Chapter VII: He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not

"Sometimes the heart does what it wants, without asking the mind."

—Walt Whitman

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They were kissing. Somewhere, deep in the back of her mind, Renesmee couldn't believe this. But it was happening. Somehow, it was real.

Jacob didn't reciprocate for a moment. He tensed. He resisted. He almost pulled his head back.

Almost.

But then Nessie felt his body loosen and he shrank to meet her. He dipped his head, and she stood on her toes, and when their lips touched again, she became undone. Her limbs disconnected, her bones unknotted, she melted; and she wanted him to melt, too. She wanted him to melt like butter on toast, and to absorb him and walk around for the rest of her days with him encased in her skin.

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He gave into temptation far too soon. He should have kept his distance, should have said no, should never have kissed her back.

But she was warm, so much warmer than someone half-vampire should ever have been. And she was slender and supple and deceptively strong. And she felt so good against him, fitted so perfectly.

He couldn't think straight, and when she sighed he reacted like a parched man falling into water, like a man who hadn't kissed in almost a decade. He let his hands sit on her shoulders, slide down her back, and he pulled her up against his chest.

He reacted how he wanted to and not how he should have and now he was a dead man and these would be his final breaths.

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She kept her hands by her sides, completely ignorant of what to do with them until she remembered what they were good for and she reached for his cheek and bared her soul.

But as her slender fingers touched his skin, Jacob broke the kiss. They stared at one another, panting for breath, and it was really getting cold now so each exhaled gasp was like a puff of dragon smoke around their faces.

He leaned back. Shook his head. Gasped, "Oh, God."

She was shy then, something she couldn't recall ever being before, and was bashful when she looked up at him.

"Jake," she started—

"No." He stepped back from her. "I'm sorry." His voice was made of steal. He was backing away from her. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't be sorry," she tried, but he was shaking his head.

"I should never have done that. God, I'm sorry."

She stepped after him, but her confidence was weaning. "I don't understand. "Jacob, what's wrong?"

"Nothing!" he exclaimed. "That's the problem." He pushed his hands through his black hair. "Nothing feels wrong, Nessie. And it should. It really, really should."

"What are you talking about? Nothing should feel wrong. That was . . . amazi—"

"No." He shook his head. "It wasn't."

"Oh."

Realisation washed over her, like ice cold water freezing her skin. She loved him. Love-loved him. But he never said he love-loved her. And he was sorry he kissed her. And he was still backing away from her like she was something repulsive.

Her heart shrivelled up in her chest and fell to the pit of her stomach, like an out of season leaf. It wilted and died.

She knew he could never feel the same way, could never see her like that. She had been steeling herself for it, going over it her head again and again. We can never be together.

She knew that.

She had always known that.

But she still wasn't prepared for how much it hurt.

"Let's go up to my car," he said after what felt like hours of silence, though it had probably only been seconds. "We can talk on the way home."

She waited for tears to come, because certainly her heart was weeping, but her eyes remained bone dry.

He said something else, something more placating, but she didn't hear it. She didn't see him reach for her and his hot touch made her leap back in shock.

"Nessie," he was saying, but she didn't want to hear it. She didn't want to hear anything because—

Her heart was combusting—

And her insides were aflame—

Each heart beat was—

—Rupturing.

—Puncturing.

—Breaking.

And then—when her heart gave out—

She ran

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She flew back up the sand, slipping in its malleability, running straight for the forest that joined to Second Beach. She could hear Jacob calling to her, calling her to come back, and as he ripped out of his clothes and galloped after her on four paws.

She ran faster, no match for him, but as fast as she could until everything in her peripherals blurred together.

Jacob howled, a strangled sound, but eventually he fell back, slowed a bit, followed from a distance. He continued to follow until Nessie reached the Cullens' main house, and she couldn't hear him any longer.

Renesmee dashed up the porch steps and threw open the front door.

Rosalie flashed to her side in an instant, wrapped her up in a cold, hard embrace. "You're back early," she said, and then she leaned back, looking at Nessie expectantly. "How was it?" She asked like she already knew the answer. It seemed that everybody but Nessie knew what had been planned for the night.

"Where's my mom?" Renesmee said, her voice rough, like each syllable scratched her throat.

Rosalie's face hardened. "What did he do?"

"Aunt Rose . . ."

"So help me God, Nessie, what did he do?"

A single tear welled in her eye, but she refused to let it run down her cheek. "Please," she said. "Where is she?"

The blond vampire looked a bit upset, but said: "She's at the cottage." Nessie turned immediately for the door, and as it closed behind her, she heard Rosalie call for her to come back. The second person that night.

Renesmee ran full tilt home.

