Chapter Twenty-Six Notes: So, I didn't get tarred and feathered after the last chapter, which tells me (1) you guys are awesome and (2) people actually dig some serious, heart-wrenching pain once in a while. That bodes well for this chapter, which is another angst-fest, though nowhere near as good as the last chapter.

The angsty song I listened to while drafting this chapter: "Goodbye to the Mother and the Cove" by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. It is just so fantastically hypnotic, even if the lyrics aren't really relevant to my plot.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: Over

It was well past eleven when my truck's tires crunched against the gravel in Jacob's driveway. The rain had subsided to a docile mist, but my grief had grown, forcing the tears to well up in my eyes with such haste that I barely noticed the change in the rainfall.

I sat in the cab of my truck for a solid ten minutes replaying in my head the horror of what I had just done. I'd been more honest with Edward than I'd ever been with anyone, even with myself in my own thoughts. I'd been fearless, saying exactly what I felt in my heart because I thought he needed to hear it, that he needed me. I'd told myself I could be strong for us both, that I could believe in him so he could believe in us. I'd deflected every lie he'd sent my way because I thought he was trying to push me away because he was scared, scared that I'd be repulsed by him or scared of just of loving someone, maybe for the first time in his life. I'd been scared, too, but I pushed ahead because I was more terrified that I'd stumble through life always wondering if something as great as him and me could ever really exist. So, alone in the wilderness, I'd admitted to a vampire, a self-confessed murderer who craved the blood coursing through my veins, that I was in love with him. In response, Edward stopped telling me lies to frighten me away and instead told me the simple, inevitable truth: he didn't want me.

He'd told me before, the day we'd gone over my Dartmouth essay in the cafeteria, that he had loved someone. Once. With uncharacteristic hope, or maybe it was irrational arrogance, I thought for a second that the girl he'd spoken of was me. Apparently, who ever she was, he didn't really care for her at all. Or maybe he'd made her up. Or maybe, just maybe, she really was me, but whatever he'd initially felt with his fleeting, fickle vampire emotions was over now. All I really knew was that he didn't want anything of mine except maybe my blood but certainly not my heart or my company. I was a human, and though he couldn't read my mind like he could everyone else's, that intrigue just wasn't enough. I was plain. I was boring. I couldn't possibly hold his interest. Over the months we'd spent building what we disceptively called a friendship, he'd unknowlingly made me brave and confident and appreciative of how the traits that made me different also made me special. Then, suddenly, he'd turned me away and shattered everything he'd taught me to love about myself.

And now I was about to do the same to Jacob.

His window was dark, a black void against the red siding of the small house that would soon stop serving as my second home. Not wanting to wake Billy, I tapped gingerly against the glass.

There was no answer. Part of me wanted to take that as a sign; I could easily turn away and keep the one constant in my life—I certainly needed Jake in order to hold onto whatever shred of sanity I had left. He'd been the light of my life in Forks ever since I first arrived here, bitter about the lack of sun and completely alone. Within days of meeting, we'd become best friends…and that was the problem. I'd never really progressed past friendship with Jake. I'd told myself that I had, not even realizing what a stretch it was to see Jake as a romantic partner, to kiss him and imagine that there was passion underlying the sense of comfort I felt whenever I was with him. Sometimes, he'd try to slide into third base, and I'd swat him away, telling myself it was because I had no experience with boys and that I was just nervous. He'd been patient and assured me we could wait until I was ready. The thing was, I was ready, just not for him.

It was Edward who made me see that it wasn't my sexual naivety that made me shy away from Jake's touch; tonight, standing in a downpour, leaning into Edward as I begged him to kiss me, I realized that if he'd pushed me up against the rough bark of a tree and tore at my clothes, I would only want more from him, anything and everything he could possibly give me. At that point, the second that thought passed through my head, I knew I didn't deserve Jacob. No longer could I justify holding onto Jacob for his sake, to protect him from loneliness and rejection; he needed someone who could give him anything he wanted. That someone…she certainly wasn't me, as I'd just given part of myself away to a boy who didn't want me in return, a part of me I couldn't get back that now belonged to Edward.

I shuddered as I began to fully understand what my life had become: I loved Edward, who tolerated me only as a novelty, while the person who loved me unconditionally would now continue on without me, alone himself because my stubborn, foolish heart refused to love him like he ought to be loved.

