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06:51 pm

Jacob was right. He'd been right all along. He was more than just my friend. That's why it was so
impossible to tell him goodbye - because I was in love with him. Too. I loved him, much more than I
should, and yet, still nowhere near enough. I was in love with him, but it was not enough to change
anything; it was only enough to hurt us both more. To hurt him worse than I ever had. I didn't care about more than that - than his pain. I more than deserved whatever pain this caused me.
I hoped it was bad. I hoped I would really suffer.
In this moment, it felt as though we were the same person. His pain had always been and would always
be my pain - now his joy was my joy. I felt joy, too, and yet his happiness was somehow also pain.
Almost tangible - it burned against my skin like acid, a slow torture.
For one brief, never-ending second, an entirely different path expanded behind the lids of my tear-wet
eyes. As if I were looking through the filter of Jacob's thoughts, I could see exactly what I was going to
give up, exactly what this new self-knowledge would not save me from losing. I could see Charlie and
Renee mixed into a strange collage with Billy and Sam and La Push. I could see years passing, and
meaning something as they passed, changing me. I could see the enormous red-brown wolf that I loved,
always standing as protector if I needed him. For the tiniest fragment of that second, I saw the bobbing
heads of two small, black-haired children, running away from me into the familiar forest. When they
disappeared, they took the rest of the vision with them.
And then, quite distinctly, I felt the splintering along the fissure line in my heart as the smaller part
wrenched itself away from the whole.
Jacob's lips were still before mine were. I opened my eyes and he was staring at me with wonder and
elation. "I have to leave," he whispered.