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Renesmee burst in the cottage door, and both her parents were waiting for her, probably having heard her coming a mile away. Edward's face quickly went from nervousness to confusion to anger, and she knew he was sorting through the jumble of bewilderment that remained of her thoughts.

She had held it together all night, but there, in the house she had grown up in, in front of the roaring fire, with the two people with whom she was closest (excluding one other), she unravelled. Years of tears welled in her eyes and poured down her cheeks.

They both dashed forward, but Bella reached her first. Nessie curled into her shoulder and wept. "Oh, Renesmee." Nessie clung to her mother, revelling in the coldness of her embrace, the contrast between this one and the one she was in not too long ago before she ruined everything. "Renesmee, what happened?" She tried to pull her back to look at her, but Nessie was welded to her side. "Are – are you hurt?"

Even if it had been possible to speak through the sobs, Nessie didn't think she would have.

She felt her father's cool hand on her back. "Renesmee?" His voice was positively edged with panic. "Darling, you must tell us if you're hurt – if someone—"

"No," she cried. "No one – it was – me."

There was silence, and then her father whispered, "I'm not sure." Presumably, Bella had asked for a more comprehensible explanation, but it would be hard going to find any coherent thoughts in her head right now.

"It was me," she said again, and her voice sounded not so much breaking as already broken.

Out of unparalleled respect for Quil's grandfather, the men waited until his story was finished before disappearing off to talk. Seth, Embry, Paul, Quil, Jared and Brady subtly wandered a bit down the beach. As soon as they were in relative privacy, they turned to each other let gush everything on their minds.

SETH: "Wow. Well, that was a first."

EMBRY: "I don't believe he just pulled her away in the middle of the story!"

BRADY: "Old Quil shouldn't have told it. He knew Jake doesn't want her to know yet."

JARED: "Doesn't want her to know yet? She's, like, sixteen in her little vampire years. She's old enough to know."

SETH: "Yeah, well, it's up to Jake to tell her."

QUIL: "But I thought he was telling her? Isn't that why he brought her? So she could hear the story? He asked my grandfather to tell it."

EMBRY: "He obviously changed his mind."

PAUL: "Maybe he chickened out."

BRADY: "But he shouldn't have made her leave in the middle—"

SETH: "—Cut him some slack, man."

EMBRY: "What else could he have done? Let her listen to it? She'd have picked it up straight away."

QUIL: "She was already picking it up. Didn't you see her face?"

SETH: "Yeah, it was just Emily's or Kim's."

QUIL: "Even Claire's."

PAUL: "Claire's ten?"

QUIL: "So? She's a kid, not stupid."

PAUL: "I'm not saying—"

BRADY: "I think Billy was laughing. He has no sympathy."

JARED: "Come on, I was laughing, too."

PAUL: "It was kind of funny."

EMBRY: "Good to see Jake freaking out for once."

JARED: "He looked like he was gonna explode."

SETH: "So did Nessie."

BRADY: "I thought she was gonna hit him."

JARED: "Now that would have been funny."

EMBRY: "I'd have hit him."

BRADY: "No, you wouldn't."

There was a gust of sighs in the silence. They each took a moment to try and steer the conversation back to something a group of adults would be having.

QUIL: "At least she was there for the blessing."

SETH: "Yeah, how did that go?"

JARED: "Fine. Everything was going just fine until—"

EMBRY: "Give him a break, guys. It's hard for him."

JARED: "How would you know? You haven't imprinted."

EMBRY: "Neither has Seth."

SETH: "Hey!"

QUIL: "None of us imprinted on a half-vampire. Let's just . . . let's just leave him handle it himself, okay?"

There were nods of consent and, after a while, the group headed back to help clear up for the night. To anyone listening in, their conversation sounded ludicrous. But to someone in the know, it was easy to hear their concern for their friend and, possibly, the entrails of love concern leaves in its wake.

Renesmee cried for what felt like an eternity, into her mother's shoulder, and then her father's chest. They didn't say much, just allowed her cry, get it all out, like a detox. A werewolf detox.

She must have stopped eventually, and fallen asleep, because the next thing she knew she was waking up in a semi-dark bedroom. The bed was familiar, but not her own. It took her only a moment to recognise it as her parents'. It had been a while since the last time she'd woken up in this bed.

Her mother was sitting in the old rocking chair in the corner of the bedroom, a book on her lap. She flashed to her daughter in an instant and lay down on the mattress beside her. She smoothed her dark hair back and gave her a cool kiss on the forehead.

"All cried out?" she asked gently.

Nessie thought of everything that had happened that night, of Jacob talking to her, kissing her, rejecting her. Something inside quailed—my broken heart, she thought—but no new tears came. Her body was far too empty to store fickle things like tears.

Renesmee nodded and sat up a bit, leaned on the headboard. "What time is it?" Her voice was uneven hand-stitches.

