowering my eyes to stare at a random spot on the floor. "This isn't a song with a happy ending. Happy endings are for those Jane Austen novels I used to read and all those poems you recited for me when I was young. I live in the real world, and my real life is painful. I had to learn how to do what I could to muddle my way through it. That means I ride. And I drink." I clicked my tongue, finally admitting this to myself. "Sometimes, a lot."

"You don't have to drink, you know," Edward chided me, eyeing my glass pointedly. "Just like I don't have to drink human blood."

"You didn't have to spend all these years staring at me through other people's eyes after you left," I observed, setting my half-empty glass back on the counter. "You have your addiction, and I have mine."

"Oh Bella, I'm so sorry." He hugged me carefully. How many times did I hear those exact words in my dreams? How many times was it ever real? "I didn't mean to ruin everything for you. I thought I was protecting you by leaving. I didn't mean for you to get like this."

"It doesn't matter what your intentions were," I replied, turning my head to look at a picture on my kitchen wall. Me, sitting on my new bike the day after graduation. Already curvier at the time than I'd ever been before, I'd gained another good ten or fifteen pounds since then, had the two motorcycle accidents, and suffered at least one nervous breakdown, the end results being a huge ass, several cheese-grater-like scars, my arthritic, steel-plated ankle, nerve damage, and very little patience for anyone else's bullshit. "The outcome was this. I am this. That's the ugly thing about being human, Edward: things don't always change for the better."

I felt him exhale, his breath flowing over my hair. "Tell me what you want, Bella."

I closed my eyes, keeping my face pressed against Edward's chest. "I'm ready to go forward, one way or the other. If I'm going to be with you, you and I have to become equals, and I'll drink blood and never die. Or I can keep going with the life I have now, stay with Ben as an equal, and I'll drink hard liquor and ride my Harley and pass on someday, maybe in an accident, maybe of cancer or old age. But I can't go either direction like this, with one foot in our vampire past and the other in a human future."

Edward stepped back and hunched his shoulders, coming to my eye level. "Are you saying this is up to me?"

With a shake of my head, I replied, "Never have, never will. I'm saying it's your future, too. How do you plan on spending it?"

He didn't answer right away, suddenly very interested in the vintage neon beer light that hung over my bed, a Christmas gift from Brown and Marty. But I wasn't about to let him avoid the issue.

"Surely this isn't still about our souls, Edward," I remarked, remembering the familiar circular argument that I refused to tolerate ever again. "We just spent hours making love, and we aren't married." God, I had never made love before. I'd never known how to do anything but fuck. A tiny voice in the corner of my mind piped up: was it making love, or was it just fucking slowly because he was scared to break me? "If I were a Christian, instead of an agnostic," I continued, mentally shaking away the troubling little voice and proceeding with my train of thought, "that would mean I'm doomed to hell. You, on the other hand, seem to think you're exempt from that fate because of what you are."

"For me," Edward murmured, "hell has never been a place to fear that I might go when I die. Hell has been the last ninety-five years of my existence, an endless life I didn't ask for, wandering the earth as a monster, wanting to feed on people but still trying to be a decent person. Hell has been an unquenchable fire in my throat, and I never wanted you to suffer that way, to be in constant pain and grow to resent me for it."

"A little late to be worrying about my resentment," I pointed out. It was rude of me, especially since he was finally explaining instead of just brushing my curiosity and concerns aside. But I hated that look in his eye, what I used to call ancient grief. He'd always used it as a way for him to play up his age and vampirism as some kind of mental or emotional superiority, when really it was just a century-long pity party. If he really and truly wanted to be with me, he was going to have to move past that, the same way I had to.

Edward continued as though I hadn't spoken. "But after I left you behind…hell was every day for eight years that I wasn't with you. Hell was watching you move on without me, even though moving on was what I thought would be best for you to begin with. Hell has been the last three years, knowing you were sleeping with someone else and never having the courage to do what I wanted, to come to you as a man and make you mine."

I stepped closer to him, taking his hands into my grasp. "Does that mean what I think it means?" I asked, daring to hope, something I'd not done in years.

Edward turned back to me, lowered his head to mine, and gave me a long, slow, precious kiss. "Bella," his stone lips whispered against mine. "I love you more than life itself. I will stay with you, if that's what you want. Can't that be enough?"

I pulled my face back and glared up at him. "No, it can't. It wasn't enough when I was seventeen, and it's not enough now, not when I feel about you the way I do, and not if you claim to love me more than life."

The embarrassment was back in his face, and I understood: he'd been using hyperbole. Typical. It was also indicative of a problem: how was I supposed to take anything he said at face value?

"Why can't we just…be?" he wondered, and this time he sounded sincere. "Just like this?"

"That time is past," I informed him, trying to infuse my speech with a little more compassion and a little less bitterness. It was difficult. "You missed it. It's not like we're only a year or two apart anymore. I tried to warn you about this years ago, but you wouldn't listen to me."

"You're seeing someone ten years older than you," he reminded me, his eyes tight.

