Chapter 5

Edward closed his eyes, rested his head on the wall he leaned back against from his spot on the floor. He pressed the little pink phone more tightly to his ear and didn't dare breathe. Even that small noise would detract from the sound of Bella's voice in his ear.

It hadn't come soon enough.

He had glared at that pink phone for the better part of three days, willing it to ring. If Alice's intention had been to push him the rest of the way over the edge, she'd damn near succeeded. His sister still wasn't taking his calls, so for three days it had been just him and a pink cell phone somehow connected to Bella, one that refused to ring. Alice's note had said to answer it because Bella needed him. It never said anything about why, or what would happen if he gave in and took action himself.

The seconds had ticked by. Slowly. Had something happened? Was Bella hurt? What the hell was going on?

Finally, when he simply couldn't take it anymore, he went into the contacts and ran his thumb over that name he still desperately hoped to one day make reality. He stared at it for a few moments, considering. Then he hit 'call' before he could talk himself out of it. Come what may.

The rush of relief at hearing her voice — safe, at the very least — was what drove him to stop pacing back and forth, to slide down the wall and sit on the floor instead. Vampires shouldn't get weak in the knees, but tell that to his.

He only barely remembered Alice's caution to not say a word. He was only there to listen, and apparently Bella thought he was Alice.

"I'm sorry I didn't call." Bella was speaking again, inexplicably apologizing. "I don't blame you for anything, Alice. I know it's my fault that you're all separated from him. I know you all miss him too. I just can't... I can't even look at any of you. It reminds me too much of...of him."

Torture. Staying silent as Bella blamed herself for any part of this, when all blame rightfully lay on his own shoulders, was almost more than he could bear.

Her obvious unwillingness to say his name was quite possibly worse.

"It hurts, Alice. I miss him so much. I don't even have a picture of him. Sometimes it's like...like it was all just a dream."

He flinched, hard. That last statement hurt more than it had any right to. Wasn't that what he had told his family he wanted? For the memory of him to fade for her? He had lied to himself, nearly as badly as he lied to her.

"But then he's everywhere I look. So I can't forget him, either. Even when I wish I could."

She wished she could forget him? He deserved this. He did, he told himself mercilessly. If nothing else, maybe this would help Bella somehow. Alice must have thought it would help, and he'd decided long ago he'd be anything Bella needed him to be. So if helping Bella was the most remote possibility, he would hold that phone in his ear and keep his mouth shut if it killed him. Which it might, if she said anything else like that.

The silence that followed was brutally long. Then Bella sighed, and he relaxed shoulders he hadn't even realized had tensed. She was still there.

"I'm glad you called, Alice. I really am. I just don't know what else there is to say. There's just nothing else for me without him."

Something uneasy curled in his gut. He didn't like the sound of that. He was the one supposed to be feeling empty and hopeless. He was the one for whom the pain would never dim, who would feel it in a thousand years just as fresh and just as sharp as the first moment he left. Bella was human, and it had been months. Shouldn't time slowly be starting to heal her?

A horrific new possibility occurred to him: Bella wouldn't actually harm herself, would she?

Would she?

When the line went dead without another word, he felt more empty and panicked than he had before he called.

It was a very long three days following their first "conversation". He wanted his phone to ring. He hoped against hope that Bella would take advantage of what Alice was trying to give her, that she would call him, that she would call to talk out her feelings some more — even if she thought he was Alice, damn it. He didn't want to push, but he desperately wanted a better feel for what was going on with her, and Alice was still maintaining radio silence.

After three days, he was done waiting. He picked up that little pink phone and dialed.

He didn't get what he expected.

Talking to "Alice" about him had at least accomplished one thing: it had pushed Bella into the second stage of grief, finally.

She was angry.

At him.

"Hi, Alice. Is that you?"

There was a long pause, then a frustrated sigh.

"I know you can't tell me and I think I know why. He made me promise things too. I know it's you. I just...part of me still hoped it was... you know...him."

He'd never realized just how much he liked hearing Bella say his name. He hated her newfound reticence to do so immensely. At this rate, he was going to develop an identity complex.

She waited so long to speak again that he feared she had hung up.

And then it all came pouring out.

