Chapter 2: Dawn
The streets in Volterra are cold and loud. They are echoes of people celebrating naivety. Alice leaves to get our bags and I do not stop moving. Can not stop moving. We are to find a car and steal it. Autopilot has no qualms with this. Everything I am , I have managed to shove away, collapsed within myself. On the outskirts of the center, my footsteps leave their echoes on the stone. I pick a car, any car, chance. There is a black one I don't know the brand of. I don't check all I see are the dark tinted windows. Jacob black would know everything about this car, all I know is that if I remember what he told me I could make it run.
There is a small window on the passenger side and I take my elbow as hard as I can and jam it in. The pain is enough to make my eyes water and it spreads like electricity up to my shoulder but I do not stop. I do not make a sound.
"Are you okay?" it's a concerned voice. Velvet. It hurts more than my elbow. I do not turn. "I can do that for you." I do not answer. I pop the lock and shove myself into the front seat. The overhead light does a good job of lighting up the panel underneath the steering wheel. My hands tremble for a moment and I get my good dose of adrenaline. Like an addict, I move. I don't know the steps but im chasing pain I rip open the wires.
Wait for the burn.
Jacob black loved you.
I squeezed my eyes shut again because he did. He did always love me and I never loved him and it isn't fair. The engine wakes up with a soft sigh, triggering the check engine light and I unlock the rest of the doors.
"I'll drive"
It was snowing, only barely. We were outside discussing each other's favorite things as we did in the beginning. I was so giddy it made me stutter and say ridiculous things. I couldn't drive in the snow but I had been teasing him about it because he wouldn't let me drive anyway. So he drove, I stared at him from the passenger seat. That was a happy day. The rest of the details aren't important anymore. He must've always known he was leaving. He might've been counting the seconds. But I was happy.
"That's fine you need to change" my voice was cold and I watched his body twitch in response.
"Bella i- i need… Bella what i d-"
"Alice is back."
I shifted the car to drive. Hoping he would stop. left Volterra much too fast. I was up to 90 before we hit the freeway. Not right now. He needed to wait until I could decompose. Didn't he understand that? 95. Couldn't he give me the ride to the airport for saving his life? 98. I could not let myself feel this now. Not ever. It's funny; Somewhere in between too much, I choose too little. The nothingness carried me. I stopped checking the dash.
They dumped the car somewhere and I was instructed by Alice to go into the airport and buy myself clothes and food. She was very stern about the purchase. I was supposed to get at least two outfits and comfortable traveling clothes. I grabbed random items from a store I couldn't pronounce. Not really seeing anything. My footsteps look like a tired childs. The lady behind the counter never greeted me with a slim wrist and bleached dead hair. She eyed me wearily but the second she saw the shiny credit card her alarm disappeared with a painful customer service smile. I walked up to the counter and placed the bundle messily, the tags hitting the glass with a slap. The card twitched in my hands. They had found a way to forge credit cards in my name Isabella marie cullen in silver lettering churned my stomach.
I understood food was a necessity. I hadn't eaten since before the cliff. Maybe You should've drowned. I could no longer control the was consuming me with every second, strengthening with every cacked on issue. Maybe I should've.
I found myself throwing up in the bathroom. I was terrified. I didn't even know what to be afraid of anymore. I was in a foreign country with a foreign name. Was I on the run? Would the volturi kill me sometime soon?I thought about it; what it would feel like, me at the hands of aro. I couldn't picture the dead part but a part of me longed for the silence. The finality of his actions, everything would finally be over. It might've taken a while, time was not something I could grasp anymore but I got myself off the floor with the rest of the strength I had left. Wiped my chin with toilet paper and stripped it. Peeling away the last of what he had touched. He had kissed me in this shirt. His hands had wrapped around the fabric here, and here. Stroked there. I threw them in the bin.
I begged the mirror for strength. It looked like I was decomposing. The clothes were fine but I looked physically ill. I didn't even recognize myself anymore. I tried with a ferocity to remember Arizona and the freckles on my shoulders, the sun, and chapped lips. But I couldn't be that anymore. That was lost. I would have to mourn me too when I got to forks.
I forced down a cup of coffee, but as soon as I tasted something the hunger grew. I bought a sandwich and scarfed it down. Bought myself a ticket home.