"Yes, but I'm an adult," I replied firmly. "Do you realize you're physically younger than most of my students? Which is difficult enough to explain, but you're not aging. Even if nobody knows who you really are, you can't just fit into my world like this."

"Why not?" He seemed almost innocent, asking this question.

"Look at me, Edward," I ordered, taking his face into my hands so that he could not turn away. Gazing into his marble smooth, seventeen-year-old face, I knew that my own features had already begun to show the signs of age and wear, things no amount of Revlon Dark Brown #03 Root Perfect could mask: faint laugh lines, bags under my eyes, years of alcohol, sleepless nights, hard work, freezing wind, second-hand smoke. "Really look. I'm twenty-six years old, but I look thirty and feel forty. I am not a capricious child anymore. I don't have eight more years to wait for you to decide you're ready to participate in a mutually respectful partnership instead of playing with a porcelain doll. If you're going to choose me, then choose me. If not, leave me in peace."

He remained silent and still, as if I'd spoken a foreign language and needed to provide a translation. I paused to draw a breath, trying to steel myself so that I could say what needed to be said. "You told me once that time heals all wounds for my kind. Problem is: that only works if you don't constantly reopen the wound." I exhaled gustily, looking at my Whale and Thunderbird bracelet sitting beside my house keys. "You can't keep doing this to me. I can't be free if I know you're watching. Either we spend eternity together, or you let me go."

"What about your career, Bella?" Edward asked quietly. "Your education, your friends, your parents…your life? Everything you've been building all these years. Are you really ready to just give that up?"

"You asked me that before," I reminded him, reminiscing about my junior year of high school, so far removed from me and yet standing before me. "You wanted me to go to college, and I've done that. My education will go on forever—yours certainly seems to. Both my parents are remarried and happy. I only see them once or twice a year, if that. And my friends are the kind of people who are used to a certain way of life. Loss is something they all understand. If I tell them it's time for me to go, they'll wish me well or they won't, and they'll think of me and I'll miss them, but they'll go on. It wouldn't be a first for any of them." I looked him full in the face. "So yes, I'd give up my life here. For love. For you."

Edward sighed. "And what about That Man?"

"Don't call him that," I growled instinctively. "He has a name."

Edward lifted an eyebrow but didn't comment on my tone. "Ben."

"Do not make this about Ben." I did my damnedest to ignore the stab of guilt in my stomach. "This is about you and me."

"He's still part of the equation." Edward looked pained as he said this. His complex voice held a barely concealed hopefulness, as well as a number of other things I couldn't pick out. I didn't understand; was he arguing in favor of my joining him, or against it? "Are you really willing to let him go?" Regardless of Edward's strange, dubious motivations, I had to turn my mind to the question. It was valid, after all. I fought the urge to take another hard drink before I answered.

"I would die for him," I said evenly, hating and hurting myself as the next words formed, no matter how true they were. "But Ben wouldn't do the same for me."

"You really believe that?" Edward replied, a funny look on his face.

"I may be intoxicated, but I'm no fool." So many years ago, the boy in front of me had sworn he would die for me, but what did it mean coming from an immortal who hated his immortality? It would mean so much more from Ben, the fragile human who loved his life, but I had no right and no reason to expect it. "My old man's got a kid to take care of, and she has always been his highest priority. He would drop me like a sack of potatoes for her if she asked. Why else do you think he's not here?" Hannah was staying with her father for the whole weekend, and when she became hostile and combative and insisted that they needed privacy, and Ben then caved in to her temper tantrum instead of putting her in check, I went along with it without much argument. What was I supposed to say to him? 'I know she just got here, but send her back to her mother?' 'Our date is more important than your kid?' Even if it was my birthday weekend, even if I disagreed with Ben's decision, I swallowed my bitter response, because I was a grown woman, not a child, because I knew what it was like for a girl to need her father, and because she was blood family, and I was…not. "She comes first. She will always come first, and I'll always be last. That's the way it's supposed to be, and that won't change whether I leave him or stay. As long as Ben has Hannah, he'll be fine."

I fought the tide of pain washing over me, while the strangest combination of expressions fluttered across Edward's face: sorrow, relief, shame, and then finally…calculation?

"What about Hannah?" Edward sounded so sure of himself. "There was a picture of her on your dresser—she's beautiful. You've tried to hide it, and she's been difficult lately, but I know she's important to you. If you were changed, you'd never be able to see her again."

He looked through my eyes as if he could see my soul, the way he once had. I shot him a withering glare in return. Don't.

"I think you love her, Bella."

I slapped him without preamble, just so he'd know how I felt. Or I tried. He had his hand around my wrist before I could strike his face. "Hannah doesn't want me," I hissed through gritted teeth, yanking my hand away and trying not to think of scrawny arms thrown around me in Albuquerque. Those same arms had folded together in spite every time I'd seen her for the past month, those formerly happy brown eyes narrowed with distaste, even disgust, as if I was solely responsible for everything that was wrong in her world. All that animosity was not directed at her father, but at me. I cared so much about her, more than I thought was possible, and she hated me. "Nor does she need me in any way. She has two real parents who love her more than anything or anyone. Human or not, it's not like I'd get visitation rights to see her if I broke up with her dad to be with you. So don't pretend you give a shit about Ben's daughter, and don't you dare try to use how I feel about her as an excuse to keep me human, you miserable, manipulative bastard!"

