"I'm not free at all."
-"Haunted House," Florence and the Machine
"I'll just drop you off here," Nurse Jackie says, pulling right at the entrance.
Bella stares gloomily out the window.
Should she try to make a run for it now?
"Unless you'd like me to go in with you…?" Nurse Jackie trails off, hesitating.
Bella has a brief flash of horror as she imagines making small talk with the ancient school nurse as she waits to be examined.
"No," Bella says quickly, "I'll just get out here. Thanks."
"Take care, dear," the nurse says kindly as she slams the door shut. Nurse Jackie peels off, spraying her with flecks of freezing mud.
Bella looks up at the nondescript building in mute horror.
Forks County Hospital is a spectacle of muddied cars and a crumbling concrete parking lot marked with fading yellow paint and uneven spaces in front a three-story building that stands as the tallest structure in Forks. From here she can see the wide canopy of green and black bark that splinters into a hundred other trees constantly lost under the cover of foggy rain, a haunted forest straight out of a gloomy fairytale.
It's all familiar in a horrible sort of way.
She forces her legs to start moving, her hair dripping freezing rainwater down her back, even under her hood. She wouldn't put it past Chief Burke to drag her back here in an ambulance if she makes a run for it now. At least inside it would be warm.
The bell dings cheerfully as she walks in. She takes a second to appreciate the warm gust of air from the heater that hits her face— until she immediately sees why the entire parking lot is full of cars.
The waiting area is full of what looks like every student in Forks High School.
The chatter immediately dies as she limps her way in. She takes in the room and then drops her eyes to the floor, heart racing inside her chest. She hates— hates— that she can feel her face start to burn.
Someone snickers. Then the chatter starts up again.
Get moving, stupid.
She forces herself to make her way to the reception area, where the woman behind the counter is gawking at her with eyes about to pop out of her skull. Bella self-consciously tries to smooth her hair down under her hood but then remembers the mess of bruises and mud on her face and quickly gives up.
The receptionist— Julia, Bella reads on her name tag— hands over a clipboard with a stack of forms held between her two fingers, as if touching Bella would ruin her perfect manicured fingernails or give her leprosy or something.
"Name?"
As if you don't already know. She shuffles her feet awkwardly, trying to ignore the press of stares behind her.
"Swan. Bella."
"Swan," the nurse titters, eyes darting to Bella and over to the waiting room like she's watching a soap opera before turning her attention on the keyboard. "Insurance?"
Bella grimaces. She digs out her never used card from her wallet hidden underneath the pile of junk at the bottom of her backpack, trying not to blush even harder as scraps of month-old shopping lists and long forgotten homework assignments spill out on the floor. She clumsily hands the card over as she hastily shoves everything back into her bag as quickly as she can, face burning so hot she starts to sweat.
The receptionist is enraptured, like she thinks a blood-stained axe is going to fall out along with her unopened tampons.
She takes the insurance card, fingers clacking loudly as she enters the information.
"Are you 18 years of age?"
Bella grimaces again. "17. I'm emancipated."
Her eyes bug out of her skull again. Bella shuffles nervously.
"Well. You can wait in the waiting room. Dr. Cullen will see you shortly."
Two very bad ideas.
She turns to the packed waiting room, where everyone crammed in is now facing her with varying degrees of hostility on their faces. Some look outright vicious, others hesitant, some jeering.
"Bitch Bella."
Whispers. Giggles. Mutters. Looks.
She could jog back to the high school. She could hitchhike to Canada. She could cut her hair, change her name, live out the rest of her life as a lonely Alaskan hermit.
"…in the emergency room with his mom. His face is all messed up—"
"Apparently she's going to jail? My mom's friends with his mom and she's serious about pressing charges—"
"—crazy. Fucking crazy, man."
She reluctantly takes a seat at the very corner of the room, glaring at the floor and mentally cursing everything in existence. She tries to focus on filling out the forms but it's hard when the group in front of her starts to whisper loudly over whether or not she'll go to prison. She scratches out the same line over and over and tries her best to block them all out.
Any past medical procedures?
They should know. She writes it all down anyway.
Any chance you might be pregnant?
Ha.
Any pain, discomfort, blurred vision?
Yes, yes, and yes. She jots down no, no, and no.
Any suicidal thoughts?
She stares at the tiny black lettering.
Any suicidal thoughts?
