I wanted him like I wanted air to breathe. Not a choice- a necessity.

So this was different. I was amazing now - to them and to myself. It was like I had been born to be a vampire. The idea made me want to laugh, but it also made me want to sing. I had found my true place in the world, the place I fit, the place I shined.

She is mine.' Edward’s low voice was suddenly dark, not as composed as before. 'I didn’t say I would fight fair.

And it was different because I'd already lost her so many times, so many ways, in my head. And different because she was never really mine to lose. And different because this wasn't my fault.

I grew up in a community where it was not the exception to be a good girl. It was sort of expected. And all of my friends were good girls too, and my boyfriends were good boys. Everybody was pretty nice. And that affects how I write my characters. There aren't very many bad guys in my novels.

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

I stared into Jared's eyes, and the strangest thing happened. All the melting and melding I had just been through was shoved aside, into the smallest part of my body, the little corner that I took up physically. The rest of me yearned toward Jared with the same desperate, half-crazed hunger I'd felt since the first time I'd seen him here. This body barely belonged to me or to Melanie-it belonged to him.