"I'm sorry," he retracted, realizing that he'd crossed a line. "I didn't mean to…I'm sorry."

"Sure you are," I growled, wiping my eyes quickly. I was growing inured to hearing 'I'm sorry' at this point. They were just empty words. "So, since we've established that I'm not now, nor will I ever be, the most important person to anyone I know, are you going to do what I've asked?" Somebody, somewhere, had to love me best. I needed someone to put me first, and here was my someone. Why else would Edward have been watching me all this time? Why else would he be here now? "This is your chance to have me, Edward. All of me." I looked into his eyes, memorizing the curry-yellow rings, and held up my wrist to his mouth.

He squeezed my hips, kissed the veins on my wrist gently, and slowly met my forehead with his own, intertwining our fingers and lowering our hands. I waited and watched, my focus never deviating from his face. "If you want me, you have to take me," I whispered, "and it has to be forever."

Edward shut his eyes to hide his thoughts from me and pressed his mouth to mine for another kiss. But I saw. His next words, whispered against my lips, confirmed it: "I can't."

Not 'We have to stage your death' or 'You should say goodbye to your friends' or 'I need to call Carlisle to come help me.' Not even 'Sober up first.'

"Why not?" I breathed, trying to hold back a fresh wave of tears. "After all these years, I deserve a real answer. I demand one. Not a long-suffering sigh and a patronizing pat on the head without any kind of explanation, like you're my friggin' father. Not another lie. Tell me why."

He took a deep breath. "Because I know—that is, I believe—that once you've been changed, you'll finally realize that this way of life isn't what you want, even with me in it. Maybe not right away, but someday you'll become dissatisfied or accidentally kill someone, and you'll hate me for giving in, for making you a slave to your thirst. And instead of that hate fading over time, as it would with a human, it will fester inside you for hundreds of years, thousands. I can't do that to you."

I swallowed, tasting the liquor and cola that lingered on my tongue. "I see." And I did. I saw he had a real, paralyzing fear, and that he didn't want me to have any regrets. I also saw that he wasn't taking into account that everyone had regrets, because life wasn't so simple that being human guaranteed every decision would be easy and correct, and because there was no happiness without sacrifice. He wasn't considering how happy his former family was with each other, even if they did face hardships. Resisting bloodlust was still his primary concern, the largest thing in his life, no matter how good at it he was after a century, no matter how well the others had overcome it. In point of fact, it was his intentional focus, to the detriment of everything else his endless days had to offer. He lived in a state of mind wherein no one close to him could feel joy; no one could make the best of things. No one could even try. There was no room for what anyone else wanted—no room for what I wanted. Everything was shrouded and polluted by his undead identity crisis and self-imposed eternal guilt complex. By his immortal, supernatural bullshit.

"Then you need to go," I choked, looking away. "And I don't mean 'go back to shadowing me.' That has to stop. Change me or walk away. I'm not some fish in your aquarium."

"I have to make sure you're protected, taken care of," Edward said softly. "You're the most important thing in my world. I don't want to lose you again, not like that. I can't…I don't know how to live without knowing you're safe."

"Safe?" I retorted with a shaky voice, feeling angry all of a sudden. Eight years of loneliness, heartache, and just missing each other, and when I finally saw him again and asked him to choose option A or B, he chose none-of-the-above because he didn't want to change anything? He'd rather just go on like this than give me the say in my own life? After everything he'd done, everything he'd neglected to do, he still had the audacity to act as though he knew what was best for me? "Now you care if I'm safe? Your parents had to deal with Victoria and Laurent for me while you were bumming around the goddamn North Pole for three years, but you can't live without knowing I'm safe?" Edward frowned and didn't meet my eyes. "Where were you when I was lost in the fucking woods for fourteen hours straight? Or the first time I was trapped inside the Chatterbox during a brawl and had to hide under the pool table? Or both times I lost control of my bike and wound up in an ambulance?"

"In the trees above you, calling 911," he responded, his voice growing strong as he flashed a glare at me. "I was also there when someone tried to slip you Rohypnol while you were out drinking with Shalice, and when a drunk at the bar wanted to pay you to dance with him and you threatened him with a beer bottle instead of asking your boss to show him out. I was there at your first motorcycle rally, when some coke-addled biker tried to follow you to your tent. I was the one who made that Hells Angel who kept touching you crash his bike so the police would apprehend him. And I was in Samoa when a nomad vampire tracked you and tried to come for you through the window you so carelessly left open. I've gone to enormous lengths to keep you alive, no matter how often you insist on putting yourself in danger like some kind of rebellious teenager. Don't tell me I don't care what happens to you! It's all I've ever cared about!"