"How could he do this to me, Alice? I know he's your brother, but...how could he do this? It's like...like having a hole punched in my chest. I can't breathe. I can't eat. I can't sleep, and when I do, it's one nightmare after another. And the worst part is, he knows that. He was there, in the hospital, when my heart wouldn't beat right unless he was there. He was there when my mom left Charlie again and I freaked out.

"He promised he'd never do anything like that to me. He promised. Then he calls to tell me he's gone, and he says he loves me but he's not coming back? Who does that? Whatever you saw happening, it can't be worse than this. How can he do this?"

She cried, angrily. Like her heart would break all over again. Like if he was there, she might actually slap him.

And he sat there silent, hating himself more by the second as he listened to her cry. Because Bella was wrong — it could be worse than this, so much horribly worse, and he knew it.

But apparently Bella didn't know it, which surprised him. When he had called to say goodbye, right after he left Forks, she had tried to convince him he wouldn't hurt her. He had just assumed his family had told her everything, but apparently her knowledge was limited to the fact that one of Alice's visions caused his absence. She didn't know the details. Which meant he had overreacted terribly in the way he cut her off and hung up without a proper goodbye. It made his heart ache thinking of what she must have thought of him, of that being their last contact.

"I'm sorry, Alice," she gulped, eventually. "I thought I could do this, but I can't. I need...I need a little time. Give me some time, okay? Please don't call back for a while. I don't hate either one of you. But Charlie is ready to send me back to my mom if I keep going like this, and I can't let him do that, so I need time to get myself together."

He held that phone in his hand for a very, very long time after the call abruptly ended, wondering if there was any way back from where they were.

He forced himself to give her the time she requested. He waited two more weeks to call again, until he couldn't take it one second longer, when the pain of waiting to hear her voice became more crushing than the inevitability of the damage her words would do him.

He only made it that far because Alice, at the very least, was taking his calls again, now that her plan had been revealed and he had willingly gone along with it. So thanks to Alice, he at least knew Bella was safe, physically.

And Alice was encouraged. Bella had not only started taking her lunch tray and going to quietly sit with her old friends, instead of by herself, but Alice had also seen her nibbling at a few bites of her food here and there. She was trying, although whether it had anything to do with getting some things off her chest or if it was because she just didn't want Charlie sending her away from Forks was unclear.

Alice felt more optimistic about that than he did. Alice's theory was that Bella's soul felt the connection to her mate right through the phone line, regardless of what her head believed about who was on the other end. As much as Edward dearly wanted to believe that was true, he was skeptical. Alice hadn't heard the anger in Bella's voice that he had heard. He wasn't sure Bella could even forgive him, much less find comfort in his presence on the phone.

So when he finally called again two weeks later, he was braced for the worst — and completely stunned when she picked up the phone on the third ring, happy and excited.

"Alice! I saw him!"

It was lucky he'd had the foresight to press the mute button that day. She'd have heard his sudden sharp intake of breath as fear gripped him.

She'd seen him? Had he been wrong all along? Was there another attacker out there after all, an exact duplicate of him? It still seemed impossible, but impossible or not, Forks seemed far, far too many miles away at that moment.

Her next words clarified, allowed him to breathe freely again, but they were only slightly less terrifying.

"I have to be in danger for it to work. But I see him then, Alice. He talks to me, tells me to stop. When I'm safe again, he vanishes. What do you think that means? Am I crazy?"

He wasn't sure if she was or not, but she was pushing him closer to it by the second.

Bella putting herself in danger. Intentionally. To get a glimpse of him. He was going to have a talk with Alice the second Bella hung up. A strongly worded one.

Bella's tone turned embarrassed, a little sheepish.

"I probably shouldn't have told you that. I don't know if you'd tell him or not." She scoffed, a tiny, sad little sound. "I don't even know if he'd care."

His eyes shut. God, Bella...

Her voice strengthened. She sounded angry again.

"But you know what? It doesn't matter. I know what I promised him, Alice, but he broke his promises too. All of them. And it was so easy for him. Maybe this connection or this bond or whatever it is went away for him, and that's fine. But I still feel it just as strong as before, and it's killing me. I have no idea how to break it because nobody ever bothered to tell me, so I have no choice. If danger is what it takes to get a glimpse of him and stop the pain for even one second...then that's what I'll find."

He was dangerously close to revealing himself, to calling her out for endangering herself — to pleading with her to just say his damn name, even once.

But she wasn't done. She took a deep breath and her tone calmed to something approaching normal.