Her heart is pounding in her ears.
Any suicidal thoughts?
Is she paranoid or are the girls huddled in front of her staring at her like she just lost her mind?
Any suicidal thoughts any suicidal thoughts ANY—
"Isabella? This way please."
A vaguely familiar looking nurse comes to her rescue.
She hastily gets to her feet and sidesteps the crowd, ignoring every noise of protest as she trods on toes and pushes past bodies much taller than her.
"I haven't finished," she mutters nervously, holding up her chart. The nurse beckons her forward anyway.
The nurse waits for Bella to make her clumsy way towards the double doors, a look of sheer annoyance on her face. It's an almost physical wave of relief when she leads her away from the waiting room and the doors close behind her, blocking her view of the crowd. She dutifully follows after the nurse's bouncing ponytail, trying to ignore the rolling anxiety in her stomach. Trying very hard not to think about the last time she was here.
Bella definitely recognizes the nurse, now that she's gotten a closer look.
She's one of the good ones, Bella remembers. Crisp, professional, a little mean if she was in a hurry. No-nonsense attitude about the rumored possibilities of Bella Swan's potential homicidal tendencies.
They walk quickly down the hall, the nurse's sneakers squeaking on the linoleum floor and Bella stumbling over her feet trying to keep up, and into an examination room. She all but shoves Bella into a bed, never once taking her eyes off her chart.
"No blurred vision, discomfort, or nausea?" She raises an eyebrow.
"No," Bella says unconvincingly.
The nurse gives her face— her bruised, cracked, bleeding face— a once over and she sniffs conspicuously, scribbling something messy on her chart that Bella can't read. She reaches behind her and rips two Kleenex from the box on the counter.
"Press," she drones, her eyes back on her chart.
Bella shakily reaches for the tissues with a muttered thanks and presses it against the most pulsing part of her head, right on her forehead. When she pulls it away, the dark red has soaked straight through the tissue. Her stomach gives another nauseating turn.
"I was actually wondering if I could just get some Tylenol and I could be on my w—"
The nurse interrupts her by pressing an ice pack on the top of her head. Her brain pulses painfully right where it makes contact.
"Hold this."
In the next second, Bella is hooked on what seems like a dozen cords, measuring her vitals.
"Dr. Cullen will be in shortly."
The nurse sweeps quickly out of the room without another look, her parting words wrenching a hole in her gut.
Dr. Cullen. Right.
She is really not up for the bullshit charade right now.
But. She has to play it. It is that or… Or be discovered. Be killed.
Despite her usual paranoia when it comes to the Cullens, she does not believe she is exaggerating.
She allows her shield— her strong, invisible, shining shield— to recoil back to somewhere deep inside of her. It lies dormant, sleeping and malleable, waiting for her to bring it forth again. She imagines her scent spilling to every corner of the room, the smell of her blood from the open cuts on her face vivid and warm, the way it must smell to a vampire.
Fresh meat.
They had spent a long and trying three months together, she and Dr. Carlisle Cullen.
Their relationship has not improved.
"I'm sorry for taking so long," the monster says when he walks into the room, even though he didn't take that long.
Carlisle Cullen.
He's familiar enough to not strike terror into her right away, just an instant irritation mixed with an extreme apprehension. It's exhausting.
He somehow manages to look both immaculate and exhausted at the same time. The deep purple shadows under his eyes are so jarring against the eerie, unnatural gold that she wonders how the Cullens haven't been exposed by now— something that unsettling ought to have done the job by now. His skin only has a few shades more color than the bright white of his lab coat and the combined pale of the monster with the white of the room makes her feel like she's entered the set of a psychedelic horror movie.
If she were anyone else, he would be an awe-inducing thing to behold, if a little bit impossible to comprehend. But she is who she is, and she bites down hard on her bottom lip to keep the nausea at bay.
"Let's get this started so we can get you out of here as soon as possible. Sound good?"
Carlisle Cullen unnerves her. Always has.
A vampire. A doctor. A contradiction in and of itself.
One who had bothered to save people. Had saved her.
Why?
Her father, when faced with the enigma of Carlisle Cullen, had refused to compromise his rigid viewpoints. To him, the world worked one way and that was it. You were guilty or you weren't, and that was it. You were a monster, or you weren't, and that was it. He was a product of his upbringing, the kind of man who had stared evil in the face too many times to be distracted by its bells and whistles. He was convinced Carlisle Cullen was a trick, some way to leech the humans dry— systematically. A new breed of vampire.
