With a shaking hand, she held the cold telephone to her chest. Closing her eyes and taking deep breaths, she used the other hand to dig her nails into the carpet.

"Deep breaths. Deep breaths." She managed to croak out.

Holding the phone back up to her face and blinking away her tears, she let out a strangled cry and threw the phone across the room. She had dialed the first 6 numbers countless times. Never finally finishing the call. If this was what he wanted, then he would have it.

There was more to her than him. She wouldn't be his doormat anymore. She wouldn't hurt anymore. She wouldn't call Alice at 3 in the morning, just for her to tell her it was all going to be alright.

Bella crawled across the floor, her eyes so heavy with tears and her breaths so ragged and punctuated by strangled cries that she could barely find her way over to the couch. With all the energy she could find, she thrust herself up on it.

She tried to calm her breathing. She had to stop crying. She wouldn't be able to see the road to drive the hell away from here if she didn't.

Finally managing to gain some kind of ground, she stood on shaky legs and made her way through the cold and empty house. Through the hall that held 5 years worth of pictures of them together.

Smiling, laughing, riding and loving. Five years of knowing that no one would ever hold her heart the way he had. She let out a strangled cry again and fell to the floor. Why would he do this? Couldn't he see that she would stand by him? Couldn't he see that she would love him through this? That they would make it…together?

Bella didn't even bother to stand. She crawled the rest of the way through the dark hall until she found herself lying at the foot of their bed. The bed they had watched movies in, read into the night in, made love in, and created a life in.

How would she ever survive this? How could she ever find her way without him? He was all she had ever known. All she had ever wanted. All those plans, her future, their future….just….gone…..over.

"Bella?" Alice called from the living room.

"Sweetie, are you okay? It looks like a bomb went off in here." Bella let out a strangled cry and a fresh wave of tears began to fall to the carpet she laid her head on. Grasping and clutching at the ground, she began to hyperventilate and she didn't know how to stop it.

"Oh god." Alice came running into the room and grabbed Bella's head, pulling it into her lap.

"Make it stop hurting, Alice." Bella choked into her best friends leg.

"Oh god, please!" Bella cried out.

All Alice knew to do, was stroke her hair and rock her.

"Shhh, baby. It's all going to be okay. I promise, It will all be okay."

Bella had heard Alice say those words to her almost every night for nearly a year. At one time she had let herself believe it. Had thought that Alice must be right.

For the first time, she knew it wasn't going to be alright. She knew that life wouldn't go on. Yes, she may go on breathing….but not living.

Because Edward was gone. They wouldn't lie in the bed laughing again. They wouldn't raise a family together. They wouldn't grow old together.

He was her world and now…..now….her world was gone and that heart that beats in her chest?

It was gone too.