I frowned.

"Don't be so pessimistic," he complained. "Give me a little credit."

"What do you mean by 'be good'?"

"I'll be your friend, Bella," he said quietly. "I won't ask for more than that."

"No, that won't work," Esme said sharply. "They can't be friends with the way they feel."

"No, they can't, and I think Bella realizes that now," Alice said.

"I think it's too late for that, Jake. How can we be friends, when we love each other like this?"

He looked at the ceiling, his stare intent, as if he were reading something that was written there. "Maybe . . . it will have to be a long-distance friendship."

Emmett snorted at that.

I clenched my teeth together, glad he wasn't looking at my face, fighting against the sobs that threatened to overtake me again. I needed to be strong, and I had no idea how. . . .

"You know that story in the Bible?" Jacob asked suddenly, still reading the blank ceiling. "The one with the king and the two women fighting over the baby?"

"Sure. King Solomon."

"That's right. King Solomon," he repeated. "And he said, cut the kid in half . . . but it was only a test. Just to see who would give up their share to protect it."

"Yeah, I remember."

He looked back at my face. "I'm not going to cut you in half anymore, Bella."

"As if Edward would," Alice scoffed. "He proved that in the eighth chapter of this book when he started accepting you."

"Biggest mistake he made," Rosalie muttered.

I understood what he was saying. He was telling me that he loved me the most, that his surrender proved it. I wanted to defend Edward, to tell Jacob how Edward would do the same thing if I wanted, if I would let him. I was the one who wouldn't renounce my claim there. But there was no point in starting an argument that would only hurt him more.

Listen to that Edward, Alice thought sadly.

I closed my eyes, willing myself to control the pain. I couldn't impose that on him.

We were quiet for a moment. He seemed to be waiting for me to say something; I was trying to think of something to say.

"Can I tell you what the worst part is?" he asked hesitantly when I said nothing. "Do you mind? I am going to be good."

"Will it help?" I whispered.

"It might. It couldn't hurt."

"What's the worst part, then?"

"The worst part is knowing what would have been."

"What might have been." I sighed.

"No." Jacob shook his head. "I'm exactly right for you, Bella. It would have been effortless for us - comfortable, easy as breathing. I was the natural path your life would have taken. . . ." He stared into space for a moment, and I waited. "If the world was the way it was supposed to be, if there were no monsters and no magic . . ."

Edward closed his eyes tightly at that, again looking more pained than any at other point in these books.

I could see what he saw, and I knew that he was right. If the world was the sane place it was supposed to be, Jacob and I would have been together. And we would have been happy. He was my soul mate in that world - would have been my soul mate still if his claim had not been overshadowed by something stronger, something so strong that it could not exist in a rational world.

Edward's face hardened at that and shook slightly.

Alice, on the other hand, was thinking the passage at him again making emphasis on in that world and something stronger. She was hoping that it would somehow reach him, make him think.

Was it out there for Jacob, too? Something that would trump a soul mate? I had to believe that it was.

Two futures, two soul mates . . . too much for any one person. And so unfair that I wouldn't be the only one to pay for it. Jacob's pain seemed too high a price. Cringing at the thought of that price, I wondered if I would have wavered, if I hadn't lost Edward once. If I didn't know what it was like to live without him. I wasn't sure. That knowledge was so deep a part of me, I couldn't imagine how I would feel without it.

"You probably wouldn't have had the inclination to even give the pup a shot if Edward hadn't left," Emmett said. Edward flinched at his brothers words.

"And you would never waver if your love is as strong as you say it is," Esme said. "Stronger than a soul mate."

"He's like a drug for you, Bella." His voice was still gentle, not at all critical. "I see that you can't live without him now. It's too late. But I would have been healthier for you. Not a drug; I would have been the air, the sun."

Everyone was glaring at that, and at Edward, because he seem to be agreeing with that sentence in some ways.

"You're not a drug to her, Edward," Esme said.

The corner of my mouth turned up in a wistful half-smile. "I used to think of you that way, you know. Like the sun. My personal sun. You balanced out the clouds nicely for me."

He sighed. "The clouds I can handle. But I can't fight with an eclipse."

"Now we know the meaning of the title," Carlisle muttered.