“Do you know how many times I hoped you would come back?” she began quietly, still not making eye contact. “When I was human…the nightmares I had.” She flung her hand aside and showed me the resentment in her eyes. “I hated myself for being so weak. A boy breaks up with me and I suddenly can’t function? Pathetic, right?” She shook her head and stared out the side window watching the snow fall silently.

“But I’d have forgiven you in a heartbeat, Edward. All the pain you caused me…it didn’t matter.”

She quit talking and I ached to hear her musical voice again.

“I sense a “but” coming,” I prompted.

She stared at me, her gaze unwavering, “But, that was before Volterra.”

For a few seconds, as that statement washed over me, I couldn’t breathe. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I’d known that she would never be able to forgive me, what on Earth had possessed me to listen to three Christmas Ghosts and my deceased mother’s spirit? I may not have been really living back in New York, but it was more than I had right at this moment. Believing Bella would reject me was way different than hearing her utter the words.

“I shouldn’t have come. I’m sorry to put you through more…grief. I’ll go.”

“No, you’ll stay and hear me out. It’s the least you can do. I recall standing in the dark woods listening to you tell me how you didn’t want me or love me and that vampires are easily distracted, so you can bloody well stand to show me the same courtesy.”

I tried not to smile because I knew she hadn’t meant it to be cute, but Bella had always had a bit of a temper. Usually it was reserved for Mike or Charlie, but I’d certainly been on the receiving end of it a time or two.

 “By all means.”

She glowered at me sensing my amusement and getting all the angrier for it.

“Sit,” she motioned to the couch, her eyes falling on the book I’d been reading causing her brows to furrow even more.

“You can’t know what I gave up to rescue you from Volterra. My father was mourning one of his best friends when I boarded a plane and never returned. Have you any idea what that must have been like for him? For me? And for what? For you to turn around and say that you’d rather see me dead than a vampire?”