Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight!

Alrighty! So here's the latest chapter of this fic. I'd like to thank all of the reviewers for…well, reviewing! That's just great. I'm glad that everyone is liking how this story is progressing, so I hope that everyone likes this chapter as well!

Long Road to Ruin
Chapter Twenty Five: Meet the Cullens

Jasper.

I couldn't say that I wasn't worried. Because I was.

Even through the happiness-clouded haze of my mind, I couldn't help but feel guilt over what had transpired. Guilty for Emmett, because he was out there, guarding my mother because of my own stupid, human weakness. Guilty for my mom - because my relationship with Bella had put her through this in the first place. Guilty for…well, everything. Because right now, it seemed like everything was pretty much my fault.

We danced, we ate and drank the random snack foods that were at the party, we ignored the jealous gazes of Jessica and every other guy in the room. Because, hey, I was a lucky guy to have Bella on my arm, I knew this.

It was during the last slow dance of the evening that Bella wrapped her arms around me and said in my ear, "I'm truly sorry."

And the pain in her voice was so evident, so all-encompassing, that it seemed to mirror my own. I felt my heart constrict at her words, and I held her just a bit tighter.

The dance ended sooner than I'd thought, and we ended up going to my house first, and I wondered what she had in mind.

"Maybe we should wait for tomorrow to see my parents." Bella told me, her face beautiful and grave all at once, bathed in the moonlight. I looked at her and felt an unexpected weight being lifted from my shoulders. "Since tomorrow's Saturday, you can spend all day with us." She said in a slightly brighter tone.

I felt myself smiling, "That sounds perfect, actually."

Bella smiled before I left the car, walking up the stairs. She was going back to her house to change, and leaving me at the house for a minimal amount of time. Emmett was still standing guard outside the house, somewhere, and that gave me a sense of comfort.

I walked up the steps to the house, pausing slightly as that familiar sense of nausea overcame me. Pushing through it, I opened the door and saw that my mother was in the same place she was when I had left - the couch. Except now, she had dozed off, looking rather comfortable. I smiled at the familiar sight, and went to retrieve a blanket from the recliner in the corner, fluffing it out and draping it over her before I trekked upstairs as silently as I could.

Opening the door to my room was even harder than before. That damned sickening feeling. The dark and ominous feeling I always got when Victoria was around, crept up onto me like a ton of bricks. I twisted the knob and forced my way in, taking deep breaths, reassuring myself that nothing was there. That nothing was going to happen to me. Not with Emmett outside.

I shut the door and started to take off my shirt, feeling the elation of getting the tie off and then unbuttoning the stuffy shirt. Sighing, I happened to look back at the closed door, to see a rather conspicuous piece of paper taped to the wood. My heart stopped dead in my chest before sprinting.

Shakily walking over to the door, I ripped the paper off of the door and quickly fumbled open the letter.

Good game tonight. Nasty fall you took, but I'm glad you're alright. I would hate for anyone to interrupt our fun.
- V

There was the blood red kiss of lipstick at the corner, magnifying her twisted message a hundredfold.

The paper fell from my hands, which had suddenly gone ice cold, as did the rest of my body. I stepped back and let out a pathetic squeak, followed by a whispered, panicked, "Emmett…"

I knew he would hear me, and he did, materializing at the windowsill not seconds after I said his name. He pried the window open from the outside without breaking the glass, though I had no time to be impressed. He was over by my side in a flash, looking at me with curiosity, "What…what is it, Jazz?"

I couldn't speak. I was so frozen by terror that I could do nothing but shake and tremble like some damsel. I had never felt so helpless in my life. I pointed to the paper that lay on the floor in front of me, and Emmett moved liquidly to pick it up.

Less than a millisecond after that, he was growling, a harsh, fierce sound, deep in his chest. I turned and saw the purest look of hatred and anger cross his face, "She was in here."

"I…I don't know when…" I told him, "But it wasn't after I got home from school…it must've been before you got here, but after I left for the ballgame."

"So! She still got in here." Emmett was trembling, but for a different reason than I was. His body shook in pure, unadulterated anger, unlike my body, which was rattled like a leaf in a hurricane, but in fear. The paper was starting to tear under his remarkable strength. Trying to find a way to calm him down, I looked around…

Bella chose to climb through the window at that moment.

Immediately, her face registered the situation, "What's wrong? Emmett? Jasper?"

Emmett spun around, "Read this."