"I have a plan how to do it. I'm not trying to kill myself, Alice. I wouldn't do that to Charlie. I'm going to need a mechanic to help me, but I know who to ask. I think — I think it will work. I'm actually about to go there now, but call again soon, okay? This really helps."

If he'd known that was the last time he'd hear her voice for another three months, that she'd stop answering the phone when he called because she was never home to hear it ring, he might have made a different decision about staying silent and letting her end that call.

Three months later...

Alice had been a vampire for a long time. She had eternity to go.

Eternity was a drop in the freaking bucket compared to the past seven months. More specifically, the past three months, ever since Bella started showing signs of life again, only to immediately begin spending all of her time at La Push.

That was also, not coincidentally, around the same time that Alice had a vision of her sitting on her bed one night and staring at that little pink phone for a long time, her expression unreadable, before abruptly turning it off and shoving it in her sock drawer.

Alice still hadn't told Edward that Jacob Black was a big part of the reason Bella stopped answering the phone. She only told him that Bella seemed to be doing a little better. It was the best she could do to protect him. At least maybe he believed he had done something to help his mate, even if he was completely crushed to lose that small amount of contact with her.

Alice, on the other hand, was legitimately considering strangling Bella.

It was a lot like having the worst babysitting job on earth, except minus the naughty toddler. In its place, she had a heartbroken 18-year-old girl, one who wasn't exactly suicidal but still nearly managed to off herself on the regular, including a newfound penchant for motorcycles and hanging with werewolves. Werewolves, incidentally, that completely blinded Alice's vision.

Oh, and did she mention that Victoria kept popping up everywhere for the past three months? She'd barely seen Jasper — or Emmett either, for that matter — because they spent half their time chasing Victoria off. Except it was weird, because it was almost like Victoria didn't really want to get hold of Bella.

Alice could nail down neither Victoria's decisions nor her motivations for her odd behavior, and that greatly added to her frustration. There was something else, something she just couldn't pinpoint. Something that kept changing, almost intentionally.

Edward better not be spending all his fortune while he was gone, because he owed them all so damn much.

Things would be so much easier if Carlisle would have just let her choose from one of a few easy options:

(A) Chain Bella up in their basement.

(B) Drag Edward's ass back kicking and screaming, if necessary, from the hellhole he was wallowing in.

or (C) Change Bella herself, then send her to find Edward and kick his ass.

But nooooo, Carlisle still stood firm on his no-interference policy. They could jump in only on their side of the border, and only to keep Bella alive, if that's what you called the shellshocked, empty husk of a girl that was left.

Of course, Bella didn't always look like an empty husk. There was some color in her cheeks, some days, when she came back from her ill-advised outings with him. The dog. That stinky mutt. Jacob Black.

Watching Bella dance on the jagged edge of falling for a werewolf, even if it was just a rebound, was sickening. Her brother was an idiot, and if he wasn't careful, he was going to lose the love of his existence for good. One way or another.

Personal sun. Gag. If the real sun smelled anything like Jacob Black, it could do them all a favor and just burn out now.

But most frustratingly, Alice's stupid vision of the future hadn't changed. Not for even one single, solitary little instant. She'd watched Edward holding down a screaming, crying Bella in her mind's eye so many times in the last seven months that she wanted to scrub her brain with bleach.

What was even less fun, if that was possible, was Edward's daily check-in with her to see if that fact had changed. He still somehow managed to sound hopeful every time, even seven months later. If she had to destroy him one more time by telling him that the future still stubbornly insisted he was a violent rapist, she was going to smash her phone and burn it, no matter how much it had cost. She might take the designer cover off first, though.

He didn't even try to ask her about Bella, not anymore. He'd made that mistake for the last time right after Bella started going to La Push, right after she stopped taking his calls. Alice had panicked. She didn't have the heart to tell him the truth, so instead he'd got an earful: if he intended to drop her in his family's collective lap to care for, instead of doing it himself, then he didn't get details anymore. Period.

She'd sounded sincerely angry. He must have bought it. He quit asking, and she quit volunteering.

So he didn't know about Bella's close call in their meadow, about her giving them all the slip after school one day to track it down, the meadow they were all sworn to keep her away from. There had been a vampire there, one none of them knew — a tall, slender, dark-haired, red-eyed vampire who had been standing within feet of Bella, talking to her. When she had that vision, and then it abruptly went blank, Alice nearly had a heart attack. Yes, dead heart and all. Because she had known there was absolutely no way any of them could get there in time.

