A Year of New Beginnings

I don't own Twilight, but I do own a Cullen crest keychain!

*** Ya'll have blown me away with all the alerts! It makes me smile, makes my husband think I'm crazy…

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Thanks for all the inspiration to keep going! Love ya! ***

Chapter 4

Bella POV

January 22

9:30am

I was awoken by the sound of clattering of dishes coming from downstairs and uncontrollable laughter. Really I just wanted to sleep more, so I tried rolling over in bed and pulling the pillow over my head. The world just wouldn't let me have my way though, because not even two minutes later, a very rambunctious Emmett and Jake came bouncing in my room and jumped on the bed. They were quiet at first trying to tickle me, but there were too many blankets on me for them to succeed.

"Bella fo smella, me my mo shella, BELLA!" Emmett sang loudly.

"Go away, I'm sleeping," I grumbled from under my pillow, before it was snatched from my grip. "Shouldn't you two have gigantic hangovers to attend to this morning?" I questioned, "you both drank a whole lot last night."

"Nah, when you're our size it takes a lot more than what we drank last night," they grinned evilly at each other, "we should know."

"Whatever, go away," I replied pulling the covers up over my head.

Sensing that they needed to take this a step further, Emmett and Jake proceeded to jump on the bed. "Seriously, what the hell are you two thinking? I'm laying in here. I swear to God if either of you fall on top of me I will break something very important to you." I shouted from under the covers, trying to curl myself up into a ball to prevent them from jumping on some body part that can break.

"Emmett Cullen, what the hell are you doing?" Rosalie shouted from the bedroom door. "Leah, your dog needs to be caged."

The jumping stopped immediately and I pulled the covers down enough to see Rose glaring at the guys.

"Come on babe, she's taken the longest to get up," Emmett tried to argue, "everyone else woke up by the time we got to the singing, but Bella was being difficult, so we had to take a new approach."

"What if one you landed on Bells? Or broke the bed? What would you have done then?"

They looked between themselves, then down at me, "sorry Bells," Jake spoke for them both, looking very apologetic.

"It's cool, I'm up now. Thanks Rose for saving my life." I called out. She just smiled before walking away.

"Well, now that you're up. Come downstairs for breakfast, we guys made something special for all you girls." Emmett grinned. "There's even coffee."

"You know my weaknesses Em, I'll be down there shortly, let me clean up first."

Jake and Emmett left the room, hollering about racing downstairs. I heard Rose groan, "Oh dear Lord, how old are they?" before shouting after them "if you break anything, Esme will kill you!"

I wandered into the adjoining bathroom, to make myself presentable. I brushed my teeth, splashed my face with water and then tried to do something with my hair before deciding to just pull it into a ponytail.

I slowly made my way downstairs to the kitchen, still in my pj's. The sight before me was very comical. Jasper and Edward were both wearing Esme's aprons over top of their sweats and t-shirts. Edward's apron said "Kiss the Cook" with a pair of bright red lips painted on it and Jasper's was frilly and pink with flowers all over it. I giggled as I made my way over to the coffee pot. "What's so funny?" Jasper questioned.

"Really Jazz, you don't know?" I laughed.

"Shut it, it's Edward's fault, he had to go and lose the stupid bet," he shot back.

"Seriously, it's only 9 something in the morning, how are you guys already betting?" Leah asked disbelieving.

"That's nothing, one month I think they had a bet going on every day, always for something stupid. Sometimes I think they have a serious addiction. Maybe we should look into Gambler's Anonymous for them," Alice answered. "So what was the bet this time?"

I finished making my coffee and went to sit with the girls over at the table. I smiled when I noticed we all were still in our pj's or sweats.

Jasper decided to answer his wife's question. "Well, apparently it snowed its ass off last night. We've gotten about three feet, which for us, is very strange. I mean, by now, the rain has normally melted it away. So Eddie here," he was interrupted as suddenly Jasper got hit in the back of the head with a slice of bacon. He turned to Edward, who jus gave him a smirk. "What the hell man? Why you throwing bacon at me? Trying to get animals to chase me?"

"Eddie? Everyone knows I hate that name, even you Jazzykins. You may continue on with you story." Edward returned to flipping pancakes.

"Jazz throw that piece here!" Jake hollered while he and Emmett came to join us at the table. Jasper tossed the bacon over to Jake. Us girls all made faces of disgust at Jake as he munched on the bacon.

"Anyways, Edward bet Emmett that he couldn't stand out in the snow in his underwear for over two minutes. Well, we all know Emmett, and he stripped down to his boxers and went and stood in the middle of the driveway for 2 minutes and 20 seconds." Rose shook her head before placing it on the table in defeat. "Then, I bet Jacob that he couldn't run to the garage and back in the snow faster than I can, I didn't think how hard it really is to run in the snow."