Bella took the paper in her hands, her eyes skimming the words that were etched on it. Her face quickly morphed from concerned to boiling with anger. She whipped her head up, hands scarily still on the paper, "What do we do?"

"Have this house protected as often as we can." Emmett said, looking from me to Bella. "We can't let anything get through the cracks. I'll tell Alice to start looking more carefully."

A serious Emmett - it was a rare sight, to me at least. Emmett had always been jovial the times that I'd seen him, but now it was strange. He looked…deadly. Like a true vampire.

"I'm staying here tonight." Emmett said with a look in his eyes that told me that he would not be argued with, "Sorry if you two had anything planned, but I'm not leaving. Not tonight. Lock down starts now."

I felt a surge of awe at the protective way Emmett said those words, and something swelled within me. A sense of friendship, strong and building, and I knew that it would get stronger over time.

Bella looked compassionate, "Oh, no, Emmett…we couldn't ask you to take more time out of your - "

"Bells. Sis. I totally get that you don't want to ruffle anyone's feathers with this. But I want to stay. And if she does show up, two is better than one, right?" His face broke into a grin, dimples prominently showing.

Bella sighed, obviously knowing how hard-headed Emmett was, and then relented, "Fine."

Emmett's grin grew, "I knew you'd see it my way."

Then, we settled in for a rather strange night.

I woke early. The sun wasn't out at all, as usual, and the clouds were a heavy blanket over the sky. I had no idea how much I'd slept. I didn't think I'd sleep at all. I closed my eyes and tried, but when I did, I ended up seeing those menacing red eyes, and the wild tangle of equally red curls…the snarling teeth…

I shook my head and looked up. Bella was sitting, leaning against the bed, with her hand twined with mine. I wondered if she'd moved all night, for that was how she had looked before darkness claimed me throughout the night.

"Ah, sleepy head." Emmett teased, and I turned to face him. He was sitting in the beanbag chair, facing the television. His ferocious mood from the night before seemed gone, but the tension in his shoulders was still there. I then noticed that Bella was stroking the back of my hand with her fingertips, a soothing gesture.

"You didn't sleep well last night, did you?" Bella said, and it was obvious that she already knew the answer.

"Nah, but it's fine. When can we meet the Maw and Paw?" I said, my accent drawling thickly around each word. Emmett and Bella let out a laugh at that, and I felt glad that I could make them amused at a time like this.

Bella rose from the bed, walking over to the window and looking at the clouded blanket that draped around the town of Forks. She turned and looked at me, "We'd better see what your mother is doing first. We don't want to leave her unprotected."

I felt a slight chill in the air - it looked like it would be this way until Victoria was dead. "Right." I rose from the bed, and wandered to the door. "Y'all stay here, I'll go check."

I opened the door and walked down the stairs, slightly groggy from sleep-deprivation, and yawned on the way down. I wasn't sure what time it was, but Mom was usually up before I was. So I walked in the direction of the crackling bacon, and saw with great relief that Mom was awake - and in one piece. She turned with a smile and said, "Good morning, sleepyhead."

"Mornin'." I mumbled, walking over to the kitchen table and sitting down.

"Did you have fun at the dance, sweetie?" She asked, flipping over an egg she was frying before she returned to the bacon.

"Yeah…" I said, remembering all of the wonderful and awful events that had happened last night, trying to find an appropriate response that wouldn't show I was lying, "It was interesting, for sure."

"I take that as a yes." Mom said slyly before moving the finished eggs to a plate and then the bacon. She stirred a pot of grits, and then clanked the spoon against the side of the pot, removing the excess from it. She turned to me, "I made you breakfast."

I cocked my head, "You're not eating?"

Mom looked at me smiling. She was already dressed in a pair of slacks and a nice, green top. Her hair was pulled back into a high bun, and a few tendrils escaped and fell around her face. All in all, Mom cleaned up good. "I've got a conference in Seattle today…something that has to do with my job or whatever. I'll probably be gone all day, so I just thought I'd make you breakfast since you'll be on your own for the other two meals."

"You always make breakfast, anyway."

"True, true."

I got up and walked over to the counter, where my breakfast was lying. I moved the eggs and bacon aside and plopped several hearty spoonfuls of grits onto the space designated. "Mm." I said, looking at the stuff on my plate. My mother knew me well. Fried eggs and bacon and grits? Ah, I could die happy.

Pausing at the strange thought, I made my way over to the table and sat down, already munching on the bacon before my ass hit the seat.

