Hello, lovelies!

I can't even begin to explain how sorry I am for the unexpected hiatus. This year is a lot for me on the professional front, because I am still trying to adjust to my new job. As much as I love it, it sucks that it has taken the energy to write away from me.

Seeing that it has been so awfully long since I was supposed to post, I've decided to make up for my absence by posting the last two chapters in one go. It's not much, but it's my way of saying thank you for waiting (and for leaving so many lovely reviews too)!

Forever grateful to my dear friend and beta, CoppertopJ, as her editing magic is everything I could've wished for and more.

Now, back to the story. As you may remember, Edward left in a hurry, leaving Bella highly confused, to say the least.

Let's see what happened to her after he left :).

*Bella's Point of View*

The light in the room felt wrong, misplaced somehow.

I fought against the sleepy fog weighing my lids down, trying to force my eyes to open. For several moments, I felt nothing at all. Only the calm peace that comes with waking up — when dreams and real life are still intermingled in strange ways, when reality is still polite enough not to knock you down.

But then I shifted slightly, feeling the rough touch of the sofa on my bare skin, and my memories started to return.

Not slowly, to give me time to accommodate their meaning, but all at once.

I remembered everything, which was a blessing and a curse at the same time: the exquisite pleasure, the ecstasy, but also the pain… the high, and the immediate low… Edward cleaning up the mess he made on my back, only to leave moments after.

I felt my stomach turning, repulsed by the onslaught of emotions, fearing the worst.

What the hell have I done?

I rose up, panic fueling my movements. I pushed through the dizziness and instantly went to find my phone. The air felt cool against my naked skin, but I ignored it, knowing that something much more important than dressing up had to be done first. My phone awaited on the kitchen table, right where I left it after talking Edward into my plan.

Stupid, childish, selfish plan.

Once unlocked, it wasn't the fact that it was already noon that had me in a chokehold. It was the fact that I had five missed calls from Jacob and not a single one from Edward. Not even a pitiful text. Naively, I tried to convince myself that Edward was probably sleeping. He had to be, right? Because after last night, there was no way we could afford to go one day without talking about everything that happened… right?

For minutes on end, I wondered if I should be the one to call him. A part of me wanted to, but I didn't want to push his boundaries again. What would I even tell him? I wouldn't even know where to start. How could I bring up the events of yesterday without acknowledging the fact that we went over the line, thanks to my desperate need for him to fuck me to completion? Even worse, how could I act normal, when just thinking about his eyes made my heart flutter with a sentiment so deep, so raw, it made me scared to acknowledge its presence?

In the end, I put the phone back on the table, defeated.

I had no idea how to talk to Edward without scaring him off more than I had already done. At this point, I feared that hiding my real hopes and expectations from him would have been impossible. He would have seen right through my lying attempts. As for Jacob, he could call as many times as he pleased, I had no intention of answering him anytime soon. The reminder of what he had done was still there, in the back of my mind, although it didn't hurt the way it was supposed to. It didn't hurt the way that Edward's silence hurt.

Realizing this brought unexpected tears to my eyes — tears of utter frustration, tears that burned with shame as soon as they rolled down my cheeks. Was this what it came down to, after three years? It didn't feel right. Being cheated on was supposed to wreck me from the inside out, but all I could feel was a trembling sense of guilt over the fact that I wasn't more heartbroken by Jacob's actions.

Passingly, I wondered what was the precise moment when I stopped caring as much as I should. It was frightening to realize that all the answers my mind was capable of conjuring seemed to begin and end with a pair of green eyes, because the new awareness meant something else too. It meant that maybe… maybe I was to blame too. Not that I deserved to be betrayed, but I wasn't all too innocent either. Fantasizing about my best friend — regardless of all the ways I tried to suppress these thoughts — had to count as some form of emotional cheating, at the very least. Of course, I never acted on those fantasies until I found an actual reason to do so, but how was that any better? It was as if I had been waiting for Jacob's misgiving, without even realizing I was waiting, just so that I could have an excuse.

Conflicted, I had my late breakfast through small sobs, staring at the phone and wishing to disappear.

When I was finished, I wasn't ready to face the rest of the day at all. So I hid in the shower for a while, allowing the water to pour over me while I pondered over the craziness of the last twenty-four hours. The only thing that really got me to leave the warm comfort of the shower behind was the sound of my phone, blasting from the kitchen.

A few minutes of quickly dressing up and one unfortunate slip on the wet floor later, I disappointedly discovered that it was Jacob that called once again. Seeing his name on the screen — as well as the fact that I had several unread messages from him — had a new effect on me this time around. It reminded me that I still had a purpose to fulfill, one that I couldn't ignore anymore, despite my emotional warfare.

I had to send those damned videos, or else everything would have been in vain.