I banged harder against the glass. A light snapped on, and he appeared, worriedly appraising me through horizontal slits in the blinds. As evidence of just how awful I must have looked, Jake impulsively slid aside the glass, unhitched the screen from its track, and climbed through the frame so he could be at my side instantly.

"Bells! What the hell? You're sopping wet!" I realized then that along with my heart and emotional well-being, I'd also left my jacket in the forest. Fervently, Jacob ran his hands up and down my arms, trying to create heat through friction. He had no way of knowing I was numb and thus immune to both the cold and his frantic efforts to warm me.

For what I knew could very well be the last time, I threw my arms around his neck. The effort the action took was foreign to me; he'd grown so tall that I had to stand on my toes and stretch my arms to their limit, to the point where he didn't feel like my Jacob anymore. I buried my face in his shoulder, wanting to cry and demand he tell me everything would be okay…except that it wouldn't be, and of all people, I couldn't ask Jake to assure me otherwise.

I curled my fingers around the sharpness of his shoulder blades. Keeping my mouth against the warm cotton of his t-shirt, I eked out the devastating words I'd been holding inside for far too long. The sound was muffled and my voice was hoarse from my devastating altercation with Edward less than an hour earlier, but I knew Jake could hear me. "I can't do this anymore."

He gently gripped at my shoulders and pulled me back so he could study me. "Do what?" His breathing was ragged and his eyes were pleading, which told me he probably already knew the answer to his question. We'd done our best to ignore it, but our downfall had been building for weeks.

"This, Jake. You and me. I—I'm so sorry." I was crying, even though I'd sworn I wouldn't; I didn't have the right.

He continued to stare at me like I was speaking in tongues.

I cupped his cheek with my hand. "I love you. So, so much." I removed my palm from his skin, fisted it, and brought it to my forehead, closing my eyes as I continued, "But not the way I should."

Jake bore his eyes into mine with innocent but brazen intensity. "Are you break—You're not—you can't do this, Bells. You can't. It just…doesn't make any sense for us not to be together. You—you're not making any sense." His phrasing was desperate, spoken so quickly each set of words overlapped.

"I know." I couldn't even look at him. "We should make perfect sense together, but somehow…something's just missing." The last of my words was toxic, hanging in the air like a poisonous gas.

"No! No—nothing's missing! We belong together. You, me, us. That's all there is. I don't know anything that's not you, and I don't want to." He bent his face down to mine, searching my eyes for some remnant of reason. I was dreading the moment he'd realize he wouldn't find any; his Bella was gone…maybe she never really existed at all, at least not in the incarnation he wanted.

"I can't give you what you want, Jake. I can't love you like you need to be loved. If you think about it, really think about it for a second, you'll see that."

"You don't have to give me anything! What I want, Bella, is what you are. If you're sad, I want you. If you're angry, I want you. If you're broken, I want you. And you want me, too. You've just been through hell lately, that's all. I mean, hitting your head—"

"This isn't about a head injury. It's about me. I-I'm a mess, and I c-can't make you happy."

"Shhh," he whispered, moving to pull me into an embrace. I backed up a step, and the distance made his face fall. "You do make me happy, I swear you do."

Too absorbed in his sweet, adolescent denial, he was going to make me say it. "I think," I gnawed on my bottom lip, hoping to taste blood so I could feel something. "I think we can both be happier, Jake. I think that—that there's something more out there." There was—for him; I was almost certain of it. For me, however, there was nothing left; only one person could fill up my emptiness, but he found me wholly unworthy of his attention, let alone his love. And, in light of what I was doing to Jake, I probably was.

Jacob was wounded, then still, and finally incensed. His upper body tensed as he roared, "So this is about him—Cullen—you want him. Instead of me."

Superficially, he was right. I didn't want it to be true, to love a cold, arrogant yet self-loathing jerk rather than my unfailingly kind-hearted best friend, but it was. Nevertheless, in the greater scheme of things, regardless of whether Edward loved me back, he'd taught me what love really felt like, the passionate kind that made me gladly abandon common sense and think with my heart instead of my head. Before he'd crushed me into irreconcilable pieces, Edward showed me what I was missing, and I now knew it was something I couldn't force, no matter how badly I wanted to. The odds were that I would never feel it again, but Jake could, and maybe, if fate was just and merciful, he'd fare better than I had.

I could only offer Jake the truth, though I still would do whatever I could to protect him from the hellish rejection I was feeling. "It's not about him, not really. I was right, about what I told you in the hospital. Do you remember?"

