Well… I'm not proud it's been over 4 years! Thank you for all of those who are still encouraging me to finish this story. I've read your messages and they made me feel so warm. You have so much patience, in your place I would have given up a long time ago. Thank you, sincerely!
I'm not sure why I put this story on hold for so long. No good reason, really. School, work + my interest in reading other people's stories grew so much more important than my motivation to write out this story. Plus, I didn't feel like I had enough time to write it out in a decent time span (even got critiqued for it), so I decided to wait a while. I've been feeling bad about it for all this time now. I'm so happy to finish this. I had a great pleasure writing the last chapters. I'm correcting them right now and they should all be out by tomorrow.
10 in total.
Hope you enjoy them! I don't deserve you!
xoxoxoxoxox
"What are you drawing?" Alice asked after winning a battle match on her Gameboy and closing the thing. They were in Carlisle's private jet, heading to the wedding and about an hour away from landing.
His sister was bored and she had decided to turn to him for a little entertainment.
Edward paused, his pencil stilling.
"A face" he answered nonchalantly and resumed tracing lines of lead on his sketchbook.
"Who's?" she fished for details.
"No one's" he replied and hummed a tune to shut her out.
Alice harrumphed and turned her attention towards Jasper and Emmett. They were playing a boring game of Risk and Rosalie was in the back, ruining the airplane air with the smell of a nail polish she was applying to her toenails. Edward didn't particularly mind; it covered the cat's smell a bit.
"Bella is acting a little weird don't you think?" Esme asked her husband. Edward pretended not to pay attention and kept drawing.
The cat had been acting weird, Edward agreed.
It had turned its attention to walls, like they were the most fascinating thing in the world now, instead of him. The cat slept curled into a ball, its back always to him. It was disconcerting.
"She has this look that says: I just shat all over the place; I'm so deep in shit I'm gonna try and act invisible and hope nobody ever notices" Emmett said and although Edward would have picked a different description, he agreed with his brother. Why was the cat's face expressing guilt at all?
They arrived at their designated hotel on time, without a hint of trouble. Each Cullen couple settled in individual rooms and Edward had his own personal space. The cat would stay with the calm Carlisle and the loving Esme. That suited Edward just fine, although he wished he had someone to share the trip with. He had the sketched woman in his art book to keep him company. She wasn't real, she didn't even exist. She was nothing but a futile attempt to picture his future companion, if he was even destined to have one.
The first evening in France was great for most Cullens. Everyone but Edward had gone out into the city to sightsee and shop. The copper-haired vampire had preferred to stay in his room and read. It was only around midnight that Edward finished his books and decided to do something else with his abundant time.
He walked nonchalantly in the huge hotel. He checked the pool area and the gym, he explored the glamourous lobby. During his visit, he came across many heated gazes from rich women – the hotel was swanky- and even the maids added to the dirty thoughts he was unwillingly catching. He wasn't surprised when two of the bellboys also winked at him.
But he quickly got sick of being stared at like a prised jewel. At twelve thirty, Edward journeyed back to his room 226. On his way there, he passed room 220; Carlisle and Esme's. The sight made him remember his mother's words: "I'm giving you our key. If you want, check up on Bella while we're gone" she had said before leaving to climb the Eiffel tower. The key card was in his pocket, and he was suddenly so aware of it that it seemed to burn him through his pants.
"For crying out loud…" he muttered in the hallway, standing at 220. He surrendered to his irritating desire to see what the furry ball was up to. He took out the card from his pocket and entered his parents' room, sighing heavily.
It was an odd thing to see a cat sleeping on a computer keyboard. 'How is that even comfortable?' Edward asked himself as he came across the strawberry scented thing at the work desk on the other side of the king sized bed. He approached the scene and realised that the computer was on, with the screensaver mode activated. Edward assumed his parents had searched something and left the hotel device on. The cat must have been attracted to the light or something, just like a bug. A fluffy strawberry scented bug.
Edward picked up the cat from the keyboard and laid it in on the nearby couch so that he could use the computer. He only realised a few seconds later what he'd done. He'd touched IT! And IT was still alive! The temptation to sink his teeth in its neck and inadvertently kill the cat hadn't grown from direct contact. Only weeks ago he was afraid to open his window and smell it. Now he was touching it. And the cat was soft. It was warm too. Cozy…
"Stop!" he told himself. 'Don't get attached to it. Someone crazy owns that cat. And it still irritates my stomach with its sweet smell' he reminded himself.
Edward childishly glared at the cat before turning to the computer screen. He wiggled the mouse around and the screensaver mode broke, revealing a web page for flight booking. He read the information on the page and frowned.
Why were his parents trying to book a flight for the next day?
Edward would ask them later, just to make sure the cat hadn't accidently typed stuff. The bronze-haired vampire took the time to turn off the computer, just in case the cat had an obsession with the keyboard and decided to sleep on it again, and in the process accidentally pressed a destructive combination of keys.
After that, Edward headed back to his room where he'd spend the rest of the night. He picked up his art book and worked on a few old sketches. When he got to the woman he'd started drawing in the plane, his pencil stopped. He wasn't in the mood to finish it, he wasn't in the mood to think about mates. He was in the mood to draw something lighter, something funny; like perhaps a fluffy cat sleeping on a keyboard.
