chapter iii

-

The wedding reception was in Forks; the backyard of the Cullen's house, to be specific. Both Bella's mother and father were there, exchanging cordial comments and studiously not acknowledging the presence of Renee's new husband, who was hanging off her arm awkwardly.

It was an overcast day, but luckily it did not rain, so they held the reception outside. Bella looked beautiful, glowing in her dress, but when the cameras came out her smile diminished a bit.

"Do I look okay?" she asked anxiously.

Edward had never been so happy. "You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," he said, struggling to put it into words. "I can't believe I'm lucky enough to be married to you."

With that, her smile returned full-force, and it almost hurt, how much Edward loved her at that moment. "I love you, too," she said, and when the cameras clicked, she wasn't even looking at them.

"Want to see the Grand Canyon?" Jacob asks.

Edward's seen bits and pieces on the canyon in his travels across the continent, and after the third or fourth visit, it had stopped being quite so exciting.

"Okay," he says anyways, and Jacob's face lights up, unabashedly happy. Edward's seen that expression before, on someone else's face, but it takes him a moment to place it.

-

Edward covers just about every inch of skin he can with clothing and his skin with a cheap concealer bought at a massive superstore that doesn't quite manage to completely disguise the sparkle his hands and face when they step out into the sun.

"People will notice," he warns Jacob.

"Who cares? Let's go see the canyon," Jacob says, and hops out of the car.

Edward glares at him and mutters, "This is a bad idea."

He follows him anyways.

They walk over to the roped-off edge of the canyon together. Their shoulders bump, and Jacob grins when Edward looks up at him. "Aren't you glad that you're just sparkly and not exploding into a pile of ashes?" Jacob says cheerfully.

Edward glares, but it's less effective when he feels a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Yeah, I'll do that just as soon as I turn into a bat and sleep in a coffin."

"Hey, I watched Dracula. I know all your secrets, vampire."

"You don't know anything," Edward says, and Jacob is surprised into a bark of laughter. He knocks Edward's shoulder again, and Edward elbows him in the ribs. Jacob laughs again.

The canyon couldn't have been more different from the constant drizzle of Forks. The storm has left behind a late-blooming mass of greenery, and the air smells like baked earth and sage, the sun hanging golden and hot in the sky. Edward tips back his face to catch the sun.

It's September, the off-season for tourism, so the area is relatively quiet. Edward squints out across the canyon from under his hat. It's as beautiful as he remembers it, and it's the beauty of something filled with life. It makes Edward edgy.

"Can we go now?" he asks.

"No," Jacob says, leaning against the fence and peering over the edge of the canyon. "Hey, do you see any rangers around?"

"There's a few tourists standing over there," Edward says without looking. "What are you going to do?"

"A little climbing," Jacob replies, grinning.

Edward frowns. "We need to get to Phoenix."

"It'll only take a minute. C'mon. It'll be fun."

It's a really nice day. Edward can't remember the last time he went running for his own enjoyment rather than that of his enemies.

"After you," he says, and waits until Jacob drops off the cliff before jumping over the fence in his path.

-

"Tell me that wasn't fun," Jacob says when they get back to the car six hours later, smelling more strongly of werewolf then he has in weeks from his recent transformation. He leans against the hood of the car. "Go ahead. Tell me how we're running late. I'll wait."

Ducking his head, Edward allows a small smile to surface on his face. "We are late," he points out. "But…I had a good time."

Jacob grins at Edward and shakes his head, looking back out across the canyon.

Even in the dark, Edward can still see it clearly, and in repose the landscape is just a beautiful as it was under the sun. The air is still warm from the traces of daylight.

"It was good to get out of the car," Edward says.

He's standing in front of Jacob, and with the werewolf leaning on the hood of the car, they're almost exactly the same height. Edward wonders how well they would be matched in a fight, vampire against werewolf, alive or dead; if they would end up killing each other or if they would refuse to fight.

Something in Jacob's eyes changes. "Hey," he says. "C'mere."

"Why?" Edward asks, staying where he is.

"Come here," Jacob insists, reaching out and grabbing the bottom of his shirt, pulling him forwards.

Edward shuffles forward with uncharacteristic gawkiness. Their knees are almost touching. "What?" he repeats, defensively, because Jacob is still looking at him with that odd expression, one that is slowly twisting him up in a feeling that could be perpendicular to uneasiness.

Jacob reaches up and touches him lightly on the jaw. His fingers are hard and rough with calluses.

Edward stands perfectly still. "What are you doing?" he asks.