There had been wolves nearby, fortunately — perhaps the only time Alice ever intended to consider their presence a good thing, even if it had interfered with her sight. The unknown vampire left without incident, and a very shaken Bella hightailed it out of the woods shortly after. That was very nearly not her only vampire encounter of the day, because it had taken every bit of restraint Alice possessed not to go to Bella's house and shake her.

Edward also didn't know about Victoria prowling around outside Bella's house constantly, nor the pack of mutts chasing the redheaded vampire all over the place, at least whenever Emmett and Jasper weren't chasing her off themselves.

She never told him about Bella jumping on the back of some random loser's motorcycle in Port Angeles to hear his voice, although she was sorely tempted. She sure as hell didn't tell him about all the stitches in Bella's forehead from falling off a motorcycle with Jacob Black, stitches Carlisle himself had put in her head in the ER, all while Bella studiously avoided his eyes and lied her ass off about how she got them. Tripping over tools in Jacob's garage. Please.

But three months into this Jacob madness, enough was enough. Alice finally had to make an exception. Edward deserved to know that he had the last thing she'd ever expected him to have when it came to Bella: competition. So she finally sucked it up and told him everything she knew about Bella and the mutt. In great detail. And she did it without mincing words, hoping that if nothing else, maybe jealousy would drive him to get off his butt and come reclaim his mate.

It had the opposite effect. He got super quiet for a long time, which encouraged her, at least until he started quietly spouting some utter bullshit about Bella moving on being what he had hoped for her.

When Alice pushed, he just tried to convince them both — but mostly himself — that maybe jealousy would have been the impetus for his attack on her if he stayed, which Alice wisely pointed out would have never been an issue in the first place if he was there to freaking keep them apart in the first place.

It was a lot like arguing the plot holes in a bad time-travel movie. So she got off that particular merry-go-round, right then and there, because both it and her brother were starting to piss her off.

But not half as bad as Jacob Black.

If the first four months were bad, the following three were nearly Edward's undoing. Having regained contact with Bella, only to lose it again, was heartbreaking.

Knowing full well that there was something Alice wasn't telling him made him even more anxious.

He suspected the truth, of course. It was the reason he let Alice believe she had intimidated him into not asking questions anymore. In reality, he wasn't sure he wanted answers.

He had known it was only a matter of time before the long line of suitors interested in Bella began knocking at her door again.

It was also only a matter of time until she opened it to one of them.

He knew that. He understood it. He even accepted it, as best he could.

It still hurt, more than any pain he'd experienced in his 110 years.

So he wasn't terribly surprised when Alice finally explained to him why Bella had stopped answering the little pink phone three months ago. She was too busy, spending all of her time with Jacob Black. He was a little surprised to learn that Jacob was the one who had won out. He wouldn't have chosen a wolf for her, although to be fair, he wouldn't have chosen anyone aside from himself. It was just that wolves were an extra danger that Bella didn't need. Of course, Bella choosing the most dangerous option was hardly surprising either.

What did surprise him, a few days after Alice told him everything, was when his pink phone started ringing.

He'd kept it charged, just in case. It hadn't rung even before Jacob Black. Every phone contact they'd had, he was the one to initiate it. There was no reason to believe she would reach out now.

But it was ringing, and his dead heart felt like it jumped in his chest.

The caller ID, Alice's optimistic entry in his contacts, taunted him.

Mrs. Bella Swan Cullen.

If Alice still thought that was a possibility, she hadn't mentioned it lately. He bitterly wondered if that meant he would eventually need to change it to Mrs. Bella Swan Black. The image of Bella in a white dress, her hand in Jacob's, hit him with all the force of a freight train. He could tell himself all the noble things he wanted. The truth was that he'd never be able to handle the idea of Bella with someone else.

He accepted the call, pressed the phone to his ear, closed his eyes and waited.

"Alice?" Bella asked tentatively. "Are you there?"

He nearly slipped. His control hung by a thread. He hadn't remembered to hit the mute button. He swiveled the little phone against his ear so the mouthpiece pointed upward, and he willed himself to hold his tongue.

"I'm sorry I missed your calls. I don't know if you're mad at me or not. But I was thinking about you today. I wanted to tell you about my friend Jake. He...makes me feel better."

