A/N: Okay, so I got a quicker update up, now you need to read and review. There isn't really much to say about this chapter, I'm going to try my hardest so here you go, please don't hate me if you think I did it wrong...

A/N: Alright, I redid this chapter because like I said in the old version-I hated the way that one turned out! I was thinking about just going on to the next scene, but I could not get how crappy that chapter was so I had to re-do it, otherwise, it would have drove me nuts and probably lead me to ruin the kiss scene, so I tried to use everyone's constructive criticism and make it a better chapter. Please read and review! It's the only way I can make this better! Team work people!!

Enjoy!

WAKE UP!

What was I going to say? I could not just admit to her that I had tried to find Victoria. That I had tried and failed to make her pay for what James had done to my Bella. So I lied, some what. "Nothing terribly exciting."

It was not a complete lie because it really had not been exciting. It had been nerve racking. Also, it had been depressing. I had been trying to occupy my mind with things other than Bella. I had told her that my kind was easily distracted, and that had been a lie. I knew the moment the words left my lips that I would not be able to just keep myself from thinking about her, not without a struggle. Everytime I thought about it I almost grinned inwardly at the irony. I had been trying to avenge the one thing I wanted to distract myself from, therefore just reminding myself of Bella every single moment.

"Of course not," she mumbled. Uh-oh, maybe she did not believe my semi-lie. I did not want to tell her about tracking Victoria, she had been through more than enough in the last couple of days, and worrying about what I had done would not benefit her in any way. I wanted to just leave it at that and move on to another subject, but in the back of my mind, the look on her gorgeous face and the tone of her voice, nagged to know why that was her response.

"Why are you making that face?" I asked.

"Well..." She pursed her lips, debating it looked like. I didn't want her to make that face either, it hid her rosy, full lips, and I loved looking at them. "If you were, after all, just a dream, that's exactly the kind of thing you would say. My imagination must be used up."

We were back to square one with the whole 'I'm dreaming' thing again. Why did I have to be so inquisitive about her reaction? I should have just changed the subject when I had had the chance. I sighed, I could have gotten away with my answer if I had not questioned her about her response, now I had to tell her, I could not have her thinking she was dreaming this all up. "If I tell you, will you finally believe that you're not having a nightmare?"

"Nightmare!" She repeated my word with emphasized scorn. I was not about to start up another argument like the previous Heaven/Hell one, it was bad enough I had started up the 'I'm dreaming' one, so I waited for her to answer me. I didn't have to read her mind to know she was going to say yes, but maybe I would get lucky and she would let me off the hook...not likely, but a guy could hope, right? "Maybe," she said. "If you tell me."

It was so hard to tell her what I had been doing. I really did not want to bring up Victoria at this time, I wanted to save it for another day, when things had calmed down. "I was..." I wanted to wait before telling her, life was too stressful for my angel right now. I would tell her the whole truth at a later date, so I came up with another semi-lie. "Hunting." Tracking and hunting were pretty similar, so it worked-in my mind atleast.

"Is that the best you can do?" Shoot, I was caught again. Perhaps I could work with my semi-lie and twist it so I did not look like a liar. The last thing I wanted was for my Bella to not trust me, but then again I didn't know if she did as of right now or not, after what I had done to her.

I searched for words in my head to make this work. "I wasn't hunting for food..." Think, think, think. I scrambled for words and then I decided to just be honest. As much as I wanted her to not have to worry about this, I did not see how fibbing about it would help either. "I was actually trying my hand at..." I hoped she would take this well. Then again, I did not have to tell her what I had been tracking, so I decided to be vague. "Tracking." Now all I had to do was keep her from knowing just exactly who I had been tracking. I needed to distract her. "I'm not very good at it."

She seemed intrigued by this. She probably was shocked to realize there was something that I wasn't great at. I never did understand why she thought I was the good at everything. "What were you tracking?" she asked.