For a second, he thinks Jacob is going to kiss him, because he cups his hand around Edward's cheek and tilts his jaw up. Then the expression in Jacob's eyes change, and his thoughts dissolve into haywire static, back to a shifting mess of confusion and wariness that Edward can't read, even if he tried. He drops his hand.

"Nothing. Come on, we're running late."

Edward steps back, and Jacob pushes himself off the hood of the car and walks around to the passenger door, avoiding Edward's gaze.

The Volvo is no longer the shiny silver it used to be, and has faded to a dull grey underneath the coat of dust and the nicks from rocks on the road, the dent where Jacob punched it several weeks ago. Something's up with the suspension, too, and the car rocks when Jacob drops himself in and closes the door hard.

It doesn't matter. Edward has other cars.

He gets into the car, too, and turns the keys in the ignition. The engine rumbles to life, and he pulls out of the parking lot and onto the highway, where a few other cars are only red taillights speeding away into the twilight. The car chews up the road.

Stupid vampire, Jacob thinks, arms folded. Stupid pack of vampires.

Why did you do that? Edward thinks back, shifting the car into fifth and swooping around a slow-moving sedan. Jacob doesn't answer, mentally or verbally, just sits there, resolutely looking straight ahead.

"We'll be in Phoenix in a few hours," Edward says.

Jacob nods once, the muscle in his jaw flexing.

Over the past few weeks, somehow, despite their history of mutual hatred, they've somehow managed to slip into something that is only a few shades off friendship. Edward doesn't know how it happened, but he's surprisingly reluctant to let it go. Somehow, this werewolf had become someone important to him.

"Are you all right?" Edward asks.

Jacob grunts, then reaches out to turn on the car radio. Johnny Cash's wavering old voice fills the car.

And you can have it all, my empire of dirt. I will let you down. I will get you hurt…

The Volvo speeds on through the night.

-

They go on.

-

The sun isn't up yet, but the sky is growing lighter over the western horizon. Jacob is asleep in the passenger seat. If Edward turns his head, he could see Jacob's face, slack and peaceful with sleep, fingers curled into his worn gray shirt, eyes flickering underneath the lids.

Edward doesn't look at him. Edward stares straight ahead at the road.

After all that he and Bella have been through, the pain and the love and the joy and the tears and the blood; after all that, he hadn't thought there was room left within him for another person; he hadn't thought it would be Jacob Black, of all people.

But then again, Edward and Jacob had shared Bella's love for several years now. It wasn't so strange that they'd share themselves, too.

-

They reach Phoenix in the dusty, scorched afternoon, the sun high in the blue, blue sky.

-

Bella's mother lives in the bowl of valley, deep within the acres of suburbia around the downtown, in a small pink stucco house with a small pink garden out front.

Renee doesn't smile as brightly as she once did, and when she pours them both a glass of iced tea her movements are slow and halting. She studies Edward with sad, wrinkled eyes.

"You look like you haven't aged a day since you married her," she says.

Jacob looks out the window, sunbeams playing across the tanned skin of his throat and collar, and takes a sip of his iced tea. Edward copies the gesture, though he know it'll just lead to him crouching on the side of the road later, trying to retch up the sickly sweet drink from his stomach.

Renee sighs. Her face was weathered with laugh lines when Edward had last seen her at the wedding, but now furrows were etched across her forehead, around her nostrils and lips and eyes, spreading down in webs of failing skin, yet another person he was responsible to for causing pain.

"I haven't seen her," she says. "I wish I had, but…you don't know where she is?"

Jacob and Edward exchange a glance. "We had a fight," Edward says slowly. "I thought she'd come down here, but I suppose that's not the case if she hasn't come to visit you."

Renee encircles her own glass of tea with shaky fingers. Even her hands show signs of aging, with veins rising from the soft skin and knuckles thickening with an onset of arthritis. "No," she says again. "I haven't seen her. She might have gone to Jacksonville, I live there for most of the year now. My husband, Phil, he plays for the Suns there, you might have seen him play on the television, baseball, you know…"

She looks so much like Bella, Jacob thinks. This is how Bella would've looked, if I was strong enough to put an end to her obsession with immortality.

Renee looks at Jacob. "You're Quileute, aren't you? You looks like Billy."

Jacob nods.

"You weren't at the wedding," she says. "I would've remembered. You weren't there. I thought Bella told me you two were close friends."

"We were," Jacob says, looking down at the table, his big hands folded across the cheap fake wood. "I…we haven't seen each other in a while. I want to talk to her again."

With a sigh, Renee pushes her hair away from her face, looking at Edward again. "Bella's a good girl. She wouldn't hurt anybody."

