"Yes . . . and no, again. She likes it better this way, and, though it sometimes drives me insane, I'd rather she was happy."
The wind ripped around the tent, shaking it like an earthquake. Jacob's arms tightened around me protectively.
"Thank you," Edward whispered. "Odd as this might sound, I suppose I'm glad you're here, Jacob."
"You mean, 'as much as I'd love to kill you, I'm glad she's warm,' right?"
"It's an uncomfortable truce, isn't it?"
Jacob's whisper was suddenly smug. "I knew you were just as crazy jealous as I am."
"I'm not such a fool as to wear it on my sleeve like you do. It doesn't help your case, you know."
"You have more patience than I do."
"I should. I've had a hundred years to gain it. A hundred years of waiting for her."
"So . . . at what point did you decide to play the very patient good guy?"
"When I saw how much it was hurting her to make her choose. It's not usually this difficult to control. I can smother the . . . less civilized feelings I may have for you fairly easily most of the time. Sometimes I think she sees through me, but I can't be sure."
"I think you were just worried that if you really forced her to choose, she might not choose you."
Edward didn't answer right away. "That was a part of it," he finally admitted. "But only a small part. We all have our moments of doubt. Mostly I was worried that she'd hurt herself trying to sneak away to see you. After I'd accepted that she was more or less safe with you - as safe as Bella ever is - it seemed best to stop driving her to extremes."
Jacob sighed. "I'd tell her all of this, but she'd never believe me."
"I know." It sounded like Edward was smiling.
"You think you know everything," Jacob muttered.
"I don't know the future," Edward said, his voice suddenly unsure.
There was a long pause.
"What would you do if she changed her mind?" Jacob asked.
"I don't know that either."
Jacob chuckled quietly. "Would you try to kill me?" Sarcastic again, as if doubting Edward's ability to do it.
"No."
"Why not?" Jacob's tone was still jeering.
"Do you really think I would hurt her that way?"
Jacob hesitated for a second, and then sighed. "Yeah, you're right. I know that's right. But sometimes . . ."
"Sometimes it's an intriguing idea."
Jacob pressed his face into the sleeping bag to muffle his laugher. "Exactly," he eventually agreed.
What a strange dream this was. I wondered if it was the relentless wind that made me imagine all the whispering. Only the wind was screaming rather than whispering . . .
"What is it like? Losing her?" Jacob asked after a quiet moment, and there was no hint of humor in his suddenly hoarse voice. "When you thought that you'd lost her forever? How did you . . . cope?"
"That's very difficult for me to talk about."
Jacob waited.
"There were two different times that I thought that." Edward spoke each word just a little slower than normal. "The first time, when I thought I could leave her . . . that was . . . almost bearable. Because I thought she would forget me and it would be like I hadn't touched her life. For over six months I was able to stay away, to keep my promise that I wouldn't interfere again. It was getting close - I was fighting but I knew I wasn't going to win; I would have come back . . . just to check on her. That's what I would have told myself, anyway. And if I'd found her reasonably happy . . . I like to think that I could have gone away again.
"But she wasn't happy. And I would have stayed. That's how she convinced me to stay with her tomorrow, of course. You were wondering about that before, what could possibly motivate me . . . what she was feeling so needlessly guilty about. She reminded me of what it did to her when I left - what it still does to her when I leave. She feels horrible about bringing that up, but she's right. I'll never be able to make up for that, but I'll never stop trying anyway."
Jacob didn't respond for a moment, listening to the storm or digesting what he'd heard, I didn't know which.
"And the other time - when you thought she was dead?" Jacob whispered roughly.
"Yes." Edward answered a different question. "It will probably feel like that to you, won't it? The way you perceive us, you might not be able to see her as Bella anymore. But that's who she'll be."
"That's not what I asked."
Edward's voice came back fast and hard. "I can't tell you how it felt. There aren't words."
Jacob's arms flexed around me.
"But you left because you didn't want to make her a bloodsucker. You want her to be human."
Edward spoke slowly. "Jacob, from the second that I realized that I loved her, I knew there were only four possibilities. The first alternative, the best one for Bella, would be if she didn't feel as strongly for me - if she got over me and moved on. I would accept that, though it would never change the way I felt. You think of me as a . . . living stone - hard and cold. That's true. We are set the way we are, and it is very rare for us to experience a real change. When that happens, as when Bella entered my life, it is a permanent change. There's no going back. . . .
"The second alternative, the one I'd originally chosen, was to stay with her throughout her human life. It wasn't a good option for her, to waste her life with someone who couldn't be human with her, but it was the alternative I could most easily face. Knowing all along that, when she died, I would find a way to die, too. Sixty years, seventy years - it would seem like a very, very short time to me. . . . But then it proved much too dangerous for her to live in such close proximity with my world. It seemed like everything that could go wrong did. Or hung over us . . . waiting to go wrong. I was terrified that I wouldn't get those sixty years if I stayed near her while she was human.