I saw Mom gathering up her purse and her keys. She looked at me with a smile before she walked over and kissed my forehead. Such a Mama's boy… I thought, slightly embarrassed, to myself.

"Bye, sweetheart. I'll see you later."

"Bye, Ma."

Then, she was gone, leaving me alone in the kitchen.

"Aw, Mama's boy."

I jolted at the deep, joking voice, looking over to the doorframe, where Emmett's massive form stood, leaning against the side of the wall and looking very out of place. His smile was plastered on his face, and he grinned at me, making it wider. I laughed at him, and dove back into my breakfast.

"It's a good thing. Of what I can remember, me and my Ma were close, too."

I looked at him, and now he was sitting in the chair across from me. I could never get over the fact that someone so burly and muscular was able to move without a sound. It was slightly unnerving.

"Of what you can…remember?" I bit. It was a curious statement, and I wanted to know what he was getting at, surprisingly.

"Well, yeah." Emmett said, leaning back on the two legs of the chair somewhat gingerly. Again, this guy never failed to surprise me, "Most human memories fade with time." He tapped a finger against his head, rustling the curly brown hair that resided there. "It's kind of like a fuzzy haze over them, but you can usually remember the most important ones…the ones that mean the most."

I looked at him curiously, suddenly finding myself wanting to know the story of this guy.

He knew what I was wondering about, and he sighed, "You wanna know how I was changed?"

I looked down at my eggs and started to cut them with my fork, trying to focus on something else. The runny yolk spilled out and ran into the bacon, then the grits. I stared, fascinated at the mundane occurrence, but then I looked up to see that Emmett's eyes were eager, and happy to be talking to me.

Again, I bit, "Sure. If you want."

"I want." He said, grinning largely, "Well, basically, I was out hunting. I came across a huge grizzly, which would feed me and my family for a good long while. Time were hard, so I was determined to get that bear." He gave a chuckle, but it somehow lacked mirth, a strange thing to be associated with Emmett, "I guess you can figure out how it all went down. I was careless, thinking I could take down that bear all by myself. Somehow, I'm not sure how, but the bear attacked me, and I was near death. All I could think of was how I was going to disappoint my family. The snow was so cold, and getting colder by the second, and that bear just wasn't going to give up…" He trailed off, and I knew what memories had followed him into the afterlife.

"That's when Rose found me."

That stopped my train of thought completely, "Rose…as in, Rosalie?"

Emmett saw my shock and laughed, this time full and booming, "Yup. My Rosie saved me from that bear, and took me to Carlisle, where…well, this happened. And everything else was history."

I smiled, suddenly feeling a new respect forming for the beautiful blonde. She had saved Emmett when she didn't know him from Adam. I didn't know much about Rosalie, but I found this incredibly kind of her.

"So, that's basically what my story is." Emmett said, and there was a peculiar glint in his eyes, "I wonder what your story is going to be."

I paused, the fork in my hand clinking to the side of the plate, confusion crossing my face. I was about to ask him what he meant, but then I heard Bella's tinkling voice coming from the door. "Emmett!"

Emmett looked sheepish, and scratched the back of his head in what I assumed was a habit of his when he was embarrassed. "Hey, Bells. Everything go good?"

Bella was holding a small, expensive-looking cell phone in her bone white fingers, and I could see she was using all of her strength not to crush it into pieces. "Yeah. Alice said there's going to be a thunderstorm today."

Emmett rose quickly, "Excellent."

I looked to Bella, and then to Emmett, my eyebrows knitting in confusion, "Uh…why is that good?"

Emmett snickered, and clapped a large hand on my back. "You'll see."

I looked to Bella, who was looking a bit peeved, but also a bit excited. She looked at me with a pair of mischievous eyes, and said, "Ready to go meet the family?"

I gulped, looking at my food. "Uh, let me eat first."

The two vampires laughed.

I wish I could've found what was so funny.

Bella drove my little car to the Cullen household. I heard Emmett complain about how slow she was going, but she just sighed and didn't even more the gas meter above the designated speed limit.

"Geez, you know we're never in wrecks. Vampires can't get in wrecks." Emmett said, trying to force his logic on her, but it obviously wasn't working. "Even so, we wouldn't die."

"Yes, but, Jasper isn't a vampire." She said, and there was a funny little note to her voice. Something that I couldn't even bother to decipher for myself. It was odd, and as we drove, I tried to piece it together, but with no avail.