Both Edward and Jacob look away from her now, studying the beige walls, the floral pillows on the couch, sitting in silence.

Renee says, "You and Bella were such a beautiful couple. It's too bad it was raining that day during the ceremony, or else it would have been the perfect wedding. You loved her so much…" Her voice trails off wistfully.

Edward clears his throat. "I still do."

He wishes he was lying.

-

After they leave Renee's house, they go into the underground parking lot where they left the Volvo and lean against the steel flanks of the car. Jacob is quiet, pulling loose threads off his shirt under the bright fluorescent lights.

He's thinking rapidly, not too coherently, and words emerge from the radio static of his mind in tattered pieces, more broad concepts then fully rendered syllables and vowels, a torrent of love hate death lies family strangers sunlight night.

Feeling oddly uneasy, Edward retreats back into his own mind.

"How can you be in love with someone you hate?" Jacob asks. He sounds like he's trying to be quiet, but the concrete walls and pillars pick up his voice, amplifies it back at them, and the werewolf winces. "I mean," he says, even quieter, "You want to kill her, right? How can you still love her?"

Edward makes no effort to disguise his voice, to mask the pain in it, dull it down so it doesn't echo across the empty grey space. "I don't fucking know anything about love," he says.

Jacob's eyes widen in surprise. "Edward…" he begins.

For the first time in a long time, Edward feels cold; but when he wraps his arms around his chest, he feels nothing but the hollow space where his heart used to beat. "I don't understand love," he repeats in a whisper. If he had anything else in his body other then frozen, dead organs he would have started crying. He's not even granted that escape.

Jacob reaches out and pulls Edward over, wrapping his arms around his back, a hand to his shoulder, a hand to his hip, pressing them together. His chin nudges against the top of Edward's head when he speaks.

"It'll be okay," he says. "It'll be okay."

Standing lifelessly in Jacob's grip, Edward can feel the heat from his body, the overly-quick pulse of his blood, the way he smells putrid, like werewolf and youth.

"It won't," Edward says, but he reaches up anyways, reaches up to hold onto Jacob's broad shoulders and rest his forehead against Jacob's collarbone, breathing in the smell of his skin again, and again, and again.

-

The two of them stay in another nondescript motel, and sitting on the bedspread, Edward lets his mind go by increments, searching for the blank spot that is Bella in the millions of thoughts.

In a way it's almost comforting. For now, he's not alone.

Somewhere out there, someone is getting their happy ending.

Edward digs his toes into the carpet and searches for the blank spot.

-

When he finally resurfaces, Jacob is sitting on the bed beside him, talking on Edward's cell phone.

"He's been just sitting here for a while, he was like this when I got in. I don't know. I think he's looking for Bella with his mind powers or something," Jacob says, shifting the phone to his other hand and reaching down to pull at the laces of his dusty shoes. "No, I didn't get her scent anywhere. We're trying." Pause. "Are you sure your premonition was right?" Edward can hear Alice's voice on the other end of the phone, berating Jacob about the intricacies of the future, and has to fight down an unexpected smile. "All right, I'm sorry I asked. Any other possible futures she's running around in?"

Edward nudges him in the side, and Jacob turns to look at him, grins briefly, and says into the phone, "Edward's back from the metaphysical realm or wherever the fuck he was, want to yell at him for a while?" Pause. "Okay. Take care."

Alice is talking when Edward puts the cell to his ear. "…There was also something in Italy, I think, but she decided not to do that because I'm not getting any more flashes there, and I'm half-sure she's in Arizona, so you two should keep watching her mother…"

"Alice," Edward says.

She pauses. "Hello," she replies, somewhat sheepishly, and in the background, Edward can hear Jasper talking to Esme. His throat tightens for an instant. "Jacob tells me you're not having any luck finding Bella in Phoenix."

"It's no use looking for her mentally," Edward says wearily. "I've looked through everybody's minds in the city, and either I just can't find her or she's not here."

"I might have been wrong," Alice admits. "I'm getting flashes of her from all over the world, now, but the clearest visions are from Arizona. I'll keep looking, though. How are you doing?"

"I'm fine." Edward watches Jacob watch the television, propped up on his elbows, too-sharp eyes flickering from particle to particle on the cheap set. "Do you remember that vision you had in New York, Alice?"

For a few seconds, there's only silence on the other end.

"I had a lot of visions in New York," she replies carefully.

Arms and legs twined together, dark and light...

Edward ignores her hesitation, because she knows which vision he's talking about, she has to, and continues, "I was just wondering what would happen when the vision comes true."

Alice inhales sharply. Edward waits, staring at the unmoving clock, while the host on the new show talks about the war on the television. He can hear Jacob's breathing.

