Midnight Sun (The Twilight Saga #5) - Stephenie Meyer Page 0,142

aging. This was the desperate, unlikely future that was the only one I could live with. The future that did not cheat her of either life or afterlife. The future that would take her away from me someday, as inevitably as day turned to night.

“It’s still not very probable, but I thought you’d like to know it was there. If you two get through the crisis, this is out there.”

“Thank you, Alice,” I whispered.

I put the car into drive, and pulled onto the road again, cutting off a minivan chugging along under the limit. I accelerated automatically, barely registering the process.

Of course, this is all you, she thought. She was still picturing the unlikely trio on the sofa. This doesn’t take her wishes into account.

“What do you mean? Her wishes?”

“Did it never occur to you that Bella might not be willing to lose you? That one short mortal life might not be long enough for her?”

“That’s insanity. No one would choose—”

“No need to argue about it now. Crisis first.”

“Thanks, Alice,” I said again, caustically this time.

She trilled a laugh. It was a nervous sound, birdlike. She was every bit as on edge as I was, almost as horrified by the tragic possibilities.

“I know you love her, too,” I muttered.

It’s not the same.

“No, it isn’t.”

After all, Alice had Jasper. She had the center of her universe safely at her side—even more indestructible than most. And his soul was not on her conscience. She had brought Jasper nothing but happiness and peace.

I love you. You can do this.

I wanted to believe her, but I knew when her words were built on sure foundations, and when they were no more than ordinary hope.

I drove in silence to the edge of the national park and found an inconspicuous place to leave the car. Alice didn’t move when the car stopped. She could see that I would need a moment.

I closed my eyes and tried not to hear her, not to hear anything, to really focus my thoughts toward a decision. A resolution. I pressed my fingertips hard against my temples.

Alice said I would have to make a choice. I wanted to scream out loud that I’d already decided, that there was no decision, but even though it felt as though my whole being yearned for nothing but Bella’s safety, I knew the monster was still alive.

How did I kill it? Silence it forever?

Oh, he was quiet now. Hiding. Saving his strength for the fight that was coming.

For a few moments, I thought seriously about killing myself. It was the only way I knew to be sure that the monster didn’t survive.

But how? Carlisle had exhausted most of the possibilities in the beginning of his new life, and had never come close to ending his own story, despite his very real determination to do so. I would have no success acting alone.

Any of my family would be capable of doing it for me, but I knew that none of them would, no matter how I begged. Even Rosalie, who I’m sure would claim to be angry enough to do it, who might bluster and threaten the next time I saw her, would not. Because even though she sometimes hated me, she always loved me. And I knew if I could trade places with any of them, I would feel and act exactly the same way. I would not be able to harm any of my family, no matter how much pain they were in, no matter how much they wanted out.

There were others.… But Carlisle’s friends wouldn’t help me. They would never betray him so. I could think of one place I might go with the power to end the monster very quickly… but doing that would put Bella in danger. Though I’d not been the one to tell her the truth about myself, she knew things she was forbidden to know. It was nothing that would ever bring her the wrong kind of attention, unless I did something stupid, like go to Italy.

It was too bad the Quileute treaty was toothless these days. Three generations ago, all I would have had to do was walk to La Push. A useless idea now.

So those ways of killing the monster weren’t possible.

Alice seemed so sure that I had to go forward, to meet this head-on. But how could that be the right thing to do, when the possibility that I would kill Bella existed?

I flinched. The idea was so painful, I couldn’t imagine how the monster