The beach was cold and as I arrived I stepped out of the shelter of the forest path to a gust of wind. My feet crunched in the sand as I took a couple steps, wondering which way my sister might have gone and wishing the rain would lighten up just a tiny bit more. I started to walk toward the water, looking for footprints and know this was probably pointless as I reached the more rocky areas of the beach. What on earth was she thinking, staying out in this cold? As I looked around, growing more and more irritated, my phone began to ring. I pulled it out and found an unknown number, increasing my annoyance with my sister and the world in general. What the hell was going on?

It was about then that my eyes caught the movement up on the cliff.

And about then that time started to slow down.

The small figure, buffeted by the wind as much as I was, crouched down for a second and then threw herself off. I started to run along the beach, feeling numb as I was the distant girl fall the hundred or so feet into the waves with a crash. Had she hit the rocks? Damn it, I could see her anymore. I stumbled and drew to a stop about halfway to the cliff path, eyes darting across the water as the figure failed to reappear and the waves seemed to grow stronger.

"Isabella!"

Nothing else coming to mind, I took a deep breath and surged toward the water. Immediately I felt a pair of strong arms wrap around my middle and I was yanked back against what felt like a stone wall. Next a dark silver blur was sweeping past me and into the water, disappearing with another crash as I fought to follow it. Gradually I realized someone was trying to talk to me above the sound of the waves, his voice deep enough that I'd not recognized it as separate from the roar in my ears.

"Gen! Gen, he's got it!" I was pulled further back from the waves and finally stopped fighting to free myself "Gen, Paul will get her."

"Paul?" I turned as far as I could and found myself in Jacob's arms, his face worried as he held me tightly against him.

"He'll get her." Jake assured me, sounding almost out of breath. He leaned forward as he tried to study my face but I pushed back against him, tucking my head under his chin and trying to hold myself together. "Gen, he'll get her. She'll be fine." Jake repeated. But he didn't sound as sure of himself as I would have liked.

I was forced to wait then, watching the waves and the clouds and seeing no sign of life for the miles that the water went on. Was my sister dead? Had she just killed herself? And how had it never occurred to me that this might be where her life was headed? I'd known she was messed up, right? And I'd thought I'd reached out to her but suddenly I couldn't remember a single instance where I'd done anything to help.

"Bella..." Where was she? Where was Paul? I gripped Jake's hands tightly. "That idiot—where is she?"

Jake suddenly stiffened, turning us to look down the beach. Dropping his tight grip around my middle, he took my hand and started to lead me down toward the cliff. As we got closer, I saw a large shape had washed up on the sand and I dropped Jacob's hand as I rushed forward.

I saw Paul first, kneeling over an unidentifiable mass of some bedraggled thing washed up by the waves. He was moving oddly, pushing at the thing as though he were... almost as if it was... I took several quick steps closer to the beach and then I broke into as quick of a walk as I could without tripping over the tangled brush and stones. It was a few steps further that I saw what he was doing.

That he was doing CPR.

That the mass of sodden clothes and seaweed was my sister.

I held in a scream, telling myself not to distract him, but as soon as I hit the sand I was sprinting and stumbling and falling and breaking my fall on pebbles and shells. Jacob tried to help me up but I was too frantic to really notice what he was doing and I fought my way to my sister's side; I was bleeding but Isabella was right there and I needed to know...

I arrived coughing and holding my right hand against my body, trying to staunch the bit of blood. Paul looked up momentarily to spare me a dirty look. I turned to ask Jake for help but he just looked back with desperate apology in his eyes.

Isabella....? Is she... Is my sister dead? Is it my fault?

"She's...?"

Bella started to cough.

"Oh..." I breathed shakily, falling back as Paul roughly propped her head up so that the seawater could leave her lungs. He glanced up with a scowl when he recognized my voice. "Oh, Isabella."

"How long has she been unconscious?" A deep voice asked. I turned to glare up at Sam, yet another of the monsters always intruding into my life.

"I don't know." Paul said desperately, looking defiantly from Sam to me as though there were something we could do that he hadn't done. As though we had failed her and he hadn't.

"She's breathing." I said shakily, watching my sister start to shiver. "She's moving." I said the words like a question, unsure if any of that meant anything.

"We should get her out of the cold." Sam said and I was torn, not wanting a monster by my sister, wanting an adult to take care of this mess. "I don't like the color she's turning."

Jacob knelt down next to me, wrapping a warm arm around me as I started to shiver. "We can take her to my house."

