After Forever (a Twilight Saga fanfiction: 10 years after Breaking Dawn)

7 ∘ Truth: Part Two (JPOV)

September 12th, 2016

We got back to the Cullens’ and I went to find Bella. When I did, Edward was with her.

“Really, Jacob?”

“Of course you already know.” I rolled my eyes. “We need to talk to her together. We all have different roles in the story.”

Bella grabbed Edward’s hand and followed me to Renesmee.

“Why are you three being so dramatic? Rip off the bandaid already,” Emmett said. They were all here. It’s probably best this way.

“What’s going on?” Ness was clearly nervous. She didn’t really mind any attention she got, but she didn’t crave it, either.

“We need to talk about you and Jacob,” Edward told her.

“Yes, the talk we’ve all been waiting for.” Emmett grinned. He was so excited to see how insane this would get.

“Oh, no. You guys seriously aren’t gonna—”

“No, Nessie. Not that talk,” Bella whispered.

“Okay, good. Then what is it?”

“Jacob started to talk to you about it last night,” Edward started, sitting next to Ness on the couch while Bella sat on the coffee table in front of her. “And just so you know, this is gonna be as hard for me to say as it is for you to hear it.” She looked at me for a second. “As you’re already aware, Jacob and I grew up together. And when I came up here from Phoenix to live with Grandpa Charlie, he and I reconnected. And that’s when I met your dad.” Edward took her hand. “We were together for a few months, and then when my eighteenth birthday came around... something terrible happened.”

Jasper chimed in. “I was still relatively new to the vegetarian diet, so I wasn’t one hundred percent in control of myself all the time. Alice wanted to celebrate your mom’s birthday here. But being the klutz that she is...” He paused to smirk at Bella, who grinned back at him. “She gave herself a paper cut when she was opening a present.”

Bella mockingly continued, “And Uncle Jasper being the bloodlusting maniac that he was...”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m a vampire, get over it,“ he lightly shoved her. “Anyway... I attacked her.”

“Tried to,” she corrected. “Everyone made sure I was safe. But in the process, your father shoved me ten feet back into the wall, for whatever reason, I still have no idea,” she chuckled. I had never heard this. It sounds traumatic. She’s only trying to make light of the situation for Renesmee’s sake so she doesn’t freak out. “And I got glass in my arm. So for Jasper’s enjoyment, I was bleeding five times more than I was in the beginning. But Grandpa Carlisle stitched me back up and I was perfectly fine.”

Everyone saw her expression shift. Edward continued for her. “After that happened, I didn’t think that your mom would survive in my world. The dangers of being around vampires was starting to catch up to her—let alone how accident prone she was, even without me—and I didn’t want to inflict her with that anymore.”

Nessie kept flickering her eyes between Bella and Edward with tears threatening to fall.

“He thought I would end up either extremely hurt, or dead. So... he left.”

“What do you mean, he left?” She was so confused.

“He lied to protect me. At least in his eyes, it was protecting me.”

“Lied?”

“He said I needed to go on living my human life without him. That... he didn’t love me anymore. And that I would be happier in the long run.” She took a deep breath before continuing. “He and everyone else were gone for about seven months.”