a/n: Special thanks to gallantcorkscrews for opinions, encouragement, and wickedness.

Stephenie Meyer owns everything, and I am enchanted by her work.

Chapter Twenty-Five: Epiphany

When Jake left after our talk, Edward was beside me in a heartbeat with his arms around me. His eyes were dangerously dark, and I reached up to touch the purple bruise-like circles just beneath them that marred his otherwise perfect face. He never flinched away from my touch, though my hands were surely cold.

But of course, they wouldn't be cold to him.

He stared into my eyes, standing there in that overgrown chunk of field or meadow with trees rustling around us and his family just out of reach and the ghost of my best friend standing there as real as anything. We stared like no one else existed. I waited for him to kiss me or move me toward the house, but he didn't; he just stared, unspeaking, while I was mute and transfixed and lost in his dark eyes.

His scent was snapping at me in fits and snatches as the breeze whipped around from every direction randomly. I was overcome with the need to lick him, and I almost said as much to him, but then Alice sang his name, "Edward!"

His face briefly held a flicker of surprise and then he further incapacitated me with a grin that blossomed joyously over half his mouth.

"You want to lick me?" he whispered.

"What?"

"Do it, Bella. Lick me." He leaned his face closer to mine, his hands suddenly settling on my hips.

"How- how did you know that?"

That smile taunted and teased me. "Just do it, and I'll tell you."

I was embarrassed beyond belief, and I felt the heat erupt across my face. Self consciously, I looked over my shoulder to see if there was any possible way I might be able to angle my head to such a degree that my tongue would be entirely shielded from the view of Dr. and Mrs. Cullen.

They were gone.

Alice was gone.

The wolves were long gone.

Edward and I were standing in the cold wind, knee deep in damp grass, surrounded by encroaching gloom, all alone.

"Lick. Me." he drew the syllables out so that every letter was valiantly represented on his tongue, the better to tantalize mine and bend it to his will.

"It's twilight," I said, looking around at the pink in the edges of the sky.

He nuzzled against my mouth. "Lick."

His eyes were sparkling. I opened my mouth and leaned against his chest and craned my neck and lifted myself on my toes and stuck out my tongue and placed it flat against his jaw and dragged it slowly up and back at a diagonal to his ear.

Delicious.

I heard his breath stutter somewhere in his chest, and for a brief moment, a sound reminiscent of a purr vibrated against my fingertips that were clawing at his chest.

When I had licked as far as I could in one stroke, I drew my tongue back into my mouth and relaxed my neck so that my chin was lowered and I relieved my shivering calves of holding my weight. In this motion, I also exhaled slowly, and as I did so, I felt and heard Edward inhale deeply and I looked up at his face to see a look of extreme and intense satisfaction dancing there with a glittering coat of saliva.

"Mmmmm," was all he said before turning me around and leading back toward the house.

My brow knit. There was supposed to be something else. "Edward, you said you'd tell me."

"I will, love. Inside. You're cold. Alice is making you hot chocolate."

"She is?"

He only smiled at me, still looking blissed out about my tongue, and looking at that expression on his wonderful face made me smile as well. I was worried about looking ridiculous as we entered the house. What would Esme think when we walked in looking like a pair of cats who ate a flock of canaries?

Oh hell. Why should I care? I'm in love with a vampire. How weird can anything else really be?

When I got the answer to that innocent musing, I wished I had never pondered the question.

Edward was a fucking mind reader. No, really. He and Alice told me about it. Whatever thoughts are going through someone's head are his to plunder at will.

But there was a silver lining on this frightening storm cloud. Alice assured me with her best best friend face that could never ever lie that I'm the one freakish Bermuda Triangle to Edward's super brain-dar.

"Nothing?" I clarified as I sipped at the thick bittersweet chocolate topped with fluffy giant marshmallows.

"Nothing," Edward confirmed from behind me where he acted as my chair on the floor of the room that had become my little nest. The way his chest vibrated when his vocal chords made a noise was like an electric thrill against my back.

"Then how did you know I wanted to lick you? It had just passed through my head." I took another self-satisfied sip as I waited for him to dig his way out of this one.

Alice answered. She was sitting across from us on the floor with her lean little legs akimbo. "I told him."

"Huh?" I stared at her. Edward was burrowing his nose in my hair, and it was incredibly distracting.

"You didn't."

"Yes I did," she argued.

"No. I heard you say his name."

"Right. Then I told him."

"No, you didn't."

"Yes I did."

"No you di- Edward!" his tongue had just danced a revival of the performance mine had acted out earlier. In my ear.

"Couldn't help it. Stop arguing," he murmured.

Alice sighed and took advantage of my distraction. "I knew as soon as you made the decision to lick him, and I thought it. And that's how I told him."

"As soon as I made the decision? Did I make a decision?"

"You certainly did."

I thought about it. "I guess I did. didn't I?" I looked at Edward out of the corner of my eye, and he smirked at me and kept ducking his head in toward my neck to lick at me.

