" Until your heart stops beating."

She stood there, her hands falling against the sides of her body. She felt his absence as he stalked away into the tree line and she stared after him, for god knows how long. She was supposed to get married tomorrow, and it was her wedding party tonight. After not seeing him for a few months, she wasn't sure that the man who was standing before her had actually been Jacob at all. The way that his arms felt as they laid around her waist, and her jackhammer heartbeat against her ribcage told her that it couldn't have been anybody else–only he had that effect on her. But the man that stood before her wasn't the same one that she had seen months ago. (Eleven and a half to be exact.)

He was barely holding it together, and his muscles were twitching almost as though they were going to ripple out and become a Wolf any minute that he was holding her. His face was taught and full of anguish, his mouth set into a grim line and his eyes had a faint glow of yellow around the rings. This man was a borderline animal.

And it was all her fault.

She felt the cold whisper of a breeze before chilling fingers pulled her in a gasp from her stare. "Bella, love." Edward crooned her name as though he were speaking to a wild animal. Carefully. And she thought for a minute, fittingly–that in a way he was. The chord that tightened in Jacob's departure still pulled her in his direction as she turned to meet his gaze. Soberingly cold marble brushed against her elbow as she turned to stare at the too-perfect face.

A smile played at her lips, as she tugged them forward in a fake plastering grin. She didn't want to look at his face right now, she didn't want to be reminded that she was going to have to give up tomorrow. His hand gently caressed her face as he stared at her from under porcelain eyelashes that didn't so much as flutter in the breeze.

"I'm just tired." And in fact, she was. She was so tired she felt it in her bones, almost as though if she were to lay her head down she wouldn't pick it back up again. She wanted to curl up on the earthy floor of the forest and breathe in the pine scent that reminded her so much of her best friend. She rubbed her hands against the small blue dress that Alice had fit her in. It wasn't her at all, but then again she wasn't even sure who that was anymore. "Can I go home now? I want to make sure I'm not all peopled out tomorrow."

His eyebrows furrowed slightly across the sculpted face. "Of course…" His arm spread out, motioning to the path back towards the house. Her legs dragged her towards the picturesque house slowly, and heavily. She felt like she was wading through heavy waters. His long legs followed behind her, slowing his pace to appear human–even though as she knew from watching him, they looked anything but.

Alice stared at her from the balcony, a pensive look on her fairy-like face. Her spiky hair was splayed out in its never moving style, and dressed in a pale pink dress she really did look stunning. And it reminded her just how dwarfed and plain she looked in comparison.

The house was lit with hundreds of tiny lanterns, as they lit the path from the forest to the house. Pale pink lanterns hung delicately from the towering trees. It really was beautiful and she felt a pang of guilt at just how uncomfortable all of this made her. This was "scaled back", to Alice's tastes. Honestly, it felt like she was setting her own wedding up, but that was what it was like to be with the Cullens–they had a way of changing you into something that you didn't know you wanted to be.

They approached the house in silence, Edward's pensive stare burning a hole into the ground beside her. They remained like that as she said her goodbyes, her soft human body pulled to a cold marbled statue, and all the way to her house. She had a small apartment, but Edward had insisted that she move back in with Charlie and let her lease run up–what was the point of having a place where she would never come back to anyways?

Edward was determined to have forever with her, and she realized that she was wondering if that was something that she wanted as well.

He pulled into the drive, and she felt the unasked question hanging in the air between them. He finally spoke his breath a sickly sweet in the small car. She breathed it in with a slight wrinkle of her nose. It was as though she was huffing cotton candy, and suddenly she felt as though she was being suffocated. "Are you getting cold feet?" He asked against the palm of her hand.

She didn't realize that he had grabbed it and was pressing it to his lips as he watched her carefully. Cold feet? Nowadays she seemed as though she was always cold, her own human temperature usually the warmest in the room. It was ironic , really. Didn't he always have cold feet?

She shouldn't feel like this. She couldn't. She very much had signed her death sentence, but she realized without Jake it didn't really matter. She let out a sigh and smiled at him before shaking her head. "No."

For somebody who had spent hundreds of years around humans, and priding themself in human behavior–he definitely wasn't able to discern her feelings. She had never been more thankful for him not being able to read her mind. He leaned closer, breathing his sweet breath against her face and she paused for a moment before stones met her lips butterfly soft before pulling away.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Isabella." She internally cringed at her full name, is used. Her hand reached for the handle and her door was being pulled open–the cold air caressing her face like a silent whisper. Bella slipped out of the car, her two left feet stumbling over each other, plummeting to the ground before a cold hand caught her. "Careful.." He hissed, she flinched slightly at the steely cold warning shooting through his teeth.