"I won" Jake chuckled. "So now, Em and I get to torture Ed and Jazz for the rest of the day, hence them cooking breakfast."

I choked on my coffee, "did you just use the word hence correctly Jake?"

"Yes, miss I'm a big shot magazine writer. I did pay partial attention during my college English class. We get to pick our adventures for today. Emmett and I decided that we wanna go play in the snow. How about a snow war? We haven't had one of those since freshman year." He sounded really excited about the plans they had made.

"Probably because it hasn't snowed more than 2 inches here since high school." Edward commented.

"By the way, I'm not some big shot writer, I just write the articles they suggest and get my bestest to take awesome pictures."

"I really do take awesome pictures," Alice praised herself.

Jasper and Edward served up plates of eggs, bacon, pancakes and sliced fruit. We all sat around enjoying our food and making plans for our epic snow war.

10:30am

Alice, Rose, Leah and myself were all congregated in Emmett and Rosalie's room. Splattered all over the bed were all the different pregnancy tests that Emmett unknowingly supplied our little group.

"Wow Rose, Emmett wanted you to be extra sure didn't he? There's gotta be about 20 tests here." Leah observed.

"That explains why he forgot the ice yesterday, he was trying to get the heck out of the store after buying all these. If I was the cashier, I probably would've thought that he impregnated an army or something," I laughed trying to calm the butterflies floating around my stomach.

Alice went over to the main door to the bedroom and locked it. "Just in case any of the guys get the brilliant idea to find out what we are up to. I'm sure they will get easily bored with washing dishes. And I'm not sure if I'm ready for them to know about this."

Rose and Leah had categorized the tests into groups by brand. Apparently, he'd bought about 2 boxes of every type, with 2 tests in each box. Rose announced the plan, "well, with the supply Em got us, it looks like we will each be taking 3 tests, because there are 3 different brands. Leah is our control person because she just had her period." She threw bottles of water at each of us. "There is extra water over on the dresser if you need it, but if you drink too much, your results may not be truthful. After taking the tests, place them on your assigned part of the counter. We're going to use the timers on our phones and no peeking at the results until all the timers have gone off. Start chugging."

We all started chugging the water. The only bad part of this plan was that we were all using one bathroom to keep the guys from knowing. Rose and Alice had already taken their tests and right now Leah was in there. I was starting to do the pee-pee dance when Leah finally emerged from the bathroom. After taking the tests, I placed them in my assigned spot beside the tissues and walked out into the bedroom to lay on the bed with the rest of my friends.

10:40am

Waiting sucks.

None of us were talking, we were just sitting there waiting for the alarms to go off, each of us silently pondering what the results would mean for our lives.

Finally, the beeping noise resounded from the bathroom. Leah was the only one to jump to her feet, probably because she already knew her answer. She turned off the alarms and stood by the bathroom door. "Do you wanna come in and see the results? Or do you want me to call them out?"

When none of us moved from our spots on the bed, Leah turned back into the bathroom to retrieve the tests. Rosalie grabbed one of my hands and one of Alice's, we created a line of support that we all needed. When Leah returned, she was grinning from ear to ear. "Well, mine were all negative, which was to be expected. The 3 tests beside the soap dish were all positive."

Alice let out a little squeal.

"The 3 tests beside the toothbrushes were all positive."

Rose let out a breath that I didn't even know she was holding. She looked so happy. Tears started silently flowing down her face, but she wouldn't let go of my hand until we knew all the answers.

"And last but not least, all 3 tests by the tissues were positive. What did I tell ya last night? There's gonna be 3 little Cullen kids running around here soon. Kinda cool that you're all preggers together."

"Sure you don't wanna join Leah? I'm sure Jake would be happy to be involved in the creation of a child." Alice joked.

"Positive, as much fun making a kid would be, dedicating my life to someone else is not quite what I want right now. But one day I will, just not today," she smiled.

Rose pulled all of us in for a big group hug, we were all crying, well all but Leah. When we broke away, Leah asked the one question I had no answer to. "When are you going to tell the guys?"

"I'm not sure, I mean, were kind of on rocky ground right now…" I whispered.

"Nonsense, Bella, you will tell my brother today. You will hear him out and you will watch the stupid video in his phone. Do you understand me? He loves you! He wants to marry you and spend the rest of his life with you! He has a right to know about this child!" Alice's little tangent made me cry even harder. Rosalie pulled me into a hug and I could feel her glaring at Alice.

"No, Rose she's right, I need to hear him out." I sniffled as I pulled away from her shoulder. "What video are you talking about?"

Alice looked at me warily, "I found his phone the other day and I went snooping around to see if I could find out more information about this Tanya situation. What I found will amaze you. Just give it a chance. I'm sorry for yelling." She too pulled me in for a hug.

"No one answered my question, you just gave me more questions… when are you going to tell the guys? Now? Later? When?"