Sounding much like a wounded animal, he granted me a guttural response telling me he did.

I struggled to keep my voice even. "I was telling the truth." And I had been, even though I'd secretly, subconsciously hoped Edward would prove me wrong. "He and I will never be…anything. This—what I'm doing—is because I don't love you like you think you love me."

"Knock it off." He spoke quietly, in a small voice that made my heart compress with guilt. "Don't make me feel like I don't love you, because I do. Don't downplay what I feel for you. You can't talk your way out of that, Bella. Even if—" he sucked in a breath, teetering on the edge of letting the impending loss consume him. "Even if you…don't love me back, I will always love you."

"I know you love me, Jake, I do." I choked a bit as I spoke, my lips trembling against my gums as I forced out the words I needed to say to get through to him. "But if I was the girl meant for you, I wouldn't be doing this; I wouldn't be able to say these things, to hurt you like this." He winced, and my throat was so dry I felt like I was being strangled. Still, I kept on. "I love you, you have to know that…but in a different way. Not the way that makes me want to keep you to myself and not share you. Somewhere out there, there's someone who won't let anyone come between her and you; you deserve that, her. And I—I can't be her. God, though I really want to be her, I'm just…not." I felt ill. My stomach twisted to the point that I had to bend slightly at the waist to ward off the urge to dry heave.

Jake was in some sort of shock. He walked back and forth without speaking or glancing in my direction. He clenched his fists and then released them, patting his trembling hands against his sides in jerky, rhythmless motions. He blinked furiously before touching his fingers to his eyelids, discovering the tears that had only just begun to flow freely. Finally, his entire face crumbled, and despite his sudden growth spurts and the hardened features that had chiseled his once familiar face, he was a boy again, the one I'd loved on the porch of the little red house in La Push who taught me how to change a tire, appreciate Tom Petty, and recognize the growl of a truly fearsome V-8 engine.

Until recently, everything I'd discovered, every place I'd visited, and every person I'd met since moving here was inseparable from him. We'd kissed more times than I could remember in the garage out back. Every inch of Charlie's kitchen had Jake written all over it, from the table where we'd sit and play fearsomely competitive games of Rummy to the counter where he'd sit and tell me hilariously unfunny knock-knock jokes while I cooked him dinner. Every year, on the anniversary of his mother's death, we walked hand in hand to the cemetery and scattered fresh daisies under the engraved stone that bore her name. His friends were my family, his home was my home, and his world for so long had been me in return. Jake's warmth and sincerity shaped the person I'd grown into since arriving in Washington at 14, insecure, scared, and alone. He'd been my life, and without realizing it, I'd allowed that to change. I'd taken the best pieces of our lives and thrown them out based on a sick, one-sided love that now brought me only grief and never joy. Edward's rejection had left me fragile and broken, a former shell of the person I was only learning to become, and a piece of me didn't want to let Jake go out of my dwindling sense of self-preservation, but my selfishness had made me into someone who wasn't worthy of him. I barely had any strength left, but I'd use the small bits of courage left inside me to push him far from the debris of my imminent collapse.

Jake kept sobbing, his body twitching with each sharp intake of breath. He sunk to the muddy earth, bringing his knees to his chest and resting his forehead against his kneecaps, a position reminding me of the one I'd found myself in earlier in the forest…and I knew that made me Edward in this situation. The parallel made me physically gag; my shoulders slumped as my stomach lurched.

I rocked back on my heels, barely able to stand. I may have been crying harder than Jake was, but my tear ducts were somehow disconnected from my heart, as my insides only felt deadness. Tendrils of my hair clung to my face, dripping filthy rainwater into my eyes. I hardly noticed.

"Why?" He croaked out the question, his head still against his knees. "Why are you doing this to me?"

"I don't know," I whispered. "I wish I wasn't. I wish I was better for you. But I can't see myself in this life anymore. I want La Push to be my home, and for you to belong with me, but it doesn't feel right. I can't explain it. Sorry—I'm so very sorry."

"I don't know how to get past this."

"Me either," I croaked, knowing that there was a chance I might never really move on. I'd lost Jake, and I never had Edward. The fact that the latter cut deeper than the former told me just how heartless I truly was.

