A/N: PLEASE READ!

I know many of your don't always ready author's notes, but you want to read this one!

Thank you so much to everyone who has shown interest in this story, but, sadly, I've lost my enthusiasm for Twilight fanfic. That being said, I did want to go ahead and wrap up the story for you guys. I hate when fics are just abandoned. So, what follows is a half-assed, rushed conclusion to this sad tale that is a greatly summarized sequenceof events that I had planned to write out over many chapters. And, be warned. It's not really edited.

Again, I apologize if I'm disappointing anyone! My heart just isn't in it anymore. But I hope you still enjoy this rushed conclusion. It's a tear-jerker, so grab your tissues! And thanks for all the kind support. :)

Chapter 6: Photograph

I couldn't help but smile at Charlie's anxious posture as I helped him knot his tie. His scent was heavy with sweat and adrenaline, but I could see that he was happy. Happier than I had ever seen him, really.

"Well, Bells, am I presentable?" he asked, smoothing a shaky hand over his neatly combed hair.

"You look great, Dad," I answered genuinely, taking in his navy suit and pale yellow tie. "Emily did a great job picking out this suit."

"Thanks, kiddo. You don't look half bad yourself."

I smiled as he reached for my hands, chaffing them gently between his large, rough ones.

"Jeez, Bells. Your hands are freezing. Don't forget your coat."

"Oh, you know me," I shrugged. "Always cold."

"With a warm heart."

I had no choice but to hug him for that.

The rumble of a familiar engine reached my ears, and I pretended not to notice Jacob's approach until he knocked on the door. I also had to pretend that there wasn't still a palpable awkwardness between Jacob and myself.

We had barely said two words to each other on the second half of the drive from the airport. Jacob had never explicitly said he regretted what happened between us, but it was evident in the tense set of his shoulders and clipped tone of voice.

We appraised each other for a long, heavy moment as I held the door open or him. I'd never seen him dressed so formally before. His dark eyes roamed over the silvery fabric of my dress before he could stop himself, and I felt something unspoken pass between us. A silent agreement. A promise.

Charlie's wedding was all that I could have hoped for. He's happy; he isn't alone.

Jacob whisked me away from the reservation as soon as the bride and groom departed, as promised, running silently beside me through the moonlit woods back to Charlie's house.

I didn't mean for it to happen again. I didn't mean to betray my marriage vows in the same bed where Edward had held me for so many nights, in the same room where we had first professed our love for one another.

But Jacob had phased back into human form without shame right in front of me, his silky skin luminous in the moonlight, as he'd pulled me into his arms, sealing my fate.

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I wouldn't see Jacob again until the following year, when I visited Forks for what was to be the second-to-last time.

I never actually saw Charlie again. But I heard his voice, hoarse with grief. Human sorrow has a scent, and the room I lay in was heavy with it. I was almost glad that I wasn't supposed to breathe.

Even as an immortal being, climbing into a coffin was an unsettling feeling. It took every ounce of my self-control to lay there, still and silent as an actual corpse, as the familiar voices of my family, both those who knew I wasn't dead and those who thought I was, floated in and out.

Many hands brushed over my folded ones, but I instantly recognized the heat and size of Jacob's. He was in on our secret, of course. He knew that the crash that had mangled my Mercedes hadn't harmed me. But he played the part of grieving best friend to a tee.

I wondered if he was having any trouble hiding thoughts of our affair from Edward. If only I could ask him, but there was never the right time.

In the dead of night, I opened my eyes beneath the stars after what felt like an eternity of dark. Jacob and Edward where both there, offering me their hands to help me out of the coffin before they reburied it.

~ 0 ~

Sixty years.

Deer. High school. Deer. High school. Sex with Edward. More deer. More high school. More sex.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

The only breaks in the monotony of my immortal life were my trips with Jacob.

We took one every year. To my husband and family, they were my "best friends' trips," but to Jacob and me, they were so much more.

We explored every city in Europe and most of Asia and South America too. Days filled with companionship and adventure and nights filled with passion.

Eventually, Jacob moved away from La Push. He had never stopped phasing, and people would start to notice that he hadn't aged. At first, he'd offered to stay close to wherever Edward and I happened to live, but we had agreed, in the end, that it was too dangerous for him to be within range of Edward's gift.

On our tenth trip together, Jacob asked me to leave Edward. He said he would marry me if I wanted to but that it wasn't necessary. All that mattered to him was that he loved me and wanted me to be his and his alone. I wanted that too.

Vampires don't adapt or change easily, though. I told him I would think about it, that I'd try.