"Rebellious teenager?" I repeated, incensed. "You stand there in all your immortal seventeen-year-old glory, the epitome of arrested development, having stalked me for years instead of initiating contact like an adult, and you have the nerve to say that to me?"

"Well that's what all this biker crap is really about, isn't it?" Edward sniped at me. "Some kind of delayed teen rebellion, since you had to play the adult all those years with your parents? You get off on flirting with danger now?"

I snorted. "This from the speed demon boy who had a garage full of sports cars back in Forks. What are you driving, by the way, that flashy blue Ferrari I saw last week, or the black Porsche Alice followed me home in?"

"I don't risk death every time I get behind the wheel," he hissed. "I don't go courting danger."

I rubbed my temple with two fingers and closed my eyes for a few seconds. Did he really think so little of me, of my motivations? "You're so stuck on what you think I'm doing with my life, you don't actually understand it at all, do you?" I accused. "Apparently danger comes looking for me no matter which country I'm in or what I'm doing at the time. God, I left a window partially open on a warm island, just like every villager I met there. You act like I intentionally slit my wrist and invited every vampire in a five-mile radius in for dinner. If another vampire wanted me bad enough to track me across an entire island nation during monsoon season, a goddamn window wasn't going to stop him! Can you even conceive how ridiculous your point is?"

"Would you rather I let you be slaughtered in your sleep?" Edward glowered.

"Slaughtered?" I said stupidly, throwing a hand up. "I was asleep. He would have drained me and gone, and I wouldn't have known or cared! I have to say, I didn't have any major accidents or predators after me in the three years you were gone, but I certainly…" He looked horrified, though at which part of my assertion, I didn't bother to ask. My brain was busy catching up to what else Edward said. "Back up," I rumbled, shifting my eyes back to his. "When I wrecked my bike at the canyon, they said a passing motorist called it in…that was you? My flowing blood was right in front of you?"

Edward nodded almost proudly. "It was frightening, but yes. That day I learned that it was possible to resist killing you, that I had the strength of will for it. That's why I feel I can be safe for you now. If you'll have me."

Meanwhile, I followed my thoughts to a place he probably didn't expect. "You mean I was lying there in the gravel and mud, all alone and bleeding out, a thirty-minute drive from the nearest town, and you didn't drink from me, you didn't try to change me, you didn't run me to the hospital or call your father just over in Calgary, you didn't even use your medical degrees to help me? You just sat in a tree and called an ambulance, hoping it would get there in time for someone else to take care of me? Jesus, Edward!" Even Rosalie did more for Emmett, and she didn't know him from her next meal.

"It wasn't like that!" Edward denied.

"Yes, it was!" I refuted. "That's exactly what you did! That's what you do! I need you, you watch me suffer, and then you leave! I nearly died, Edward! You say I'm the most important thing in your life, but it's like my humanity is more precious to you than my existence!"

"I couldn't just snatch you up and change you without your permission, Bella." Exasperation seemed to weigh down his forehead, like this was all going wrong. "You hadn't laid eyes on me in years. The only conversations we'd engaged in took place in your sleep."

"And whose fault was that?" I demanded. "You had the perfect opportunity to make me a permanent part of your world, and you didn't take it!"

Edward ran his hand violently through his hair, the sign of anxiety and irritation I remembered so well. "It wasn't exactly an ideal time to have a long discussion about our relationship."

"Yeah, because you couldn't have made a tourniquet or held my hand or ridden in the ambulance with me or anything," I snarled. "Good to know that if I bled out and died waiting for the paramedics to get there, at least you would have avoided an awkward conversation."

"Stop it," Edward ordered. "Either you want me to look out for you or you don't, but you can't have it both ways."

"You fucking hypocrite!" I spat. "You've spent the last, what, five years tailing me? Watching me as often as you please, but without having to give me anything I want? Crawling into my bed and kissing my throat when I was dreaming?" He flinched, and something occurred to me: that's why he was able to be so close to me all night without using his teeth. "You've had it both ways for years, goddamn it, in the creepiest, most secretive way possible, knowing full well how badly I wanted you to be here when I woke up. Did you think I'd just intuitively know you were around and magically feel better because you watched me sleep? I don't need that juvenile shit, Edward. I need you to man up and be here for me."

"I was here for you! I took care of you the best way I could without interfering," he argued.

"Interfering…" I groaned. Was he fucking serious? "Every human risks death, every day, from the moment they get out of bed. So every time you save me, you are interfering with the natural course of my life. That's the reality of the situation, no matter how you try to dress it up." I covered my eyes with the palm of my hand, trying to regain control of myself. Calm, Bella. Deep breath. "It's not that I don't appreciate what you've done for me, but why do you keep protecting me if you're just going to let me die in the end anyway? Tell me, how are you going to protect me from cirrhosis or pneumonia? Or better yet, how are you going to protect me from feeling inadequate and used?"

