Twilight: But it's a Thriller and I Never Read Twilight

Chapter 33: White Lies

The fish that came out was gasping and wiggling as he brought it carefully into his hands. I watched him as he held the fish tight between his knees and pulled the hook out of its lip. Holding the fish up, Charlie grinned as he rubbed a thumb against the pearlescent scales and tossed it back into the water, gasping headfirst.

I didn't have time to think about why my Dad liked catch and release fishing so much because my line was dipping too and I yanked back on the reel to drag another catch in. Charlie watched me reel with satisfaction that I imagined he'd been missing for quite a while. We'd missed so much of this, and we were only going to miss more once I was married.

I thought of the ring in the pocket of my backpack, waiting for me to slip it back onto my finger. It wasn't smart to bring a wedding ring to a fishing trip. Accidents were prone to happen to anybody out on a lake like this. But that ring. One day, I would have to wear it forever. Every day, I'd wake up and put it on. There wouldn't be fishing trips like these when I was married and gone.

When I finished reeling mine in and took the hook out of its lip, Charlie grinned even wider at my catch. "I think that one was bigger than mine," he said.

"I doubt it," I said. I'd watched how hard he struggled with that thing.

"Agree to disagree," he said as I bent down to let the fish drop back into the murky water around us. As its tail swished and brought it deeper into the water and out of our sight, I wondered still, how I was going to tell him the truth.

I was leaving him, and I'd be leaving him with lies. When I graduated and married Edward, I wouldn't be the same after that. We'd have to leave Forks behind and go somewhere far away. And all I would tell Charlie was that I was leaving to marry Edward. If I ever came back, the secret would be out. He'd see the Cullens, unchanging over the years and he would know something was wrong. Charlie wasn't the type of man to leave something like that alone. He'd come find me. So I'd have to lie.

We fished all day, catching and releasing all while I tried to find the words to tell him I was getting married. I needed to tell him, more than I needed to tell Jessica or Angela or my mom all the way in Florida. Charlie, who I'd come all the way to Washington to see again, I needed to tell. It took me all day to get the courage.

I floundered a couple of times, speaking his name out and watching his head bob up from the water to look at me. Every time he did, and I got a look at his big eyes, I stuttered and asked him instead about work or about how Billy was or anything else I could think of. And so he told his stories instead while I tried to reason why I had to tell him.

By the end of the night when sunset was turning the sky pink and purple like thick bruises against the skin of the world and we packed up the truck to leave, I decided I was going to tell him before we got home. We got in the truck with what was left of the bait and the cooler in the bed, and I drove us back toward home, on the long stretch of woods that led there.

I was quiet for most of the ride, turning over words in my head as I tried to reason how to tell him. I didn't know why I was so nervous. Charlie knew me and he knew Edward. He wouldn't think this was crazy or dangerous. He wouldn't know any better, but the more I thought about Mom, the more I thought about the stories he'd told about her the last time we were at that lake, the more I thought he might have a heart attack at the thought of me marrying so young.

They were the same reason I hadn't wanted to get married so early before and I had to expect that it would take my own Dad, who was so much like me, a long time to come to terms with it. When we pulled into the driveway and I pulled the truck into park, I cursed myself for not just coming out with it. But as I looked at the house ahead, where I would stop living soon enough, I pulled myself together.