The Long Night

Chapter Four

Chapter 4

I had failed Bella by not leaving and staying away after that first disastrous day in that biology lab.

I had failed Bella by not protecting her from James, and later from Laurent, and Victoria.

I had failed Bella by leaving and pushing her into the arms of Jacob Black, then returning to turn her life upside-down once again just as he was helping her to return to a normal life.

I was failing her now by not stepping aside so that Bella could remain with her true love, a human—or almost human—who could give her so much that I couldn't.

Jacob was strong enough and determined enough to truly protect Bella from all the danger that constantly conspires against her.

Jacob loves her completely and absolutely, and while he endangered her slightly with his wolfish temper, the danger was nothing, after all, when compared to living with a family of vampires.

Jacob could give Bella a real honeymoon that would not involve the possibility of her death...or at least of severe, perhaps fatal, injury.

Jacob could provide Bella with children, with a real family.

Jacob would eventually age, thus living a long, happy, relatively-human life with her.

Jacob could give her so much that I couldn't—that I would be taking away from her. She would probably resent me later, after she became a vampire, for not being able to provide her with a real family, with children from her own body. By making her stay with me, I would be stealing all her future human joys as well as her human life.

So it would be far better for Bella to indeed return to La Push tomorrow and let Jacob know that he had won her, heart, soul, and...body.

I swallowed hard, trying to dissolve the lump in my throat as grief swept through me. I held a trembling, sobbing girl in my arms, against my chest, and I wished that I could join her for a very few moments.

That I could find relief and release in the comfort of tears.

But there was another reason Bella should remain with Jacob: I couldn't even cry with her. I was only helpful in being a stone wall for her to grip as sorrow poured through her frail body, ripping her into pieces that only Jacob could reassemble.

As I made my decision, Bella started to quiet a little. Without moving my head, I glanced at the clock on her bedside table: 2:14 A.M. Hoping that she was beginning the process of “crying herself to sleep”—a phrase I had always scoffed at in books, thinking that humans never would do such a thing, a phrase I now realized was frighteningly true—Bella gripped my shirt with renewed strength and began to cry even louder, almost hysterically.

I held her to me, passing one hand comfortingly up and down her back as I tried in vain to soothe away her pain—pain that I had caused this delicate human girl. Pain that I deserved to be experiencing in her place.

Charlie was right. Inadvertently I had forced Bella into the decision to choose me, to marry me, simply so that she would not be responsible for my return to, and thus my death in, Volterra. She had witnessed my agony when I was tortured by Jane, and she had determined to never let me feel anything like that pain again, no matter the cost to her.

Her loyalty knew no bounds.

I would have to tell her in the morning.

But I also knew of a certain possibility that I had pointed out to Jacob last night: since Jacob hadn't yet imprinted, there still remained a slight possibility that he would imprint—on someone else beside Bella since he had not imprinted on her. And then Bella would be abandoned, left alone, as Jacob joined his imprint.