Isabella Swan?” He looked up at me through his impossibly long lashes, his golden eyes soft but, somehow, still scorching. “I promise to love you forever—every single day of forever. Will you marry me?” There were many things I wanted to say, some of them not nice at all, and others more disgustingly gooey and romantic than he probably dreamed I was capable of. Rather than embarrass myself with either, I whispered, “Yes.” “Thank you,” he said simply. He took my left hand and kissed each of my fingertips before he kissed the ring that was now mine.

Momma, you're special," Renesmee told me without any surprise, like she was commenting on the color of my clothes.

I felt like I was staring out across an ocean that I was going to have to swim from shore to shore before I could rest again.

If you throw a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will hop right out. But if you put that frog in a pot of tepid water and slowly warm it, the frog doesn't figure out what going on until it's too late. Boiled frog. It's just a metter of working by slow degrees.

Does it bother you, me being half naked all the time?

Love is irrational, I reminded myself. The more you loved someone, the less sense anything made.

Like everything in life, I just had to decide what to do with what I was given.