After we drove for a while, the trees started to get thicker, if that was possible in Forks. They encompassed every side of the car, and I wondered when we would actually get to the elusive Cullen house. Suddenly, the car turned into a road that otherwise would've been hidden, hard to see by anyone. I knew if I was the one who was driving, I would've passed it completely.

The trees encroached upon this road as well, but the space got wider and wider as we came upon one of the most beautiful houses I'd ever seen. Three stories, with light colored walls and mahogany wood… Fitting. I thought to myself as Bella parked the car in a spacious garage. My eyes widened at what I saw.

Cars. But, more than the vast number were the types. A Jeep, a red BMW, a Volvo - some I'd seen at school and others that I'd never even known they'd had… Was that a Ferrari?

Emmett chuckled at my expression from the backseat, and put his mammoth hand on my head gently. "Impressed?"

"Very." I croaked.

We got out of the car, and I was speechless at the amount of space this little garage had. Bella and Emmett led the way up the stairs from the garage and into a huge room, where Alice was waiting, a ball of energy if I'd ever seen one. "Jasper!" She crowed, hugging me. "Ah, good to see you without the pretense of school!"

"Ur…uh, yeah." I said, and everyone laughed at my speechlessness. I wasn't quite used to Bella touching me yet, let alone the strangely enthusiastic pixie vamp.

"That noggin of yours will be fine in a few days. You had no major damage." She said, and I remembered her gift of reading into the future. Bella sent her a look, I assumed, and she sighed, "Alright, fine." She parted from me, and turned, where Edward was suddenly standing. She danced toward him, and wrapped an arm around his waist.

"Jasper." Edward acknowledged with a crooked smile.

"Edward." I mocked him, and he chuckled at that.

I saw Rosalie sitting over in the corner of the living room, glancing over at us every now and then but altogether looking unimpressed. I guessed it was the living room that we were in - there was a large, flat screen television mounted on the wall, and a couch, along with a few chairs. A magnificent grand piano sat perched on a raised platform, and I looked over to it.

When I looked back at the people gathered around me, two others had made their entrance, these two I'd never seen before. Yet their looks were just as prominent as the other members of their family.

The woman had long, honey brown hair that waved down to the middle of her back. Her body was slightly more curvy than the other girls of her family. Her eyes were the same color of topaz, and the motherly emotion they held in them was enough to get me to think of my mother. Somehow, she made me feel homesick, and I hadn't even been away from my mother for a while. Her features were perfect, skin pale, as were the rest of the family, and she smiled.

The man was just as pale and perfect as the rest of them. He had blonde hair that was just a few shades lighter than mine and the same topaz eyes that came along with the rest of his family. He had an air of kindness that just radiated off of him. I found it so overwhelming that I almost had to take in gulps of air. It was strange, the way his emotions were effecting me. The way everyone's emotions effected me these days. But I returned the smile he gave me, trying not to look awkward or feel as nervous as I was.

"Jasper," Bella said into my ear, "this is Carlisle and Esme Cullen."

"Er…" I fumbled for my words like an idiot, before I jutted out my hand the way my mama raised me, "Nice to meet y'all. I'm Jasper Whitlock."

Esme laughed, and the sound was light and airy in my ears, but not condescending. Instead of taking my hand, she came forward slowly, and wrapped her arms around me lightly, "Pleasure to meet you."

Her motherly nature, coupled with the kindness radiating from Carlisle like he was a lighthouse beacon, were almost too much. But I persevered. She parted from me, and when I expected Carlisle to give me a handshake as well, he gave me a hearty hug, different from Esme's kind and motherly one.

Hugging vampires…who knew?

"Welcome to the family, Jasper."

I was shocked for a moment that he would consider me a part of his family already. I mean, I had only been with Bella for a short time, I supposed, but still…it made my heart do a funny little dance in my chest.

Family?

It was more of a welcome than I'd ever imagined.

End Chapter Twenty Five.

There's that! He's officially been introduced to the entire Cullen family. Hopefully everyone enjoyed this chapter. I liked writing it. I would love to hear your opinions on this chapter. I tried to make this longer, but it didn't really work, since someone had asked if I would make longer chapters. I'm not a real huge fan of super long chapters. Right now, this is the tenth page. So…I dunno. I just write, and when I reach a spot that seems appropriate to stop at, and if I have gotten at least nine or more pages done, then it's where I end the chapter. I'm sorry if anyone wants longer chapters - this is just how I work, I suppose.

Anyway, sorry for that long author's note. Haha.

Thanks for reading!