"Sorry." Her whisper was swallowed whole in the chilly air. He released her and pressed a soft kiss to her temple before walking her to the door. She stepped inside her childhood home with a soft wayward look over her shoulder.

She was walking down the aisle, red petals littered the makeshift aisle nestled delicately between rows of seats. Pale pink lanterns swung in the light breeze and small fairy lights were entangled around the branches above. She paled, smoothing down the side of her dress, and squeezed Charlie's arm tighter as he nodded in her direction. She didn't look up to meet his eyes until the end of the aisle and she gasped, golden swirls staring at her set in rich caramel skin. "Jacob?" Her voice was breathy and hot as she stared at the man before her. She looked handsome and her breath was hitched in her throat. Blinking, she watched him smile, before grabbing his chest in pain. "JAKE!"

She barely recognized her own voice as she watched him fall forward into her. "Run, Bella." His silky baritone was grounding out the words as he fell into her. Red pools ran down the white lapels of his shirt. She looked around in confusion and saw scattered bodies as they lay haphazardly across the aisles. Six pairs of golden eyes stared back at her as she watched them swirl and shift to red.

"What did you do?!" Whirling around she stumbled and ran straight into solid rock. Cold hands caught her elbows as her startled eyes met his.

"Bella….look what you did….I had to protect you. It wasn't safe." She looked down as his hands left red trails littered across her pale milky skin. He paused and leaned in towards her neck, his tongue darting across her skin. "Are you ready for forever, my love?"

Her eyes flew open at the sound of Alice's voice, pulling from her dream last night. "Bella, you were supposed to get beauty sleep….what time did you go to bed?!" She threw her hands up and continued on without even waiting for an explanation. "I don't know how I'm supposed to work with this." Bella sighed, deciding that it didn't matter what she looked like, even though it was her day she wouldn't be anything close to the prettiest girl in the room. No amount of makeup was going to heal the jagged scar that was slowly tearing open on her chest.

A sigh escaped her lips, as she looked up at Rosalie's furrowed brow in the corner. Her undead soon-to-be sister-in-law was more beautiful than she was on her wedding day. Their eyes caught across the room and an unspoken question hung between their eyes before Bella cast them downward, snipping the line in half.

Nobody needed to know that she was having second thoughts, well, were they second thoughts? She swallowed the question down and convinced herself that it was just fear–everybody gets nervous on their wedding day, right?

A soft rasp at the door had all of them lifting their eyes to the hallway just outside of Bella's old room. Alice had insisted that they get ready there and drive over that way Edward didn't risk catching glimpses of her through anybody's head. Strangely, it made Bella feel a lot more at ease. Charlie stepped through the door, looking extremely uncomfortable in his suit as he leaned against the door frame. "Bells." He choked out her name as though somebody had a hand on his throat.

She understood the feeling all too well. Her eyes drifted for a moment to the mirror in front of her as she caught a glimpse of a person she didn't know. Soft tendrils were hanging against her pale cheeks, and she blinked under the small wing that Alice had given her eyes. Her lids felt heavy with the lack of sleep under the heavy mascara.

"Well." Alice clasped her hands together before turning her attention back to Charlie. "We are going to help her into her dress, and then we're going to head that way. You're still bringing her, right Charlie?" She crooned his name as she smiled at him. He nodded once before giving her a small smile and stepping into the hallway.

They held her as she stepped into the dress and the satin skated against her agitated skin. She felt like she was on fire and the tight dress was friction that was unwelcome. Rosalie eyes her subtly as she clasps onto her elbow. The dress was anything but her, and she felt as though she had the word ALICE painted across her body. A tight mermaid body trapped her as she stood there, soft lace over the delicate silk of fabric that clasped against her skin. Full sleeves came down to brush against her delicate wrists. Her hands ran over the trapping neckline and she suddenly felt like a caged bird.

She knew that they heard the thumping heart against her chest.

"It's okay to be nervous, Bella." Alice's cold finger swept across her cheek before fixing a stray hair that was dancing against her jaw. "Just think, we're going to be sisters soon!" Her squeak made Bella jump and she raised her eyebrows with a fake smile plastered against her face. Sisters…that word felt foreign as she tested it on her tongue.

