Edward's POV

I blasted the stereo, the violent music washing over me in a heavy wave. My fingers locked on the wheel as I held my breath; I didn't shout what dirty words were sitting on the edge of my tongue, probably because Bella's lingering perfume told my conscience that I was still in the presence of a lady.

Part of me, though, most likely held the rage back for a different reason: helplessness – against the world, against the circumstances, against my wife. And I blamed my courtesy for my restraint, I figured, because I hated admitting to such a weakness. There was little I could do, though, for I made a promise to Bella no less than ten minutes ago.

The ride to Charlie's was a tense one and, if given the choice, I would've turned around and driven home without a second thought. Nonetheless, tending to her ailing father was something that Bella wanted to do, and she had made that opinion perfectly clear the previous night; I had never fought with her so viciously before – whenever I was with her, my instinct was to keep her safe, so getting visceral with her was definitely not something I was used to. But, somehow, like she always did, Bella won, and I had to face the fact that letting her do this would benefit us …. No instant gratification was guaranteed, but it would benefit us nonetheless.

Our tension was still crisp as I drove her in the Volvo to Charlie's. Her eyes hadn't turned to look at me, not once, while she sat there staring forward like a robot. I knew this expression of hers well, though, because I had seen it many times spread across her face, whether she knew I had been watching her or not. It was her silent martyr face.

"This isn't your decision to make," she'd murmured to me silently, but her voice broke off.

I exhaled deeply then, glimpsing over at her. I could not begin to express how badly I wanted her to look at me. "Bella, I don't know if this is some kind of repentance for you, but I don't think you should be doing this. What happened to your father is …"

She cut me off almost immediately, before I had even finished. "I'm not repenting. I'm trying to care for my father who happens to be dying right now, Edward."

I closed my eyes and then begrudgingly opened them again – a prolonged, aggravated blink.

She sensed my frustration before I had even made the face. "I only have so much time left. Whether Charlie dies in forty years or he dies tomorrow, I refuse to waste my time trapped up in that little world of ours when I could be with him. I have forever with you, but I don't have forever with him."

It hurt me when she used the word "trapped" – it made me think I was keeping her with me against her will. Therefore, I could not reply to that, and as I brusquely parked in Charlie's driveway, I could tell she was eager to get out of the car. Automatically, I reached out for her hand, stroking the bumps of her knuckles. "Alice will miss you, I'm sure."

"She'll live. Will you?"

"I have enough to keep me preoccupied," I had replied blankly. "I have to hunt anyway. But I'll try to stay out of trouble for your sake."

"You're a big boy," She'd smiled, but it wasn't whole. It hadn't been wide enough for my liking since the incident. "You can take care of yourself."

"If not, I'll have Emmett catch my daily meals for me," I'd joked, the thought itself almost making me laugh, but, not having the voice to do so, it came out as a pathetic mumble. When my voice picked up again, it wasn't nearly as strong as I wanted it to be. "I'll find something to do."

"Just promise me," she breathed in deeply, and when she let it out, a newfound seriousness seemed to empty out of her mouth with the carbon dioxide. "Don't go looking for her on your own."

My heart fell. "I promise."

We both got out of the car then; she'd sped around to the other side, but stopped dead at the edge of the walkway. I, however, stayed against my door, leaning back and lifting one foot off the pavement. She watched the house for a long while, deep in concentration. Instantly, I wondered what she was thinking about, and I retreated to my mental bank to search for her inner voice. I caught only shreds of the overall picture, so little that I could not piece the half-words together to form a logical thought.

To pull the saddened look from her face, I'd asked, "When do you want me to pick you up?"

I knew right well that she could run home whenever she felt like, but setting a deadline brought me some sort of relief – that she would be back, safe in my arms, on an exact, set date. I could only spend so long without both of the most important girls in my life, and one of them would be gone for who knew how long, so the thought that Bella would, without a doubt in the world, come back to me gave me a strong notion of security.

She seemed distracted as she replied to me, telling me to come back for her in a week. I immediately did the math in my head: that would be Saturday, meaning I would only have to spend one hundred and forty-four hours without her – and compared to the 936,000 hours I'd spent sleepless in my lifetime, these hours ahead already looked more painful than anything I'd ever had to endure in that time.

The prospect of being without her for that long, when we needed each other the most, made me selfish and I went on again about how it was terrible idea for her to be doing this. She took the defensive, denying and objecting every point I made. Things were still overwrought when she groaned, frustrated, and sputtered in a quiet voice, "I love you. See you in a week."