Easy access, Charlie had muttered. Mark my words.
But Bella is not her father.
And she is not so sure of the world's reliability.
"I don't need to be here."
Dr. Cullen almost smiles as he grabs the nearest swivel chair and sinks into it, smooth and casual, spinning to face her like she's his favorite patient in the world and he's shedding off that layer of professionalism that he reserves for everyone else. She wants to flinch back, away from him and away from the notion he's playing at— as if they could ever pretend to be acquaintances or friends. It didn't matter how many grueling hours they had spent in each other's company, when she was at her worst and he was the constant witness to it all.
His voice gave her the worst news of her life.
"Well, I assume Chief Burke is merely being overly cautious."
She resists the urge to groan.
"He called you?"
"Or course. Regardless, it is my job to make sure that you are not going to keel over anytime soon. Call me thorough."
She fiddles with a loose thread on her sleeve, avoiding his eyes. Would being as difficult a patient as she could be be as satisfying as she imagines it, or just counterproductive in the long run?
"I just want to go home. It's been a… long day."
The my-entire-family-is-dead card. She hardly ever plays it and it's a testament to how much she doesn't want to be here that she's folding now, so early in the game. But, of course, while it always seems to do the trick to literally anyone else, she thinks bitterly, Carlisle seems to have developed some form of immunity.
All he does is flip open her chart and start scribbling down nonsense words that by no means apply to her— concussion, and malnourished, and depression, and trauma— she'd bet her life on it. All words he's scribbled down before, as if writing it down meant anything ever got done about it.
The file in his hands is thick.
"I understand." He jots something else down, utterly unfazed. "We'll get through this as quickly as possible."
He keeps his eyes on her chart and his voice is quiet when he speaks again.
"I know how much you would rather not be in a hospital, Bella."
She presses her nails down hard into her palms. It's on the tip of her tongue.
You don't get to call me that, leech.
Carlisle lowers her chart down onto his lap and leans forward, face grave. She fights down the sudden flare of paranoia that he can read minds.
"You want to tell me what happened today?"
No.
"It's nothing. It's fine."
She avoids his unsettling eyes and picks at a dead flake of skin on her finger. Maybe she's beginning to decompose.
"That is the last thing it looks like to me."
He looks pointedly at her face, which starts to throb at his words, as if to prove his point.
She swallows hard and tastes copper. She doesn't know how it happened— all she can recall is the distinct red haze that colored everything, that made her feel separate from the chaos going on around her and inside her. That it felt like she was standing at the edge of the circle with the other students, watching herself go crazy, stunned at the spectacle of that unhinged girl who could not possibly be her.
"Can I go?"
God. Even her voice sounds dead.
"No. You cannot," he says kindly.
Dread fills the pit of her stomach.
Carlisle stops busying himself with her chart to frown at her. His face is strange for a moment before it goes blank again, so quick that she's sure she imagined it.
He reaches behind him to grab blue latex gloves, and she seizes the chance to double-check her shield. It's only a second but that's all she needs— she strains that invisible muscle inside of her, making it transparent enough to allow the scent of her blood to filter through. A perfectly human scent.
It goes against her every instinct to not wrap her shield up thickly around her, but she manages to balance perilously on that tightrope.
"I'm just going to prod the area, make sure there's no severe damage," he warns, hands up as if to show he's unarmed.
Past experience with Bella taught him how well she reacted to being touched unexpectedly.
She is so good, so good at this charade, that she doesn't even flinch when she feels his fingers begin to prob along her scalp. His fingers are slightly too firm, but his touch is gentle. Her head throbs when he finally removes his hands.
She thinks she's going to hurl.
"So you're not going to tell me what happened with the Crowley boy?" Carlisle asks with his back to her, ripping off his gloves as he turns.
He is as calm and patient as ever, and she hates that she isn't as good at the façade as he is.
"Nothing happened."
"Bella… I thought we were past this."
She almost snorts out loud.
Like he knows anything about her. Like he has the right to assume anything about who she is and what she's feeling. Three months in the burn unit with Dr. Vampire peeling off decayed, charred flesh from her neck and arms and legs meant shit to her.
She didn't ask to be saved.
