LOST PIECES
Chapter 2
It is Goodbye
EDWARD
God knows I had been suffering for months, suffering worse than ever before in my long life. But this was an excruciating new level of torture that I hadn't known existed. How could I still be alive?
I felt like I was drowning and I gasped for air like a suffocating human, but air gave no relief. I felt my fists pounding the sides of my head, the physical pain of it having no impact at all on the searing agony in my…what? Heart? How could a dead organ produce so much anguish?
She jumped!? But she promised, promised not to harm herself! What have I done? Oh…what have I done…?
I'd thought that my previous, self–imposed sentence—never to see her again—was an unbearable torture. But knowing that she was no longer there to see…I never could have imagined this agony, how bad it would be. This pain was far, far worse.
Bella…dead…gone…forever….
My body bent into itself as I struggled to defend against the brutal battering of this truth.
Never again would I see her eyes peering into mine, warm chocolate melting at my gaze; never would she surprise me with the workings of her strange, silent mind; never again would she challenge my deceptions, break down my defenses; no more would I touch her soft, soft, skin…silk over glass…so fragile, so beautiful; never again would my lips meet hers.
No, no, no! It isn't true! It isn't! It can't be true!
I wanted to deny it, to scream the contrary—but it was true. I knew it was. I had been wrong…so, so wrong…wrong in the worst possible way. Bella didn't go on as I knew she could,
perhaps to grieve for a time at my treachery, learn to hate my memory, but to continue, to find a happy life. In the end, I had accomplished exactly what I had torn myself away from her to avoid—I had murdered my one true love.
It was simply too much. Needless torture. Though I had thought Bella would get over me, would let go of her love given time, I had never had such delusions about myself. I always knew that I would not—could not—live if Bella did not.
Isabella Marie Swan…my love…gone forever.
Moving more like a human than a vampire, slowly and clumsily, I crept to the end of the roof and pushed aside the vent cover. I clambered down story by story, until I was three stories from the ground and then dropped. I didn't want anyone in this crowded place to see me drop from too high a height and come looking for a body they wouldn't find.
In my distress, I had tuned out everyone around me,
The international airport was farther north than the domestic one I had flown into some weeks before. I ran down the snaking stairs and pathways of Rio De Janerio, not bothering to move slowly. Anyone who saw me would be unable to make sense of the nearly invisible flurry of motion that sped by and I would never come back, so what did it matter?
When I reached the city's South Zone, I hailed a taxi to the airport. At the end of the trip, I donated all my money to the driver, who looked at me in shock. I hadn't bothered to count it. Perhaps he would feed his children a little better in the next few days.
"Thank you, sir!" he called as I began to walk away.
I simply nodded.
On the way to the airport I pondered how I would ask the Volturi for help and perhaps Aro would take pity on me. That would make things easy and leave no mess for Carlisle to clean up. A different kind of pain stabbed me in the chest.
Carlisle…my creator and father. I so hated to hurt him. He was the best father a vampire could have had, or a human, for that matter. I regretted seeming ungrateful, but I knew he would understand. Still, it would hurt him for a long time, probably forever.
But he has Esme, I quickly justified. And his work. And the family. The same goes for Esme and the rest of them. Let them lose their partners and then they would understand!
When leaving Rio De Janerio, I had dropped my cell phone in a trashcan by a bus stop. I'd finished talking to everyone. Though I didn't care to hurt my family, I couldn't cope with their input either. It was over. I didn't even have the strength to feel bitter about how Rosalie had broken the news to me because she was feeling sorry for herself. That was just Rosalie. I sent her and the rest of them a soundless prayer of goodbye and vowed to try not to think of my family again.
When I reached the airport, the attendant told that there's no flight till midnight, she also said if I wanted to I could wait in the Waiting Room. So, I made my way.