But no matter how precious Jacob was to me or how much I wanted him in my life, I just couldn't bring myself to leave Edward. I continued to allow my love for them both to tear me up inside, eating away at me as year after year passed in a slow march of time that never seemed to end.

Deer. School. Deer. Sex with Edward. More deer. More school.

On, and on, and on.

Eventually, Jacob grew tired of waiting for me to make up my mind. He had to try to move on, he said. One day, he didn't answer when I called. When he finally called back three days later, it was to tell me that he had a girlfriend now. I had run deep into the forest and leveled several acres of trees in a blind rage. But who could I really blame but myself?

I tried to let him move on. Really, I did. But, inevitably, the boredom and the longing would set it, and I would find myself sneaking away in the dead of night to dial his number.

Jacob would sneak into the other room to talk in private. I knew the guilt of his unfaithfulness weighed on his conscience even more heavily than it weighed on mine. He fought more valiantly than I ever had, but, eventually, we found ourselves meeting in a hotel half way between our two cities. He stopped even trying to move on after that, and I still couldn't give him an answer.

The last night we spent together will haunt my flawless memory if I exist to see the world burn. It was much like any other. We fucked. We fought. Jacob begged me to run away with him, and I begged him to be patient.

I wished we had parted that night on better terms. But there was no way I could have predicted what was coming.

Edward was his usual broody self when I got back. We hunted. We went to school. We had sex.

I'd once thought that passion, for vampires, never fades. I now know that it does. Sometimes, there just isn't anything else to do.

Two weeks later, I finally made my decision. I finally chose Jacob.

Alone in the woods, I set my resolve. I would tell Edward I was leaving the next morning, and then I would call Jacob.

I smiled all the way back to the house, imaging how happy Jacob would be when I told him. It had taken us a literal lifetime to get here, but I was finally ready.

There was a sealed envelope waiting for me in the center of the bed when I got back. There was no return address, but I knew instantly who it was from. Jacob's familiar scent was all over it.

My heart sank with a sick feeling of dread as it turned the thin paper over in my hands. He had never written to me before. I knew it was over before I even broke the seal.

In his messy scrawl, Jacob wrote that he'd returned to La Push after our last visit, hurt and looking for the comfort of home. It was there that he met her. She was Sam and Emily's granddaughter, he'd explained. When their eyes met, all the pain and longing of the past six decades had melted away, leaving only her holding him to the planet.

He had found his imprint. He had stopped phasing for good so that he could age with her.

It was too late.

I ran back into the woods and screamed for what could have been hours or minutes, clutching at my chest and wishing to god for just one tear. But, of course, I could shed none.

Deer. School. Sex with Edward. More deer. More school. More passionless sex.

Rinse and repeat for another fifty years.

This time, there is no Jacob to break the monotony, not even a single phone call. I told Edward we had fought, and he didn't question me beyond that.

I kept tabs on him in subtle ways. The Cullen's had their methods, which I had learned early on in my immortal life. I knew when Jacob got married and when he became a father for the first, second, and third time. I knew when he became a grandfather, and then a widower. A month later, I learned that he was dying.

A hastily-scrawled note was all the explanation I left behind as I boarded a plane back to Washington for the last time.

The night was dark and silent as I approached the familiar red house in La Push, utilizing all of my keen senses to find him inside. I silently pushed open the window to the mast bedroom, my eyes falling on his still form lying on the bed.

I had to draw in a steadying breath as I stepped silently into the room. Even wrinkled and old with a long, white braid draped over his shoulder, I recognized my Jacob. It was strange to see him look so frail, so helpless. My heart ached as I stood beside him, listening to the faltering rhythm of his once robust pulse.

As if he had sensed my presence, his familiar brown eyes fluttered open, fixing on my face.

"Jake," I whispered, reaching for his weathered hand. "It's me."

"You…" he gasped weakly, blinking up at me. "You remind me of someone…"

I shushed him gently, stroking the back of his hand as he dragged in a ragged breath, slipping again into unconsciousness.

"Who are you?"

My head jerked up as a shadow filled the doorway. For a second, I thought I must have been mistaken, that Jacob wasn't lying old and sick in bed but standing in front of me. This must be his son, I realized. The eyes were a little larger; the lips a little less full. But the resemblance was heart wrenching.

His shape began to blur around the edges as the unmistakable odor of wolf reached my nose. I was out the window and deep into the woods within seconds. He didn't follow me.

I felt the moment Jacob's spirit left this world. It was as if a part of my silent heart had beat on, tethered to his. And now, it was silenced forever.

