Bella ignores the ringing silver phone with a twisted expression on her perfect, angular features. Renesmee watches her quietly. She knows that Bella is overwrought with the sudden changes in her best friend. Nessie's despair, in comparison, almost falls short.
Bella slides down the wall of her mansion bedroom; though Bella and her husband much prefer the cottage and it's reminder of Isle Esme, this particular room provides memories as well…
She sighs as the phone ceases its constant buzzing, and Nessie gazes at her with pondering brown eyes. "Mommy?" she asks, reverting back to the cute term she uses only rarely.
The brunette beauty turns her startling eyes on her; they are very nearly black with thirst. She hasn't hunted for weeks.
"Yeah, baby?" Bella replies wearily, an alabaster hand running through her long tousled mane.
"Why are you ignoring Daddy?"
Bella's lips form the rough approximation of a smile. "Edward doesn't need to know what's going on here. He's trying to find something. Answers. And these days," she laments, "answers are hard to come by." She chuckles then her lovely face stills in somberness.
"I hate secrets. And he does, too. But this is a necessary evil. I can't possibly bring him away from what he's doing. It's so important to this family. He'll forgive me. He always does." She shivers with what could be cold but, of course, is not. It is trepidation for the unknown.
Nessie tilts her head as she does often. She can see the world better that way, topside, upturned. "Well, at least we both know one thing," she giggles. Bella looks at her incredulously; Nessie, always tuned in perfectly to emotions, is acting very strangely considering the awful situation.
Ness grins. "Alice hates secrets much more than either you or Edward."
"Yes, I do!" Alice calls from the next room. "That's why you must always tell me everything!"
Bella and her daughter share a single moment of levity, leaning over with laughter. "Would you stop doing that?" Bella responds through her mirth, feigning anger. Her expression is much lighter than seconds before.
Life, it seems, goes on.
But Nessie pulls back slowly, careful not to touch her mother. There is a certain gleam in her milky brown eyes, a curve to her eyebrows and a slant to her mouth that suggests deceit.
Indeed, as her mother banters with Nessie's aunt, Nessie herself is contemplating the repercussions of her decision…She can clearly envision the results.
Jacob- smiling happily and tightening his warm grip around an overjoyed Bella.
Jacob- altered, freed of his phantoms and the chains which had bound him.
Jacob- continuing his life without burden or woe…
She would never see his relief as she liberated him. Her eyes, then, would be closed.
Alice is suddenly framed in the doorway, her appearance haggard with disbelief. Her thin coal-black brows are pulled together, her teeth bared.
"Alice, what's wrong?" Bella demands, standing swiftly and reaching for Renesmee. Nessie, however, does not fall into her arms.
Alice stares down at her niece, shocked and terrified, unable to speak.
Nessie looks up at her with a sweet, innocent smile on her porcelain face.
Just then a pack of wolves roar in the distance, and the silver phone begins to ring once more.
---
He races the wind.
His massive, powerful body strains forward, ever faster, postponing the inevitable burn which will slow his progress and limit his limbs. He's already shaking with effort.
But if he reaches further down to the many layers of hurt and suffering within him, and yanks up the harsh memories one by one, the rage and desperation will surely give him the edge he needs to go on.
"Please, Bella. I'm begging."
"Jake, I have to-"
"You don't though. You really don't. You could stay here with me. You could stay here alive. For Charlie. For me."
"Don't die, Bella. Don't go. Don't."
But she left anyway…
He pushes faster, ignoring the first twinge of rejection that ever occurred. There is more to come. He fortifies his mental state in preparation for the onslaught.
"I love him. Not because he's beautiful or because he's rich! I'd much rather he weren't either one. It would even out the gap between us just a little bit-because he'd still be the most loving and unselfish and brilliant and decent person I've ever met. Of course I love him. How hard is that to understand?"
She pushed the knife in deeper, crippling him.
"It's impossible to understand."
But really, he knew in his then unchanged heart that it was easy to comprehend. Who wanted a rough stone as opposed to a gleaming diamond? Second-best…
Panting now uncontrollably, he pumps his legs faster, feeling the uncomfortable sensation in all his tendons, working laboriously.
There is no reason in him. He has no destination; it's as if he is repeating himself. When he ran away the first time, the worst time, he desired only to outrun himself. This is exactly the same.
It hadn't worked before.
He can only strive harder.
He listened to their intimate conversation with growing agony.
This was the woman he loved discussing her 'best nights' with his biggest enemy.
"Tell me one of yours now. Did I guess your first place?"
"No- that would be two nights ago, when you finally agreed to marry me."
He stopped breathing. What? No, this was a nightmare. This couldn't be real. He worked furiously to restart the blood in his veins, catching up with their tender exchange.
"I don't understand why it's so important to you. You already had me forever."
"In a hundred years from now, when you've gained enough perspective to really appreciate the answer, I will explain it to you."
"I'll remind you to explain- in a hundred years."
His heart tore in half…
Jacob slows, dragging. His muscles give out and he collapses. He wants to cry but he cannot. He is just as impaired as a vampire in this state.
He had built Edward up in his mind as his rival- but he is more than that. Edward is a golden god to which Jacob's life revolves around. After all, Edward and Bella are almost a single entity. And he has no place with them.
He's fooling himself. His happy ending has passed by, waved, and blended neatly into the horizon.
He is forever slipping, catching up, tripping, racing ahead. He can never find solid ground. Never a place to just rest. To escape the self-deception and disappointment.
Jacob looks up at the sky. The rain will fall soon. He can smell the change in the weather rattling though the trees.
The sky is unreachable, but in this moment he wants to simply dissolve and float away into the atmosphere…away from the pain that slows his every step. He imagines that in the sky, somewhere far above, he is just Jacob.
And there will be no more pretense. The duplicity can finally terminate.
And she will be with him there.
---
Later, a small cloaked figure moves steadily through the new rain.
Renesmee, slight but brave, goes on to find the changed Jacob. She will release him from his bonds. Or rather, fix the connection her birth had severed.
Her family, distracted, had believed her when she murmured hushedly she wanted to venture out into the shower for some air.
Hopefully the downpour will wash away her scent...as well as any trace of lies she may have left behind to hurt them.
She wouldn't hurt anyone again.
Her only regret is that her father had never returned to hold her one more time.