Listening to his mate, his only reason for living, describe what sounded an awful lot like slowly falling in love with another man — and barely taking a breath for a good half hour while she did so — was certainly the low point of his existence.

He made it two more days, but he was barely hanging on.

And then it happened.

Deep down, he'd always known it was inevitable.

His endurance had an expiration date, a point where he couldn't take it anymore.

And he'd reached it.

The little pink phone rang. And he knew he wasn't going to be silent for one more minute.

Some part of his mind warned that that was the most dangerous point a man could possibly reach, the point where he started justifying.

He also knew it was a very thin line from making himself known to her, straight to boarding the next plane that would take him to her, closely followed by him dropping to his knees, throwing his arms around her waist and begging her to take him back.

He was going to do it anyway. He couldn't stand one more minute of Bella believing, as she had told "Alice" during that call when she was furious with him, that leaving her had been easy for him. That statement still ate at him. He couldn't stand her valuing herself so little.

Didn't she realize? There was nothing for him without her. Nothing.

She was going to know it in about 30 seconds.

He was lost. Completely and hopelessly. Every noble intention was gone. He was even willing to accept that he wouldn't hurt her, for one simple reason: he'd lived without her for seven months. He could say, with certainty, he would never take any action — even under duress — that could lead to going through that again. Neither his mind nor his body would allow it. Self-preservation.

All he could do was hope that he wasn't too late, that she could forgive him, that the wolf had not become so intricately enmeshed into her life that there was no removing him. He could only hope that she still loved him, that she still hadn't found a way to break the bond between them. Because his would never fade.

His fingers trembled as he picked up the phone. Mrs. Bella Swan Cullen was calling. He held onto that image like a lifeline, more determined than ever to make it reality.

He pressed the button to answer, held the phone to his ear. He held his breath out of habit, waited for her voice to wash over him like a breath of fresh air.

"Alice, it's me. I wish you could talk to me. Things are bad again. It's Jacob. He won't speak to me anymore and I don't know why. I don't know what to do, Alice. I can't survive this without Jake."

She sounded miserable and it broke his heart all over again. He wanted Jacob out of her life. So why did he also want to break his bones for hurting her?

And then a realization hit him. Jacob may have hurt her too, but Bella was still able to say his name. She didn't sound pained at the very thought.

That meant something. He was almost certain of it.

He couldn't wait one more second.

"Bella..." He breathed it like a prayer, the word he'd held in through hours of silent listening.

He heard her suck in air sharply. She hadn't expected him to speak. Hadn't expected him, period.

"Edward?"

His name. Finally.

"It's me, Bella. I..." He trailed off, having no idea what to say to her. He hadn't planned. "It's been me all along."

"Please don't hang up," she begged then, her voice trembling. "Please."

"I'm not. I —" And then the truth came tumbling out. All he could do was fall, hope she would save him. "Bella, I can't do this anymore."

He heard the tears in her voice. "Then come back. Edward...please."

Unbidden, the crystal clear memory of Alice's vision sprang vividly to the forefront of his mind. It gutted him all over again, especially with her soft voice in his ear. She was so fragile, so breakable, so trusting. What the hell was he doing? How had he been so weak?

"No. Don't do that. We can talk, Bella, but tell me to stay away. Please."

"Edward..."

After months of not hearing it, his name on her tongue again was overloading his senses.

"You have to. Tell me not to come and I won't. You're the only one I'll listen to. You don't understand."

It was silent for a few moments. He was trying to bring himself to hang up the phone, trying to find the will to do the right thing.

Then his entire world stopped.

The sudden whoosh of Bella's breath, a harsh inhalation of shocked surprise — one that sounded more panicked than he'd heard from her even when her life was in mortal danger — commanded all of his attention.

"Bella? What is it?"

"Edward...is this really you?" She was whispering. She sounded confused. Maybe even a little scared.

"Yes, of course." Something very uneasy took up residence in the pit of his gut. "Why?"

"Um...where are you right now?"

A cold fist of terror started working its way around his heart. He didn't even consider lying, concealing the truth. There was something about her tone...

"I'm in Brazil. Why, Bella? Answer me."

She answered his stern command with words that stabbed him straight through with utter terror.

"Because I see you out the window, standing in my yard. But you don't have a phone in your hand."

TO BE CONTINUED...