(Quite the contrary.)
Carlisle's eyes are sympathetic. It's unsettling to the extreme.
"Talking helps. You might roll your eyes at that, Bella, but it does. Trust me."
Of all the things he has told her, that is the most egregious.
But… She can give him something. Just a little. It's easier than accidentally giving herself away because she is so close to confessing just how much she doesn't trust him. And why.
"He's an asshole," she says in a rush. Her heart pangs at the memory of what he wrote on her locker. "I'm sure you'll tell me that's no excuse."
Carlisle's face gives nothing away. "Why is he an asshole?"
"Because—" She can't. She can't say it out loud.
(psycho baby killer)
"Just because."
Carlisle can be ridiculously perceptive— and it's never more apparent than when he is looking at her like that. Eyes open, wide and unblinking— do vampires even need to blink? The seconds tick by slowly and all she can hear is the beep of the machine, measuring her vitals, as she sweats but stubbornly refuses to blink first.
Seconds pass before she realizes she's forgotten to hide the hatred from her face.
"I'm sorry," he says.
It's not what she expected.
His words hover in the broken silence between them, incomprehensible.
"Why?"
She blurts out the question before she can think not to, and then—to her horror— keeps going.
"You don't have to care about me."
He looks straight into her eyes when he answers her.
"Why wouldn't I?"
(Before)
"They're in there, completely defenseless. None of them have the slightest idea what they're sitting next to. Who knows? If there's the slightest slip up or just some random accident— a frenzy could happen."
Bella and Charlie had been sitting at the kitchen table, a mess of paperwork in front of them.
It was a Thursday afternoon. Bella would start school at Forks High School the following Monday.
Charlie frowned at the schedules in front of him. "I don't care what Billy says. Vegetarian vampires or not— it's downright criminal. Irresponsible." His nostrils flared. "It's an accident waiting to happen. It's in their nature to lose control."
It hadn't sat right with Charlie— five vampires, purposefully placing themselves in an area with vulnerable, unaware teenagers.
He had printed off the Cullen's school schedules from the station. It was amazing what someone could get with a police chief's log in information.
"And the doctor? What do you think about him?" The concept of a vampire doctor still shocked her.
Bella stared at the names on the yellow notepad in front of them, written in Charlie's messy block lettering. CARLISLE AND ESME CULLEN. JASPER AND ROSALIE HALE. ALICE, EMMETT, AND EDWARD CULLEN. Surprisingly, all their paperwork had checked out. They're the first vampires they've ever come across who even bothered with squeaky-clean paperwork.
That had been a first. Along with the doctor vampire. Also vegetarian vampires, as ridiculous as that sounded.
A lot of firsts, with these leeches, she thought.
Charlie frowned. "Dr. Cullen?" His eyes narrowed suspiciously. "I need more time to figure out that one. I've never heard of a vampire being around blood for so long without feeding. Not ever. Something else is going on there, you mark my words."
For one agonizing moment, she stares at Carlisle and he stares back— and she swears he can read all the secrets in her eyes like stars.
Why wouldn't I?
He had said it— not like a kind remark about the likeliness of her character— but like a challenge.
What do you think I am?
She can't look away. To look away first is to lose.
The moment is broken when outside— sounding so far away from this little room— a child starts to wail.
She folds. Looks down at her muddy shoes. Tries to calm her racing heart.
"Poor kid," Carlisle mutters, entirely unfazed as he flicks the machine recording her vitals with his fingers. The erratic beeping starts up again, rapid and irregular. "Nothing worse than resetting a broken bone."
She can think of multiple things. But she keeps her mouth shut. She's already given too much away, though what exactly she can't be sure.
But Carlisle is nothing if not perceptive, and he realizes the meaning behind his words without any input from her.
"I apologize," he says softly. "And take it back."
She can feel his eyes on her face, watching her stare at her shoes.
"Of course there are worse things."
She blinks slowly, tries to look bored.
"Mm," she hums noncommittally. "Poor kid. Must hurt."
An uncomfortable silence falls. She fiddles with her fingers and watches him from the corner of her eye. Dr. Cullen stands and turns to record something on her chart. After a moment's pause, he turns back to her with an air of making his mind up about something, shifting his weight from foot to foot. For the first time since entering that room, he seems hesitant, unsure of what to say next.