"What do you mean?" Edward asked, confusion abruptly halting his indignation. "Ben doesn't…does he? I don't watch when you're having sex, but…it never seemed…you always…"

I lowered my hand and stared up at him, raising my eyebrow pointedly.

Horror-stricken, Edward gripped my waist, tight but careful. "I make you feel that way?"

I cradled my head in both hands, unable to believe that someone I'd always thought was so intelligent could be so mind-numbingly stupid. "That's how I've felt every time I thought about you for almost exactly eight years now. That's why I will not be with you if you're not willing to make me your equal. That's why it's called a deal-breaker, Edward."

He hesitated, and for a moment I thought he might have changed his mind. "Can't we talk about other options?"

Oh hell no.

I folded my arms and affixed Edward with my iciest stare. "Like what? You want to share me with Ben? Is that really why you brought him up? Or do you want me to follow you around the world while I get old, pretend I'm your goddamn mother in the daytime and fuck each other at night? Have you thought nothing through, or are you really that depraved?"

Edward's eyes flashed with fury momentarily, and I felt the low growl in his belly, but he controlled his voice. "Bella, please be reasonable."

"Reasonable, my ass," I hissed. "You're just making excuses. There is nothing reasonable about a vampire taking a human lover until the human becomes senile. There's not an alternative compromise between human and vampire; I'm either one or the other, not both. "

"You're not thinking this through, Bella. There are a hundred different things you could change your mind about over the years," he warned me sternly. "What if you decide you want all the things you're so willing to give up right now? What if you miss Hannah too much? What if you want a baby girl of your own, and you can't have one any longer because your undead body won't bear children?"

"A baby?" My mouth dropped open, unable to believe this conversation was going this way. "You think I…? How is that even an option?"

"Don't dismiss it." Jesus, he sounded like my dad. "You can't get that opportunity back once it's gone. Esme and Rosalie have never stopped grieving for exactly that reason."

I folded my arms the way I did when an undergrad tried to justify not handing in an essay by claiming their hangover was a stomach virus. "Edward, let me ask you something," I snapped. "In the six decades you've known her, has Alice ever wanted a baby?" His eyes darted away from me, and he shook his head no. "Yeah, that's what I thought." Why didn't he understand this about me? Hadn't he been paying attention to anything other than physical danger all these years?

"Esme was changed the day her infant died," I recalled. "So of course she's never stopped wanting another one. In case you haven't noticed, I am a completely different person. In fifteen years of fertility, I have never, not once, felt that I might ever want to give birth." My lips curled around the word with revulsion, remembering the live birth videos my mother showed me at the age of eleven when I got my first period, complete with episiotomies and c-sections, her attempt at promoting birth control. It worked. "And even if I ever change my mind, what the fuck are you planning to do about it? Have me inseminated like a racehorse? Are you going to be in the delivery room when blood and shit are pouring out of me? What if this hypothetical baby smells even more delicious to you than I do?" At this, Edward's gaze snapped back to mine, his mouth agog. "What happens when it falls and scrapes a knee? Am I going to have to explain why its teenage vampire daddy had to run away? Will you even be able to resist feeding from it long enough to run, let alone stick around and raise it?"

"Stop it," he protested, looking more offended than he had any right to, especially for someone who'd been expounding on the personal tortures of bloodlust within the last two hours. "Just stop."

I met his infuriated eyes with ire all my own. "No, you stop. I've had it up to here with you and your 'other options' that don't make a lick of sense. You're grasping at straws, and we both know it. You asked me what I want, and I told you what I can live with. I'm not going to stoop to cutting myself to force you to bite me. I'm certainly not going to beg Carlisle to do it behind your back so I can spend forever chasing you like some undignified, boy-crazy little girl. I'm worth more than that." I glared at him, a challenge in my eyes. "Or at least I should be."

"At least wait until you've finished your doctorate," Edward tried, desperate and pleading. "Can't you wait that long?"

That might have been perfect, actually. I'd been working so hard all these years, and I wanted to receive the recognition for my accomplishments. But I'd have that many times over as a vampire. What was the point in waiting? Why would it be better for me to be eleven years older than him instead of nine? Why was the answer suddenly wait just a little longer when it had been no, never twenty seconds ago?

I held him with a pythonic, penetrating stare, forcing the truth to appear in his expression, realizing his real motivation. "I'm sorry; do you expect me to give you the benefit of the doubt here?" I asked. "I would probably agree to that condition, if I thought you were being honest with me. But your track record works against you. You're just stalling. If I counter-offer with 'until the end of the semester' you'll go along with it for a while, then you'll tell me it would ruin the holidays. If I say 'until the end of the school year' you'll tell me I should visit with my parents for the summer. If I opt to drop out of the program altogether, you'll have a fucking tantrum about my wasted potential, as if you have some kind of proprietary right to it. You know perfectly well this degree will take me at least two more years to accomplish at the rate I'm going, and by then you'll have some new excuse to delay changing me. Tell me I'm wrong." I gave him a few moments to deny my hypothesis. Instead, he actually squirmed, and I knew I was right. "You could have come to me at any time in all these years—in point of fact, you should have," I jabbed his frozen chest with my finger for emphasis, hurting myself in the process, "but you never did." I pulled my hand away and shook it, as if that might ease the pain.