Soon enough, I was copying the last file from the camera on my laptop, my fingers trembling as I tapped impatiently on the touchpad. When the little loading bar disappeared, my stomach suddenly felt hollow. I wanted to open the video, but I was also too scared to watch its contents, knowing that they probably ruined the one good thing that truly mattered to me. And all because I had been too daft to foresee the obvious fallout.

With guilt strumming my nerves like a guitar, I created a new email address, cursing my lack of creativity when I realized I had no idea what non-ominous nickname I was supposed to choose. I went with some variation of Anonymous, deciding that it didn't matter anyway — it wasn't like it wouldn't have been obvious. With my fingers still shaking, I typed Jacob's and Tanya's email addresses, attached the video, titled the message 'Important', and, at long last, hit the send button.

The instant relief I felt was short-lived, as it was immediately followed by panic.

Now that the cat was out of the bag, a new kind of reality was about to hit soon.

And I was in no way prepared to face it.

I told myself I would be able to fall asleep until Jacob got home. I had to, because I honestly had no idea how to confront him. Not even ten minutes after receiving the videos, a new wave of bombarding calls and texts from him overwhelmed my phone. I only dared to open his texts when the phone stopped buzzing.

'Come on, baby, just pick up the phone. You're worrying me.'

'WTF. What the ACTUAL fuck?!'

'I received the weirdest mail. Is it from you? What happened?'

'Fucking shit, is this a joke? It's got to be.'

'ANSWER ALREADY!'

'I can explain that thing with Tanya. I swear. But what the fuck is that other video?'

'Fucking respond, Bella. I am NOT kidding.'

'That's it, I'm cutting this trip short. See you soon.'

I turned off my phone altogether after that, having zero energy to process what those texts meant, beyond a fight in the making. I curled up in a ball on the couch, in a fruitless attempt to fall asleep, even though it was the middle of the day. In another lifetime, I might have asked Edward to let me stay at his place; and because I wouldn't have wanted to drag him into the mess of my fights, I would have found some excuse about how Jacob wanted to stay up all night with his buddies and I wanted a restful sleep.

But now Edward was a key part of that mess, and it wasn't even his fault.

So I spent hours upon hours just staring at the ceiling, silently wondering what Edward was doing. What if, while I was too busy contemplating the effects of my stupidity, he had talked with Tanya? I wondered what the outcome of such a talk could be. Maybe they found a way to patch things up already. He was all too forgiving, it wouldn't have necessarily surprised me. But what if they were already broken up at this point?

I tried to suppress the sudden hope that spurted inside me once I allowed that last thought inside my brain.

The evening was setting in when I heard the familiar click of the front door opening. Everything inside me froze, awaiting the inevitable tempest. More familiar noises made their way to my ears and, as the sound of approaching steps stopped, I rose up from the couch, looking up and meeting Jacob's gaze.

"Hi," he said, his face revealing nothing. He looked a little ruffled, a testament to the fact that he did indeed leave Rockford on a whim. He didn't lean in to kiss me, and I realized I didn't mind. Not at all.

"You're back." I felt stupid for stating the obvious, but I didn't know what else to say.

"I am. And you… you've got your phone right here, it seems."

He pointed to the phone sitting on the table, and I had no excuse. "I wasn't in the mood to talk," I admitted.

"And what about now?"

"Well… now it's inevitable."

He sighed, his eyes turning away, and sat down on the other end of the couch. My heart stung with regret, instantly reminiscing how just the other day, it was Edward who was sitting there, in his place. I risked a glance in Jacob's direction, but he wasn't looking at me. I had to remind myself, through all the guilt balling up in my stomach, that he was anything but innocent.

"How the fuck did we get here?" he mumbled.

I wasn't sure if he was really waiting for an answer, but I replied anyway. "About the same time you decided to cheat, probably."

"About that, I need to make a few things clear."

"The video made it pretty clear."

"Sure, sure, but it's not all doom and gloom. What you saw there was meaningless, trust me. I feel nothing for her. I mean, for fuck's sake! It's Tanya. She's our friend."

I could hardly consider her that. A true friend wouldn't have stabbed me and my best friend in the back at the same time. And she most certainly did both. "You told me you were going to Seth and Sam that night. You lied."

"I did go to them! I only met up with Tanya after. She had been fighting with Edward for a while and I tried to console her. But you know, I was a little drunk after all that beer pong in the dorm room, and one thing led to another. It's so stupid, really, I don't even know how it got to that point, but the bottom line is that it meant absolutely nothing to me. It's like… it's like watching porn, really."

His feeble argument almost got me to laugh — not because it was funny, but because I couldn't believe my ears. I knew Jacob's behavior had taken a turn for the worse since we got to Chicago, but I had underestimated just how much. If this kind of thing would have happened when high school ended, it would have probably broken me in an almost irreparable way. As it was, I was only mourning the years lost in a relationship that had gone stale.

