Finding Heaven

A/N: So, I had problems uploading the last chapter, hopefully this one goes smoother lol. If you still didn't get a chance to read chapter 24 Betrayal, which was EPOV on everything that happened in Volterra, then make sure you go back and read it, because A LOT goes on. Sorry about all the confusion, and thanks for sticking with me.

~Chapter 25 – Being Human~

EPOV

"GET A ROOM!" Emmett yelled at us as we laid tangled on the ground outside the hotel. I had no idea how long we were there for, but neither of us cared either.

"THIS IS A HOTEL, ROOMS ARE EASY TO FIND…COME ON, YOU'RE SCARING THE HUMANS!" Emmett was relentless.

I pulled my lips away from hers, and she whimpered slightly in protest. "We need to get home," I said softly.

"Is Chelsea dead?" she asked unexpectedly.

"No, I don't think so, why?"

"How do I know this isn't some elaborate plan to learn the whereabouts of our children so you can tell Aro how to find them?"

I nodded my head slightly, "I'm glad you're not so trusting of me anymore."

"Oh yeah, and why's that?" she said with a smile.

"You have always been far too trusting of me, and look where that's gotten you. I was a man eating vampire fully intended on killing you, but there you were, a fragile little human trying to steak me one moment, and the next we were making love. Now you're stuck living as a vampire for the rest of eternity with me. I feel sorry for you really," I tried to sound serious, but she just laughed at me.

"Well, consider me suspicious," she said sarcastically.

"How about you blindfold me so I have no idea where we're going, and then when we get there, you'll just have to never leave my side so you'll know for a fact that I haven't snuck away to call Aro."

"That sounds like a really good plan, especially the part where I never leave your side."

"Yeah, I thought you'd like that part," I said with a smile and started kissing her again.

"You know, this would be a whole lot better if we didn't have any clothes on," she said with a seductive grin.

"Since this is a high trafficked public place with your mother standing over there, I think us being naked would be somewhat offensive," I said lightly.

"That's Ok, maybe you can do that compel thing where you can force humans to forget stuff."

"Now, who watches too much TV?" I teased her.

"Hey, that's a good show, inaccurate, but still good."

"We really do need to be going," I said and forced myself to get up and pull her up with me.

"Ok, I need to say goodbye to my mother, and then we'll head to the airport." She walked back to the room and dragged me by the hand, refusing to be separated from me, and I felt exactly the same way.

Bella promised her mother that she'd call her whenever it was safe to do so, and then we left to the airport. Although Bella acted like blindfolding me was a joke, she did separate from me just long enough to talk to Jasper and Emmett privately so I couldn't hear their plan. Jasper and Emmett were both good at concealing their thoughts from me, so I never got any hints as to where we were going. Jasper flew the plane, so I didn't even have the luxury of a stewardess announcing where our destination was.

I understood why they weren't being forthcoming with me, but it was still slightly irritating, so Bella distracted me by spending the majority of the flight in the tiny bathroom. Making love in the closet sized room where we had to work around a sink and toilet, wasn't easy, but it was better than not having sex at all. When we first went in there, Emmett kept yelling at us that he could still hear us, but after a few hours, he gave up and ignored our huffing and moans of bliss. We had to be careful though, because the last thing we needed was to punch a hole in the airplane in the fits of passion. But I really didn't mind being gentle, it was just like it was when I made love to her as a human, and with all the violence during our time in Volterra, the peaceful tenderness was a welcome relief…even if it was in a bathroom.

"Lady and gentlevamp," Emmett's voice came over the speaker as Bella and I were still making love in the bathroom, "We will be making our final decent momentarily, so please put away all electrical devices such as cell phones, laptops, and over worked penises, and return to your seats."

"Don't forget that I ripped your head and arm off before, and I can do it again!" I yelled at him as we grudgingly got dressed.

We exited the bathroom, and Emmett made a face of disgust as we came into view. "Great, now we have to sit here and smell your venom based fucking fluids all over each other. Isn't there a shower or something in that toilet closet?"

"Oh Emmett, don't be jealous. You'll have Rose's fluids all over yourself soon enough," Bella told him. Emmett grinned in anticipation, and Jasper and I both gagged.

"So how are you feeling, Edward?" Jasper asked me while he prepared the plane to land.

"I'm not the one who had my head removed, so you should be asking Emmett and Bella that question." I joked, even though I knew exactly what he meant by his question. Chelsea was still alive, and she didn't remove the ties that bound me to Aro, so there was a small part of me that hated leaving Volterra and wanted nothing more than to go back, but that small part was becoming smaller with every mile between us, and it was absolutely nothing compared to my devotion to Bella. I loved what she loved, and she loved the Cullens so I knew I'd never betray them again.