"Edward you need to go hunting," Alice stated firmly. His arms tightened around me. My cup of warmth was empty and his proximity was leaching all my body heat away, and I shivered. His cool breath tickled my neck and I sunk back against him as hard as I could, in a vain and futile and ridiculously backward attempt to scooch out of the reach of his mouth and his breath.

"Edward." Alice was standing over us and glaring at him, which made him loosen his grip for some reason.

I may have whimpered slightly when we became disentangled, and I said "Can't I go with you?"

Everything stopped.

The movements from both of them stopped.

The sounds from the household stopped.

The pounding of my heartbeat stopped.

Everything stopped as Edward stood bolt upright and rigid with his eyes boring into me. I was caught in his glare, and I watched as his eyes noticeably darkened, from black to blacker than midnight, in a matter of seconds. They became fierce and dangerous and hungry and angry and frightened.

"NO!" he bellowed at me.

I shrank back from him. For the first time in my life, I was face to face with Edward the vampire, and it was a profoundly terrifying thing to behold.

In the second in which his voice filled the air and reverberated painfully in my ears, he was across the room and through the door. I was left stunned and woozy from the overwrought pounding of my heart. I might have swayed because Alice grabbed my elbow and then raced to the window and threw it open.

"It's freezing!" I scolded.

She leaned with her head sticking as far out the window as was physically possible while she gulped at the air, filling her lungs noisily.

"Alice?" I was standing, holding my elbows, my arms crushed into my torso as I shivered. She continued to gasp at the damp night air, and when she was sated, she turned her face toward me while remaining at the window.

"Sorry, Bella." Her beautiful voice was low and almost shaky. "I got too close. I wasn't thinking."

I willed my heart to slow down. "What the hell was that?"

"You just smell so-"

"No. I get THAT. I meant Edward. What did I do wrong?" I looked into my friend's strange red-black eyes and watched her pant at the window like an overheated tigress without a pond to soak in.

"He's just-" she hesitated, seemingly at a loss for words. "He does tend to overreact, Bella. And he's been skirting dangerously close with you. And the chances of him slipping up if you were around when he let himself fall into predatory mode-" she was speaking in short bursts, punctuated by her panting. I wondered how long it would take for her to calm down. I pulled the duvet off the bed and wrapped it around me, resuming my seat on the floor, but it wasn't as nice without Edward. But, God! The blanket smelled like him, and I let myself just get lost in that for a moment and forget the way he had yelled and the way he had glared and the way Alice had jumped and the way she was freaking out.

That was when it finally dawned on me that things would never be the same again.

Ever.

There was no way to reverse my life and take away the vampires and the mutant wolf boys and the dead friends and the worry in Charlie's eyes. There was no way to take it all back and start fresh. My life would never be THAT life again. I'd never be the girl with the sad extra-curricular calendar and the friends who were prettier than her and the dreams of getting a scholarship out of Forks. Without even being aware of it, I had become someone else. Someone new. Someone who believed in weird scary supernatural things but wasn't scared of them; someone whose heartbeat was a liability; someone whose happiness depended on death.

I was no longer Bella Swan. I was no longer that girl. I was no longer young and happy and carefree. I laughed wryly to myself. A few months ago I would never have considered myself carefree. I'd had worries enough: debate club, history exam, rising cost of fuel for my gas-guzzling truck, what gifts to get my friends for birthdays and Christmas.

I was no longer that Bella Swan at all.

So who had I become? I looked at Alice. She was no longer Alice Brandon. She was no longer that girl. She was not baking cookies or searching for Jazz down the empty aisles of the sad little small town supermarket; she was no longer counting up her GPA so she could stay in the top 10 of the class. What was she now? Who was she now? Was she a person or a beast or a monster or a ghost?

I looked at her. She was sitting on the floor near the open window. She appeared to be holding her breath. She didn't move at all. Her eyes were fixed on me, but they no longer looked frantic and frightening. She was calm. She was my friend. She was Alice and I was Bella. and I knew that some things couldn't change- no matter what,

And I came to understand that I was still Bella, even if Bella Swan was long gone. I had a new identity and a new nature and a new understanding, and the only way to keep my head above water in this brave new world was to be brave and be smart and understand it and be Bella.

I was Bella.

I needed to be Bella. I needed to stop standing idly in the paths of the powerful waves that were pounding against me and reshaping me against my will.

I needed to be Bella. I needed to stop letting the world mold me. I needed to mold my world into the right place for me to be.

I needed to shuffle off the heavy cloak of mortality that was holding me down. I needed to BE Bella and TAKE happiness when it dangled itself so dangerously and deliciously in front of me. I needed to HAVE Edward. Forever.

That was the new Bella. That was the good, right, True Bella. Bella was a woman who grabbed at the happiness that life offered and held onto it, no matter if it seemed so cold it would burn.

I needed to shuffle off Bella Swan and just be Bella and make Edward mine and keep him forever.

Forever. The real, long, True forever.