In the end, I responded to his explanations. "I'm sorry, but that's such bullshit, Jake! Sex is not just something accidental, it's a choice. And such a choice speaks for itself."

"Oh, you would know, wouldn't you?"

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"When did you and Edward start fucking, huh? Was it after New Year's Eve?"

"What?"

"Shit, it might as well have been during New Year's Eve, for all I know, right? Was it when you went out for that walk?"

"I seriously don't know what you are talking about."

"That's a load of crap and you know it."

I stared at Jacob, trying to understand what he meant, almost second-guessing my own brain. But I remembered New Year's Eve. And I also remembered the fact that Edward and I had never crossed any boundaries until precisely last night. I dug and dug in my memories, trying to understand how Jacob could even come to such a conclusion, but my efforts were in vain.

"Jake, I never did anything behind your back, not until last night, when I discovered you cheated on me."

"Once," he stepped in. "I cheated once."

"You want me to believe that the one time you decided to cheat just so happened to be caught on camera? That nothing ever happened until then?"

His sudden malicious grin took me aback. "Kind of hard to believe, right?" he said. That's my point. How am I supposed to believe you, when you tell me nothing happened before?"

"Because nothing happened, not until last night! That video you saw was something done purely out of spite, and only once." I was surprised that my voice didn't tremble.

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Bella! You might as well have been eye-fucking him when we went out to see the fireworks. And you laughed at everything he said, even when it wasn't funny. Let's be serious here, the guy is no Dave Chapelle, you were the only one laughing. And what about that walk? When you returned all flushed fifteen minutes later?"

"We… had a snowball fight and I fell, you know that." I hated the hesitation in my voice, since I knew all too well that I wasn't even close to lying. "I don't understand where this is coming from. Why are you even bringing New Year's Eve up now, more than half a year later? I mean… you never told me any of this before. If you did, I would have set things straight then."

"I figured I would let it slide." He turned his face away as he said that, and something felt off.

"So you are trying to tell me you lived for — what, eight months? — thinking that I cheated on you? And you never considered asking me?"

Jacob nodded, bowing his head down, as if suddenly he was the victim. I refused to fall prey to whatever game he was playing.

"That makes no sense," I muttered. "I never questioned you when, that very same night, you disappeared with Tanya in the kitchen to bring the cookies and returned ten minutes later. I can't even remember what your excuse was when Edward asked what took both of you so long, I just… believed you. I can't understand why you didn't voice whatever doubts you had then. Why would you even wait until now to—"

"I didn't want a fight," Jacob interrupted, his voice clearly on edge. I had to take a moment to understand what he wasn't willing to say out loud. The realization started to sink in slowly.

"No, it wasn't that," I said, putting the pieces of the puzzle together. "You're not the type to hold back. If you've got something to say, you say it directly to my face. Unless… unless you feel guilty over something you've done and you'd rather not bring it up." He tried to interrupt me again, but I spoke louder, to cover his voice. "It's not that you didn't want a fight. You simply couldn't accuse me of something that you had done without feeling like a hypocrite!" I gasped at my own conclusion. "Which, you totally are, actually!"

His eyes rose up again, meeting mine, and there was no trace of the Jacob I once knew in them. "The fuck I am!"

"You are, and you are mad because you know it," I persisted, standing my ground. "You were the one who cheated on New Year's Eve, not me."

"That's just a twisted narrative you came up with to cover your own mistakes."

"No, what's twisted is that you can't own up to the fact that you cheated on me multiple times. You're trying to shift the blame, Jake, but I'm not stupid. I know what I did. And thank God, now I know what you did as well."

"We did precisely the same thing to each other," he grumbled, not looking away. I was a little taken aback that he wasn't really fighting the obvious anymore — but he wasn't willing to back down either. "Don't act like you're any better."

"Except that there is a clear difference, Jacob. What I did was in reaction to your cheating. Because whether you believe it or not, I had never done anything with Edward until last night, when I saw that footage I sent you."

"Yeah, sure. Just the perfect cover-up."

"Excuse me?"

"It seems to me that you have been waiting for the perfect excuse to jump on his dick. You didn't have to think twice about it, did you? I mean shit, you probably didn't even consider doing it with someone else to get your revenge on me — or whatever it was that you were trying to do. As soon as you had reason enough to do it, you were more than ready, I bet."

I hesitated for a second, my previous courage trembling ever so slightly. "I wasn't waiting for an excuse," I managed to say, suddenly no longer able to face him directly.

"Whatever helps you sleep at night."