At long last, he raised his head and glared at me with bloodshot, swollen eyes. In a distraught whisper, he said, "You did this. You pushed me away. You don't appreciate how special we were." He wiped his nose against the back of his hand. "I wanted to marry you."

My chest constricted in a muted but distinct panic at that last sentence, telling me that even though I felt like I was flat-lining, what I was doing was really my only option. "Like you said, Jake, I'm all you've ever known. You can't possibly mean that. Look at what I'm doing to you. Do you see what a huge mistake we would have made if we'd gotten married and then one of us discovered what we felt for each other was, in the end, just a really intense, beautiful friendship? We aren't in love with each other, Jake! Maybe we thought we were, but I think that—"

"Speak for yourself. I would have done anything for you." His face was tight, but his tears were unrelenting. "Anything."

I wasn't deaf to the fact he spoke in past tense. I had it coming, but it still hurt like hell. I kept nodding, wanting him to shower me with expletives and threats that he fully intended to carry out. I wanted to feel all the pain I was causing him, to somehow mutilate myself further, yet he silenced himself, keeping his demons buried inside.

Eventually, he stood. He kept his head bowed downward to his feet and said, "I can't look at you right now."

I pretended like I wasn't crying, though the shaking quality of my voice betrayed me. "I know. I'm so sorry." I should have said a million more apologies or tried to explain that I was trying to save him from falling into the black hole that was my future, but I was empty. All my words—the pleading, the vacant reassurances, the careful explanations—none of them carried the weight of what I was feeling. There was no concise, tidy way to cut your only true friend out of your life. He wanted more, and selfishly, I just wanted his platonic devotion. I couldn't force a common ground upon us because it simply didn't exist.

With all he had left, he stifled out his parting words. "You need to go."

I nodded once more and stumbled into the darkness toward the driveway. For one final, devastating moment, I turned back to look at him. His back was to me, curled into a crescent shape as his arms wound tightly around his body. I'd never seen him so wrecked, and though I hadn't thought it was possible, I died a little more knowing that he had been broken by my own callous hand.

Though incoherent, I still somehow managed to reach my truck. Seeing it only made me think of Jake, who had taken pristine care of it over the years until he eventually passed it over to me. Now, it served as one more reminder why he was so much better than what I had become.

Once I backed out of the driveway, I shut down. I couldn't cry. I couldn't feel. I just drove, watching the road in a trance.

X X X

Miraculously, I somehow reached home, my brain still on autopilot. Charlie was waiting for me. The second I opened the door, he was there, popping up from his recliner, crossing our poor excuse for a foyer, and cutting off my path to the stairs.

"Do you have any idea what time it is?" He was livid, but he had yet to see my face. "It's a school night, Bella, and—"

He broke off as he finally really looked at me. His expression softened before his brow creased with worry, watching me like I was still his little girl with skinned knees and a tear-stained face. I loved him to death, but Charlie had no way of knowing this was so much worse than a seven-year-old falling off her bicycle.

"Bells, are you alright?"

"Jake and I broke up." The emotionless, stilted voice coming out of my mouth wasn't my own.

Charlie didn't know what to do with himself. A bit awkwardly, he moved to hug me, and he looked nervous that I might either burst into tears or attack him in a fit of teenage hormonal rage. Instead, I just backed away until the back of my calves hit the first step of the staircase. I gripped the railing for support but refused to allow my face to be anything but vacant.

"I need to sleep," I lied, not lifting my gaze from the floorboards.

"Of course," he muttered brusquely. He reached out and slowly patted my back, opting for physical action over discomfited words as a means of comforting me. "If you need anything—"

"I won't."

I crawled up the stairs before he could think of anything else to say. I reached my bed without really seeing or even feeling it and laid down, not bothering to take off my sodden, muddy clothing.

After an hour or so of staring at the bumpy stretch of popcorn ceiling above my bed, I closed my eyes, but, for what my heart told me was an eternity, I never really fell asleep. Sometimes, I would drift out of consciousness, but before I could truly hope to reach actual slumber, my body would jerk, and I would open my eyes with a start. Through it all, I was just…numb. I knew I should be crying or at least thinking about what I had just done, but I couldn't. It wasn't yet real to me, which made sense because I'd never been someone who was capable of the irrational bravery I'd forced myself to put forth in the forest with Edward nor the unapologetic cruelty I'd shown to Jake in the very spot we'd had our first kiss all those months ago.