"Has it?" she asks, so softly he barely hears her.

"No."

The conversation breaks for a long minute. Eventually, Alice sighs, and says slowly, "I can't predict the future that well, Edward. Anything could happen."

"But…I don't want…I don't want to hurt any more people," he replies, digging his fingers into the bedspread and feeling the cheap fabric give away beneath his fingernails. "I don't want to hurt him."

Jacob glances over at him, eyebrows raised in question.

"That's part of life," Alice says gently. "I'm not the person you should be asking about this, Edward."

He forces out the words, sharp and raw in his throat. "Who do I talk about this to, then? You can predict the future, you should tell me if I'm going to hurt him."

"I can't give you that," Alice says. She's quiet, subdued, and somewhere in the background Jasper is asking her what's wrong. "I've got to go, but remember that I love you. Call me again if you need anything."

Edward stays on the empty phone until the dial tone begins beeping in his ear.

"What was that about?" Jacob asks, sitting up on the other bed and cocking his head to the side.

Edward drops the phone on the bedside table, staring down at his feet, wondering if he should see the ground giving away below them instead of only feeling numb. "It's nothing," he mumbles.

Jacob studies him for a moment. "Okay," he says, doubtfully, but turns back to the television set anyways.

Edward looks towards it too, but all he can see are the tiny, wavy dots of green and red that make up the screen, not the full picture.

-

If he was going to verbalize the way he felt, sick and twisted on the inside, he'd explain to the person—though he doesn't know who, and all his mind provides is his own reflection—he'd explain to them that he'd always expected it to be poetic. But it's not. It's raw and painful, too blunt for nuances, and most of all, it just hurts.

In his mind, the shadow of himself nods, and Edward tries to deny the realization that's he's not really heartbroken over Bella, he's heartbroken over what he has become, and how he has destroyed them both.

-

It's late at night, the sky tinted with orange from the streetlights, and Jacob is not asleep. He's pretending to be, but Edward knows the difference in his breathing from too many hours spent awake and listening to his quiet workings of his lungs. Edward doesn't try to read Jacob's mind, but it nags at him, how Jacob is still thinking about something in the early, early hours of the morning.

The clock doesn't change. Edward waits.

"You're awake, aren't you," he says finally.

He can feel Jacob tense beside him.

"I know that you're not sleeping. What's wrong?"

After a moment, Jacob rolls over, propping his head up on one hand and studying Edward with opaque eyes. "Can't you see inside my head?" he replies.

It should sound more scathing than it is, but once again, the darkness and the quiet are working against him, leeching out the bite in the words and leaving behind only resignation.

Edward lets his eyelids flutter close, and reaches out to Jacob's mind. Tonight, the usual barriers aren't up, and tendrils of their thoughts connect.

So fucking sad. I miss Bella, miss the old times. I can see right through you, you know, I know who you are. I want the truth. I want a new life. I want you.

An image of the two of them, Edward's pupils blown wide open, mouth slick with spit, them kissing, them fucking...

Edward tears himself away, so forcefully he ends up physically pushing himself back, coming close to the edge of the bed, fingers tearing into the stiff sheets. Jacob just watches him.

"You can't want that," Edward whispers, horrified.

Jacob keeps looking straight at him, like he can do what he thinks he can and see right through Edward. Maybe he does. "Why not?" he asks.

"Because you can't," Edward says, voice rising almost hysterically. "You, of all people, shouldn't want that."

"You've got something against fags?" Jacob says flatly, but his expression has turned faintly menacing.

It's not a new thought to Edward, homophobia—he'd lived in a time when sodomy was punished by death—but, after all the years he'd spent alone in his bed and uninterested in the company of women, he'd begun to wonder. A century's worth of self-reflection was enough to take care of any lingering doubts about his bisexuality. "It's not that," he says.

"Then why not?"

Edward swallows dryly."Because I'll hurt you," he rasps. "All I'll do is cause you pain."

"As much as you don't like to admit it, we are equals," Jacob retorts. "We're complete opposites, but we're equal. You can't hurt me any more than I'll let you."

Edward shakes his head. "I don't want to hurt you at all."

"Where did you think this was going, Edward? Why would you let it go this far if you didn't want it?"

Edward doesn't have an answer to that.

With a click, the air condition turns on, and the polyester curtain sway in faint breeze from outside the window. Jacob reaches out, touches Edward's cheek.

Edward doesn't say no. He doesn't push Jacob away. He doesn't do anything when Jacob pulls him forward and kisses him chastely, mouth and eyes closed, flat and peaceful in the musty motel room air.

-

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