I stood apart from the group of mourners as they sprinkled his ashes over First Beach, a ghostly vision in black.

No one seemed to take notice except for Jacob's son - the one who had caught me in his room.

"Isabella Cullen?" he asked, knowing I could hear despite the distance. I nodded.

He went to his car and pulled a wrapped parcel from the back seat, clutching it to his side as he approached me.

My confusion grew as I waited for him to explain.

"You're his son," I observed, and he confirmed with a sad nod.

"My father told me about you, after my mom died," he said. "He wanted me to give you this."

He handed me the parcel.

"He said you would come."

I didn't know what it was, but I clutched Jacob's last gift to my heart, watching as his son turned and walked back down to the beach.

Alone in the familiar woods, I tore away the brown paper wrapping to find that Jacob had left me what looked like a handmade photo album. The cover was intricately carved wood with my name on the front.

I held my breath as I opened to the first page.

Inside, was the picture of me as a human, the same tattered one he had clutched on the first night we met after my transformation. I turned the page to find a black and white printed copy of the picture I'd taken with his phone after our first night together in Seattle.

Pictures of us together at Charlie's wedding came next, followed by our first couple trips, all printed in black and white.

I saw it the moment Jacob stopped pining for the human Bella and fell in love with vampire Bella. The pictures stopped being black and white and started being in brilliant color.

There were pictures of us together, arms thrown around each other, in a multitude of exotic backdrops. Kissing in front of the Eiffel Tower. Looking into each other's eyes in front of the ocean. Me looking over my shoulder at him, our hands intertwined between us, on the Great Wall of China.

There were drawings too, beautiful sketches of private moments he had wanted to preserve. My naked body reclined on the bed as I smiled up at him, drawn in such careful detail I would have blushed if I still could. My pale hand resting on his russet chest. An entire page filled with sketches of just my eyes in different expressions, the irises colored a vibrant amber.

On the final page, there was a short handwritten note that read simply, "Thanks for all the memories, Bells. A part of me will always belong to you. Love, your Jacob."

A week after I returned to our current home, I found Edward hunched over our bed with the album open in front of him, the floorboard I'd hidden it under out of place. His fingers traced lightly over the drawing of myself in a hotel bed. He knew my body well enough to know it wasn't drawn from imagination alone.

Edward knew.

He didn't look up as I watched him in silent horror, his eyes still fixed on my image smiling up at him from the page.

"I'm not surprised, really," he spoke, his voice eerily emotionless. "A part of me always knew. I just didn't want to believe it."

"I'm so sorry, Edward."

He scoffed a little at that, then flipped the album closed with a resounding thud.

"I don't know who you are anymore." His eyes moved to our wedding picture, framed on the wall beside the bed.

"It's still me," I plead pitifully. "I'm still your wife — your Bella."

He stood, approaching the open window.

"That you are my wife is indisputable. But you're not my Bella."

He stood, approaching the open window.

"I killed my Bella many years ago."

His voice was hollow, empty.

I wrapped my arms around my middle as my husband disappeared out the window.

He didn't return.

Two days later, a frantic Alice called me to tell me about her vision. Edward running through the familiar forest between Forks and La Push. Crossing the treaty line. Facing down a large, russet-colored wolf. Looking up at the sky as he raised his arms at his sides. And then nothing.

~ 0 ~

The dark city streets were bustling with human activity, even in the small hours of the morning.

Heads turned as I passed, my heels clicking softly on the sidewalk.

I followed the pounding of load dance music to a crowded club, flashing my counterfeit ID to the dumbstruck bouncer.

Striding confidently to the center of the dance floor, I swayed my graceful body sensuously, drawing several sets of human eyes as I cast my gaze around the room.

They stopped on one in particular. Young. Handsome. Tan skin and hazel eyes. Rich, masculine scent.

He met my eye with a besotted grin, and I smiled back, swaying my hips just a little more obviously.

I glided back out of the club, turning to walk into a dark ally that smelled of garbage from all the dumpsters lined up along the brick walls. My quarry's heartbeat predictably pattered along behind me.

Of course, he followed. They always did.

"What's your name, gorgeous?"

"Isabella," I answered. It's who I am now.

Like Edward said, Bella died a long time ago.

My teeth glide through the skin of his neck like butter as his hot blood flows into my mouth. I camp a hand over his parted lips to muffle his scream.

This is what I am — what I chose to be.

I am the world's best predator. Everything about me draws my prey in, but I don't really need any of that. They can't hope to outrun me or fight me off.

After all this time, I finally understand. I am designed for one thing and one thing only — to kill.

Fin

Song: Photograph, Ed Sheeran