Her lips pressed up against my lips for only 1.6 seconds, and this alone was enough to signal me that my 144 hours began here, officially. Our separation had already started and she wasn't even out of my sight yet.

Brokenly, I whispered to her with the wind, "Be safe," leaning forward and pushing my lips against hers so urgently I was almost afraid of falling into her mouth. And, with that, I was off, halfway down the street and around the corner before I could even process her reaction.

Desperately, I'd watched her through her father's thoughts as I raced down the street, in the opposite direction of home. I felt a little guilty for trying to change Bella's mind when I heard her father's excitement as he saw her walk in. Bella's expression through his eyes almost immediately changed when she entered. At first, she was depressed by the sight of him, but then her mouth lifted into an exhausted smile as she went to clean up her father's mess off the table.

"I'm not here to visit, Dad. I'm here to take care of you. I feel like you're my responsibility, and I can't stand picturing you sitting here all by yourself," I heard her say. Her father tried to convince her that he was perfectly capable of talking care of himself, but she didn't buy a single word of it. She left him to go to the kitchen then, and Charlie helplessly stood to follow her. She didn't realize he'd gone after her, though, as she disapprovingly critiqued him on the dirty kitchen.

As he turned the corner, Bella's bottomless eyes widened as she abruptly became short of breath. She whispered the words, heartbroken, and even through Charlie's ears, I could hear the pain in her voice. "I'm never gone. I'm right down the road."

Charlie must not have noticed how pained she was, and he obviously didn't fully understand the meaning underlying the words; but I completely understood. Again, that word she'd used earlier resounded through me: trapped.

Their conversation went on about Charlie's condition. My face fell a second time when she sat down at the table with him, saying strongly, "If anyone is going to be pointing fingers, they should be at me." I didn't like that she blamed herself, and, for a moment, I wasn't quite sure why she would find herself culpable; her next statement, however, told me that she was thinking on a grander scale than I was – she felt culpable because of keeping the lie. "Dad, there's something about this whole ordeal I have to tell you. I am sure none of this would've happened if I hadn't gotten so deep into this mess that I'm in …"

Charlie didn't let her finish, but I wouldn't have kept listening anyway.

She was about to tell him what we were, what she was – what I had turned her into. And, it would take every ounce of self-control in me to keep myself from darting out of the Volvo on Main Street, dashing back to the house, bursting through the door, and cupping my hand over her mouth all in a hundredth of a second.

I remembered what Carlisle had said at the hospital. It stung in my head like poison, a lasting reminder. You either have to tell him everything or shut him out of your life. I loved Carlisle as a father and I trusted him with my dead life, but after I'd heard him say that, I wanted to shoot up out of my seat in protest. "Thanks a lot, Carlisle. Thanks for putting that pleasant thought in her head." Bella had always been selfless, and, knowing that before I had even formally met her, I knew what she would choose. She would work for her father's wellbeing over her own; and, thanks to Carlisle's spectacular choice of words, there was no doubt in knowing what she would choose.

When I decided to listen through Charlie's thoughts again, I heard his gruff voice say, "I know I'm just causing you trouble. You should go home, Bella." Finally, some sense! If only he had told her that earlier, before she became so dead set on going in the first place.

Her response was sharp, and I almost yelled aloud in frustration when I heard it. "I am home."

The fury that overtook me in that instant was foreshadowed almost instantaneously by regret – a regret that had overwhelmed me since the second I first saw those wide, bewildered eyes of hers. The regret that I had stolen her life, that I had taken away her purity, her soul. I considered pulling over and escaping into the woods then, but I was already too far down Rt. 110 to turn back now.

That was when I reached out for the radio, turning on a rebelliously loud band with stinging guitar and banging drums. I could hear my speakers groan and scratch in protest when I pushed the volume up only a bar away from the maximum, and – since my car was still relatively new – I knew that that was not a good sign. But I was too infuriated to care.

It was moments like this where I hated Bella, mainly because she made me face the painful truth. So, I decided to ignore her, to pretend that what she made me face was not truth at all, but lies.

One thing she had said, however, that I could not ignore was the promise that I had made with her, the one that I had already mentioned, and already vowed to keep, a promise that I wish I could take back now. I knew she was right; I knew that I could not go after Renesmee on my own. And the single trait that I prided myself in was painstakingly striving to refuse to break promises out of sheer, dim-witted impulse, especially promises I made with Bella.

