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These violent delights have violent ends And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, Which, as they kiss, consume. Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene VI
“I think it’s a nice idea. You’re only a senior once. Might as well document the experience.” “How many times have you been a senior?” “That’s different.”
Money meant next to nothing to Edward or the rest of the Cullens. It was just something that accumulated when you had unlimited time on your hands and a sister who had an uncanny ability to predict trends in the stock market.
The waves of pain that had only lapped at me before now reared high up and washed over my head, pulling me under. I did not resurface.
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.
Forbidden to remember, terrified to forget; it was a hard line to walk.
he carried that happiness with him like an aura, sharing it with whoever was near him. Like an earthbound sun, whenever someone was within his gravitational pull, Jacob warmed them. It was natural, a part of who he was. No wonder I was so eager to see him.
What an odd thing for her to do. I wished I knew the reason behind it. Did she get gum stuck in it? Did she sell it? Had all the people she was habitually nasty to caught her behind the gym and scalped her?
I was like a lost moon—my planet destroyed in some cataclysmic, disaster-movie scenario of desolation—that continued, nevertheless, to circle in a tight little orbit around the empty space left behind, ignoring the laws of gravity.
The smile broke across his face the way the sunrise set the clouds on fire, and I wanted to cut my tongue out.
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. I’d been broken beyond repair.
Even here, on the point of death, his name tore against my unhealed wounds like a serrated edge.
There was a darkness in Jacob now. Like my sun had imploded.
“I’m trying to keep”—he huffed, shifting his weight as the treetop bounced him—“my promise!” I blinked my wet blurry eyes, suddenly sure that I was dreaming. “When did you ever promise to kill yourself falling out of Charlie’s tree?”
I’d cried myself to sleep over this boy. His harsh rejection had punched a painful new hole in what was left of my chest. He’d left a new nightmare behind him, like an infection in a sore—the insult after the injury. And now he was here in my room, smirking at me as if none of that had passed.
A small, dry voice in the back of my mind asked me what the big deal was. Hadn’t I already accepted the existence of vampires long ago—and without all the hysterics that time?
Once you cared about a person, it was impossible to be logical about them anymore.
And the last seven months meant nothing. And his words in the forest meant nothing. And it did not matter if he did not want me. I would never want anything but him, no matter how long I lived.
“Death, that hath sucked the honey of thy breath, hath had no power yet upon thy beauty,” he murmured, and I recognized the line spoken by Romeo in the tomb.
At least I could be with him again before I died. That was better than a long life.
He continued to kiss my hair, my forehead, my wrists… but never my lips, and that was good. After all, how many ways can one heart be mangled and still be expected to keep beating?
“But I can’t imagine what you could have done to wind up in hell. Did you commit many murders while I was away?”
“I could see it in your eyes, that you honestly believed that I didn’t want you anymore. The most absurd, ridiculous concept—as if there were any way that I could exist without needing you!”
“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.”
“You… were… risking your life… to hear—” “Shh,” I interrupted him. “Hold on a second. I think I’m having an epiphany here.”
“In about two hours, Charlie will be here looking for you. I wouldn’t put it past him to involve the police.” “All three of them.”
“If you really believed that you’d lost your soul, then when I found you in Volterra, you would have realized immediately what was happening, instead of thinking we were both dead together. But you didn’t—you said ‘Amazing. Carlisle was right,’” I reminded him, triumphant. “There’s hope in you, after all.”