I could see the light bulb go off over Ali's head when she thought of the idea. "Tonight, but I'm gonna need you to play along for a little bit, okay Leah?"

"Sure, sure, but why are you waiting?"

"Because as much trouble as those boys are, they can still be a little overprotective."

"A little? Some guy waved at me the other day at the store and Emmett growled at them to back off!" Rose exclaimed.

"Exactly my point, they are overprotective and if they think we might get hurt, they will prevent us from having any fun and I wanna go play in the snow." Alice explained.

11:15am

The guys had found some extra clothes in their closets, so that we all had enough layers to play in the snow without turning into ice cubes. All decked out in boots, coats, gloves and scarves we went outside to prepare for the impending war.

To make the teams fair, we split up Emmett and Jake, why have two beastly sized guys on the same team? That would be completely unfair. To make it even better, we split up all the couples, so that they couldn't defend their mate. I wound up on a team with Emmett, Jasper and Leah. We set up a little fort to prepare as many snowballs as we could. When both teams were ready, Jasper and Edward met in no man's land and shook hands, signaling the beginning. We all ran around blasting each other with snowballs. There was no real winner, just friends having fun. In the end, we were all covered in snow. Of course the guys had to keep competing, so we decided to have a snowman competition. We split up into couples, with each team making their own snowman. An hour later, a snow family appeared. Edward and I had made the traditional snowman, with a carrot nose and big black hat. Rose and Em made a snowwoman, equipped with size D boobs according to Emmett. Jazz and Ali made a snowgirl trying to do ballet and Jake and Leah decided on a snowdog. Jake and Leah won that one because their idea was so original. Emmett protested that because of the realistic appeal of his snowwoman, but everyone ignored him.

1:30pm

When we all started freezing we came inside, everyone heading to their respective rooms to change. I had already taken a shower to warm up and put on some fresh clothes. Now, I'm sitting on my bed thinking about what Alice mentioned earlier. I notice Edward's phone sitting on the dresser. I listen to hear him start up the shower. Curiosity getting the best of me, I climb off the bed to grab the phone. Alice mentioned that it was a video, so I go to that screen on his iPhone. The last video was taken on New Year's Eve… hmmm… I hit play.

"Ben, Ben, whatcha doing man?" The video zooms in on Dr. Ben Chaney, one of Edward's colleagues at work, "nothing right now, really wish I wasn't stuck here with you on New Year's Eve."

"I know what ya mean man, that's why I'm making this video, so I can share my night with Bella." He turns the camera towards himself, "Isabella Swan, I love you so much, you made me the happiest man in the world when you agreed to marry me. Wish I could be at Alice's New Year's party with you!" In the background you hear barfing noises and the camera turns back to Ben.

"Bella, please come save me from this man, he's torturing me with all his bubbly loving happy feelings." Ack, he fakingly throws up.

"Ben, will you video me going around the hospital, it's almost midnight and I want to send this to Bells to start of her new year with her knowing how much I love and miss her."

"Sure dude, there isn't anything else going on in this place tonight."

The video follows them around the hospital, introducing me to all the staff stuck at the hospital when they'd rather be home with their families.

"The staff all decided to celebrate together by the main nurse's station. It's a couple minutes until midnight, so we're gonna head that way."

When they reach the lobby, it's just about time for the countdown.

10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1…Happy New Year's!

Happy New Year's baby, next year I promise to spend it in your arms…

His voice was cut off by that cootie filled nurse Tanya trying to stick her tongue down his throat. In the background I see myself walking in through the front doors. I stand there for a second before running back out. But from the angle of the camera I can see the situation from a new light. I see Edward tense up and try to push Tanya off of him without hurting her. When he finally breaks free, he starts flipping out on her, again something I didn't know about previously.

"What the fuck is that about Tanya? Was there a sign above my head that said kiss me I accept STD's willingly? No, there wasn't. I'm engaged. I love Bella, leave me the hell alone." Tanya stomps off out of camera range.

Over the intercom I hear them announce that there was an accident and that they are sending the casualties to the hospital.

"Dude, you're in some deep shit, I think I saw Bells run in when Tanya kissed you. It's on the video."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Just watch the video man."

Another doctor hollers out "Cullen, Chaney, suit up. We got people coming in t-minus 2 minutes."

"Shit, I'll deal with this later."

That's where the video ends. I'm sitting on the bed crying at the realization that Edward didn't do anything wrong, that I had been a total bitch to him for nothing. What the hell was my problem? Why didn't he even fight me on this? I heard the water to the shower turn off and I jumped off the bed, placing the phone back on the dresser before running down the stairs.

Thanks again for everyone who took the time to read this so far!

I get super excited to see my berry light up!

I even have my hubby intrigued by me publishing my story online.

Please Review, it makes my day!

K. Thanks! Love ya! :)

AcEcHiCa