My silver Volvo crawled closer to the Seattle city limits. Normally I would be in a hurry, driving like a "maniac" or so I have been told. Today however, there was no great hurry.

I was two hours ahead of Bella and her caravan and I had already been to check out her apartment earlier that day.

It wasn't what I would have picked out for her; not enough locks on the doors, bars on the windows, and way too many sharp counter top edges for her to fall into, but I guess it was normal. Normal, a word I repeated to myself often. I wanted her to be normal and normal meant letting her live in her first substandard college student apartment. Besides I wasn't interfering.

No, I wasn't in a hurry. The only thing that waited for me on the other side of that city limit was the endless questions and sad looks I was sure to get from my family. It had been a while. I had purposely avoided them. I grew tired of their looks, their whispers, and Alice's constant stream of thoughts about Bella and what she thought I was doing wrong. No, there was no reason to hurry. In fact I could turn around and check on Bella on more time…

The dull vibrating of my phone pulled me out of my thoughts.

Alice's name flashed on the screen and for a second I considered not answering, then again, I knew she wouldn't have called unless she knew I would answer. That's the annoying thing about having a psychic in the family, they always knew…

"Edward!" her voice chirped automatically putting me on guard

"What!?" I barked

"Do NOT turn back around, the clouds are fixing to break and you need to get to some cover soon." God had her voice always been this annoying

"Ugh" I groaned

"Just come to the house, please we all want to see you! Pleeeeeeeeeeaaaaaassssse!" She sang into the phone

"Fine, just please keep your thoughts to yourself and ask the others to do the same once I get there"

"Yay, I knew you would!" I could literally hear Alice bouncing

"Ha, yeah" I laughed as I slapped the phone shut

I sped up to my usual pace not because I was anxious to get to the Spanish Inquisition that I was sure to receive when I got home, but because my windows weren't quite as tinted as I would like them to be and if those clouds parted I might become a massive traffic hazard.

I could see it now, "Sparkly Man Causes Massive Traffic Jam on the 110" Heh, yeah I should hurry.

I pulled into the tree lined drive that leads to my family's massive new home, which is strangely a near replica of our home in Forks.

I feel a pang in the space where my heart should be as I remember the day I had brought her there. When I had let her fully into my world. She had trusted me then, with her life and her heart.

God how I had betrayed her!

At that second I had decided that I couldn't handle this. It was too much. I threw my car in reverse ready to escape before anyone could see me, when…

Crack!

My car smacked into what I thought was a boulder. I cussed under my breath and pulled forward to inspect the damage but my car wouldn't budge. It was then that I heard the big booming laugh.

"Emmett I'm going to kill you" I snarled as I flew around to the back of my car

"You owe me a bumper!"

Emmett just laughs and knocks my bumper back into place as something knocks me to the ground.

"Damn brother! You're losing your edge" Jasper laughs as he pulls me up from the dirt

"I'm sorry I was distracted by the fact the Emmett just demolished my car!!!" I growl at them both

"Drama queen" Emmett challenges me

"We were just trying to stop you from leaving, we figured we'd have to disable you for a bit" Jasper drawls trying to calm the tension in the air

It was then that I heard Alice coming. I heard her thoughts screaming in my head before I saw her.

"Edward! It's about time you got here." She bounded to me and lightly kissed my cheek

"Alice could you PLEASE keep those thoughts to yourself!" I scream at her alerting the rest of my family who slowly came out of the house.

"Oh, Edward relax! I've already seen it. You know it's going to happen. Seattle isn't that big!"

"NO!!!!" I growled "You WILL stay away from her Alice!"

"I can't help it if we accidently run into each other, even you can't stop that"

"YES I CAN!!!!! She will have a normal life, without reminders of us!" Anger welled up inside of me to the point that I was literally seeing red, I was about to snap. This wouldn't be good

"Normal!?" Emmett snickered

"You call being stalked by a love sick vampire a normal life!?"

I snapped

I threw myself at Emmett with such force that we both went flying through a large tree in the front yard. The tree snapped quickly and fell with a thud, clipping the side of Esme's wide porch as it went.

Emmett laughed as I snarled at him, aiming for his throat.

"Edward, stop this!" I looked up into Carlise's kind eyes and shoved Emmett back into the dirt

"You two clean this up, now!" Esme ordered Emmett and Jasper who begrudgingly began to remove the tree off of the porch.

"Let's go inside son" Carlise led me in with a firm grip on my arm

The house took my breath away. Everything was the same. My piano, my room, the large glass wall; it was all the same and yet it was different. Painful memories flooded back again. My eyes panicked and searched for an escape. I needed to get out of there and back to my life. Well what had become of my life anyways. My life, the true one, had ceased to exist the day she ceased to be a part of my life.

"Please stay" came a small plea from Esme

"We miss you, even Rose" Emmett echoed her sentiments

" I…I…" I choked up. If a vampire could cry, I just might have. This was too much. My life or lack there of was beginning to take their toll on me.

"Ugh" I groaned and sank on the couch.

Alice and Esme were gleefully by my side in a split second

Alice chattering excitedly about my return and the new car she wanted to buy me.

Esme looking kindly at me and stoking my hair like a concerned mother would do to her sick son.

Maybe I was sick.

We sat there until long after the sun had sank below the horizon. Not caring or needing to move.

When I noticed the time I began to get anxious and Alice noticed the shift in my mood.

"Edward…" she began cautiously

I knew what she was thinking; it was the same thing they were all thinking.

I was a miserable wreck without her but it had to be this way. There was no other option.

"There is another way" Alice spoke softly and I jerked back feeling as If she had read my thoughts

"I can't" I sighed defeated

"Even if I could go back, she'd never trust me again and I could never live with that"

Alice looked at me closely her dark eyes clouded and her thoughts purposely muddled by pictures of new shoes

"Okay…"she gave in although I knew it was too easy.

I silently nodded and walked into the cool damp night towards what was left of my life