"Late," her mother said. "But sleep has never been a priority in this house." She pulled the quilt up around her daughter's shoulders. "Want to talk about it?"

"Surely Dad's worked it out already." Her thoughts must have been blaring like police sirens all night.

"I want to hear it from you. And your father nipped out." Bella smiled. "Your dreams must have been scaring him." Her smile drooped. "What happened, sweetheart?" There was silence a few moments longer, and she said one word: "Jacob."

Renesmee's eyes widened. "How did you know?"

"What else could possibly make you cry like this?"

Her voice still wobbled. Like a girl on a tightrope. No balance and an impending gust of wind. "I – I did something terrible, Mom. Terrible. And now Jacob hates me."

"Nessie—"

"You should have seen the way he looked at me – like – like I'd slapped him. And now he hates me."

"Nessie, I don't know what's happened tonight or how much Jacob's told you, but Jacob loves you every bit as much as your father and I do. He could never, ever hate you."

"But he does. He couldn't wait to get away from me. I've ruined everything."

Bella pulled Nessie onto her chest, ran her fingers through her long hair soothingly. "No, Nessie, no. Maybe he's upset, but that won't last long. If only you knew, sweetheart, he could never stay mad at you."

In a moment of sheer madness, because she couldn't bear to say it aloud, Renesmee placed her palm on her mother's pearly white cheek and showed her exactly what she'd done to alienate the most important person in the world from her.

Bella's eyes glazed over momentarily, and Nessie let her hand fall away.

Bella was, for once, speechless.

"I don't know what I was thinking . . ." she said, for want something to break the quiet.

"Renesmee, I didn't know – I had no idea . . . How long have you felt this way?"

Nessie got off the bed and the springs squeaked; she paced over to the window and back again, bouquets of words sprouting from her. "I don't know. Weeks? Months? Years. What does it matter? He's shown me—well and truly—that he doesn't feel the same. And – and why would he? Look at him and look at me. Why would he be interested? I'm not like him – not a werewolf. I'm not even a vampire like you. An anomaly. That's what I am. And who'd want that?"

"Darling, you're not an anomaly. You're—"

"Special. Yeah, I know." She paced back to the window. "Special's not all it's cracked up to be." A shadow moved outside and she knew, like she always did. She leapt back from the glass and drew the curtains quickly. Without turning around, she said: "He's out there, isn't he?"

Bella hopped off the bed, and of course for her it made no sound. She approached her daughter slowly. "He's been there all night."

"Oh, God." She spun around abruptly. "He hasn't . . . heard what I said, has he?"

Bella shook her head. "He wouldn't listen."

What was he doing? He couldn't say he didn't want to be with her and then camp outside her window.

"What does he want?" Did she really want to know?

Bella frowned a bit. "To talk. But your father said no. You were too upset."

"Dad? Is that why he left—to talk to Jake?" She crept over to the curtain and drew it back a millimeter to peek into the darkness. "What did he say to him?"

"They're still talking."

Nessie spun around again. "Still? About what? What are they saying?"

"I've been in here with you."

"But you can hear them! Mom, please tell me."

Bella sighed and said: "About you, mostly. You may be fighting, but he doesn't like to see you upset." They were not fighting. If only it were that simple.

"Nessie, do you want to go out and talk to him yourself—"

"No, nonononono." She stood back from the window. "I think I just want to go back to bed. I can't – I can't deal with this right now."

"Okay, sweetheart, okay." Bella pulled back the blankets on her bed. "Want to stay here tonight?"

Normally this sort of suggestion would have been ludicrous, what with Nessie being such a grown up, but tonight she wanted nothing less than to sleep alone. "Thanks, Mom."

They climbed in together and Nessie laid her head on her mother's shoulder again and they were silent for a long while.

Renesmee just registered more tears as she drifted into a restless sleep.

Jacob was still sat outside, two hours later, when Bella came out of the cottage. He was just inside a canopy of trees, but sprang up when he saw her. "Bella," he said, and then drew up short. What on earth could he say?

For a moment Bella was conflicted: he was her oldest friend and was clearly upset, but Nessie was her daughter. She knew where her allegiance lay.

Edward was standing to her left, twenty feet from Jacob. "I told him to leave," he said. "I offered to hang him by his tail." He subconsciously touched her arm as he made his way inside. "I'm going to check on my daughter." And he left the two of them alone.

Jacob stepped closer, into the porch light. He was wearing only a pair of torn shorts and a look of utter devastation. "Is she . . . okay?"

"Okay?" Her tone was vicious. "No. She is not okay."

He brought both of his hands to cover his face and groaned. "Oh, God. I never meant – I didn't want . . . I need to talk to her."