I remained in my purgatorial state of numbness for what could have been hours. Somehow, after a countless number of false starts, my body forced itself into an uneasy slumber around dawn. When I woke up again, my neck was nothing more than a series of throbbing knots, and the shadows in my bedroom were all wrong. I looked at my alarm clock for confirmation: It was three forty-eight in the afternoon. Instead of risking witnessing my nervous breakdown firsthand, Charlie let me skip school. When I flopped my head on its side, I saw he'd made me breakfast hours earlier; on my nightstand sat cold, brittle strips of bacon and eggs that were congealed into a soggy, yellow mound against the pale blue ceramic of my parents' dated wedding china.

My body felt grimy underneath my muddied, day-old t-shirt. I supposed I should have felt the urge to shower, but I couldn't move. So, instead, I returned to my mindless study of the ceiling, welcoming the filth of yesterday's clothing like a second skin.

That went on for what could have either been minutes or hours…until I heard the branches of the tree outside my window create hollow scraping sounds as they brushed against the aluminum siding.

Finally, for the first time since the sun had risen under the shadow of dismal, precipitation-laden clouds, I shifted my eyes to the side away from the powdery white bumps above me to the window. Small but determined hands pushed it open.

"What do you want, Alice?"

She leaned casually against the window frame as if this was a routine she performed on a daily basis. "You weren't in class today, Bella. What gives?"

I didn't have the energy to scoff at her. Dully, I responded, "What do you think." It wasn't a question, as both of us already knew the answer.

She rose from the windowsill and plopped down at the foot of the bed. "Given what he did to you?" Her face fell at her own words. "He's not worth it."

I wasn't ready to talk about this—about him.

I wanted to conjure up tears or at least a shaken voice, but I wasn't capable of anything beyond a tearless monotone. My eyes moved robotically back to the expanse of space above my head; I noticed water spots on the dankly lit patch of plaster above my head. "Tell me something I don't know."

"I can tell the future, for real." Alice was simultaneously eager and apprehensive.

"The Cullens and their superpowers," I mused, trying to muster up surprise, though nothing could really catch me off guard anymore. Instead, my tone was dead or, at best, cynical. "Fortune telling. Mind reading. I get that you guys are pretty spectacular."

She didn't concern herself with my use of sarcasm where I should have spoken with shock. "Some of us have special abilities, but we've each just got one, unique to each of us. I can tell parts of the future, but I can't read your mind. Only Edward can do that."

"Don't." My heart stopped. "Don't ever say that—name to me." I was a melodramatic wreck of a human being, but I honestly couldn't bear the sound of anything related to him. "He rejected me, Alice. You don't need psychic premonitions to tell you that. He hurt me to the point where I'm questioning everything about—"

Before I could keep talking, her hand was against my mouth, silencing me. It was cold, and I'd never consciously made the connection before, though I should have, but now I knew for certain that she was just like him. "So you're…"

"A vampire, yes." She ran her fingers against the raised patterns on my quilt before examining my face. "Does that bother you?"

The previous day she'd told me that I wouldn't care once I discovered the secret, and she was right, so I now questioned her lack of confidence. I could only think of one source for her suddenly dubious resolve. Weak, detached, I asked, "Did he tell you that it would?"

"He hardly told me anything. I only saw what you'd say, and even then, I only saw bits and pieces." She was quiet and clearly upset. "That's kind of how it works for me."

I wanted to bestow upon her my best sarcastic laugh, but I still didn't have the strength to come off as clever or even disbelieving. "You can…see into the future? That's, like, your thing?"

"Yeah." She shrugged, but I was impressed nonetheless, as if I'd just discovered she could speak Italian or knew the strategic difference between a nine iron and a wedge. "But it's not crystal clear, like it would be if you were watching a television show. I get fragments, seconds of what's about to happen; sometimes minutes, rarely hours. I know the weather; I can predict the stock market. But I can't see every moment of your entire future like it's a miniseries on HBO." Alice was suddenly apprehensive; atypically, she finally looked no greater than her four-foot, eleven-inch frame. "Does that—do I make you nervous?"

Of everyone I'd had significant but tumultuous conversations with in the last 24 hours, Alice's presence at the foot of my bed was anything but nerve-wracking. "No, Alice. Not at all."

Her smile restricted itself to the lower half of her face. She took a deep breath, and I wondered if vampires even needed air. "My family--they wanted me to ask you if you were going to tell people what…we are."