So, I decided to keep this promise with a faithful commitment to such promises I shared with my wife. And, technically, I wasn't breaking that promise by driving down this road, by inviting the one person that I unfortunately had to dig through Bella's cellphone to get in contact with, by giving in to animalistic revenge. And, moreover, if I was careful, Bella would never know – and, by avoiding my family's knowledge, particularly Alice's, they would never find out about it, either. I would not be breaking anything.

When I pulled up to the treaty line, I caught sight of Jacob before I heard him. His thoughts were wary, and I could not blame him. Edward would never intentionally call me, not unless there was something in it for him, he contemplated. I could tell that he was already halfway through this motivational speech to himself, that he'd already done a lot of thinking on the subject. I know we're friends now and everything, but why the hell would he want to meet up? And at the treaty line? Not at his house? Not somewhere general? Obviously, he's got something up his sleeve.

The moment he noticed me driving up, his mental monologue shifted, altering to a biting and burning criticism. His unspoken words shoved the rage out of my mouth, but I caught myself just in time and only let the anger come out in a silent breath.

To block him out, I turned the music up even louder. The lyrics to screamed out of the speaks, "You're so disabled. Death is all you cradle. Sleeping on the nails, there's nowhere left to fall."

I did not bother to yank the keys out of the ignition as I thrust open my door irately, trying to control my temper and making sure not to pull the door straight out of the latch. Jacob – shirtless, of course – leaned coolly against his Rabbit, his muscular arms folded across his bare chest. His dark eyes glared at me cautiously; his instinct was telling him to leave. I didn't even have to comb through his thoughts to know this. I could tell just by looking at his face.

"Gonna bust those expensive speakers of yours, Cullen," He smirked.

I bit my lip, so fiercely my razor-sharp teeth almost cracked my stone hard, for lack of better term, flesh. "Don't test me, Black," I barked heatedly. I thought he was supposed to be the volatile dog. I was ashamed at what the situation had molded me into: even more of a monster than I already had been.

He hardly reacted to my anger, probably because, these last few days, he'd been suffering from the same pain. "I'd expected Bella to be with you."

"I'm acting on my own," I huffed, stopping a couple feet away from him. The tips of my shoes stopped directly on the invisible line that divided us. "I knew if I had told you she wasn't coming, you would have been too daunted to accept my invitation." I was glad that I hadn't cut of the Volvo's engine; Jacob's thoughts were still shouting at me, but the music was fortunately louder.

"You don't scare me, Edward," He retorted vindictively, out of inbred rivalry, but his voice simmered down to a broken sigh. "And I don't wanna fight you. I thought we were done with this crap."

"I'm not in the mood to fight you, kid," I cracked a halfhearted smile. "But that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm entirely complacent."

"Obviously," He gestured towards my car, more so the still blaring music. "Black Rebel Motorcycle Club" – he nodded in apparent approval. Hmm, I had never thought that musical tastes would be something that we would have in common – "pretty wicked group. They're even better when you're in a whip-ass kind of mood."

"Well, conveniently, that's exactly the mood I'm in," I stuffed my hands in my pockets. "Bella told me not to act rashly, so I'm stuck sitting on the benches."

"I can relate," He unconsciously clenched his hand into fists, so tightly his skin resembled purplish gloves. "Sam took me off patrol so that I couldn't do anything stupid. I'm entirely helpless."

There was that word again – helpless.

My lips parted, pulling back the corner of my mouth in a Machiavellian smile. "It just so happens that I didn't call you out just to chat. We're in the same boat, it seems; we're the ones forced to sit out when we should be on the front lines. We're going to have to bend the rules here, Jacob, but I'm assuming that you don't mind that much, am I right?"

His eyes brightened gamely. "Hell, you shouldn't even have to ask. All you had to do was say 'breaking the rules' and I was already signed up …"

I put up my hand to stop him, pinching the bridge of my nose. "No, no. Not breaking the rules. Just bending them. I can't break them."

"What's the difference?" He pushed off his car and walked right up to me, defiance in his voice. I glowered into his reproachful eyes. Was he actually trying to square off with me?

I closed my eyes – another abnormally protracted blink, an effect of my coming to terms with defeat, I supposed. "Breaking the rules means organized rebellion, purposefully setting off the explosion. Bending the rules means going under the radar."

