AN: It is an honor to have been favorited! I hope you are enjoying the story so far.

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I woke up in my old bedroom and sat bolt upright in bed. The shadows creeping along the wall told me it was late afternoon; Charlie was either out or the house was strangely silent, with one exception: my fluttering heartbeat raced loudly in my chest. The nightmares had left me once I left Forks, but sleep wasn't as easy now that I knew one of nature's most efficient killers was still stalking me. Even if the pack was stiff competition, I knew. I knew, better than any living creature on earth, how strong, how silent, how completely deadly they were.

Something deep in my subconscious broke open. I pictured Edward's face in the meadow, so many years ago, and felt tears spring to my eyes as if I had recalled them by will. I wiped my cheeks angrily, swearing to myself and hearing it echo back to me from the empty house. I could always love Edward; I could always allow myself moments alone with his memory. But I could not cry over him any more, now that I was old enough to understand what he had done.

True love, I muttered to myself as I stumbled out of bed and raked through the suitcase on the floor for clean clothes. I had fallen asleep in the same glass-covered outfit I'd stumbled in to the house in, so I carefully pulled myself out of it, placed it in the center of the sheets and wadded them in to a giant bundle. There was nowhere reasonable to shake it out, so I settled for the kitchen floor and then got out the broom to clean up any remaining shards.

No time for a shower. I called La Push, listening to the thump of the large load of laundry pacing itself in the wash machine. If no one answered, I would walk there. Fortunately, Emily's calm voice greeted me, and she graciously offered to come by so we could talk. "Now that you've slept," she said, "it's important we know everything we can. To prepare ourselves." It was mysteriously quiet in her house, too. All the boys must be out in the woods. I told her I would see her in twenty minutes, and found a brush to try and wrangle my hair in to something resembling smooth.

Emily's car pulled up just as I was about to become anxious—not that I could have done anything besides worry. My position as a sitting duck was hitting home in a very uncomfortable way—no truck, no La Push….no personal bodyguard, vampire or werewolf. Emily's unusual but kindly face was hardly enough to scare off a viper like Victoria. I shuddered, composed myself, and met her with the door open.

"I'm really glad you came." For a minute, I stuttered, and then reminded myself to try and be who I was now—someone who showed gratitude. "I really appreciate how kind you were to me this morning. Thank you." I motioned with my hand towards the living room while I asked, "Can I get you anything to drink?"

"Coffee, please." Emily didn't sit, and instead followed me to the kitchen. We would both probably be more at ease here anyway. The coffee maker was exactly where I had left it, years before. Charlie never changed anything unless he had to—yup. The filters and the tin of ground coffee beans were both in the same place as well. Emily watched me make my way around the kitchen with no expression. I turned my back to her and tried to broach the subject that had brought us here, and then realized Charlie could walk in at any time. I had no idea where he was.

"Actually, maybe we should have gone to your house," I began. "I don't know where my dad is." Saying this out loud brought frightening implications to my mind, and I turned to look at her. Her blank expression broke in to a careful grin.

"Charlie's fine—Sue Clearwater and Billy Black harangued him into lunch at La Push's finest new restaurant. Co-owned by yours truly." Her grin turned impish. "Just lunch. He wanted to make sure he would be home in time to make dinner for you." We laughed together for a moment at the memory of his breakfast offering. Charlie wasn't a bad cook, but nerves clearly took a toll on his already meager abilities. "Maybe I'll try and convince him dinner's on the house."

"So you guys must be doing okay, then? I mean, you're running a restaurant, Jake is some famous mechanic now, and Leah…" I hurried to brush past her momentarily fallen expression. "Leah seems like she's more comfortable with the pack."

"She is." Emily's face still hadn't wholly recovered, so I could tell their relationship hadn't made the same journey. I suddenly remembered that Leah had included Emily in the heartbreakers club. I winced, but Emily brightened with a new thought. "She's second in command now."

I could tell the shock showed on my face. "How did that happen?"

Emily shrugged and wrapped her hands around her coffee mug. "It was Jake, really. He wasn't…up to the task. After you left. And Leah is smart, and strong. The guys respect her."

My body suddenly felt heavy, and I leaned on the table. It took a minute before I could continue, but I knew Emily wouldn't rush me. She understood how it felt to need forgiveness, and not even be worthy of it. I hoped in my heart that someday Leah could talk about Emily's accomplishments with the same lightness she had mentioned Leah's promotion.

"You know, Emily…Jake stopped talking to me. First." I inhaled, and then continued when I saw she was willing to wait. "He knew that I could accept that he was a werewolf, but he couldn't accept me as I am. I…I couldn't give him what he wanted, and the way things were going finally just seemed…wrong to me. I didn't push it further, when he finally said he didn't want to talk to me any more, even though it almost killed me because…because I didn't want him to wait to be with somebody who couldn't be with him the way he deserved." I had thought these words over and over in my mind. They were old words. But it was the first time I had said them to anyone else.

Emily gazed into her coffee cup. I had said everything I could say to her, so I decided to wait. Too late, I realized that even if Emily could forgive me for leaving, that didn't mean that Jake could. It didn't mean he would listen even if I got the chance to tell him what I knew now.

"You were using him, Bella." She looked at me evenly. "That's the trouble, now, I think. He grew up—he understood that everything the two of you had done was tied to the vampire. And he just…gave up." I bit my lip to keep from crying. "He was immature, so he thought that telling you he didn't want to see you again would make you push harder, make you realize that you loved him back." She looked down at her cup again. "When that didn't happen—when you moved back to Phoenix—he couldn't even be human again." When I moved to sit at the table, and we were finally face to face, she quietly said, "Now he's even worse, knowing more about heartbreak and looking back at the two of you in retrospect. Now he can see, of course, all the little things you did that he thought were about him, and were really about someone else."

It took me a moment to realize that Emily had tears in her eyes, and another one to realize that her words were not only about Jake.