"I'm fine Jasper, I swear," I assured him. Jasper was one of the smartest vampires I had ever met, both in battle and in life, so he didn't trust me completely and I didn't expect him to, but he was trying.

I looked out the window as we neared the ground, and Bella came from behind me to wrap her arms around my waist while resting her chin between my shoulder blades. I rubbed her hands as she rubbed my stomach, and we just breathed together as her body was pressed up against my back.

"I love you," she said softly.

"I love you, too," I said with every ounce of my being.

….

"So Bella, how far out is the camp?" Emmett asked as we walked out of the airport.

I wasn't exactly sure what country we were in, but it was obvious that we were south of the equator and it was a forested location.

"It's…."

Daddy, we're coming! – Carlie's thoughts rang in my head.

"What is it?" Bella asked me when she saw me listening carefully. Jasper and Emmett looked at me also, and waited for me to respond.

"They're here," I said, which only confused them.

"Where?" Jasper asked, ready to fight.

"Not the Volturi, the Cullens and the kids, they're here. Alice had a vision of us arriving and so they came to greet us," I told him.

And then, there they were.

"Mommy, Daddy!" Carlie and EJ yelled together as they ran towards us. Bella and I ran to meet them, and we each swept one of them in our arms, hugged them tightly, and then switched.

It felt so good holding my babies and being with the Cullens again, that I realized that it didn't matter where we were because as long as we were all together, we were home. As much as I kept telling myself that I was only with the Cullens for Bella and the kid's sake, the truth was that I really did care about all of them deeply.

Bella and I took turns holding each of the kids as we walked towards the outskirts of the little town that the airport was in, and I didn't think it was possible to feel any happier. I even smiled to myself seeing Jasper and Emmett back safely with their mates. I loved Alice, she was my sister in every sense of the word and I loved her longer than any other, but after the viciously traumatic experience Emmett, Jasper and I had been through together in Volterra, I realized that those two guys became closer to me than any natural sibling could ever be.

Again, with the false human relationships- I shook my head at the thought, but smiled despite myself. I really didn't care about my pride anymore; all that mattered to me in the entire universe was walking away from the airport with me.

Carlisle bought a big off-roading wilderness van, and we all piled in. We could have ran faster than that stupid van could take us, but it was better not to leave our scent trails as we went.

"Momma, what did it feel like to not have a head?" Carlie asked Bella.

"Uh…" she looked at EJ who pretended to not be listening, but I could hear that he was hanging on her every word. "I don't know, I don't remember anything from then."

"She's lying Carlie, Uncle Emmett said it hurt like hell," EJ said casually.

"EJ!" Bella scolded him.

"What, it's true."

"Can my head come off?" Carlie asked worriedly.

"No dummy, we have blood in our bodies, so it would kill us permanently to have someone tear off our heads the way daddy did to Emmett."

"EJ…" I wanted to explain to him what happened in Volterra, but really, the truth was more horrifying than anything make-believe that he could come up with in his mind.

"That's Ok daddy, I understand," EJ said as if he could read my thoughts. Damn it. "Damn it, isn't a nice thing to say," he told me.

"I didn't say it, I thought it. Bella?" she understood what I wanted her to do immediately, so she grabbed EJ's hand, then released it.

"Momma, that's not fair. Uncle Jasper told me to listen to daddy's thoughts."

Bella and I both looked at Jasper disapprovingly, at the same time. He shrugged sheepishly. "You can never be too careful, right?"

I wasn't upset with Jasper at all, we both knew that I was in constant battle within myself to keep my insignificant tie to Aro under control, so it was actually a good plan of his to try to get someone to keep tabs on my thoughts. But EJ was too young for that responsibility, and the fact that he was my son, only made it worse.

For the rest of the car trip, every time that EJ would touch me, whether it was a show of affection or on accident, Bella would immediately touch him afterwards. I was glad that he was able to absorb Bella's mind blocking gift so he'd lose my ability to read thoughts, but it also meant that I couldn't hear his thoughts and I hated not knowing what he was thinking.

We drove in the forest for about three hours before we pulled up to a little camp site, where a huge wolf was pacing anxiously.

Thank god – Muttboy thought in relief. He wasn't grateful that we were back from Italy safe, he was just relieved that there wasn't some kind of ambush and I took Carlie back to Aro. Stupid fucking mongrel.

"Ah, I missed you too pup," I teased him as we all got out of the van.

And just how many humans did you kill in Italy? I'm sure you won't tell me, and none of them will question you on it, but your eyes were almost gold when you left, and now they're back to bright red. – Jacob was angry at me, which I couldn't really blame him for, but his feelings were the least of my concerns.

"Well, I can tell you of one very large werewolf that I killed," I said mockingly.

"Ah, I forgot about the werewolves, it's so unfair that I missed that," Emmett complained.

