New Moon

'I am…' My head swam as I looked for the appropriate word. 'Confused.' That worked. I couldn't make sense of what he was saying.

He stared deep into my eyes with his sincere, earnest gaze. 'I'm a good liar, Bella, I have to be.'

I froze, my muscles locking down as if for impact. The fault line in my chest rippled; the pain of it took my breath away.

He shook my shoulder, trying to loosen my rigid pose. 'Let me finish! I'm a good liar, but still, for you to believe me so quickly.' He winced. 'That was… excruciating.'

I waited, still frozen.

'When we were in the forest, when I was telling you goodbye—'

I didn't allow myself to remember. I fought to keep myself in the present second only.

'You weren't going to let go,' he whispered. 'I could see that. I didn't want to do it—it felt like it would kill me to do it—but I knew that if I couldn't convince you that I didn't love you anymore, it would just take you that much longer to get on with your life. I hoped that, if you thought I'd moved on, so would you.'

'A clean break,' I whispered through unmoving lips.

'Exactly. But I never imagined it would be so easy to do! I thought it would be next to impossible—that you would be so sure of the truth that I would have to lie through my teeth for hours to even plant the seed of doubt in your head. I lied, and I'm so sorry—sorry because I hurt you, sorry because it was a worthless effort. Sorry that I couldn't protect you from what I an. I lied to save you, and it didn't work. I'm sorry.

'But how could you believe me? After all the thousand times I've told you I love you, how could you let one word break your faith in me?'

I didn't answer. I was too shocked to form a rational response.

'I could see it in your eyes, that you honestly believed that I didn't want you anymore. The most absurd, ridiculous concept—as if there were anu way that I could exist without needing you!'

I was still frozen. His words were incomprehensible, because they were impossible.

He shook my shoulder again, not hard, but enough that my teeth rattled a little.

'Bella,' he sighed. 'Really, what were you thinking!'

And so I started to cry. The tears welled up and then gushed miserably down my cheeks.

'I knew it,' I sobbed. 'I knew I was dreaming.'

'You're impossible,' he said, and he laughed once—a hard laugh, frustrated. 'How can I put this so that you'll believe me? You're not asleep, and you're not dead. I'm here, and I love you. I have always loved you, and I will always love you. I was thinking of you, seeing your face in my mind, every second that I was away. When I told you that I didn't want you, it was the very blackest kind of blasphemy.'

I shook my head while the tears continued to ooze from the corners of my eyes.

'You don't believe me, do you?' he whispered, his face paler than his usual pale—I could see that even in the dim light. 'Why can you believe the lie, but not the truth?'

'It never made sense for you to love me,' I explained, my voice breaking twice. 'I always knew that.'

His eyes narrowed, his jaw tightened.

'I'll prove you're awake,' he promised.

He caught my face securely between his iron hands, ignoring my struggles when I tried to turn my head away.

'Please don't,' I whispered.

He stopped, his lips just half an inch from mine.

'Why not?' he demanded. His breath blew into my face, making my head whirl.

'When I wake up'—He opened his mouth to protest, so I revised—'okay, forget that one—when you leave again, it's going to be hard enough without this, too.'

He pulled back an inch, to stare at my face.

'Yesterday, when I would touch you, you were so… hesitant, so careful, and yet still the same. I need to know why. Is it because I'm too late? Because I've hurt you too much? Because you have moved on, as I meant for you to? That would be… quite fair. I won't contest your decision. So don't try to spare my feelings, please—just tell me now whether or not you can still love me, after everything I've done to you. Can you?' he whispered.

'What kind of an idiotic question is that?'

'Just answer it. Please.'

I stared at him darkly for a long moment. 'The way I feel about you will never change. Of course I love you— and there's nothing you can do about it!'

'That's all I needed to hear.'

His mouth was on mine then, and I couldn't fight him. Not because he was so many thousand times stronger than me, but because my will crumbled into dust the second our lips met. This kiss was not quite as careful as others I remembered, which suited me just fine. If I was going to rip myself up further, I might as well get as much in trade as possible.

So I kissed him back, my heart pounding out a jagged, disjointed rhythm while my breathing turned to panting and my fingers moved greedily to his face. I could feel his marble body against every line of mine, and I was so glad he hadn't listened to me—there was no pain in the world that would have justified missing this. His hands memorized my face, the same way mine were tracing his, and, in the brief seconds when his lips were free, he whispered my name.

When I was starting to get dizzy, he pulled away, only to lay his ear against my heart.

I lay there, dazed, waiting for my gasping to slow and quiet.

'By the way,' he said in a casual tone. 'I'm not leaving you.'

I didn't say anything, and he seemed to hear skepticism in my silence.

He lifted his face to lock my gaze in his. 'I'm not going anywhere. Not without you,' he added more seriously.

'I only left you in the first place because I wanted you to have a chance at a normal, happy, human life. I could see what I was doing to you—keeping you constantly on the edge of danger, taking you away from the world you belonged in, risking your life every moment I was with you. So I had to try. I had to do something, and it seemed like leaving was the only way. If I hadn't thought you would be better off, I could have never made myself leave. I'm much too selfish. Only you could be more important than what I wanted… what I needed. What I want and need is to be with you, and I know I'll never be strong enough to leave again. I have too many excuses to stay—thank heaven for that! It seems you can't be safe, no matter how many miles I put between us.'

'Don't promise me anything,' I whispered. If I let myself hope, and it came to nothing… that would kill me. Where all those merciless vampires had not been able to finish me off, hope would do the job.

Anger glinted metallic in his black eyes. 'You think I'm lying to you now?'

'No—not lying.' I shook my head, trying to think it through coherently. To examine the hypothesis that he did love me, while staying objective, clinical, so I wouldn't fall into the trap of hoping. 'You could mean it… now. But what about tomorrow, when you think about all the reasons you left in the first place? Or next month, when Jasper takes a snap at me?'

He flinched.

I thought back over those last days of my life before he left me, tried to see them through the filter of what he was telling me now. From that perspective, imagining that he'd left me while loving me, left me for me, his brooding and cold silences took on a different meaning. 'It isn't as if you hadn't thought the first decision through, is it?' I guessed. 'You'll end up doing what you think is right.'

'I'm not as strong as you give me credit for,' he said. 'Right and wrong have ceased to mean much to me; I was coming back anyway. Before Rosalie told me the news, I was already past trying to live through one week at a time, or even one day. I was fighting to make it through a single hour. It was only a matter of time—and not much of it—before I showed up at your window and begged you to take me back. I'd be happy to beg now, if you'd like that.'