"I wanted to," Edward said softly, grasping my hand and tenderly holding my finger in his chilled palm. "I had planned to come to you when you got your bachelor's degree. But you'd already started seeing Ben, and I could tell how he felt about you, and then that night you let him kiss you, so I just…" he trailed off.

I remembered the glass on my counter and picked it back up. "It's always something with you, isn't it?" I threw back a long swallow, feeling the familiar burn in my throat, the warmth spreading through my belly. "You're unbelievable. I got drunk and let a man kiss me for the first time in five years, and you let that stop you. You fucking coward. You threw away an entire future over one kiss. Just like you discarded me over an instinct your brother couldn't suppress and regretted instantly. Always, always, you let the little shit get in our way instead of talking to me and making an effort to overcome the problem."

"It was cowardly of me," Edward admitted. "But if you hadn't told Ben 'yes,' I would have come to you that night."

"Oh, so now this whole thing is my fault?" I growled, gesturing angrily at my chest with my glass. Edward's eyes followed the tumbler as it swerved. "It's my fault you didn't fight for me? It's my fault you waited and wasted all these years for no goddamn reason?"

"I wanted to be sure I'd be welcome, but when you let him kiss you, I thought it meant you were finally over me," he explained quickly. Too quickly. "I didn't want to invade and ruin whatever peace you'd found. Human love fades, Bella. I didn't know you still loved me."

"So you're saying it was all a coincidence," I deduced, tilting my head to examine Edward's face. "A big misunderstanding."

"Yes, exactly," Edward replied, a weak smile of relief at his lips.

I took another drink. His smile died.

"Bullshit." Who did he think he was fucking with? "Even if you couldn't hear my thoughts, you watched me for so long; there is no way you didn't know how I felt about you. Are you really going to pretend that during all your years of listening to me sleep-talk, you never once picked up on the obvious? You knew I was still in love with you then, just like you knew it when you tore my heart out and stomped on it!"

"Don't act like you're blameless here!" he protested. "When I ended things with you, you didn't fight for me, or for us. I thought I'd have to argue with you for hours, but I didn't even have to work that hard. You just rolled over and gave up. That's what you always do!"

"Fuck you!" I shouted. "And fuck your arrogant, only-vampires-can-love-this-strongly attitude. You're the one who said you wanted to go. You're the one who preyed on my insecurities and low self-esteem. Why should I have fought for you after you said I wasn't good enough? That you didn't want me! And how was I supposed to fight when you fucking disappeared inside of ten minutes? I wandered that forest for hours looking for you, which you should know if you were actually watching me, and you have the nerve to accuse me of rolling over and giving up?" I yelled. "You left me all alone! For years! You never called to check on me, you wouldn't let Alice search for me, nothing! You just threw money at me and assumed I'd have a good cry and go back to life as usual while you took an extended vacation. You pompous, condescending asshole! You do nothing but complain about the hell someone else thrust on you, but you haven't the slightest clue what kind of hell I went through when you vanished!"

Edward lowered his head in silence. I couldn't be bothered to discern what was there on his face besides the unceasing shame I heaped on him. "I had to fight just to wake up without screaming every morning! I had to force myself to eat something every day! I had to get drunk or mentally exhausted just to make myself fall asleep at night! I spent years fighting tooth and nail to get respect from my own mother! I had to struggle to carve out an existence that gave my life any sort of meaning! I couldn't even talk to anyone about what really happened or how worthless you made me feel, whether I wanted to or not, because I had to protect your goddamn secret! Do you have any idea what that was like?"

I continued screeching, feeling my throat twinge, while Edward clamped his eyes shut. "You have no right to say I never fought or to judge anything I've done with my life! You stand there and talk about not wanting to disrupt my peace, when you don't even know what 'peace' means to me or how I find it! You want me to be happy, but you watched me struggle with depression and didn't help me. You claim you want to be with me, but only on your terms. You want me to live the life I've made, but you belittle it. You want to protect me, but you want me to die! And you're giving me with no guarantees that you won't put me through the pain of falling in love with you and losing you all over again! What sense does any of that make? What kind of relationship do you expect to have with me without working together? Did you even think about what you were going to do when you walked through my door, or did you just show up because of Alice? Do you really want to be here? Do you even love me?" I roared.

"I don't know!" Edward thundered back. "I don't know anything anymore! Sometimes I don't even know who the hell you are!"

My body tensed at the volume, and Edward covered his mouth, his face filled with remorse. "I am so sorry," he whispered, his palms flying up and cooling my reddened cheeks. "I didn't mean it like that."

"Like what?" I croaked, trying to pull away without much success. "How else could you mean it?"