I looked down at my sister, tuning out the conversation that followed. She was always paler then me, always thinner than me: now she was the color of a ghost and not much more than a skeleton. My little sister: what had she been doing, out in the water? What was she doing half drowned on the freaking beach? Heartbroken over a vampire, with only a werewolf to rescue her? And where have I been, while she was getting to this point? Bella opened her mouth to speak but I was still wondering how in the world this girl was still alive.

"Jake?" She said, her voice fighting past a throat soaked in saltwater.

Paul abruptly stood, gave one glance to make sure she was ok, and then a giant grey wolf was sprinting back toward the water. I stared after him with wide eyes for a second before I managed to get control of my voice and look back at my confused sister.

"Oh, you idiot." I muttered, pulling the wet hair gently out of her eyes. She turned them on me.

"Gen?" She was so confused.

"Can you hear me?" Jacob asked urgently. "Do you hurt anywhere?"

"Just my throat." She said, her voice still crackly. "Gen, what...?"

Jacob was scooping her up into his warm arms. "Let's get her out of here." He said to me and I nodded feverishly, walking quickly to keep up with him as he moved toward his house.

"Bella, what were you thinking?" I asked, impatiently swiping a hand through my own hair as the light rain made it frizzle into my face.

"Sorry." She muttered. "It was stupid."

Her voice was so quiet.

Jacob met my worried gaze and we broke into a jog.

"Yeah, it was really stupid." Jacob said, trying to distract her and probably me as well.

"Of all the things to pull, Iz." I gasped, trying to keep up with Jake's unnaturally quick pace—he started to slow down for me, but I sped up and placed a hand at his elbow to urge him on with me.

"What happened?" Bella said, never one to be distracted. "Did you find...her?"

"Her?" I asked puzzled. My phone started buzzing again and I gave a short yell of frustration, opening it just long enough to ignore the call again. "Find her?"

"She... she took off into the water." Jacob told Bella, giving me a distracted look.

"She?" I jogged a bit faster, trying to get ahead of him so I could look him in the eye. "Victoria escaped again?"

He nodded, looking sorry again and miserable.

I bit my lip, considering this as we neared Jacob's house. Bella in the woods, Paul taking off into the ocean. Damn it, Bella.

"How close did she get?" I said slowly as I opened the door for Jake to carry my sister through. I followed them out of the drizzle and we found Billy waiting with blankets, a package of cookies, and—my favorite—hot chocolate. "Jake..."

"She took off into the water." He said, hesitating as he looked around for a place to put my sister. "We had to keep to the coast so I'm not sure... I came to make sure you too weren't on the beach." He finished drily.

I laughed humorlessly. "Yeah. Sorry." Not sure what else to say or think, I slipped around him into the kitchen and started setting out plates for the cookies. Billy started doling out marshmallows for the cocoa and Jake shifted, Bella in his arms, still apparently unsure what to do.

"Can you put me down, Jake?" Isabella asked suddenly. Billy, Jacob, and I all turned from what we were doing to look at her skeptically. She turned pink. "I'll be fine!"

"Do you have a change of clothes?" I asked Jacob. Then found a real laugh squeaking past the lump in my throat. "Again?"

Jake nodded, gesturing with a jerk of his chin for me to follow him. Snagging a cup of cocoa and giving Billy an apologetic wince, I followed Jacob to his room and let the mug warm my hands and Jake dumped Bella on the bed and went to dig through his dark closet for something warm to wear. I started looking around the cramped room, looking at the various posters and cheap furniture and wondering why he hadn't moved into Rachel and Rebecca's room now that they'd moved out—though I suppose Jake wouldn't have thought a move worth it, especially if they were to come back and visit. For that matter, wouldn't they have left some better clothes? He'd stolen those shoes from their room.

Before I could bring this up Jake had come back with some giant grey sweatpants, a sweatshirt, and t-shirt. He left pretty quickly after and I took the opportunity to let some of my feelings out, scolding Isabella into changing into them as she argued she was too tired. She threw on the giant clothes and sat looking up at me with an awkward grimace. I ignored this and grabbed another of Jacob's sweatshirts, using it to roughly start toweling her soaking hair. She winced but didn't say anything as I threw the sweatshirt to the floor and handed her the cup of hot chocolate, ordering her to drink. She obeyed with a look that said she was only trying to avoid an argument. I opened my mouth to start the argument for her when I was interrupted by a knock at the door.

"Give us a minute." I called. I didn't bother to look away from her.