That Bella of mine, always asking the questions I hoped she would not. "Nothing of consequence." That too, was the truth. By tracking Victoria, I had not gotten any results. It had been a waste of my time-not that there wasn't plenty of that to go around-and mainly had hurt the most important person in my life.

"I don't understand." Of course she would not understand, I barely understood what I was saying. I knew she was not going to fully understand it until she knew who I had been tracking.

"I-" I took a deep breath. I was just causing my Bella more stress by confusing her. She needed to know the truth, the truth about how sorry I was and how I would never leave her again. The truth about how I really had had no idea how big of a threat Victoria was. The truth about how every single moment I had been gone had been pure torture, and how it had been a worthless attempt on my part.

I was not going to hold back anything now, she needed to know. "I owe you an apology." That was an understatement. After seeing how she had responded to me leaving her, that was far from the truth, and I needed to correct that. "No, of course I owe you much, much more than that." We could get into specifics of just what exactly I owed her later, but now I needed to get all of this out. "But you have to know that I had no idea." My words were flowing so fast, it was hard to understand myself, and as much as I wanted to slow down so she could hear every bit of what I had to say, my body wouldn't allow it. It just kept pouring out of my mouth. "I didn't realize the mess I was leaving behind." Another understatement, even the word disaster would be an understatement for this case. "I thought it was safe for you here. So safe." This was true, not very brilliant on my part, but true. "I had no idea that Victoria," I practically growled at the sound of her name. "Would come back. I'll admit, when I saw her that one time, I was paying much more attention to James's thoughts. But I just didn't see that she had this kind of response in her. That she even had such a tie to him." I recalled back to that day in the meadow. Everything had been so perfect then, the scent of Bella had been so intoxicating that day. I should have read Victoria's thoughts deeper than I had. But James had been the leader, therefore the biggest threat, and when he reacted to Bella's smell the way he did, it had been like everyone else had disappeared and it was just me, Bella and James. "I think I realize why now-she was so sure of him, the thought of him failing never occurred to her. It was her overconfidence that clouded her feeling about him-that kept me from seeing the depth of them, the bond there."

I felt like I was getting sidetracked from my main point, and I needed to get back on track. "Not that there's any excuse for what I left you to face." It was all pouring out, no lies, just the cold hard truth. "When I heard what you told Alice-what she saw herself-when I realized that you had put your life in the hands of werewolves, immature, volatile, the worst thing out there besides Victoria herself," I shuddered-there was that name again. I took the opportunity to think, and slow down for a minute. "Please know that I had no idea of any of this. I feel sick, sick to my core, even now, when I can see and feel you safe in my arms. I am the most miserable excuse for-"

"Stop," she cut me short. I really did feel sick, and I hurt so badly. I could not express how much she meant to me and how horrible I was for leaving for her. And why had she stopped me? Did she not want to hear what I had to say? I need to know her thoughts, the silence from where her mind should have been was driving me insane!

"Edward," she said with almost a pained tone to her voice. "This has to stop now. You can't think about things that way. You can't let this...this guilt...rule your life. You can't take responsibility for the things that happen to me here. None of it is your fault, it's just part of how life is for me. So, if I trip in front of a bus or whatever it is next time, you have to realize that it's not your job to take the blame." I was confused, what was she trying to get at, because no matter what she said it did not change the fact that I could not live without her. "You can't just go running off to Italy because you feel bad that you didn't save me. Even if I had jumped off that cliff to die, that would have been my choice, and not your fault." Ha, silly Bella, that's not why I went to the Volturi, I thought you knew that? "I know it's your...your nature to shoulder the blame for everything, but you really can't let that make you go to such extremes! It's very irresponsible-think of Esme and Carlisle and-" She stopped to catch her breath. She was right, it had been irresponsible of me, but Carlisle and Esme were not what kept me existing, Bella was, and if she was gone, there really was nothing to stay for. I love Carlisle and Esme, and the rest of the family to death, but Bella was my everything, I thought I had made that clear.