What exactly he could have to say that he hasn't already said, she has no idea. She still doesn't trust herself to look up.
Did she give herself away?
"Bella…" He starts.
A nervous twitch of the eyebrow breaks through her control.
"I need to speak with you, very clearly... as your doctor."
He is frowning deeply when she finally tears her eyes away from her shoes.
"By all means," she says, forcing politeness into her voice that just comes out sounding testy.
Her legs vibrate with anxiety and she has to physically force herself to be still. She catches herself gnawing on her bottom lip and immediately stops.
Dr. Cullen watchers her steel herself and his expression sets, some unknown suspicion of his confirmed.
"You are not fine."
It's a blunt statement of fact, no room for debate, but she makes one anyway.
"So fix my face."
"That's not what I am referring to."
She is a glass mosaic about to shatter.
"Just treat me," she says in a rush of shuddering air, "or refer me or discharge me, just do whatever you need to do so I can— I just need to go—"
Her eyes start burning out of nowhere.
"I'm tired."
Her voice, to her horror, breaks at the last word. She feels the color drain from her face and she shudders where she sits—paranoia insane in her veins—exhaustion screeching inside her ears.
Her mask is a chipped-down, mosaic tragedy of a thing and suddenly, immediately, she hates him for it. Hates him for being the ever-constant witness to her lowest points. Hates him for what he is and the way he makes her doubt, hates how he makes her feel like the wrong one.
She stands up, her mind instantly made. "I'm going now."
"You do this," he says, his voice quiet.
Her next step falters. While she has stood up with the full intention of leaving, she has made no actual break for the door. Carlisle is standing in front of her off to the side, not yet deliberately blocking her way. She wonders if he has it in him.
"Do what?" She snaps.
"Run. Avoid."
Something shivers, holds its breath on that last fragile tendril inside of her, and gives way.
Tears start streaming down her face and the monster blurs out of sight.
"I am fine."
Fine, fine, fine fine fine. She can say it so many times it almost sounds like a real word.
"Bella, you have clear evidence of PTSD and regression of traumatic memory. You lose track of conversations in the middle of them. You display hypervigilance at the most ordinary things. You are entirely isolated from friends— you lose your temper at the slightest provocation and you have never, not once since you stepped into this office, lowered your guard."
For a moment, she thinks she's talking about her shield.
"Bella. Look at your hands."
Her hands?
She looks down. Her fists, which have clenched into fists at some point, finally release.
There are four tiny half-moon crescent marks on each of her palms, bright red, where the nail bit through skin. The dark red droplets are already pooling on her palms, where the much bigger crescent of an older scar starts to burn with a phantom ache.
(Fire. Venom. Pain. How many times in her life would she burn?)
She shuts all memory out and shakes her head. She can't let herself think about that right now.
"Bella, I'm sorry," he says again, when the silence starts to become the loudest thing in the room. He looks genuinely apologetic.
"I shouldn't push you too hard. But I am afraid that if I do not, then no one will. I mean what I say. Listen," he says, his eyes unbearably earnest, "these things don't just get better on their own. It's just like a broken bone that must be set and cast to be treated. Your mind is no different."
She has nothing to say to that. She swallows again and again, trying not to think too hard about what he's saying, lest she fall into panic.
"Bella…" He says, kneeling down so his face is level with hers, even if he's still feet away from her. "I fear you are suffering unnecessarily. I know how strong you are. And how brave. But that doesn't mean you have to bear this alone."
This? Her heart stutters strangely at his strange emphasis on the word. She feels like something heavy is about to drop over her head and crush her.
"What do you… I don't know what you're—"
"What happened to your family was an unforgiveable wrong," he says, eyes shining. "I know you must feel very afraid and very alone. I think you are incredibly brave to be here, and I know it will take some time, but I hope… ultimately… that you can come to trust me."
She shakes her head, his words not making any sense. Not wanting it to make sense. Because he's talking like… like he—
Her heart stops completely in her chest.
"As a father, I wouldn't want my child alone in the world if I was gone. I think your parents would feel the same."
His eyes are earnest and beseeching and honest and a vampire's and she can't— she can't—
"Please, just… If you need anything, you know where to find me."
"Stop. Just— stop."
You are guilty or you aren't. You are a monster, or you aren't.
She does not want to play the game anymore. The rules stopped making sense the day she survived and her family didn't.