"Another day, another battle," Jasper said to him.

"I bet they were really cool though, huh?" Emmett asked.

"They were huge and oozing all over the place," EJ said excitedly to him.

"You saw that too?" I asked him incredulously.

"I was the only gifted vampire here, so no one else was able to give him a different ability," Alice said, feeling guilty about it.

"What else did you see?" Jasper asked him.

"Well, daddy met a lot of vampires, mommy took off some female's head then threw it in a fire, mommy was yelling at daddy then they started kissing and wrestling around, then daddy pretended to be dead…."

"Ok, that's enough," Bella said horrified that EJ had seen everything, especially the sex and killings.

"We all got a detailed play by play of everything that happened," Carlisle explained. "We were very worried and I was about to come try to help, but EJ and Alice both had visions that it would all turn out OK."

They saw you turn into a total sadistic freak, so how do we know that you're really back to normal? – Jacob thought angrily.

"You don't," I said to him with an evil grin. It would be beneficial for many years to come if Jacob thought that I could snap at any moment and go to the dark side. Perhaps it would even keep him in line when Carlie came of age.

Over the next few weeks, we slowly became more and more comfortable in our jungle houseless home. We didn't really need human dwellings, and the kids had a tent to sleep in, which they loved. We all just spent our time reconnecting as a family, playing with the kids, and being with our mates. There were no bedrooms to be alone in, so whenever a couple wanted mating time, we'd just go off into a secluded area of the forest….and there was a lot of mating going on.

We also spent the time of jungle living to teach the kids how to hunt. There was no more donated blood and they were strong enough to face animals without getting hurt, though animal blood was not the easiest thing to get used to after only drinking human blood.

"It's gross," EJ said after catching his first animal.

"Trust me son, I know," I told him. After killing a few humans in Volterra, I thought going back to animal blood would have been more difficult, but it actually wasn't too bad. Mind over matter.

….

"Momma, are we going to live here forever?" Carlie asked, but Bella didn't have an answer, because none of us knew for sure. Alice wasn't having any visions, and we worried about going back to more normal living situations because we were still afraid that the Volturi would learn the truth somehow, or at least continue to look for the rest of the Cullens and the twins. As far as we knew, Aro thought that Jasper, Emmett, Bella and I were all dead, but that would just make him try to find Carlie and EJ even more.

The kids were starting to quickly outgrow their clothes, and we actually could all really use new stuff, so we decided to venture out to the nearest town that sold clothing and other things that the kids needed.

At first, just the women wanted to go. They were all excited for a girl's shopping trip, but we all hated the idea of separating again, so we decided to all go.

We got to a small town where everyone spoke Portuguese, and besides a few wary elderly people, most were actually quite friendly. The market there was small, but not tiny, so we decided to spit up so that we weren't so noticeable, but we didn't go far enough away from each other that we couldn't defend each other if necessary.

Bella and I took the kids to the few clothing shops that were in the town, and the kids were so excited to be out of the jungle and around new people, that they were bouncing around as we walked, like a couple of normal kids. Bella and I held hands, and kept smiling at each other as we watched them jovially picking out what they wanted, and for a few brief minutes, it felt like we were just a normal unimposing family like everyone else in the little market.

Bella started looking at some hand woven blankets while I was keeping an eye on the twins, when an older woman complimented me on my family.

"You have beautiful children, you are very blessed," she said in Portuguese. I knew many languages thanks to decades of nothing to do but read, so understanding her wasn't a problem.

"Thank you," I said sincerely. Since I only killed two humans in Volterra, but had drained several animals since then, my eyes had already lightened back up, which I was grateful for. There was no way to get colored contacts where we were, so I would have had to stay behind or find some dark sunglasses like Bella did. Bella's newborn eyes had become more of an amber color, but she still wasn't comfortable showing them to ignorant humans.

"And you're wife is breathtaking," the woman said to me.

I smiled at her and nodded another thank you. It was strange that I couldn't just go with it when she called Bella my wife. I didn't deny it, but I couldn't confirm it out loud either. Bella was not my wife, being married was a human tradition and we weren't humans. But at that moment, as we pretended to be a human family with our children, I wished that we were. If I could have given up my immortality to be human again when Bella was, then I probably would have done it to be with her, because I knew she didn't want to become a vampire back then. But this was the first time that I actually really wanted to be human.

I was tired of fighting, and I didn't want my family to be on the run for the rest of eternity, I just wanted to live a normal human life. I wanted a house and a car, hell, even a mundane job to go to every day. I wanted to drop my kids off at school and make dinner when they got home. I wanted to do trivial things like homework and soccer practice. I just wanted my family to feel safe, and for the first time ever, I thought of humans as the superior species.

*Cullens meet a new vamp coven next. Please Review*