My heart skipped a beat. "Is that why you're here? Because you think I'm going to rat you guys out?"

Just when I thought I had nothing left, I felt moisture seep down my face and drip from my chin to the hollow at the base of my neck.

The corners of her eyes crinkled in disbelief. "No, Bella. Of course not. I already told them that I didn't see you ever betraying us. But some of them—well, one of them—is a tough sell."

A lump rose in my throat. Of course, I knew who it was who doubted me. "He thinks that I'm going to what? Turn him in? Send the cops after him for being a living incarnation of something out of a Bram Stoker novel?"

"No." Alice shook her head feverishly. "Edward trusts you. He's an idiot about...well, a lot of things, but deep down, he knows you won't say anything. It's Rosalie, my sister. She thinks…the worst of people. I assured her to the contrary, but she's so stubborn."

"I won't tell a soul."

"I told her so. But, regardless, thank you." For the first time since her arrival, Alice smiled, a real smile, twinkling eyes and all. But the longer she looked at my face, the more her grin faded. "I've tried to see…what happens to you, Bella. But I can't. I want you to be strong, to be okay again, but all I can see is this blank future where nothing's clear. I can't make any sense of it."

I wasn't really concerned to the mechanics of ESP, so I could only bark out the only thought ricocheting through my brain. "I broke up with Jake."

"That I know."

"Does he—does your brother know that?"

"Not yet."

"I didn't do it for him. I get it. He doesn't…want me." I was so incredibly sick of those words, but they were all I heard in my inner monologue, so I repeated them like an anthem, even though they were anything but. Finally, even though I didn't want to do so in front of Alice, I let myself sob because otherwise, I was worried I'd never feel anything ever again. "But I don't love Jake, at least not like I'm supposed to. I just had to, Alice. I had to do it."

Wordlessly, she reached across my bed and hugged me. Her body was cold, and she was so very strong; maybe I should have turned away, given her close relationship with the person who had initiated my demise, but I just couldn't. I had no friends left, and Alice just got me. I didn't have to explain exactly what it was that made me fall apart; I could just inexplicably cry, and she didn't ask questions. So I returned her embrace, weeping into the chilly hardness of her shoulder.

Finally, I stopped and pulled away. I had to set my sights on the future; whatever I showed Alice, I knew he would eventually see, thanks to his freakish mind-reading capabilities. I may have been weak and wrecked, but I'd be damned before I let him read his sister's thoughts and see just how disgruntled I was in what should have been private, intimate moments between myself and a friend.

I wiped my hand against the damp sheen of tears covering my cheek. "We can't really be friends anymore, can we, Alice?"

She examined my hardened expression with disbelief. "Don't be stupid; of course we can. What are you talking about?"

"What you see, he sees. I can't…think about that part of my life anymore. It's over…and I just…can't." The numbness was back, and I knew it was only a matter of time before I completely shut down again, returning to my near-comatose examination of the ceiling above my bed.

I was done acknowledging her presence. In any other frame of mind, I would have felt guilty for treating Alice with such indifference, but I was incapable of conscious thought when it came to anyone, even someone I liked as much as I liked Alice. I closed my eyes, hoping she'd be gone once I re-opened them. Into the blackness of my eyelids, I muttered, "I won't be sitting with you at lunch. I won't see you at all." I swallowed and continued with my final parting words, "Every time I look at you, I see him. And I think I might start to hate him, Alice, and the last thing I want to do is hate you, so this is it for you and me."

I felt her come closer. In my ear, she cautiously whispered, "I'm so sorry, Bella. I wish things could be different; I really do." She patted my shoulder with her forceful yet feathery touch. "You have to come back to school, though. You can't just fall apart. You're better than this."

And then she was gone.

Even in my fractured, unfeeling state, I knew she was right. I would have to go back. But when I did, I wouldn't be able to look at him ever again. I would survive by putting forth minmum effort, going through the motions without ever truly feeling my surroundings. He'd ruined me, showing me what it felt like to really fall in love before denying me any affection in return. For Edward, I gave up Jake, the only person I knew to be trustworthy and true in my tumultuous, lonely life. I'd never known hate or betrayal until I'd met Edward Cullen. But now I did. Had I any reflexes left in my stiff limbs, I would've cringed at the thought of seeing him again. Instead, I just curled up against my lumpy mattress and waited listlessly for the coming day, when I'd return to school and somehow figure out a plan for my own survival.