"Bella, my love," he crooned, pressing his forehead to mine and trying to kiss me. I jerked my head to the left, not caring about his crestfallen reaction. "I've done nothing but watch you for years, always staying out of the way unless there was trouble, just trying to make sure you had what you needed and weren't in danger." His shoulders slumped, and he pulled me even closer to him for just a moment, kissing my nose instead of my mouth. "I didn't…I never expected this to happen. One minute I was playing the piano while you were at work, trying to listen to the thoughts around you since it wasn't that far. The next minute I heard Carlisle's mind for the first time in years, and everyone in the family was stunned by your scent and pouring over your scholarship application and picturing your seventeen-year-old face, trying to decide what they should do. Next thing I knew, the entire clan was hunting for me and demanding answers, Esme was crying, and Rosalie called me a…a fucking pussy. Then Alice broke her vow for Esme and had a vision of you getting stone drunk, so she went after you. When she brought you home you were ranting and raving and you didn't recognize your lullaby in the lobby, and Alice kept thinking at me to act like a grown man instead of a scared little boy, and she said I'd waited too long for this already, and it was all just…crazy," he finished lamely.

"Crazy," I echoed, my mind filling up with a slow, somber dawning. Edward nodded, looking relieved for a moment until he realized my expression was murderous.

"You were never going to come see me," I murmured darkly. "You were going to kick back and spend the rest of my life watching me get old and die. The only reason you're here now is because of a bizarre coincidence you had no control over. And I'm not waiting around for another one." I looked down at the glass in my hand. Out of nowhere, something strange occurred that had never happened to me before: I heard Ben's voice.

Sometimes you think you know what you want in life, but when you finally reach it and take a good look at it, it's not at all what you thought it would be.

What the hell was I doing? This boy didn't love me; he loved the idea of me, the memory. And I couldn't honestly say the same wasn't true of myself. For all my talk of being more than a mere impetuous youth, I certainly had been acting like one. But I had my limits. I might be willing to give up all that I'd built for love, but I wasn't about to give it up for someone who didn't respect me.

I pulled out of Edward's grasp and took four steps back. "Leave. Now."

"Bella, no, I—"

I launched my empty glass at his face, watching as he let it shatter in his eyes. He didn't blink, though his face rippled with surprise. "Get out, and take your money with you!" I screamed. "I'm not your whore! I am nobody's whore!"

Stunned, he retreated to my bed, robotically pulling his clothing out from behind the mattress and taking his time getting dressed as he spoke. "I wasn't trying to treat you like a…wh-whore," he stammered, slipping his hand over the front of his shirt as if he'd forgotten he popped all the buttons off. "I didn't mean to make you feel that way, and I apologize. I meant that money as a gift, so that you wouldn't have to struggle and suffer."

"Then I'm glad I didn't use it," I said, feeling surprisingly calm now, my body releasing its tension after the exertion of something as simple as throwing glass. "Maybe life didn't turn out exactly the way I would have wanted, but it's through my struggles and suffering that I've gained anything worth having."

Edward nodded in understanding. "All the same, I would still like you to keep the money. You don't have to use it," he said hurriedly at my homicidal glare. "You can give it to Brown and Marty, or to a charity, or give it as a scholarship to someone else, anything you like. You can even burn it, if you want. But I won't take it. It's yours."

I grunted noncommittally in answer. Living by my own sweat for eight years had made me pragmatic enough not to want to burn money. I would give it to someone who needed it. Alice might help me launder it first, if I ever decided to give her a call, or perhaps Shalice would know a way to legitimize it. I could buy the Chatterbox for several times its worth so Brown and Marty would have a way to pay for Brown's cancer treatments, assuming he needed them, and eventually, his funeral.

"I'm sorry I hurt you, Bella," Edward murmured, sitting on the bed to don his shoes. "I didn't mean to, and I will never regret anything as much as I do that. I'm sorry I couldn't be human for you. Please know that it's all I've wanted for nearly a century—to be human, not just for me, but for someone else, someone I could love, someone who could love me. For you. Only you."

In that instant, I knew he would never stop loving me from afar, never waver in his devotion, never stop following me in the shadows until the day I died.

And I couldn't live like that.

"I'm getting married, Edward."

His eyes grew wide, the whole of his flawless body freezing in the middle of the room, a perfect Rodin statue of disbelief.

"Don't act so surprised," I told him; I tried to sound curt and sarcastic but it just came out tired. "I'm sure you've heard Ben thinking about it."

"Yes, but…" He searched me, probably trying in vain to hear my thoughts. "You haven't told him yes…"

"What's the problem?" I asked coldly. "Isn't that what you wanted? Didn't you stand right here and say 'What about Ben?'"

He looked at me, then at the rumpled bed, then back at my face. "But I thought…" He had never looked so very young until that moment. And I never felt so ancient.

"This weekend was wonderful," I said softly, honestly. "The best of my life. And I do love you. I'll always love you. In a way." My voice hardened again as I turned his poisonous words back on him. "But as it turns out, everyone was right all along: just because you love someone doesn't mean you're right for each other. I can either spend the rest of my life pining for you and the future and family I wanted, or I can let myself be happy."

