Edward makes the decision to leave Katnis after he almost lost control of himself.
Katnis is hurt, heart broken even, by his departure but she understands why he left. He wanted to protect her from himself.
One month after The Cullen's leave Forks...
The next morning, Bella decides to go see Jacob on her own. She'd told Katnis and the younger Swan decided she'd go and see him once she figured out how things went with Bella and him.
Bell stopped in front of Jacob's house, killing the motor and rolling down the windows. It was stuffy today, no breeze. She put her feet up on the dashboard and settled in to wait. A movement flashed in her peripheral vision—she turned and spotted Billy looking at hee through the front window with a confused expression. She waved once and smiled a tight smile, but stayed where she was.
His eyes narrowed; he let the curtain fall across the glass.
She was prepared to stay as long as it took, but she wished she had something to do. She dug up a pen out of the bottom of her backpack, and an old test. She started to doodle on the back of the scrap. She'd only had time to scrawl one row of diamonds when there was a sharp tap against her door.
She jumped, looking up, expecting Billy.
"What are you doing here, Bella.'" Jacob growled.
She stared at him in blank astonishment. Jacob had changed radically in the last weeks since we'd seen him. The first thing she noticed was his hair—his beautiful hair was all gone, cropped quite short, covering his head with an inky gloss like black satin. The planes of his face seemed to have hardened subtly, tightened… aged. His neck and his shoulders were different, too, thicker somehow. His hands, where they gripped the window frame, looked enormous, with the tendons and veins more prominent under the russet skin. But the physical changes were insignificant.
It was his expression that made him almost completely unrecognizable. The open, friendly smile was gone like the hair, the warmth in his dark eyes altered to a brooding resentment that was instantly disturbing.
There was a darkness in Jacob now. Like her sun had imploded.
"Jacob?" She whispered as it began to rain hard.
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He just stared at her, his eyes tense and angry.
She realized they weren't alone. Behind him stood four others; all tall and russet-skinned, black hair chopped short just like Jacob's. They could have been brothers—she couldn't even pick Embry out of the group.
The resemblance was only intensified by the strikingly similar hostility in every pair of eyes.
Every pair but one. The oldest by several years, Sam stood in the very back, his face serene and sure. She had to swallow back the bile that rose in her throat. She wanted to take a swing at him. No, she wanted to do more than that. More than anything, she wanted to be fierce and deadly, someone no one would dare mess with. Someone who would scare Sam Uley silly.
More importantly, she wanted to kiss him. She wanted to pull him into her arms and kiss him full on the mouth.
"What do you want?" Jacob demanded, his expression growing more resentful as he watched the play of emotion across her face.
