A/N: Another shorter one, sorry. These will eventually stop coming some frequently. Anyway. I hope you enjoy this one also! Your reviews are so encouraging and amazing! Thanks so much.

Chapter Eighteen: Reason

JPOV

Life, love purpose, meaning, definition, all of that had changed in a matter of seconds.

Nothing that mattered before still mattered.

My priorities changed.

I came to realize that, even when one can live for an eternity, time was precious.

The clocks' tick seemed faster name.

Too fast.

A second was no longer just a second.

It was a moment with or without my Alice.

It was an ultimatum.

She slept in my arms the whole night, my body there to support her and her fingers there to fold into mine.

She was there, her life ticking away.

The most important--the only important--part of my everlasting life would end.

She would die; I would live on.

And so that was my decision. I could be in her life, tell her the whole truth, and hope she would forgive me for lying. Or I could let her slip through my fingers, never to remember her as the girl I loved, just the girl I'd hurt so badly.

It wasn't much of a choice for me.

She shifted in her sleep and my stomach turned over, worried my cold touch had awaken her. But she moved closer, resting her head on my arm, and she relaxed again.

She trusted me.

In her darkest times, she trusted her predator.

Why did that not amaze me?

My Alice never did the expected. That was clear to me as she squeezed my hand, even in her unconscious state.

She was wounded, but I was the one that was healing.

This wounded, broken girl came into my life, and she took nothing for herself. She walked straight into danger instead of running.

She was the prey that loved her predator.

I couldn't fathom all of her beauty. I could not change what happened to her. I could not undo what had happened so far or stop the things that continued to happen.

I knew the whole equation. I knew the moral solution and I knew the solution I wanted.

First of all, I knew I could kill my Alice without trying. She couldn't fight and she wouldn't know what had happened to her.

Second, I knew the danger it put me in if I told her. She would end up dead also.

I also knew that I would have to leave my new family or trust them if they would put their trust in me to do what I felt was right. If they were to be put in danger because of me, they each had the right to know Alice and how much she'd done for me. She'd done everything for me in a day what they had been trying to do for months. I could forget for moments alone. I could smile. I felt human again.

I knew the pros and cons.

I knew what I wanted was only my Alice.

I knew I had let things go too far already.

But most of all, I knew I would never be able to live one more day without her by my side.

Without her, my life had no purpose.

Not even a selfish one.

I stroked her soft hair, my eyes on her face.

This tiny human with so many other reasons to go on was my only reason. She made me see what Carlisle had been trying to tell me for months: I did still have a point. My life was no longer meaningless, and it was possible to love.

I'd done things all wrong.

I had fallen for my prey. Her innocence, the fascination of knowing she had never taken a life, the knowledge that she could change.

I felt like a newborn child or a blind person who regained their vision. The world around me was more than people, animals, plants. It was my home, my place of existence.

Alice, my Alice.

I smiled at the thought of her name. She was the angel that took me from hell and helped me through to this new place.

She was all that mattered.

She was all I had.

I brushed her cheek lightly. She was my only reason to change myself.