The next day around two in the afternoon, the Cullens prepared for the Lavigne's wedding. Alice took care of the girls' hair, the guys' suits and pretty much everything. Around three, it was time to leave to the wedding reception. Esme made sure Bella had a full water bowl, some food and a clean litterbox before they all left the little cat behind to take a limousine to the event.
Everything was going perfectly well and they'd been just about to enter the reception hall when Alice realised she'd forgotten something very important: her Pink-Flamenco-Allure-Smooth-Sugar-Velvet Chanel lipstick.
It was so important for touch-ups that she would have taken the limo back to the hotel just to get it. She couldn't though, because she had a wedding to orchestrate, being the main planner and all. Jasper had offered to get it for her, but his wife had refused: she needed him to calm down the bride.
"Brides always go crazy before the big show, even vampire ones" she'd said.
"Does that include you?" Jasper had joked and he'd never gotten an answer; just a we're-wasting-time-right-now glare.
So acting in good faith, and really because he wasn't so keen on being at the wedding, Edward volunteered to get her ridiculous lipstick.
Then things started to go downhill.
He found the lipstick in his sister's room rather easily and pocketed it. His other pocket vibrated a second later from a text message. He took his phone out and read it.
Esme was asking if he could make sure Bella was okay while he was there.
He would have answered back that they'd only left her alone for forty-five minutes and there was nothing to worry about but he knew his mother figure would worry if he didn't check. So he made his way to room 220. Immediately, he realised something was wrong upon entering it. He felt a light breeze; the balcony door was wide open.
What if the cat had escaped? He searched frantically for it. His ears didn't pick up any heartbeat; his eyes couldn't find the animal and his nose detected a diluted strawberry scent. The cat was gone.
Edward immediately called Carlisle.
"It's gone!" Edward said as soon as he picked up.
"Edward, calm down. If the lipstick is missing it's fine, Alice will survive…"
"Not the lipstick, the cat!" he corrected frantically.
"What do you mean?" the blond vampire asked with sudden worry.
"Did anyone leave the balcony door open? It's open! The cat is gone!" Edward questioned.
"Hold on" the composed Doctor said.
Edward heard Carlisle question his siblings and Esme. Esme was sure to have locked up everything.
"No one opened that door, Edward. In any case, we need to find that cat. She's our only lead to Stranger. I'll see if Alice has a vision and we'll come help you right away."
"I'm taking a head start" Edward said before hanging up.
The panicked vampire would have left through the window if he hadn't been worried about humans seeing the second-floor jump. Instead he took the elevator and rushed through the lobby, ignoring the receptionist shouting at him not to run in the vicinity. She didn't even mind the run, she just wanted his attention.
Edward had tracked many meals in his life and he felt confident he could track his delicious smelling cat. He would use his fine nose and read minds. Surely people would notice a fluffy brown cat in the busy streets? Edward hoped so.
Unfortunately, lust-filled thoughts were the most he was getting from people. Because of course, a vampire in a tux was a rare sight, and what a delightful sight it was for the plain humans to lust upon. Fortunately for him, there was no sun that day.
He was losing confidence in his tracking abilities when his nose barely picked up the familiar intoxicating scent. His phone rang at the same time and he picked it up as he sped-walked, guided by his nostrils.
"Alice" he answered, having seen her name on the ringing device.
"Edward, go to the Roissy Airport. Bella will be there soon. That's all I've got for now."
"Thanks Alice" he said before hanging up and hopping into a taxi.
"Where are you going?" the cab driver asked in French.
"The airport. I'll give you five hundred euros if you make the trip in less than thirty minutes" Edward replied in perfect French.
Driven by a high monetary incentive, the taxi driver took off immediately, keeping his speed well above the limit to make it to his destination within the desired time.
When they reached the airport just under twenty-five minutes with two red lights burned and an average of thirty kilometers over the speed limit, Edward handed a thousand euros to the taxi driver instead of his promised five hundred. He didn't stay around to witness the driver tear up. He quickly followed the residual strawberry scent and hoped it wouldn't be lost in the humongous airport.
He anxiously searched and cursed when the fruity perfume started to fuse with many others: cologne shops, coffee shops, fast food joints and sweaty travellers threw millions of scents into the recycled air, covering the tracks of his escapee.
No one seemed to notice any cat wandering. He searched a long time, trying to find the feline. His last hint was a trail leading him to a boarding station. When Edward got to the flight desk, he was stopped by the worker.
"This plane is taking off soon. The gates are closing. I'm sorry sir but if that plane was yours, it's too late."
Edward swallowed a curse.
"Please, I think my cat ran on board" he said although he doubted the women clerk would let him in for a lost cat. In fact, her nose wrinkled at the absurdity of his explanation and she continued blocking his way.
"I assure you that no cat has passed the boarding gates" she told him while eying him up. She was thinking that he was the most gorgeous lunatic she'd ever seen.
Edward had to watch the plane take flight and disappear along with his only link to Stranger.