The cab instantly began to heat up.

We were quiet for a moment, the trees soaring by, blurred by the increasingly heavy rain. My windshield wipers had been changed—thank you, Mr. Black--and they silently whisked away droplets in time with each second that passed. "Who wouldn't miss you?" I asked, but it wasn't a real question, and we both knew it.

"I don't know, Bells," he said in his low voice. "I never thought I'd see you again." I realized he was looking at me and not the endless trees or the slate sky, not tasting the tiny drops of rain spattering against the side of his face. I didn't turn my head because I didn't know what to say. We were quiet for another long while, the trees ticking by.

"Maybe you should outline some of the details of this plan for me," I said. Push it away, Bella. It was all I could do to smother the string of questions I had for Jake, now that he sounded more like a person and less like a ghost. My image of him from two nights ago haunted me once again, flashing his wicked grin across the windshield. It was hard to reconcile the two as the same person now that I could hear Jacob's humanity in each of his carefully chosen sentences.

"Well…" Jake inhaled and looked away. His head was bowed, his large body uncomfortably stuffed in to the cab; the truck was huge, but it was clearly only just able to hold him. I felt the wheel pulling to the right as his side of the truck dipped low. He looked back at me, his hands folded awkwardly in front of him. He was trying to sit like a man. "Leah and Sam chased her while you were still here, before you left for Phoenix…" His brow wrinkled. "I think she just disappeared once you left…never came back. When she attacked you again, I think everybody took it as a sign…that we could finally get her." He smiled shyly down at his large hands. "She's the only one."

"It's weird that she just vanished after I was gone—she never showed up in Phoenix." Of course we both knew that if she had we wouldn't be talking. It was strange to think she held the key to my connection to Jake; if she hadn't attacked at the border, would I have ever seen him again? "It's so strange she found me sleeping in my truck, heading back here."

"I'm glad in a way…even if that's twisted," Jake said, answering my thoughts. He had turned his face to the window, and the wind blew his words back to me. "I owe her one." His eyes were closed, and I knew he had been thinking exactly the same thing I had.

"I guess I do too," I said, and I let the smile show in my voice. Jacob's dark eyes flew open and he looked back at me. I realized he had been smelling the wind coming in from the crack in his window, his mind reading the scents there like the pages of a book. His expression was unfathomable, and when he spoke he leaned close to me again, and I knew without seeing it that he was checking my scent for emotions.

"Bella…" He sharply leaned away again, and I exhaled. "I don't understand when you say…things that make me think…you are happy to see me." I realized I'd upset him; his muscles ground against each other as he hugged his body in. His arms gripped the seat. He was fighting the wolf; his mouth twisted and he closed his eyes: "It confuses me." Just as the leather gave way under his hand, he rumbled, "it hurts me." His eyelids were tightly shut over his spinning eyes, his breath coming slow and deep. "I can't tell you how strange I feel…"

It wasn't my right to cry as I listened to him sort through the mess in his brain, but the tears were unstoppable. I rolled my window all the way down, letting the rain in to the cab, pelting my hot face, letting some of the steam his flesh induced collide with the cool air. "Do you want to talk about this?" My voice sounded desperate—I kept trying to change the subject, keep things easy…maybe he didn't want to keep things easy. Maybe he needed to hear the things I kept avoiding. I kept my eyes on the road, forcing them open, forcing words and breath from my chest. "Do you really want me to tell you? There's no way I can know whether or not I'm going to hurt you more Jake, and I'll be damned if I want to do that."

"Don't pity me!" His breath blew away in shaky howl. I shook my head, feeling the suffering emanating from him, shivering from fear. The truck was swerving; I tried to right myself, watching him with my peripheral vision and feeling my heart race. Everything was loud—the rain, my heart, and Jake. Jacob, no longer sitting like a man. No longer completely a man.

"Don't ignore what I'm trying to say," I said, sounding braver than I felt.

"Tell me," he growled. The wind had fooled me—Jake was once again inches away from me, my vision skewed by the rain and panic and his heat blown away by the mist. This was the moment everyone thought had passed--if I said the wrong thing, I knew I would die. I took one last deep breath and knew I couldn't let it affect the truth.

"I love you," I whispered. I felt him beginning to phase before I saw his hand slam the door handle, his body flying backwards into the dark as he hurled himself from the truck. He flew out in to the rain and was gone. The truck was going over seventy.

I yanked the wheel to the right and slammed on the brakes, screaming his name before I could even think it. "Jake!" It disappeared in to the wind, the brakes squealing and the truck skidding to an rough halt off the side of the highway; I dashed out of it without bothering to look behind me and ran back towards the way we'd come. The rain was coming down, filling my face with the cold, wet dark, smashing my tears in to my open mouth. "JAKE!" I howled and pulled my hair, running along the dark, empty road and screaming at the endless trees. Everything was silent save the cutting rain and my hysterical voice—the sound carried out and over everything, changing the shape of the world in front of me. I was a child again—it had all been an illusion, the peace I felt; I had shattered Jacob Black beyond repair.

And then she was there. I froze, staring.

Victoria didn't bother to hurry towards me. She sauntered down the center of the highway, seemingly from nowhere, as if she had flown. I began to scramble backwards towards the woods instinctively--the black trees behind her fluid white and red from made it seem like she was crackling, electric hallucination, but I knew that in the long nightmare of my life, she was as real as it gets. She was more real than my happiness earlier that day, my carefree peace. Her long hair whipped violently around her angled features, her gait favored her injured leg. I knew she didn't expect to have to run far, and no matter how lopsided her limbs, how weak she was, she was still more than strong enough to kill me.