Breaking Dawn

“If you think that imprinting could ever make sense of this insanity . . .” I struggled for words. “Do you really think that just because I might someday imprint on some stranger it would make this right?” I jabbed a finger toward her swollen body. “Tell me what the point was then, Bella! What was the point of me loving you? What was the point of you loving him? When you die”—the words were a snarl—“how is that ever right again? What’s the point to all the pain? Mine, yours, his! You’ll kill him, too, not that I care about that.” She flinched, but I kept going. “So what was the point of your twisted love story, in the end? If there is any sense, please show me, Bella, because I don’t see it.”

She sighed. “I don’t know yet, Jake. But I just… feel… that this is all going somewhere good, hard to see as it is now. I guess you could call it faith.”

“You’re dying for nothing, Bella! Nothing!”

Her hand dropped from my face to her bloated stomach, caressed it. She didn’t have to say the words for me to know what she was thinking. She was dying for it.

“I’m not going to die,” she said through her teeth, and I could tell she was repeating things she’d said before. “I will keep my heart beating. I’m strong enough for that.”

“That’s a load of crap, Bella. You’ve been trying to keep up with the supernatural for too long. No normal person can do it. You’re not strong enough.” I took her face in my hand. I didn’t have to remind myself to be gentle. Everything about her screamed breakable.

“I can do this. I can do this,” she muttered, sounding a lot like that kids’ book about the little engine that could.

“Doesn’t look like it to me. So what’s your plan? I hope you have one.”

She nodded, not meeting my eyes. “Did you know Esme jumped off a cliff? When she was human, I mean.”

“So?”

“So she was close enough to dead that they didn’t even bother taking her to the emergency room—they took her right around to the morgue. Her heart was still beating, though, when Carlisle found her. . . .”

That’s what she’d meant before, about keeping her heart beating.

“You’re not planning on surviving this human,” I stated dully.

“No. I’m not stupid.” She met my stare then. “I guess you probably have your own opinion on that point, though.”

“Emergency vampirization,” I mumbled.

“It worked for Esme. And Emmett, and Rosalie, and even Edward. None of them were in such great shape. Carlisle only changed them because it was that or death. He doesn’t end lives, he saves them.”

I felt a sudden twinge of guilt about the good vampire doctor, like before. I shoved the thought away and started in on the begging.

“Listen to me, Bells. Don’t do it that way.” Like before, when the call from Charlie had come, I could see how much difference it really made to me. I realized I needed her to stay alive, in some form. In any form. I took a deep breath. “Don’t wait until it’s too late, Bella. Not that way. Live. Okay? Just live. Don’t do this to me. Don’t do it to him.” My voice got harder, louder. “You know what he’s going to do when you die. You’ve seen it before. You want him to go back to those Italian killers?” She cringed into the sofa.

I left out the part about how that wouldn’t be necessary this time.

Struggling to make my voice softer, I asked, “Remember when I got mangled up by those newborns? What did you tell me?”

I waited, but she wouldn’t answer. She pressed her lips together.

“You told me to be good and listen to Carlisle,” I reminded her. “And what did I do? I listened to the vampire. For you.”

“You listened because it was the right thing to do.”

“Okay—pick either reason.”

She took a deep breath. “It’s not the right thing now.” Her gaze touched her big round stomach and she whispered under her breath, “I won’t kill him.”

My hands shook again. “Oh, I hadn’t heard the great news. A bouncing baby boy, huh? Shoulda brought some blue balloons.”

Her face turned pink. The color was so beautiful—it twisted in my stomach like a knife. A serrated knife, rusty and ragged.

I was going to lose this. Again.

“I don’t know he’s a boy,” she admitted, a little sheepish. “The ultrasound wouldn’t work. The membrane around the baby is too hard—like their skin. So he’s a little mystery. But I always see a boy in my head.”

“It’s not some pretty baby in there, Bella.”

“We’ll see,” she said. Almost smug.

“You won’t,” I snarled.

“You’re very pessimistic, Jacob. There is definitely a chance that I might walk away from this.”

I couldn’t answer. I looked down and breathed deep and slow, trying to get a grip on my fury.

“Jake,” she said, and she patted my hair, stroked my cheek. “It’s going to be okay. Shh. It’s okay.”

I didn’t look up. “No. It will not be okay.”

She wiped something wet from my cheek. “Shh.”