Bella looked up at me, waiting for me to start. She looked just as guilty as I felt, though she wasn't as irritated at that fact as I was. There was also a hint of embarrassment but she wasn't holding herself quite as tightly as she had been lately, like somehow her short flight from the cliff had made things better. Bella studied me as I studied her, glancing once back at the door which only made my frown deeper. I was trying to worry about her, not Jake—as usually she made this more difficult then it needed to be.

"I thought you were getting better." I said finally, unable to come up with a better opener.

"I was." She said helplessly. "And then yesterday..."

"What, you got scared?" I asked as she failed to go further. She shook her head and scooted back on to the bed. I sat down and pulled myself against the wall beside her, curling up around Jake's pillow. "You were never scared of vampires."

Bella bit her lip, unsure. "I was scared of Victoria. And James." She glanced down at my hand, eyes going from the new cut to the old scar of James' bite. "And the..." She again failed to go any further.

"So you what?" I asked, putting myself in her shoes. "Decided to end it before Victoria could?" Too late I realized that the werewolf outside could possibly be listening to every word. Crap.

"What?" Bella was saying with wide eyes. "No! Gen, it was... for recreational purposes."

I blinked slowly at my idiot sister. "Rec-re-a-tion-al?" I repeated. "Oh, no. No I get it." My voice grew more and more sarcastic. "Risking your life is fun. I mean, that explains the vampire boyfriend. And the werewolf friends. And your idiocy with the black ice last month. And how you ..." I cut myself off, about to accuse her of coming to rescue me from James because she enjoyed danger. That seemed a bit harsh, even for me.

Bella started to turn red again and refused to meet my gaze. My eyes widened.

"Isabella, what the f***."

"I just wanted to see him!" She cried finally. She looked at me again, begging me to understand. "I had to see him."

I hugged Jake's pillow closer to my chest, hands gripping at it as though I wanted to strangle it. "Him." I said, nodding as I considered this. "Still kinda 'what the f***'."

"I'm not... I wasn't trying to kill myself." Bella repeated. "It just makes me feel closer to... him... when I'm in danger."

"Too late for lies, Iz." I snapped. How long had this been going on? How much have I missed because I thought she was a giant crybaby? "You said 'see'. Explain."

"Gen—"

"Now."

"I,... it..." She looked more embarrassed then ashamed now. "It just hurt so much. And when I feel through the ice, last month... I saw him, I heard him telling me what to do to be safe. It was like he cared about me. And, today. I was so scared about Jacob and what Victoria could do to him and Paul and you and seeing Jacob wi—I needed to see Edward." She looked confused when my expression did not change. "So it's ok, right? I wasn't trying to kill myself."

"Ah, yes. Because hallucinations caused by an effing breakup are not worrisome at all." I said with a tense laugh. "What the hell did he do to you?" I lowered my voice, leaning closer so my shoulder bumped my sister's. "And why don't you ever tell me anything."

"You don't need to worry about me." Isabella mumbled tiredly into the cup of cocoa.

"Sure. You get a CATscan and I will never worry about you again." I snorted. "But really, what do you need? Distraction? Should I start up the pranks again?"

"What pranks?"

"Um." I gave her an innocent smile and moved on. "We could ride the bikes... safely. Well, you can ride them safely. And we could... watch some action movies. Or... hike? What do you even like to do?"

Bella shrugged. I considered getting angry again but I could tell she was about to pass out from exhaustion anyway so with a shrug I handed her the pillow and slid off of the bed. I don't think I even made it to the door before she fell asleep.

I switched off the light and headed back to the kitchen, not seeing either of the Blacks as I rewarmed a cup of cocoa in their ancient microwave and snagged a fistful of marshmallows to snack on.

"Jake?" I moved into the living room, wondering if he would've thought to text me if he'd left to hunt vampires again. For that matter, I should at some point check who'd been calling me. Ignoring that thought, I headed over to the couch and leaned over the back to find Jacob asleep with a pair of headphones still playing over his ears. With my free hand I reached down and shook his shoulder, grinning at him as he opened his eyes with a horribly confused look on his face. When he saw me, he smiled back and pulled the headphones off.

"You need music to fall asleep?" I asked, curious suddenly what normal things I might not know about this giant kid.

He shook his head. "You didn't want me to listen in." He explained. It was my turn to look confused. "While Bella was spilling her secrets."

"Oh?" I said, walking around to curl up next to him but still very angry and guilt-ridden and tired. "Well, guess what?"

"What?" He laughed drowsily.

"Now it's your turn."