Why is the vampire in front of her is less monstrous than the people outside?
Carlisle is quiet for one long, earsplitting moment.
"Your head will heal fine on its own. Take two Tylenol for the pain every four hours. You are free to leave, if you wish."
She can't physically speak anymore.
She doesn't look at Carlisle. She just walks out the door and leaves. She expects to hear him protest behind her but the space she leaves behind is silent.
Once again, outmatched.
(Before)
She sat at that kitchen table, staring at her brand-new schedule, lying right next to the blueprint of the high school in front of her, feeling her stomach squirm.
Of course, she wouldn't be in real danger if she stuck to the plan— she would build her shield up every day before going to the building, go to class, be a normal student, and basically avoid them. She was capable and dependable. There was no way Charlie would send her in there alone if that wasn't the case.
But she was also crawling out of her skin at the idea of being around so many of them at one time. Though she wouldn't admit it under torture, she was terrified that she'd have to go to school with them, day after day after day.
Another first.
Charlie noticed the look on her face. He leaned forward in his chair and sighed, reaching over and gruffly patting her on the shoulder. His brown eyes— a mirror reflection of hers— were slightly sad.
"You'll be alright, Bells. Just stick to the plan— if anything happens, you do not engage. Raise the alarm and we'll be there in a second." He winked at her, giving her another reassuring pat on the shoulder.
Renee looked up from where she was painting the kitchen cabinets an obnoxious sunny yellow, humming what sounded like a preschool song. She turned to smile at her.
"You'll be alright, baby. There's something different about this place— I can feel it. You'll be graduating here," she sang, in an overly cheerful voice.
Her mother smiled brightly, but Bella could see the hint of worry tightening around her eyes, though she tried to hide it.
She tried her best to smile back.
They spent the rest of the afternoon going over the routes she would use to take to her classes, all for the purpose of avoiding the Cullens on the way to their own classes. By the end of it, the blueprint was a mess of tangled complicated lines in different colored highlighter. All orchestrated in such a way that she wouldn't even accidentally bump into one of them. No easy feat, in a high school with only 357 people. Now 358.
She spent the rest of the night unpacking the pile of moving boxes, wondering if there was even a point. They would only pack up and move far away soon anyway. That was the life they led. Nomadic vampires called for nomadic vampire hunters. There was no other way.
And yet Renee had taken the time to paint the cabinets.
She knew that her mother was getting sick of it, the constant packing and moving away. All she wanted was to see Nessie have friendships that lasted longer than one-year intervals and to see Bella stay long enough at any school to see her graduate without having it feel like a secondhand accomplishment to staying alive long enough to walk the stage.
Bella didn't care too much about it— she never made friends as easily as Nessie did and she had never cared very much about having the normal experiences of the average teenager. And what was the point of university? She already knew what she would spend the rest of her life doing. She would graduate and go straight to the Academy, where she would become a police officer and work under her father, wherever they might be, and eventually go off when she was ready, when she could handle the hunt on her own. It was hard for her to connect to people, to places. To anything, really. She was better suited to the life of constant running than Renee and Nessie were.
Renee's growing impatience worried Charlie too, but what was the alternative? Ignoring the problem wouldn't make it go away.
Still. She had liked Phoenix.
The Sunday night before she would start school, she stayed up late, unable to sleep. She watched the raindrops cast shadows down the windowpane. The tears fell silently down her face, in rhythm to the rain outside.
It was always hard starting over. She was an awkward person at heart and craved a stability she could never have. It was harder still with the idea of what she would have to do for the foreseeable future.
She was anxious and unhappy at the thought of the Cullens, of having to be around them and watching them without letting them know she was watching them. She would never be able to let her guard down and the idea was already exhausting to her.
She would go to school, pretend to be normal, ignore the crawling feeling of being so close to death incarnate, and go home, listen to Renee and Charlie fight, comfort her little sister when they did, and repeat, until Charlie would inevitably announce their next mission, and drag them all to the other side of the continent and start everything all over again.
She ignored all of that and reassured herself with what she knew.
This was only temporary. She would go to school, make sure the Cullens weren't a danger. Then she would graduate with the youngest Cullens, after which the school would be safe, and her family would be free to leave again.
It was all laid out so perfectly that the Cullens would have no idea they even existed before they were gone again.
And she was sure. Everything would go to plan.