Jacob was bringing the guilt I had been battling all day back to the surface, and I didn't know how to argue against it. A part of me knew that my lust for Edward had not come out of thin air and that I had been fighting against it pretty much since we first met. But I also kept it to myself. A dirty secret, never to see the light of the day — well, the last part was no longer true, clearly.

Frightened, but committed to understanding myself, I dug deeper into my subconscious, into the chambers I had kept locked for the longest time. I thought about the exact moment when my undivided attention for Jacob started to get splintered, knowing that the answer coincided with my first memories of Edward. I met him soon after Jacob and I moved to Chicago, when living away from home started to be a lot more different than what I was used to.

Back in Forks, it felt as if Jacob and I had more things to bond over. There was a time when I thought it couldn't possibly get better than our long walks on the beach, our quiet evenings together, or the bonfires with his family. It was almost bittersweet to acknowledge that I had been right all along. Our life in Forks had been the peak of our relationship. Chicago had been a mutual dream for both of us, but it was also the place where we started to grow in slightly different directions. The change had been subtle enough to pass me by, but now that we were past the point of no return, it was all so clear. At some point, we traded our evenings in and the bonfires for late nights out and parties. And I went along with it, at least for a while. I didn't mind the parties, because I could see how happy they made Jacob. But when these outings became the norm, I started to get tired. Then more and more tired, each time he prioritized entertaining his new-found group of college friends over us. Unsurprisingly, tiredness translated into futile fights.

When Edward came along, my world shifted. It was all too easy to get lost in him, because it was as if he was a long-lost part of me, that I only got to find later in life. He completed me during a time when my inner equilibrium was in shambles, and there was no going back from that. And Jacob went along with it, especially when he went away to study in London for a semester, most likely aware that I needed a friend more than ever. But as much peace Edward brought into my life, he also turned my feelings upside down. Because it was one thing to meet someone whose soul seemed to be made from the same fabric as yours and become best friends. But quite another to also crave every single inch of them, with a desire so intense, so heavy, it was frightening to confront it directly, instead of keeping it buried. In the end, the only thing I managed to achieve by pretending my lust wasn't there was just digging a grave of my own making.

I felt like a fraud for not being honest — with myself, but also with Jacob — earlier. Because in my stubbornness to keep our relationship going long past its due date, I had hurt far too many people in the process, forgetting that sometimes, high school romances didn't always translate into fruitful lifelong commitments.

Sometimes, they were just lessons waiting to be learned.

"So that's it?"Jacob huffed, and I was surprised to discover that my anger was just a frail ghost of its previous self. I looked at him, accepting reality for the first time. "You're not even trying to contradict me?"

"No."

"How so?"

"Because I was in the wrong too. Not to the same extent, clearly, but… still in the wrong." I was surprised by the unusual calm I felt, all of a sudden. "At one point or another, I think… I think I started falling out of love. But I was a little too naive to acknowledge what it was. And I realize it wasn't fair to either of us, but… what you did wasn't fair either. We were both walking a fragile line. You were the first to really cross it, and I followed as soon as I saw how far over the line you were. Almost like you set me free."

"Bella, come on, I—"

"No, let's not kid ourselves. I mean, I wasn't the only one falling out of love. Cheating was never the answer, but… things changed long ago, whether you want to admit it or not. They were never really the same after Forks. But I don't know, at least…" I hesitated, realizing what I was about to say. "At least now we both have to face the obvious."

"And that is?"

There was a brief moment of silence — not like the calm before the storm, more like the quiet impassibility that lingers after the clouds had passed. I savoured it, surprised by how good it felt.

"We should break up," I said, moments later, sensing the proverbial weight getting off my chest. "Honestly, we should have done it before we got to where we are now."

"Just like that." It wasn't a question, but I still felt inclined to reply.

"Just like that," I confirmed. "It's not like we had anything to fight for at this point, anyway."

"And if I said I'm sorry?"

"I think we're past the point when apologies would mean something."

Jacob didn't argue against my reason, and there was a time, far away in the past, when it would have broken me to see the quiet resignation in his posture. But right now, it made me grateful. Sometimes, people spend decades wasting away in the wrong relationships — with that in mind, the three years I had with Jacob were barely a grain of sand.

Our conversation didn't stretch much further after that. There was nothing else to add, so when Jacob started packing the things he had left at my place over the years, I quietly made my way to the bedroom, eager for the day to end and all troubles to perish. Yet when I heard him closing the door behind him and I was left in the darkness, I knew that my troubles were far from over.

Because as I was trying to fall asleep, all I could see were green eyes staring me down.

Not with love, but with dismay.

Well, things aren't looking up... yet ;).

But at least Bella has finally faced how she really feels about Edward.

If you've got any thoughts on this chapter, I'd love to read and respond to them!

Stay safe and happy!