"Isabella Marie Swan," I whispered, I still couldn't believe what I was hearing, it almost made me mad that she had not listened to what I had told her about not existing without her. "Do you believe that I asked the Volturi to kill me because I felt guilty?"

Her face settled with a look of incomprehension. That was obviously what she had been believing, I couldn't read her mind, but her face said it all. "Didn't you?"

Her question wasn't very specific, I did not want her to think that I had not felt guilty, because I had. When Rosalie had told me about Bella's "death" it had felt like someone had ripped my heart to pieces. All I could think was that I should not have left, and that maybe if I hadn't left then perhaps she would not have died. At that moment I could not find any sensible reason for leaving her in the first place. "Feel guilty? Intensely so. More than you can comprehend." All I had wanted to do was tear my own self apart and light the pieces on fire myself. I was not going to tell her that though, especially not after how she had just reacted about the whole Volturi incident.

That must not have been exactly what she had been talking about. "Then...what are you saying? I don't understand."

I was going to have to clear this all up. "Bella, I went to the Volturi because I thought you were dead." I started to soften up just at the thought of Bella lifeless. It started making me feel even sicker. It brought up the whole changing her subject. I didn't want her to die, I wanted her to stay with me for forever but the only way that could happen, the only way to keep her for forever, would be to change her. But I couldn't take her soul, dooming her to this hell, it would be too selfish of me. There I was getting sidetracked again, that was another topic for another time. She needed to know why I had gone to the Volturi. "Even if I'd had no hand in your death." There is was again. Bella. Dead. It made me shutter to think about it. "Even if it wasn't my fault, I would have gone to Italy. Obviously, I should have been more careful-I should have spoken to Alice directly, rather than accepting it secondhand from Rosalie. But really, what was I supposed to think when the boy said Charlie was at the funeral? What are the odds?" Then it hit me.

"The odds...," I muttered again. My mind flashed back to watching Romeo and Juliet with Bella.

"You know, I've never had much patience with Romeo."

"What's wrong with Romeo?" she had asked, offended.

"Well, first of all, he's in love with this Rosaline-don't you think that makes him seem a little fickle? And then, a few minutes after their wedding, he kills Juliet's cousin. That's not very brilliant. Mistake after mistake. Could he have destroyed his own happiness any more thoroughly?"

I am such a hypocrite. "The odds are always stacked against us. Mistake after mistake. I'll never criticize Romeo again." I had criticized Romeo over and over, but really I had done the exact same thing, tore apart me and Bella myself, mistake after mistake, the biggest one being actually leaving her.

"But I still don't understand," she said. "That's my whole point. So what?"

What? Now I was the one who did not understand. "Excuse me?"

"So what if I was dead?"

She obviously did not remember what I had told her about not being able to go on without her. "Don't you remember anything I told you before?"

"I remember everything you told me," she said with added emphasize on everything. She must be talking about our talk in the woods before I left. I was not talking about my lies that I had told her that day.

I brushed her lower lip lightly with the tips of my fingers. The heat was simply amazing. I wished that it was my lips touching hers, not my fingers. Somehow touching her made her scent even stronger. "Bella, you seem to be under a misapprehension." I closed my eyes. I did not even realize that I had started shaking my head, until I opened my eyes again. I hated discussing these types of things with her, the thought of Bella not existing put an awful feeling inside of me, why couldn't she grasp that concept? "I thought I'd explained it clearly before. Bella I can't live in a world where you don't exist."

"I am..." She seemed to search for the right word until she settled on one that fit what she felt. I wanted to know what she was going to say, yet again, it was another time I begged inwardly to hear her thoughts. I got the same answer I always got: nothing. It felt like an eternity before she finally came up with one "Confused"

I gazed deep into her eyes, still trying to find the voice to her mind. I needed to know what was going on in there, why she was confused. Perhaps she was still talking about our conversation in the woods. I needed to tell her it was all a bunch of lies. "I'm a good liar, Bella, I have to be."