It had been a strange and horrible path that carried me to the Truth, but once I faced it, I was not afraid. Nor was I willing to turn my back on it. I was no longer THAT Bella Swan, so I really had no choice but to BE Bella, and to be perfectly honest, that sounded fucking awesome.

Alice was staring at me, her eyes full of wonder and concern. "He's determined not to do it, Bella."

"I'm determined too." I was prepared to put on my most obstinate face when the phone in my pocket jingled softly. My brow furrowed and I stared at the number. "Shit." I started to put the phone back in my pocket.

"You're just not going to answer it?"

"Alice, stop knowing everything I'm going to do. It's creepy." And then just to be contrary to Alice because she shouldn't be allowed to know what I had decided to do about Rose's call, I answered it. "Rose?"

"Bella! I know you told me not to call, but I'm so worried-"

I cut her off. "Rose, calm down. I'm fine. I told you I was fine." I tried to make my voice level and tranquil to emphasize my fineness. Then I panicked, "Did you tell anyone I called?"

"No, you told me not to." I sighed in relief and thanked her. The she asked, "Where are you, anyway? The police have been here looking for you. Your dad's going crazy."

I felt the hot tears well up in my eyes, and I sucked in a shakey breath. "I know."

"Bella. You need to come home."

"I am home, Rose."

"Oh! Well shit. I'm coming over." I heard a shuffling noise on her end of the line that might have been her arms sliding through the sleeves of her jacket.

"No!" Crap, crap, crap. If Rose went to my house thinking I was there, Charlie would interrogate her til the cows came home. "I'm not at Charlie's house." What could I tell her that would keep her from wandering around Forks after dark looking all warm-blooded and delicious? "I'm in Florida. With my mom. She freaked out, and I just needed to be with her."

"Then why did Charlie have an APB out on you?" Her voice was very reasonably bewildered.

"Well, Charlie and Renee just got their wires crossed, I guess. Charlie's all good now." I was starting to see a million ways in which this lie was going to come back to bite me. I looked up at Alice, and her lips were pursed while her brows were lost half-way up her forehead. She couldn't believe the web I was spinning either. She rolled her eyes at me.

"Oh." Rose sounded dubious. "Well, Charlie should have called to tell me you were alright." Now her voice was resigned. I had gotten away with it, at least until Charlie contacted her again to see if I had been in touch at all. Alice shook her head at me.

"Yeah. He's distracted I guess," I replied. Now for the more important question; "How are YOU, Rose? Are you keeping safe?"

"Oh Bella," she sighed. "I'm fine. I'm frickin' lonely without you. You know, I'm pissed that you didn't tell me you were leaving town. Don't expect me to pay to ship your Chrstmas present all the way to Florida."

"I know, Rose. I should have told you. But everything's fucked up. And don't worry about presents. We'll exchange gifts as soon as I'm back, and we'll have egg nog and gingersnaps and everything." I was snivelling now. The tears were flowing freely down my face. The last lie was too much for me to take because I knew it would never happen. I wasn't that Bella any more, and Rose wasn't a part of the new world I lived in.

She heard the tears in my voice. "Jelly Belly! What's wrong?"

I sniffed a wet, snotty breath. My head was down with my chin against my chest and my free arm shielding my sad, shameful face from Alice. "I just want you to be okay, Rose. I feel like such a coward for leaving you on your own in the middle of all of that."

"Awww, sweety," I could hear that my weepiness had been contageous. "I'm fine. I'm gonna be fine. I have a date with Emmett tomorrow and everything."

That bit of news perked me right up. Good. Better Emmett than one of the freaks that belonged in MY world. I'd rather Rose have a date with real, human, mortal, every-day Emmett than with supernatural, mutant wolf-boy Quil. With Emmett, Rose would be safe. And happy. And normal. "Good. Call me and tell me all about it, okay?"

"Sure. You go be with your mom. Take it easy. Don't worry about Forks. It will still be here when you get back."

"I love you, Rose."

I heard a small, breathy laugh crackle through the earpiece. "You too, Jelly Belly. TTYL."

"Bye."

I wiped my soggy face on my sleeve and looked up to see Alice staring at me.

"You're the worst liar ever, Bella."

I sighed. "I know."

"Well, how's Rose?"

"Do you miss her, Alice?"

"Yeah. A lot." Her face shone with sincerity.

I nodded. "Yeah. Well, she's excited that she finally has a date with Emmett."

Alice smiled, and her face brightened up with genuine good will toward Rose, "That's awesome. I always knew they'd-"

"Alice?" I leaned toward her but stopped myself before I got too close. Her eyes had glazed over and seemed to be focussed on a spot somewhere in the next county. "Alice? You okay?"

After several moments in that same posture, she shook her head lightly, as though a bug had buzzed past her ear. "Yeah," she breathed. "Yeah. Fine." She stood up quickly. "I need to go. Edward will be back soon to hang with you."

And with that, I was alone in the room, still shaking lightly with emotion, confused from Alice's strange actions, and feeling like a bit of a fool for lying to Rose in such an obvious, transparent way. Something was going to go wrong very soon.