He winced, as if I'd physically hurt him. "Do you think, maybe…I can call you?"

Call me? "I'm tired and worn out, and I'm getting too old to put up with a lovesick teenage infatuation. You're a hundred and twelve years old—it's time for you to grow up." Time for me, too.

Edward gasped slightly, agony chiseled across his face. When he came near me to kiss my cheek, I held my breath and remained stationary and unresponsive. He treaded lightly to the door, his eyes never leaving me, mine always on him.

"Goodbye, Bella."

He waited a few moments, but I didn't say anything. Then my front door closed, and he was gone.

"HÍ,ÁC̸E TES."

I sighed, locked the door, and began cleaning up the tiny fragments of glass on my kitchen floor and wiping everything down, my tears falling to the floor and mingling with the cleaning fluid and splashes of Coke.

I turned off all my lights but for the neon lamp, turned up the volume on my little speakers and fiddled with the buttons, and pulled my old suede coat from the closet. I still used it on occasion, if I was planning to work on my bike in cold weather or participate in fieldwork; as such it was ratty, ripped in places, stained with oil here and there, and falling apart. In short, completely unrecognizable as the beautiful piece of clothing I'd admired all those years ago. I let my robe slip to the floor, pulled the jacket on over my nude body, and stalked to the kitchen, filling a new glass tumbler with ice and pulling out my sealed bottle of Gentleman Jack from a cabinet. Smooth, expensive stuff; I eyeballed in less than an ounce of amber-gold. I'd been saving it for a special occasion. Giving up my first love seemed pretty special to me.

Taking one small sip, I sat on my disheveled bed, looking at the way the neon light cast everything in my apartment in a different light, warping my world. With a sigh, I reached out and slid open my underwear drawer, pulling out the tiny black box Ben had given me at Sturgis. Of course, he proposed a month ago, before Hannah started having parent issues. Her timing was highly suspect, now that I really thought about it, and I wondered how things were playing out between them at the moment.

Marriage had never been on my list of lifetime goals. I had nothing against it—in fact I quite enjoyed comparing marriage customs from around the world—I just didn't think it was necessary for me. Knowing this about me, Ben had encouraged me to take all the time I needed before answering, and promised that if I didn't want to change anything, I didn't have to. I still hadn't decided, actually—I lied to Edward about choosing to accept Ben's proposal as easily as Edward once lied about losing interest in me.

Lifting the lid, I studied the engraved images on the white gold:

Raven Steals the Sun.

Ben told me the story in his own way, though of course I'd heard it before, spoken in various Salish dialects, as well as other versions in other tongues. In the beginning of time, the world was in darkness, and everyone bumbled about in the endless night, only able to use torches to see the way. Seagull held the light of the world captive in a box, refusing to share the light with anyone. Raven, tired of living in darkness, attempted all manner of persuasions and pleading to make Seagull open the box, to no avail. At last, Raven tricked Seagull into stepping in sea urchin thorns, then approached him with a knife, offering to help remove the painful spears. Having only a torch to see by, Raven brutalized Seagull's feet with his knife, pushing the thorns in further and claiming he needed the daylight to see what he was doing. Seagull opened the box little by little, until Raven knocked the box wide open, snatched up the daylight, and flew into the sky, setting the light free.

The painstakingly handcrafted piece of jewelry depicted two birds facing each other and had a brilliant round diamond in the center, representing the daylight. The sun.

"This hurt inside of me ain't never gonna end…"

"It does feel that way," I agreed with the singer.

"But I'll be alright, as long as there's light from a neon moon."

I got up and changed the song, turned off the blue-and-orange lamp, and shrugged out of the coat, letting it drop to the floor. I had no idea what to do about Ben yet, and now wasn't the time to figure that out. The best thing to do now, I decided, was to have another shower and a hot meal before I did anything else. Edward probably lived here under an alias, or had some other way to get into my building at will. I wasn't sure if Alice had let him in or he had a key to my apartment, but I wasn't going to give him tacit permission to continue his midnight tiptoes. Residence contract or not, tomorrow I was getting the hell out of here, cost be damned.

As I grabbed a clean change of clothes and made my way to the tiny bathroom in the grey pre-dawn light, I sang along with the new tune—another old favorite from the Chatterbox jukebox.

"No lies, no no no. This is my last goodbye."

Footnotes:

HÍ,ÁC̸E TES: Goodbye to him.

Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. All recognizable characters and song lyrics are the property of their respective copyright owners. "My Last Goodbye" is a song by Kenny Wayne Shepherd, "Against the Wind" is by Bob Seger, and "Neon Moon" is by Brooks and Dunn. Portions of Stephenie Meyer's original work are reprinted, but no copyright violation is intended. References to real places and groups are used fictitiously, and certain elements of history are ignored. This story is in no way meant to reflect actual criminal events or territorial claims of gangs or motorcycle clubs in Vancouver or any other location.