She froze and held her breath. She looked like she was about to shut down, so I shook her shoulder, trying to snap her out of it. That didn't come out the way I had wanted it to, I had been talking about the lies in the woods. I had to think of a new approach to this. "Let me finish! I'm a good liar, but still, for you to believe me so quickly." I winced just recalling the look on her face. She had looked so...so numb, she had believed me, I knew that much. "That was...excruciating."

She still sat frozen. Bella, please believe me! I could not understand why this was so hard for her to believe. I was pouring everything out and she still wasn't responding...

"When we were in the forest, when I was telling you goodbye," I continued, still staring at her intently. She appeared as though she was struggling internally-what was going on in her head?? I needed her to talk to me, to respond, to blink, anything! It scared me the way she was acting, if I hadn't been able to hear her heart beating, I would have questioned whether or not she was breathing.

"You weren't going to let go," I whispered. I saw her face in my head again, it was so painful. "I could see that. I didn't want to do it"-if only she knew how true it was, I only did it to protect her, I thought it was the right thing to do. I need her to believe me-"it felt like it would kill me to do it-but I knew that if I couldn't convince you that I didn't love you anymore, it would just take you that much longer to get on with your life."-Bella, please, I did not want you to suffer, please believe me-"I hoped that, if you thought I'd moved on, so would you."

"A clean break," she whispered. Finally! She was responding, understanding, this was good, progress is good.

"Exactly. But I never imagined it would be so easy to do! I thought it would be next to impossible-that you would be so sure of the truth that I would have to lie through my teeth for hours to even plant the seed of doubt in your head. I lied, and I'm so sorry-sorry because I hurt you, sorry because it was a worthless effort. Sorry that I couldn't protect you from what I am. I lied to save you, and it didn't work. I'm sorry." Something was still nagging at the back of my mind, I needed to ask her, I needed to know...

"But how could you believe me? After all the thousand times I've told you I love you, how could you let one word break your faith in me?" I could not count the number of times I told her I loved her, that is why I could not figure out how she had let one word negate all those countless times.

She didn't reply. I assumed from shock from what I had said. I wanted to know the answer, no, I needed to know. "I could see it in your eyes, that you honestly believed that I didn't want you anymore. The most absurd, ridiculous concept-as if there were any way that I could exist without needing you!"

She still was not moving, so I shook her shoulder again. What was wrong with her? Did she want me to leave? Was I upsetting her? Why wouldn't she talk to me?? "Bella," I sighed. "Really what were you thinking!"

At that she began to cry. One moment she is frozen, looking like she's incapable of moving ever again, and the next she is crying! That's Bella for you, totally unpredictable. That was something about her that I loved, though. I loved everything about my Bella, but not being able to hear her mind always made her a surprise and inconsistent.

"I knew it," she sobbed. "I knew I was dreaming."

Back to that?? "You're impossible," I said with a laugh that was supposed to come out more comforting than it did. We couldn't get back on that argument-again. "How can I put this so that you'll believe me?"-I'd just have to try the most simple explanation-"You're not asleep, and you're not dead. I'm here, and I love you. I have always loved you, and I will always love you. I was thinking of you, seeing your face in my mind, every second that I was away. When I told you that I didn't want you, it was the very blackest kind of blasphemy." I had just pour my heart out to her, I did not know what else to tell her, I had just told her the truth several times, and I was beginning to think I might need to try different languages soon to get her to understand.

She continued to cry and just shook her head. I was beginning to lose all hope that I could get this through her head. "You don't believe me, do you?" I whispered. It hurt me that she would not believe me. "Why can you believe the lie, but not the truth?"

"It never made sense for you to love me," her voice broke twice. "I always knew that." It almost knocked the wind out of me. I'd had enough, this was enough, I was going to get this through her head once and for all. My eyes narrowed, and I clenched my jaw.

