How It All Goes Down
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- Bella rides on Edward’s back to the Cullen house. Due to her many motorcycle adventures, she’s not afraid of the speed anymore. She actually enjoys it.
- On the way, Edward vows to win Bella’s trust back. Bella says she trusts him – it’s herself she doesn’t trust:
"I don’t trust myself to be… enough. To deserve you. There is nothing about me that could hold you." (24.13) - But when Bella starts to tell Edward about hearing his voice whenever she did something reckless, she suddenly realizes, "the reason I could hear you so clearly was because, underneath it all, I always knew that you hadn’t stopped loving me" (24.50).
- Bella has an epiphany: Edward really loves her.
The bond forged between us was not one that could be broken by absence, distance, or time… As I always would belong to him, so would he always be mine. (24.57) - At the Cullen house, everyone except Edward and Rosalie vote for Bella to become a vampire. Rosalie says she doesn’t want Bella to be a vampire, because she herself didn’t want to be one but didn’t have a choice at the time.
- Carlisle promises to change Bella after her graduation if Edward won’t.
- Bella’s greatest wish is for Edward to be the one to change her. After arguing back and forth, Edward finally promises he will – under one condition: marry me first!
- Bella refuses vehemently, because she believes that marriage was the kiss of death for her mother and father's relationship.
- Later, Charlie asks Bella to explain her three-day disappearance with Alice. She winds around in half-truths. Charlie thinks that whatever actually happened, it’s Edward’s fault. Bella makes Charlie aware that Edward and her are a package deal and that she will move out if he doesn’t ease up on her beau.
- When Edward talks to Bella about his concern for her eternal damnation, Bella tells him she’s not buying it anymore, because when she saved him in Volterra, he believed he was in heaven. Touché!