For perhaps the last time in this lifetime of hers, Bella is in her old red truck driving down the familiar route to La Push. So much has changed from when she'd drive with a hole in her heart to spend the day with Jacob. Now she's here not to be comforted, but to comfort. As she drives up to the town, she gets a few hostile glares from young boys that she hasn't met, but by their size definitely have the werewolf gene in them. She gets to Leah and Sam's house, the one she used to share until Alice—
Seth is sitting on the porch and she gasps quietly, he is in the same position she'd always taken when she needed to protect herself from the hole that ripped itself through her.
She calls his name softly, and Seth looks up, and he's in so much pain that Bella staggers towards him and wraps her arms around him. There are tears on his cheeks that he probably doesn't want her to see, so she ignores them as he wipes them off, burying his face in her hair. She whispers that she's sorry. Gravity already moved for her, she didn't have a chance once she fell in love with Edward Cullen.
He doesn't say anything, just lets her hold him for a while. Bella wonders how much this visit will cost him in the currency of nightmares and pain and loss afterwards.
Why? What made him stop fighting? What made him let her go like this?
Bella's relieved, of course, to no longer being tugged between two enemies. What made Seth see that Edward was who she needed?
Unthinkingly she asks him, and then moans softly as he stiffens beside her. He answers though, much to her surprise.
Seth describes the way her every movement seems to be attuned to Edward, whether he's near or not. Like a dance almost, so coordinated are their motions. Her face has something in it that he never sees without him, her laugh is clearer, she looks whole. Seth can't make her choose between the love fate chose, and the love she chose. Bella's always been independent; she's not letting some inevitable future rule her life.
She leans down, very slowly, and kisses Seth goodbye. Not on the cheek, but gently pressing her lips to his for a moment. Seth is surprised, still, unsure—then he brings his fiery hands to cup her cheeks. It doesn't last long, a few seconds at least, and both of them know that it's not a beginning, like so many kisses, but an end.
Bella pulls away with her eyes closed and her lips tingling from the warmth. She touches her fingers gently to them, then gets up and goes to her truck.
A long distance relationship might work, she thinks to herself—Seth is already planning his first letter to her.
The loudness of the truck's engine makes her jump slightly, Edward normally drives her everywhere, but today she had needed to do this alone. Say goodbye to the boy—or was he a man?—that was her soul mate.
Why did she find three soul-mates, when some never found theirs?