Chapter 7 ~ Darkest Night

I had run away, again.

But this time it was from the confinements of my own family. There was no pain for them – just awkwardness and embarrassment.

Now I was away from Jasper’s calming influences my emotions flooded back to me. It took an enormous effort, and I almost succeeded in restraining them whilst I ran, but now they were slowly and steadily seeping back into my mind and I was powerless to stop them.

I pushed myself to move faster, I could still hear vehicles on a highway a few miles away and I wanted and needed silence and seclusion. My muscles started to ache and my pace slowed involuntary. Was it possible that I was beginning to get tired? I had never before experienced the need to stop running. I couldn’t get tired. I urged my body forward but it didn’t respond. I felt utterly drained. I came to the conclusion that I was debilitated by grief, and slowed to a halt after another minute. There was no point carrying on. I could only hear the night breeze delicately whistling through the trees now.

My resistance was now so weak and futile that nothing I did could stop me from feeling.

I simply held my arms out wide and let my mind succumb to itself.

I waited for the pain to engulf me; when it did it hit me like the stab of a thousand knifes. I cried out in agony and collapsed to the ground as the pain overwhelmed me.

Bella.

My Bella.

The memories swarmed back relentlessly.

The first day I’d noticed Bella – she was just another human. It was like she reeled me in; I was perplexed because I was unable to read her mind, but I was also extremely frustrated. I had never before encountered a human or otherwise whose mind I could not read. I thought of the science lab when I first caught her intoxicating scent that drove me so wild. I had very nearly obliterated an entire classroom of students, just to taste the girl who was radiating the sweet freesia scent. I had to leave town just to stop myself from killing her.

I should have stayed away then. I never should have returned to Forks. But the truth was, Bella fascinated me and I didn’t want to be forced to leave town by an insignificant human. Could I have been more stupid? I should have taken myself out of Bella’s life in the beginning – that way she would never have fallen in love with me and got so acutely entwined in the dangerous mythical world in which I reside.

So many things I should have done – but I didn’t, and all because I was a profoundly selfish creature. I truly despised myself for hurting Bella and putting her in constant danger. It was the cruellest act I had ever committed. Nothing I had ever done had made me feel such guilt and remorse – not even murder.

My eyes ached with the need for tears that couldn’t fall. My frozen body shuddered violently as the tearless sobs began and I drowned in my own emptiness.  I’d left behind far more than I anticipated when I left Forks; I had abandoned the part of me that Bella still held – my heart.

My empty chest resonated with solitude.

Bella made me feel human. I felt my frozen heart flutter when her skin met mine for the first time. I melted under her touch as her warm skin sent a thrill of ecstasy through me. I trembled with pleasure at the thought of touching her.  She was so warm and loving – not caring that it was a monster she embraced. Oh, how I longed to return to the arms of my beloved.

I still felt human now, even though Bella was no longer with me. I was experiencing all of the emotions that had resurfaced from the long dead human buried within my vampire self. Emotions that Bella had released.

I wondered what Bella was doing right now.

Was she thinking of me, as I was thinking of her? 

Would she still be hurting in the aftermath of my departure? 

Bella’s agonised face appeared in my head as the memory of my sudden departure replayed in my mind. I watched her as she so easily believed that I no longer wanted her – as if such a thing was possible!

I watched myself run away like a coward, leaving my fragile Bella alone on the edge of a forest.

Leaving her there had been a mistake – another mistake.

What if something happened to her?

I had heard her take a few steps further into the trees.

What if she had tried to follow me?

Would she have done that?

She could have got lost, gravely injured, or worse – and I just left her there. I couldn’t bear to think of the consequences.

No. Bella had promised – nothing reckless or stupid.

I had asked her not to wander into the woods on her own before, she would know that I considered that reckless.

I had no reason to worry – Bella had promised.

I dug my fingers into the earth beneath me, trying to grip on to something to stop myself from falling apart. It didn’t help – the dirt just crumbled into dust.

I was broken.

I had been ripped into a hundred pieces.

I would never be reassembled.

Only my Bella could make me whole again.

I kept telling myself that I had done the right thing by Bella, for the first time.

Keeping her safe was all that mattered,

Leaving Bella was a magnanimous act; I’d done it to save her, it was the right thing to do, I had to believe that. I just hoped that one day soon she would realise it too and her pain would then diminish. I clung to that hope as I curled up into a ball and let misery take me. I was sure the amount of pain I was feeling, was slowly torturing me to death but I welcomed it sincerely because I knew I deserved to suffer.

I don’t know how long I had lain in a foetal position – nor did I care.  My mind was clouded with thoughts of Bella.

Her impenetrable mind that I longed to read.

Her silky brown hair draping round her shoulders.

Her delicious scent that set my throat on fire.

Her inviting chocolate brown eyes that showed me the way to her soul.

She epitomised perfection.

At some point during the long night I realised that I had replayed all my thoughts of Bella and relived every second I had spent in her presence.

I missed her terribly.

I wondered if she missed me.

How long would it take her to forget me?

Hopefully I had made that process quicker by eliminating all her possessions that had some connection to me.

I wish I had something – anything of Bella’s to keep hold of…like a photograph or piece of her clothing that still held her scent.  I cursed myself for putting the pictures I had removed from Bella’s letter to her mother in the trash.

Suddenly my mind clicked as I remembered something.

I did have something that had belonged to Bella.

My hand reached into the pocket of my trousers and pulled out something that would seem so insignificant to any other person – but for me, it was the sole connection I had to Bella. It was a bottle cap; and now it meant everything to me

I had saved it from the lemonade bottle Bella had been drinking from the first day I sat with her at lunch. I couldn’t bring myself to stay away from her then; I was weak. I just gave in to my craving. This time, I wouldn’t be so feeble or so selfish – I would stay away.

I pulled myself up into a sitting position to examine the object in my hand. It was such an inconsequential thing to hold on to – but it had belonged to Bella. She had been playing with on the table, that day at lunch. She was the only other person who had touched it, and that was important to me. I clasped the bottle top in my hand gently – so not to damage it, and lay back on the ground to gaze up to the sky.

The sky was empty and dark, like me. 

Where was the moon? The stars? 

I couldn't see clearly, missing Bella was clouding my sight, and now the sky was black. 

Why was this happening?  I knew I had done what I had to do, and I knew it would be hard, but I had never imagined this. 

Then it hit me. 

I realized now that Bella had been my moon and stars. 

She was gone, and so were they.