Part I. The Desperate Woman.

Chapter 1.

Chapter inspiration: Every Day is exactly the Same – Nine Inch Nails

The deal is that it is not confession. It is not a story about a woman who has got her happily ever after with her husband, lives in a big house with picket fence and has three children and a dog. It is a story about a woman searching for someone to replace the sound of beating heart and someone who could give her a life that would boil the frozen blood in her veins.

It all started like these stories tend to: with seventeen years of marriage, a family she knew too well and her life that turned into a vicious circle which repeated in even the smallest details every three years. And yet the Cullens live happily, without a care in the world, running in circles and being the same Cullens she met, it seemed to her, a lifetime ago.

And she? She is as miserable as the characters of Victor Hugo's Les Misérаbles. Because something left a hole in her existence that is sucking out all the joy she gets from her life, because something is missing – in Alice's talks, Esme's hugs, Emmett's smiles, Rosalie's remarks and in Edward's kisses. But she cannot place her finger on what it is exactly. And it frustrates her immensely.

She is fed up with the artificial happiness. She arches for action, for something different from the routine she is used to. Morning sex with Edward, good-bye kiss before he joins the others to go to school, then she visits Renesmee and Jacob in their cozy little apartment, and after that she takes a shower and heads to the main manor where the whole family gathers up after a long day. There she plays video games with her brothers or Alice will make her a living Barbie once again. Maybe Esme will try to teach her a new dish and Rosalie will remark how disgusting it looks. And at night Edward and she hunt and go back to their house to have sex. Every day is exactly the same, nothing exciting or remotely interesting happens. Someone may call her crazy, but she would have given up everything if only for a chance to go back in time and change a few things – kick Victoria's ass once more, kiss Jacob (while she could), spit in Aro's face and die, giving childbirth. Yes, you heard right. Living the life she does, playing the housewife is too much even for a shy klutz who loves Jane Austen's novels with her whole heart.

As she recalls now it was in Belfast, seven years after they moved from Forks, that she had realized one simple truth. She would never grow up. She would never sit on a bench with her husband, holding hands and knowing that they would die together from old age, having lived their lives to the fullest and enjoying every little moment. She would never be truly old.

It devastated her back then. Had she really choose immortality just to be young and beautiful by Edward's side? Was she so much in love with the boy who broke her heart once and left it for others to piece back together? Him stalking her, him leaving her, the numbness she felt for months, him trying to kill Jacob, the one who was there, who repaired her. And Edward just returned to the girl he left – not exactly the same girl, but someone close. He did nothing to save her from the greatest danger – herself. And she still loved him and nothing could have changed that.

And slowly sinking in the routine her everyday life turned into, she understood that the famous Hollywood forever isn't 'til the end of times and beyond, but that it means a few months, maybe a couple of years. She is not sure when she would be too tired from hypocrisy to put on a smile, to get up from her bed and pretend that everything is still as it has been. She craved a way out, something to sweep her off her feet and take her to see the other side of life.

Rosalie's words still flash sometimes in her mind like a broken record. Her bitterness, her anger about Isabella's decision, her intent to scare the nervous teenage girl from damning herself to the same fate, now it all makes sense.

"This isn't a life I would have chosen for myself."

Rosalie was right, Isabella had to admit. But she was so naïve, so ignorant of how everyone schooled themselves into believing they were content with their lives and each other seconds before she entered their house. Or maybe it just her angry alter ego makes the Cullens into villains to somehow explain her loused up life. If she knew back then what her life would become, she would have never asked to be turned. But then what good does "ifs" do?

But all the questions cemented the belief that she needed a change. However, Bella is not brave enough to do something about her situation. She is a lost girl who wants something she can't get, too many doubts, insecurities.

She lies.

Her days do not end with sex, they end up with her imagining the many "ifs", the many lives she could have led. And a reminder that no good will come out of numerous "what ifs".

Absolutely none.

Note: The name of the first part is inspired by the amazing and yet terrifying picture The Desperate Man by Gustave Courbet.