"Well, you can't." His face crumpled and she added, "She's asleep."

"Oh." Silence. "Bella, tonight she . . . I . . . we—"

"I know, Jake. She told me."

"She did?"

Bella nodded, exasperated. "Of course she did. What were you thinking?"

Jacob sat down on a log, like his legs were no longer sufficient support. "I wasn't."

"Clearly." She folded her arms across her chest.

"Bells," he said, and he so rarely used her old nickname that he caught her by surprise and softened her. "I know what this looks like, but I swear I'd never – it's not like that between us."

"Why didn't you tell her today? About the imprinting?"

"I was trying to. I never got to finish."

Bella was quiet, carefully considering her next sentence. "She's only six." Her voice was so light he might have missed it. "I know she looks sixteen. But she's not. She's six."

"I know. Believe me when I tell you, I know."

"And I don't want to patronize her and tell her she can't be in love, that's she's too young, but she's six, Jacob. Six years old." Although she had no need to, she sank into a seat beside her friend. He'd opened a floodgate. "She's just grown up so fast, and I know I should be grateful I got to have a child at all, but it's only been six years and already she's physically almost the same age as me when I had her. She's far too young to love you, Jacob, but how can I tell her not to?"

Jacob hopped up, a little panicked, leaving her alone on the log. "It's not that kind of love, Bella. We have years before she even—"

"What are you talking about? She kissed you. Of course it's that kind of love."

He stared at her like she'd slapped him across the face. "That's not – no. No." He took a few steps back, shaking his head. "Why would you say that?"

"Because it's true. What did you think kissing means?" She stood up, too, and caught the bridge of her nose. "I can't believe I'm having this conversation." She shook her head.

"What?" he asked, still wired.

"This! Dissecting the kisses between my oldest friend and my six year old daughter!"

"Please don't say it like that."

"How else might I say it? It's exactly how it sounds! You and my baby, who'd have thought it?"

They stared at each other, a few feet apart. It took Bella a few moments to cool down, and when she realised what she said she immediately backtracked.

"I'm sorry. I know you didn't choose this."

"No, you were right." He looked down at the ground. "It's terrible. I'm sorry."

"Jake," she sighed softly. "I don't think that. I just don't – I don't know what to do. You imprinted on her."

"That doesn't mean I ever have to lay a hand on her. Just that I'm there for her."

Bella rolled her eyes. "I know how these stories end, Jacob. And I'm okay with her having you for the rest of her life, I'm glad she has you. I just – it's hard to watch her grow up knowing her life is predetermined. That she'll never have a choice."

"There's always a choice."

Bella sighed again. "We're going around in circles." Jacob nodded his agreement. "Just tell me: what are you going to do?"

"I – I don't know."

"Promise me something? Promise you won't leave? Like you did all those years ago with me."

"Even if I wanted to . . . I couldn't." His answer made it a little better. Bella was reminded again how Jacob was Renesmee's in a way he had never been hers.

"Then go home tonight. It won't be any better if she wakes up and you're right outside. She's hurt, Jake. Embarrassed. Give her some space."

Jacob stood back immediately and said, "Of course I will. If it's what she wants," and Bella told him, "It's what she needs."

Bella watched from her doorway as he left slowly through the forest, his head hung just as Nessie's had been.

Edward popped his head outside the door. "He left?" He sounded a little impressed.

She nodded. "He'll be back." She closed her eyes when her husband drew her close and pressed a kiss into her hair. "I want him to be happy, Edward. He deserves it."

He wrapped his arm around her waist. "Believe it or not, I agree with you. I know what it's like to face the possibility of a very long and lonely life. And I wouldn't wish that on anyone." His expression darkened. "Not even the werewolf who loves my daughter."

Bella smiled. "Are you going to kill him?"

"No. But only because it would hurt Nessie."

"Is she still asleep?"

Edward looked pensive, sad even. "Restless, but asleep."

And so they headed, arm in arm, back into their cottage together to their daughter.

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COMING UP . . .

"Of course we're still friends. If you still want me." It was the best he could do and was in no way good enough for her.

Another tear. Her hands were shaking. "I will always want you."

Jacob thought his knees would buckle. Heat rose up his neck. He hadn't even known he was cold. He'd been freezing and her words were the sun, thawing his icy body.

There was silence and suddenly the small space between them felt like a landslide. He had to touch her. So he could comfort her, he told himself, but he was lying. This need was entirely selfish. He took a small step, and she remained still, watching him with eyes clouded with tears and relief. He reached for her, needing contact but knowing she had to come at her own pace.

Slowly—agonizingly, unwaveringly slowly—she extended her hand for his. Their fingertips touched and a hundred thousand volts shot up Jacob's arm. It was the sweetest, purest pain.