the edge

I knew something was off with Bella.

She had been drifting through the house like a ghost for weeks-pale, distant, slipping in and out of the front door as if she wasn't even real. Her eyes, hollow and far away, carried the weight of something I couldn't understand, something that felt heavier than grief. I had watched her sink into herself, become something barely alive, but I never thought she would do something like this.

The wind screamed through the cliffs, biting and sharp, as I climbed over the uneven rocks, boots slipping against the damp stone. The sky above was a churning sea of gray, thick with the promise of a storm, but none of that mattered. Because there she was.

Bella stood at the very edge of the cliff, her arms outstretched, staring down at the waves as they crashed violently below.

For a second, she didn't even look like my sister.

She was still, unnervingly so, her body eerily relaxed despite the sheer drop in front of her. Her hair was a wild mess, caught in the wind, but her face-it was calm. Almost at peace. And that terrified me more than anything.

"Bella, what the hell are you doing?" My voice came out frantic, uneven, barely cutting through the howling wind. My breath hitched as I tried to move faster, tried to reach her before she did something I couldn't undo.

She didn't flinch. Didn't turn.

She didn't even acknowledge me.

My stomach dropped.

"Bella!" I tried again, voice breaking against the roar of the waves. "Don't-"

Then, before I could reach her, before I could say anything else-

She jumped.

A strangled noise tore from my throat as my feet skidded to a stop at the edge of the cliff.

Bella plunged into the ocean below, her body cutting through the surface like a stone, vanishing beneath the churning water.

I couldn't breathe.

She was gone.

The water swallowed her whole, relentless and merciless, dragging her into its depths. The waves were vicious, slamming against the jagged rocks, twisting and pulling with a force I couldn't comprehend. I stood frozen, my heart hammering against my ribs, my pulse roaring in my ears.

What the hell had she done?

What the hell had she been thinking?

And then it hit me-this wasn't some thrill-seeking stunt. This wasn't a desperate attempt to feel something, to chase some kind of rush. No. This was about him.

It was always about him.

Edward Cullen had left her, disappeared into the night without a trace, and he had taken her with him. Not just her heart. Not just her love. He had taken everything. And she had let him.

She hadn't just been grieving him. She had been waiting for him.

And somehow, in that moment, as I stood there with the salt air burning my lungs and the cold biting through my skin, I realized something I had been too afraid to admit before.

No matter how much I resented her for taking Jacob from me, no matter how much I hated being stuck in her shadow, none of it mattered.

Because she had never really seen Jacob at all. Though, as I looked down to where she jumped, I saw him. Jacob swimming towards where Bella dove. With a sigh, I turned and left; she would be fine, I thought with spite.

︵‿︵‿୨♡୧‿︵‿︵

The house was eerily quiet when I stepped inside that night, the only sound the distant rumble of thunder outside. The storm raging beyond the windows was nothing compared to the one inside my chest, the fury and exhaustion coiling tight beneath my ribs. My clothes were still damp, clinging uncomfortably to my skin, my hair stiff with salt from the ocean spray. My hands trembled as I ran them through the tangled mess, like somehow I could scrub away the entire day-the sheer insanity of it all.

Bella had almost died. She had thrown herself off a damn cliff, and if Jacob hadn't been there to drag her out of the water, she wouldn't have made it. But somehow, impossibly, none of that seemed to matter. Not the fact that Charlie had been out of his mind with worry, not the fact that Jacob had been sick with fear, not the fact that she had nearly drowned.

Because Bella, in all her infinite wisdom, was packing a suitcase; apparently the short Cullen, whom looked oddly like a pixie, had come home- and now Edward thought Bella had jumped from the cliff with the intention of killing herself. Though, she detested; stating she did it 'recreationally.'

I stood frozen in the doorway of her room, watching in open disbelief as she zipped it up with trembling hands, her face pale and determined. The scent of salt and damp still clung to her, a stark reminder that she had been unconscious in freezing water barely twenty-four hours ago. And now she was leaving?

"I have to go," she said, voice shaking but firm. "He thinks I'm dead."

I didn't need to ask who he was. The weight of Edward's name was always in the room with us, an unbearable ghost lingering in the spaces between words. It had been there in the months of silence, in the hollowness behind Bella's eyes, in the way she had looked right through me every time I tried to pull her back to the surface. And now, now that she had finally broken through-just barely breathing, but alive-she was going to throw herself right back into the abyss?

Something inside me snapped.

"Are you serious?" My voice came out sharp, incredulous, like I couldn't believe I was even having to say this out loud. "Bella, you almost died not e-even yesterday. And now you're running off to save him?"

The words felt venomous in my mouth, but I didn't care. I was too tired to care. Too tired of fighting to be noticed, to be heard, to be something in her life that wasn't just collateral damage in the wake of Edward Cullen.

Bella's hands clenched around the strap of her bag. "Annie-"

"No," I cut her off, taking a step forward, my pulse roaring in my ears. "What about Jacob? He saved you, Bella. He dragged you out of the ocean, carried you home, did everything he could to keep you from slipping away. And what about Charlie? What about me?" My voice cracked at the last part, but I swallowed it down.

Because Bella wasn't listening. She never listened.

"I can never understand what you're thinking, Annie." Bella whispered, her breath shaking.

How hypocritical of her.

Her mind was already somewhere across the ocean, already thousands of miles away from the sister standing right in front of her, begging her to just see her.

And then, like some cruel punchline to a joke I didn't understand, Jacob showed up at the front door.

His shoulders were tight with tension, his expression unreadable, but I could see it in his eyes-the hurt, the disbelief, the same desperate frustration I felt clawing at my throat. He barely looked at me before turning his attention to Bella, and for one horrible second, I thought maybe, maybe he could talk some sense into her. Maybe if it was him, she'd actually listen.

But Bella just looked at him, her gaze soft and apologetic, and I knew.

I knew she was already gone.

Jacob clenched his jaw so tight I thought his teeth might crack, his whole body vibrating with barely contained emotion. He took a step back, then another, before turning sharply on his heel and storming off into the night.

I wanted to call out to him. Wanted to chase after him and tell him I understood, that I knew exactly what it felt like to love someone who never even realized you were standing right there. But I didn't.

Because the truth was, Jacob would always follow Bella. Even if it destroyed him.

And I-I had lost him completely. He'd come to despise anything Swan related.