"I'll prove you're awake," I promised her. I knew exactly what to do. If my words were not going to make her see, then I would use my body. I locked her face in between my hands, and refused to let go, even when she tried to turn her head. I almost smiled inwardly, this way I would get her to come to her senses, and I would steal away a small pleasure from her lips. I had begun to bring my face to hers when she spoke.

"Please don't," she whispered. I obeyed by stopping, but did not pull away. I was so close, she smelled so good, I wanted her so badly. My lips had to have been a half an inch away from hers, the heat radiating off of her lips was so warm and inviting. I needed to pull myself together and stay on task.

"Why not?" I demanded. I intentionally breathed right on her. I knew perfectly well the effects it had on her. She used to tell me how good I smelled and how my scent made her head swim, perhaps it was like how she smelled to me.

"When I wake up-" There was that dreaming stuff again, I went to argue with her but she caught her mistake and tried to fix it. "Okay, forget that one-when you leave again, it's going to be hard enough without this, too."

I pulled back, not a whole lot though, only about an inch, and stared at her. I needed to clear this up now. I was not going to leave her, and I wanted to know, did she want me to? Did she move on, like I planned for her to? Or had I hurt her so much that she could no longer trust me?

"Yesterday, when I would touch you, you were so...hesitant, so careful, and yet still the same. I need to know why. Is it because I'm too late? Because I've hurt you too much? Because you have moved on, as I meant for you to? That would be...quite fair. I won't contest your decision. So don't try to spare my feelings, please-just tell me now whether or not you can still love me, after everything I've done to you. Can you?" I whispered. Please say 'yes' please, please, please...

"What kind of idiotic question is that?" Don't change the subject on me, Bella, I need to know.

"Just answer it. Please." It was a moment of truth. I was not quite sure if I had been completely honest with her, because I was not sure whether or not I would contest her decision to love someone else. Actually, I was fairly sure I would, but that was besides the point. I was riding on the hope that she would say 'yes, I can still love you'.

She gave me a dark look. Where did that come from? I could not interpret that look at all, perhaps she was going to tell me to leave, and never come back. I was wrong. "The way I feel about you will never change. Of course I love you-and there's nothing you can do about it!" Thank God, she did still love me. I was no longer afraid of the unknown, and at the moment it didn't matter whether or not she was awake, because she said still loved me. I forgot the plan, and went to claim a gift only the Angel of my life could give me.

"That's all I needed to hear."

A/N: I think this attempt turned out much better than the first, how about you guys? I dont know thats just me, but then again I HATED the way that first attempt turned out, I wish I would have just deleted it right then and there instead of wasting your time and posting it. I hope you're not disappointed with the way this chapter turned out, cuz I certainly feel a lot better about it, so on to the kiss...but only if you review!! I need to know what you people are thinking

Manialoll Thank you for the constructive criticism, it was one of the main reasons I redid this chapter, I think you pointed out exactly what I couldn't put my finger on for why that chapter felt so wrong. I hated that chapter and now I know why!

O r i g i n a l1 Thank you so much for the review-it was amazing, and eye-opening, you played another big part in the re-doing of this chapter and thank you because I think it turned out better and that makes me feel better!

Vampirenvy9 Thanks for the review! I wasn't exactly sure what you meant when you said Edward was out of character in the old version of this chapter, was he too harsh, too clingy? Too...? I didn't know so let me know, hopefully I fixed it in this version! I tried to so hopefully it worked...

Epona04 Thanks for the compliment, I'm so picky about my things and sometimes it really drives me crazy!

4ever1 and UbEr-BaD-jUjU Thanks for the reviews, every writer needs encouragement!

So, once again people, I hope you liked this version better and please review it doesn't take that long and it motivates me to update, and the next scene is gonna take a lot of motivation hint hint lol

Much love,

Lust4Edward