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for letting me experience the kind of love that people freely die for.
So what was the better course of action? Spend time with them while I could? Or start the separation now to make it more gradual? I quailed at the idea of the second option.
“Photographic memory or not, I don’t understand why you like it. The characters are ghastly people who ruin each others’ lives. I don’t know how Heathcliff and Cathy ended up being ranked with couples like Romeo and Juliet or Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. It isn’t a love story, it’s a hate story.”
“I’ll do my time without complaining when I’ve done something wrong, Dad, but I’m not going to put up with your prejudices.”
I’ll be back so soon you won’t have time to miss me. Look after my heart—I‘ve left it with you.
I wanted to skip past this part, the betrayals, the accusations, but I knew that we had to talk it through before we’d be able to move on to anything else.
My heart thumped unevenly at the emptiness of the picture he painted.
“Please enlighten me, then, Jacob.” I let the sarcasm flow thick. “What is a valid reason for someone to love someone else? Since apparently I’m doing it wrong.”
You are… well, not exactly the love of my life, because I expect to love you for much longer than that.
“He doesn’t like to tell other people’s stories—he feels like he’s betraying confidences, because he hears so much more than just the parts they mean for him to hear.”
I didn’t want him to die—so much that, even though I hated this life, I was selfish enough to ask Carlisle to change him for me.
“That sounds quite bizarre to you, doesn’t it? In some ways, you are much more mature than I was at eighteen. But in other ways… there are many things you’ve probably never thought about seriously. You’re too young to know what you’ll want in ten years, fifteen years—and too young to give it all up without thinking it through. You don’t want to be rash about permanent things, Bella.”
He loves you more than you know. It terrifies him to be away from you.”
“It’s so hard to describe. It’s not like love at first sight, really. It’s more like… gravity moves. When you see her, suddenly it’s not the earth holding you here anymore. She does. And nothing matters more than her. And you would do anything for her, be anything for her.… You become whatever she needs you to be, whether that’s a protector, or a lover, or a friend, or a brother.
“Don’t you want to know what I did?” I asked, starting to be puzzled by his apparent lack of concern. I felt him shrug. “I’m always interested in everything you do—but you don’t have to tell me unless you want to.”
“Sleep, my Bella. Dream happy dreams. You are the only one who has ever touched my heart. It will always be yours. Sleep, my only love.”
“Do you ever think that your life might be easier if you weren’t in love with me?” “Maybe. It wouldn’t be much of a life, though.”
“You don’t have to ask my permission, Bella. I’m not your father—thank heaven for that. Perhaps you should ask Charlie, though.”
“There are things between my hands right now that I can’t live without. You could take care of them.”
The way he stared at her! It was like a blind man seeing the sun for the first time. Like a collector finding an undiscovered Da Vinci, like a mother looking into the face of her newborn child.
Though he had loved the others, this was something else. He decided to give up his spirit wolf so that he would die when she did.
“To really understand why, you have to look at the world from a different perspective. You have to imagine the way it looks to the powerful, the greedy… the perpetually thirsty.
When you live for the fight, for the blood, the relationships you form are tenuous and easily broken. I walked away without a backward glance.
“Until your heart stops beating, Bella,” he said. “I’ll be here—fighting. Don’t forget that you have options.”
“Yeah. The right thing isn’t always real obvious. Sometimes the right thing for one person is the wrong thing for someone else. So… good luck figuring that out.”
“I know that. Besides, that’s not what you asked. You gave me two alternatives that you could live with, and I chose the one that I could live with. That’s how compromise is supposed to work.”
Two voices struggled inside me. One that wanted to be good and brave, and one that told the good one to keep her mouth shut.
“Charlie is happier when he pretends to swallow your stories. He’d rather lie to himself than look too closely.”
“I promise to love you forever—every single day of forever. Will you marry me?”
I was hurting everyone today. Was there anything I touched that didn’t get spoiled?
I had to never hurt him again. That would be my mission in life. Never again would I be the reason for this look to come into his eyes.
“I’m only as sure as you are, Bella. You know that. If you were to change your mind, what I see would change… or disappear, in your case.”
“Yes, it’s better to have you know,” he finally decided. “If you hadn’t figured it out… I’d have always wondered if your decision would have been different if you had. Now I know. I did everything I could.”
“He’s like a drug for you, Bella.” His voice was still gentle, not at all critical. “I see that you can’t live without him now. It’s too late. But I would have been healthier for you. Not a drug; I would have been the air, the sun.”
“I used to think of you that way, you know. Like the sun. My personal sun. You balanced out the clouds nicely for me.” He sighed. “The clouds I can handle. But I can’t fight with an eclipse.”
“No, Bella,” Edward whispered, capturing my hands. “It’s part of who you are.”
“I don’t know.…” His brow creased. “If it hurts you so much, how can it possibly be the right thing for you?”
“‘If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn
“‘I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!’”
“At least my mom and dad and my friends will know the best part of my choice, the most I’m allowed to tell them. They’ll know I chose you, and they’ll know we’re together. They’ll know I’m happy, wherever I am. I think that’s the best I can do for them.”
My parents have been my rock; I don’t know how anyone does this without a dad’s good advice and a mom’s shoulder to cry on.

