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TIME PASSES. EVEN WHEN IT SEEMS IMPOSSIBLE. EVEN WHEN each tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does. Even for me.
“But don’t get mad at me for hanging around, okay?” Jacob patted the back of my hand. “Because I’m not giving up. I’ve got loads of time.”
“It’s just that, I know how you’re unhappy a lot. And, maybe it doesn’t help anything, but I wanted you to know that I’m always here. I won’t ever let you down—I promise that you can always count on me. Wow, that does sound corny. But you know that, right? That I would never, ever hurt you?”
One thing I truly knew—knew it in the pit of my stomach, in the center of my bones, knew it from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, knew it deep in my empty chest—was how love gave someone the power to break you.
“Maybe, if you gave me some time… just don’t quit on me now, Jake. I can’t take it.”
Love didn’t work that way, I decided. Once you cared about a person, it was impossible to be logical about them anymore.
Love is irrational, I reminded myself. The more you loved someone, the less sense anything made.
“I’m so very sorry, Bella. I feel wretched about every part of this, and so grateful that you were brave enough to go save my brother after what I did. Please say you’ll forgive me.”
You’re not asleep, and you’re not dead. I’m here, and I love you. I have always loved you, and I will always love you. I was thinking of you, seeing your face in my mind, every second that I was away. When I told you that I didn’t want you, it was the very blackest kind of blasphemy.”
“Before you, Bella, my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars—points of light and reason.… And then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly everything was on fire; there was brilliancy, there was beauty. When you were gone, when the meteor had fallen over the horizon, everything went black. Nothing had changed, but my eyes were blinded by the light. I couldn’t see the stars anymore. And there was no more reason for anything.”
Edward loved me. The bond forged between us was not one that could be broken by absence, distance, or time. And no matter how much more special or beautiful or brilliant or perfect than me he might be, he was as irreversibly altered as I was. As I would always belong to him, so would he always be mine.
Edward stretched out his arm to smack Emmett’s fist with his own. “No,” Rosalie hissed. “Absolutely not,” I agreed. “Nice.” Jasper’s voice was appreciative. “Idiots,” Alice muttered.
“Let me explain,” she pleaded. “I don’t mean that I have any aversion to you as a sister. It’s just that… this is not the life I would have chosen for myself. I wish there had been someone there to vote no for me.”
