Just to make this clear - this is NOT a sequel to New Kiss. Sorry for the confusion...

So I guess my plan of staying away from fanfiction for awhile backfired on me, but I hope you don't mind. :-) Of course, this is kind of short, but it's the prologue so I thought I could get away with it. The following chapters should be much longer.

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Prologue.

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Bella.

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“I’m going to miss you so much,” I sighed against his mouth as he pulled me closer to him. He hummed in response and planted several searing kisses on my naked shoulder before pulling the blanket over both of us. I snuggled even closer to him even though I wasn’t cold.

“You don’t have to miss me, you know,” his soft murmur was almost lost to me as he buried his face in my hair. I pulled away from him with a bemused smile.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You could always marry me and come along as my dutiful, but loving wife,” he joked and despite his teasing tone, I involuntarily stiffened in his arms. He seemed to realize immediately what it was that made me react that way.

“Edward –” I started, wanting to diffuse the situation, but he beat me to it.

“I’m sorry, it slipped out,” he said quickly and shifted me in his arms so he could look at me.

“No, don’t apologize. It’s fine,” I insisted, but I didn’t miss the shadow that rested on his countenance now. An uncomfortable silence settled between us and after a moment, Edward sighed and sat up, leaving our embrace. I watched wordlessly as he ran a frustrated hand through his already mussed hair.

“I just don’t understand why it isn’t even an option for you,” he confessed, not looking me. My heart twisted painfully in my chest and I swallowed many possible answers that sprang to mind.

“Edward, it’s not that I don’t want all those things with you, I do,” I started, half-expecting him to interrupt me. “Just not now,” I added diminutively.

He was frozen where he was, refusing to look at me. I stared at him as the muscles in his back tensed and un-tensed in rhythm with his breathing. I sighed softly to myself and threw my legs over the side of the bed.

“I should go,” I murmured regretfully. When he didn’t respond, I took it as an affirmation. I gently picked up my clothes off the floor and tugged them on. When I had my things gathered, I walked over to his side of the bed, leaning down to kiss him gently. He responded with a small smile against my lips before pulling away and studying me with inexplicably sad eyes. I sank into the bed to sit beside him.

“I’ll miss you too, you know,” he said softly and a lump rose in my throat. “More than you know, which makes this hard.”

It was the almost undetectable shift in the tone of his voice that told me that we were no longer talking about his internship and I tensed on the bed next to him.

“Bella…I never knew I could even think this, but we should end this now,” he said after a small hesitation. He ran his fingers through his hair, tugging harshly at the tips. I caught my breath sharply as I watched him and felt myself rock unsteadily from the sudden pain shooting through me. “We should just forget it. It will only fall apart later if we keep going on like this.”

“Going on like this?” I asked breathlessly, disbelievingly.

“Bella, I love you and I want to marry you. But every time the subject so much as comes up, you freak out and it kills me inside that you don’t want that for us. Because even if you say you want it someday, you don’t want it now and who knows if that someday will ever come. I think…” he sighed and paused before picking up again. “I think that maybe this is our chance for a clean break from each other. You will be better off without me constantly pressuring you about marriage, because as long as we’re together, no matter how far apart we are, I will want to make you my wife, Bella. I can’t pretend that I don’t want that for us. So maybe it’s best for both of us if we just forget this whole mess we’ve made of our relationship and start over without each other.”

My stomach lurched at the pain in his voice and this time, it was me who couldn’t meet his eyes. I was absolutely speechless. He had never said anything like this before. I didn’t know he was capable of ripping me apart so firmly and decidedly.

“Edward,” I pleaded softly, incapable of thinking of any other word in the world. His name was the only thing in my mind at that moment. Surely, if I had been in a better frame of mind I would have argued that I didn’t want to forget about him and that my qualms about marriage weren’t even necessarily tied to him, but to my parents…but none of those arguments fell from my lips, only his name. “Edward.”

His hand ducked gently under my chin, raising my face up, so I was forced to meet his endless eyes. He didn’t say anything; he simply kissed me softly at first and I felt the goodbye that was implicit in his lips. It wasn’t until I threw myself into the kiss fiercely that he returned it with the same level of emotion. It was the only argument for us to stay together that I had in my arsenal at the moment and he seemed more than willing to let me argue it. His fingers slid under the hem of the shirt I had just put back on and I encouraged him foolhardily in every way I could, climbing closer to him and molding my body to his firmly.

I clung to him until he pressed me back against his bed. I knew it wasn’t fair to ourselves to be doing this now; we were only avoiding the problem. But that didn’t stop either of us from desperately trying to take in every inch of the other before morning came. If our love making earlier in the night had been goodbye, then this was surely acknowledgement of the fact that we knew we may never be in such a moment as this again with each other.

Thoughts flashed inside of me as our lips and bodies crashed together that night. Once, the thought occurred to me that I must love him more than I even knew if I could allow him to tear me apart so very thoroughly.

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When I awoke in his bed the next morning, he was gone. A cold feeling was weaving its way into my body, despite the blanket that was wrapped around me. I shivered and buried my face in the pillow as thoughts of the night before hit me like a ton of bricks. My stomach twisted cruelly and I felt the tears that never came last night flood my eyes.

It wasn’t until I crawled out of bed that I saw the note he’d left for me sitting on the nightstand. The sight of my name scrawled so beautifully in his elegant handwriting – something I’d always envied him – set something off in me. I felt the ridiculous, rebellious need to tear the note to shreds but instead I took a deep breath and left it where it was. It was probably full of carefully thought out explanations of every reason he’d could dream of to explain away breaking it off now instead of later, but I knew the moment I saw it I didn’t have the strength to read it. Besides, I had to get out of here before Emmett, Edward’s older brother and roommate, made it back from the airport or I’d risk going through a lot more pain than that stupid note would cause. I was supposed to take Edward to the airport this morning and Emmett would be wondering what in the hell could have possibly happened to not only change our plans of having the romantic goodbye in the middle of an airport, but also him sleeping in on his only Saturday off for the last month.

I preferred to skip that discussion and just escape now. I needed to be alone with my thoughts or I would never be able to quiet my raging head again.

When I got home, I went straight to my bedroom and locked myself in my room for the next two days. I was grateful it was the weekend or I would have never survived. My poor roommate, Alice, must have thought Edward died on the way to the airport instead of doing something as insignificant as break up with me, the woman he’d been dating for the past year. I certainly acted like he had died and maybe…maybe it was better that way because even though I deflected him every time marriage had come up, I was more than attached to the idea of one day becoming Mrs. Cullen. I had been truthful when I said I wanted all of that, just not at this moment. Not now. So maybe, if I pretended he was gone forever then I could forget all about his endless green eyes and his elegant handwriting and his endless persistence about the topic of us getting married. And if I could forget about all those little details that made me love him so fiercely, then surely I could forget about him, just like he apparently wanted me to, right?

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Don't worry too much about the vague history you're getting on their relationship and why he's leaving, you'll get plenty of explanation soon enough. :-)

Please review and let me know what you think so far!