New Moon (Twilight, #2)

by Stephenie Meyer

I wasn’t running for my life; I was racing to save something infinitely more precious.

September thirteenth.

But how could I let him give me things when I had nothing to reciprocate with? He, for some unfathomable reason, wanted to be with me. Anything he gave me on top of that just threw us more out of balance.

Rosalie actually cracked a smile. Jasper laughed. “It’s a stereo for your truck,” he explained. “Emmett’s installing it right now so that you can’t return it.”

“Well, that’s everyone,” I sighed. “I can clear a room, at least.”

“What I mean is, it’s not like you asked for this. You didn’t choose this kind of life, and yet you have to work so hard to be good.” “I don’t know that I’m making up for anything,” he disagreed lightly. “Like everything in life, I just had to decide what to do with what I was given.”

Charlie considered himself a Lutheran, because that’s what his parents had been, but Sundays he worshipped by the river with a fishing pole in his hand.

mumbled. I couldn’t imagine anyone, deity included, who wouldn’t be impressed by Carlisle.

“But if I believed as he does…” He looked down at me with unfathomable eyes. “If you believed as he did. Could you take away his soul?”

If he’d asked me whether I would risk my soul for Edward, the reply would be obvious. But would I risk Edward’s soul? I pursed my lips unhappily. That wasn’t a fair exchange.

was just after sunset, and I’d arrived to relieve the doctors who’d been working all day. That was a hard time to pretend—there was so much work to be done, and I had no need of rest. How I hated to go back to my house, to hide in the dark and pretend to sleep while so many were dying.

Her eyes were hard, like stones, like emeralds. ‘You must do everything in your power. What others cannot do, that is what you must do for my Edward.’

I collapsed back onto my pillow, gasping, my head spinning. Something tugged at my memory, elusive, on the edges.

“Which is tempting you more, my blood or my body?” I challenged.

I was halfway asleep, maybe more, when I realized what his kiss had reminded me of: last spring, when he’d had to leave me to throw James off my trail, Edward had kissed me goodbye, not knowing when—or if—we would see each other again. This kiss had the same almost painful edge for some reason I couldn’t imagine. I shuddered into unconsciousness, as if I were already having a nightmare.

With a roll of nausea, I realized I’d misunderstood. “When you say we—,” I whispered. “I mean my family and myself.” Each word separate and distinct.

“No! This is about my soul, isn’t it?” I shouted, furious, the words exploding out of me—somehow it still sounded like a plea. “Carlisle told me about that, and I don’t care, Edward. I don’t care! You can have my soul. I don’t want it without you—it’s yours already!”

“Bella, I don’t want you to come with me.” He spoke the words slowly and precisely, his cold eyes on my face, watching as I absorbed what he was really saying. There was a pause as I repeated the words in my head a few times, sifting through them for their real intent. “You… don’t… want me?” I tried out the words, confused by the way they sounded, placed in that order.

“And I’ll make you a promise in return,” he said. “I promise that this will be the last time you’ll see me. I won’t come back. I won’t put you through anything like this again. You can go on with your life without any more interference from me. It will be as if I’d never existed.”

If I stopped looking for him, it was over. Love, life, meaning… over.

A new moon.

“No, I don’t think she’s hurt,” he told someone. “She just keeps saying ‘He’s gone.’”

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.

“THAT’S IT, BELLA! I’m sending you home.” I looked up from my cereal, which I was pondering rather than eating, and stared at Charlie in shock. I hadn’t been following the conversation—actually, I hadn’t been aware that we were having a conversation—and I wasn’t sure what he meant. “I am home,” I mumbled, confused.

I glanced at myself in the hall mirror before I opened the door, arranging my features carefully into a smile and trying to hold them there.

The sound of his voice was something that I’d feared I was losing,

Because there was just one thing that I had to believe to be able to live—I had to know that he existed. That was all. Everything else I could endure. So long as he existed.

Forbidden to remember, terrified to forget; it was a hard line to walk.

As if he’d never existed? That was insanity. It was a promise that he could never keep, a promise that was broken as soon as he’d made it.

Only a teenage boy would agree to this: deceiving both our parents while repairing dangerous vehicles using money meant for my college education. He didn’t see anything wrong with that picture. Jacob was a gift from the gods.

Tonight would, no doubt, be as horrific as last night. I lay down on my bed and curled into a ball in preparation for the onslaught. I squeezed my eyes shut and… the next thing I knew, it was morning.

Effortlessly, without a conscious command to the muscles around my lips, my answering smile spread across my face. A strange feeling of warmth bubbled up in my throat, despite the icy rain splattering on my cheeks. “Hi, Jacob.”

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.

Seth was fourteen; he hung on Jacob’s every word with idolizing eyes.

It was loud and sometimes confusing as everyone talked over everyone else, and the laughter from one joke interrupted the telling of another.

“Please let me know when I start getting on your nerves. I don’t want to be a pain.” “Okay.” He laughed, a throaty sound. “I wouldn’t hold your breath for that, though.”

Jacob held my hand while Dr. Snow was sewing, and I tried not to think about why that was ironic.

As always, Jacob was game for anything I wanted.

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.

“Doesn’t the radio work in this thing?” Mike asked with a hint of petulance, interrupting Jacob mid-sentence. “Yes,” Jacob answered. “But Bella doesn’t like music.” I stared at Jacob, surprised. I’d never told him that.

Funny how he seemed to know not to say the name—just like before in the car with the music. He picked up on so much about me that I never said.

How could I explain so that he would understand? I was an empty shell. Like a vacant house—condemned—for months I’d been utterly uninhabitable. Now I was a little improved. The front room was in better repair. But that was all—just the one small piece. He deserved better than that—better than a one-room, falling-down fixer-upper. No amount of investment on his part could put me back in working order.

“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?” “Yeah, Jake. I know that. And I already do count on you, probably more than you know.” The smile broke across his face the way the sunrise set the clouds on fire, and I wanted to cut my tongue out. I hadn’t said one word that was a lie, but I should have lied. The truth was wrong, it would hurt him. I would let him down.

Even more, I had never meant to love him. 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.

was his expression that made him almost completely unrecognizable. The open, friendly smile was gone like the hair, the warmth in his dark eyes altered to a brooding resentment that was instantly disturbing. 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?”

“Sometimes, loyalty gets in the way of what you want to do. Sometimes, it’s not your secret to tell.” So, I couldn’t argue with that. He was exactly right—I had a secret that wasn’t mine to tell, yet a secret I felt bound to protect.

I didn’t like that—didn’t like the way his eyes closed as if he were in pain when he spoke of being bound. More than dislike—I realized I hated it, hated anything that caused him pain. Hated it fiercely. Sam’s face filled my mind. For me, this was all essentially voluntary. I protected the Cullens’ secret out of love; unrequited, but true. For Jacob, it didn’t seem to be that way.

“Emily,” he said, and so much love saturated his voice that I felt embarrassed, intrusive, as I watched him cross the room in one stride and take her face in his wide hands. He leaned down and kissed the dark scars on her right cheek before he kissed her lips.