"I need to go to Seattle as soon as possible"
"We have a flight in an hour with a couple of open seats, it is a connecting flight. You will have a couple of layovers or you could wait a couple of hours for a direct flight miss. I shuttered. I couldn't stay here any longer. I needed out and I needed it before they were back.
"What do you have for the United States?" I scrambled. "anywhere"
She clicked lazily at the keyboard. My anxiety grew. Would she see me leave? "flight to new york in twenty-five minutes"
I slid the card over to her in a hurry, drumming my fingers on the counter. She looked up after a moment of annoyance painting her face. "Since it is such short notice there is an upcharge" her eyebrow raised.
"Done"
"And since it is such short notice... there are only VIP seats left" her mock frown symbolized she didn't think I could pay for this. I had to close my eyes again.
"As I said, done"
That seat cost more money than a year's rent. I tried not to think about what I would be using that card for if things were different. Tried not to think about the future Isabella Marie Cullen had, it was too painful and I was jealous of her. I was so hatefully ravenously jealous. I suppose there would be someone to take his name one day. Maybe someone he already knew. He would live forever. There had to be a moment when someone was enough for him. I hoped I would be dead by then. I don't know how but I would feel it. I would know it the moment he gave someone else everything we could've had. I would know, I just would. I sat down in front of my gate glancing at the clock enough to slow it down. Covered my face in my hands crouching into myself.
When he had known, I wasn't what he wanted. Was it the first time we kissed? When I admitted to loving him in my sleep. It had to have been before James because he had kept me alive. He had wanted an out and put himself through enormous pain to make sure he had it. He had said he loved me, but only when prompted too right? Hadn't I said it first- twisted it out of him through pity the night of port Angeles? I couldn't make sense of it. let this go on for too long it was so stark from everything else he had told me. But it made sense. Hadn't I always been expecting this? Even before him, hadn't I always known this is how these things would end?
"Where are you going!" AliceAngeles I picked myself up from the darkness.
"Home" I couldn't lookup.
"You're going to New York Bella," she added as if I was unaware. Yes, I am, I was trying to leave before this exact thing happened.
"I'll take another flight from there, it was the earliest flight they had. Maybe I'll go to Florida. Maybe not, I don't know, I'll figure it out."
"I didn't see you buying a ticket. I thought we were all going back to forks." the tears began to sting my eyes.
"G- go wherever you want, I me-e-ean you don't need to- there's nothing for you in forks-I mean your fa-m-m-ily" I shrugged. "Jaspers worried, just go home."
Edward was a desperate man. His composure was obsolete. Completely forgotten. His clothes were not even on the right, his sleeved tangles up and curled weird. Whatever he was fighting, he was losing. And he never said a word.
"oh, well silly Bella, I already let Carlisle know we were going back to Seattle anyway. We're gonna meet there," she scrunched her nose. "I hated colorado anyway I'm glad that's over with. I guess I'll just have to bribe someone" she looked determined with her hands on her hips. "I'll be back with tickets" she eyed Edward with a harsh undertone and swiftly departed, swerving through the masses of people delicately.
Everything is still. I look out of the window. "I- I think it's a good idea for you to go home."
"Where is home, exactly"
"Wherever you were before, wherever you have been. Brazil?" The faceless picture of the woman he would love occupied my thoughts for a moment. "Six months is a long time to just leave everything." I wasn't sure what I meant by that, I wasn't talking about Brazil anymore.
"I wasn't there for six months."
"Oh"
"Is it your wish for me to go back nonetheless?" I wish he would control his voice as he had before. When things got hard he would put his well-developed mask on and no one could ever tell what he felt, but he did not do me that courtesy now. I knew exactly what he was feeling; it dripped from his tone.
I winded up my bravery one more time. "Don't leave anyone else behind... in brazil" I spoke slowly. "I don't want to be a part of that. Your distraction deserves better."
He was silent for a long time. "I'm not leaving another woman in brazil Bella. Is that what you think? All this time that's what I was doing, seducing women in Latin America?"
I thought about it for a moment, no, not really anyway. But "I don't know who you are, I don't know what you are capable of if you're leaving someone in brazil do not use me as an excuse to disappear. That's all"
"There is no one in Brazil." Relief sparked in my stomach but I pretended not to hear closing my eyes. I didn't want to talk anymore. I didn't have it in myself to be graceful with my pain. I was the only one who wouldn't survive it.