His eyebrows rose, his smile widening. There was a sense of incredulous hilarity in his eyes, and it made me ill at ease, a feeling that I was most definitely not used to. "Mr. Perfect wants to join the dark side, eh? Then you've come to the right place. I'm all for breaking the rules."

"If anything, Jacob Black, I have been on the dark side some ninety years longer than you have," I sneered disdainfully. "And, believe me, if it were my will, you and I would storm to Italy this very moment and take out those godforsaken wretches in one blow. But … Bella, she …." I couldn't go on, the thought of her reminding me of her conversation with Charlie earlier.

At the sound of Bella's name, he nodded comprehendingly. "She sure can wrap her fingers around you tight, can't she?"

I swallowed painfully. The way he'd said it sounded as if it were a curse, but to me it was a blessing more than anything else. I could not bring myself to refute the love I had for her, the undying passion, and the determination to do whatever it took to put her existence back at peace again, to bring our daughter home. Jacob shared a similar objective, if not a similar intention – to bring peace, not only back to Bella, but back to our lives. Without that single sense of familiarity, the familiarity that there was always each other to hold on to, we would become even more lopsided and aberrant than what we had been created as in the first place.

"She doesn't know I'm doing this," I muttered, so quietly he had to strain to hear me. "She's spending the week with Charlie." Again, the memories of earlier resurrected and I physically had to push back down the pain that the recollection brought with it.

His eyebrows creased together, a deep crevice appearing in between them. There was a tint in his eyes in that moment, one of … sympathy? Probably not. But there was something in them that changed, that softened them almost. He nodded stiffly, "Well, if it means kicking Italian butt, we can join forces. As long as we get Renesmee back."

I did not look at him, but I had to convey my gratitude to him in some way; I owed him that much. I loosened the muscles in my face, trying to lose the stressed pain that had been there before. He must've seen my gaze lift, and he let out an appreciative grunt in reply.

"So what's the plan?" He asked, the tender moment between us turning sober.

That much I had not yet thought through entirely in depth, but, I'd figured, that if I was going to give myself entirely over to my brutish, intrinsic nature, it was utterly paradoxical to think things through at this point. "We can't be gone long, or else our families will start to suspect something. We'll search for now, and come back early tomorrow. If anyone asks, I was being sullen Cullen, naturally, and you were in the woods somewhere, cutting yourself."

He chuckled at that. "I can play the role of emo kid. Sounds fun. Where should we head?"

"North, roughly," I glimpsed over in the general direction. "I followed Carter's scent, and it traveled all the way up to Kingston, but cut off once I reached the Puget Sound. I can only guess he's hiding in Seattle – it makes sense that the Volturi would keep someone nearby to watch our moves."

He nodded, agreeing with my plot. Then he wondered, "Have you made any moves yet?"

"My family? Not as a whole. Emmett is just as eager as you are to act, but we stopped him before he could follow Carter's scent much farther than Port Angeles. And, if we're vigilant, we can be to Seattle and back by dawn, before my family or the pack has the chance to assume anything."

"And after that?"

"Looks like we're going to have to rendezvous like this in secret for awhile," I shrugged, turning to the Volvo. He, in turn, made a move for his car as well. But we kept our eyes locked on the other – our instincts knew better than to look away, to disadvantage ourselves by reading a person by voice alone, but, instead, to depend also on glances, body language, and lifts in expression, too; humans had the same intuition, only dimmed.

His eyes narrowed vivaciously, almost overenthusiastically ready for a fight. "Undercover."

"Sounds interesting," I smirked. "I look forward to working with you."

"I'll meet you outside your place," He snickered. "The rule bending starts promptly at seven."

I had meant to put this chapter after the one from Jacob's POV, where he was feeling just as defenseless against authority, but I really wanted to get to the whole Bella-Charlie plot as soon as possible – especially for readers like DanielWhite who were in dire need of some sort of update on those characters. The similarity between the Jacob POV and the Edward POV kind of ties them together and teams them up, which is kind of an advancement of the vampire-wolf alliance in Eclipse. In Eclipse, they had to collaborate, which was a huge accomplishment in itself, but this finally puts the two flints face to face, forcing them to team up (without all the other vamps and wolves to act as buffers) to get what they want – and, unlike Eclipse, it doesn't require forcing on Bella's part, which I think is pretty EPIC.

Here's the song that was playing: youtube .com/watch?v=rKdKwJtQ-v4