Alice left, her hands scooping up stray makeup bags as she warned everybody not to smudge her masterpiece. Bella felt like she was water spilled across an oil painting. Rosalie studied her with careful eyes and as she was on her way to the door shortly after Alice had left she turned. Her mouth opened, then closed, then as she met Bella's gaze she spoke softly.

"You know, Bella. It's not too late to choose a human life. I regret the life that I chose." Rosalie's words stung across her heart as though she had reached in and gouged it out herself and held it in her hands. She cast a glance back at her again and stepped through the door into the hallway with a soft flourish. And then she was alone. Her arms clasped across her stomach as she sank to the bed. Shaky breaths escaped from her lips as she tried to steady herself. She stood shakily, and walked to her door, swinging it open to find two human eyes staring at her behind a concerned face.

"You sure that this is what you want, Bella?" Her name came from his lips and she paused for a moment. She stared at the hardened face of the man that stood before her. Her father was the wisest man that she knew, well one of them, and although he said few words when he did she took them to heart. She nodded once before stepping past him and descending the stairs with him quietly on her tail.

It wasn't until she reached the door and her eyes met her truck that a small gasp escaped her lips at the last puzzle clicked into place. She stared at her truck, knowing that it was going to be gone soon, Edward had insisted that he buy her something safer, more reliable, and practical than the old truck. A shudder racked her spine as she stepped towards it. It was the last piece of Jacob that she had, and he was going to throw it away like it was nothing.

It felt as though he was trying to remove every human thing possible in her life and she suddenly felt like she was clutching desperately at her human life as they slipped through her fingers. She spun around and Charlie stood on the step watching her. His hand lifted before gently handing her the keys to the truck. He knew her expression well and as he stepped off the small landing he laid a soft kiss against her hairline.

"Go, Bells."

And she did, grasping desperately to her dress she ran as fast as she could to the rusty old truck and threw the door open before cranking it to life. The purring in the engine gently caressed the tremors of her heart as she backed up suddenly, before hauling ass from her house. It took her about twenty-five minutes to get to Jacobs's house from Charlie's.

When she was driving normally.

She drove across the winding roads in a speedy rage as she flew towards the treaty line. She just had to pass it. She was almost there. A strange pulling sensation seemed to be grasping her in different directions as she flew down the road. Her hands gripped the steering wheel and gutted sobs tore through her chest.

It started to rain, and not the light drizzle, the kind that you step into and you feel the cold down to your bones. Bella was already shivering. She flicked her windshield wipers on as she flew across the roads. With a gasp, she flew across the treaty line, and she almost buckled. It felt as though a thread had been snipped and suddenly her starving lungs were filling up with air.

Overcast skies poured down on her as she drove frantically toward him. Alice would've been so upset that her perfect day was ruined, Bella was anything but. Jacob. Jake. My Jake. She repeated the words to herself like a mantra, stealing all of her nerves down. Her gaze flickered suddenly to her white knuckles and she saw the glittering ring sitting grotesquely huge against her dainty fingers. With a heaving sigh, she ripped it from her fingers, her truck weaving slightly into the other lane. She overcorrected and chuckled the ring across the cabin.

Finally, she rounded the corner to his house and she skidded to a muddy stop as she flung herself out of the truck. She didn't know if she even put it in park, she didn't care. She tripped, falling palms first into the thick mud beneath her feet. She laughed dryly at the splattered mud across her dress.

It didn't matter now. She was so close.

Her hands found their place as they pounded on the front door, and her whole body shook. A moment later Billy's frame took up part of the doorway as he wheeled his way over. Shock and recognition hit his face like a title wave as he stared back at her through the screen. His eyebrows raised and with a curt nod, he acknowledged her wryly. "Bella."

"Where is he, Billy?" She didn't even recognize the desperate voice.

"He ain't here, Bella. He hasn't been for months." He bit off the word as he stared back at her, hoping that his point had gotten across. It did. She stepped back faltering slightly, she turned her gaze passing over the garage for a moment before hitching up her dress and trudging her way there.

If he wasn't there, fine. But she was going to make sure and something was drawing her eyes there like wildfire. She was thankful for her converse even though Alice had pleaded desperately for heels. She probably would have shoved one surely through her bleeding heart. Her hair was escaping its delicate weave and landing with soaking wet curls against her back.

She threw open the garage door and stepped in her gaze sweeping until they landed steadily on iridescent yellow.