*BPOV*
"Anything you want. Go crazy. Use the card. Have fun. I love you," Edward murmured between kisses as he saw me safely buckled into the back of Rosalie's BMW and shut the door.
"Precious cargo, Rosalie," I heard Edward warn through the closed car window.
"Oh piss off, Edward. I'm a better driver than you on your best day," Rose snarled. Edward only laughed in response.
"Bye, babe. You have the card. Make good choices," Emmett laughed, sending Rosalie off with a big kiss and a playful swat on the behind.
Alice, anxious to get on the road, was already in the front seat vibrating with excitement, and if Rosalie dawdled any longer, Alice wasn't above honking the horn.
Jasper waved from the doorway. Alice blew him a kiss as Rose slid behind the wheel.
"Alright girls, let's blow this pop stand." She took off down the long, winding driveway kicking up a volley of gravel behind her spinning tires, but Edward quickly dodged the spray.
"Did Esme not want to come?'' I asked.
"She'll come for the next girls trip. She wanted us to have some time with you without you feeling like you couldn't speak freely because Edward's mom tagged along," Alice explained.
"She's not a tagalong! She could've come," I frowned.
Esme was so endlessly giving. She sacrificed her own fun so that I could bond with my new sisters. I resolved to get her something special while I was out today.
"You know Esme..." Rose shrugged. "But she'll be happy to know you said so." She then turned to Alice.
"What time is our first appointment?"
"10 am," Alice answered.
My eyes opened wide in alarm, that was only two hours from now and New York City was over 250 miles away.
"Plenty of time," Rosalie replied, shifting into a higher gear as she merged onto the interstate.
"Appointment? For what?" I asked; my fingers tightly curled around the vinyl handle above the window.
I briefly thought of Charlie. He had always called them "Oh, shit!" handles, because that's what you said out loud when you grabbed for one.
"You didn't think we were going to Saks 5th Avenue, did you?" Alice's tinkling laugh filled the car. "The best designers are by appointment only," she further explained.
"Oh, and Bella," Alice turned her head to look at me in the backseat, sliding her designer sunglasses down the tip of her button nose. "We're well out of Edward's range now if you'd like to revisit the topic of hot wifey clothes," Alice's eyes lit up and her lips curled into a wide grin.
"But when we dress you up like black-leather Sandy from Grease, and Edward loses his mind, you have to promise to say, "Tell me about it, stud." Rose cackled conspiratorially, joined in by Alice, who bounced in her seat with renewed enthusiasm.
*EPOV*
"There's a ranger's station about halfway up the mountain on the south side, but if we stay to the north, it should be safe, at least for when we don't want to venture further to hunt," I informed Carlisle after rendezvousing with him at the agreed-upon location.
"I think the only person in the family who takes issue with traveling distances to hunt is you, son," Carlisle chuckled knowingly.
"Touché," I muttered. I tried not to think about how much easier I'd be able to breathe once Bella was turned, and I wasn't just referring to her scent.
When I didn't have to worry about the myriad of ways my tiny, clumsy, fragile human could kill herself simply by accident, I had a feeling Jasper would be clamoring to hang out with me, too.
Gritting my teeth, I fought the instinct to berate myself for looking forward to killing her just so that she'd never have to die.
Carlisle had intuitively guessed where my mind had gone. "It won't be much longer, Edward. Alice has seen that much.
"Though, I can't imagine how difficult it must be to wait for even a second longer after all you've been through together," he placed a comforting hand on my shoulder.
I sighed. "The difficulties I have are irrelevant compared to what Bella is preparing for."
I thought of her this morning, standing on the back patio in her bathrobe, drinking a steaming cup of tea while pensively staring into the morning mist that shrouded the trout pond.
Carlisle shook his head in disagreement. "Your difficulties are never irrelevant, Edward."
After a beat of silence, he continued, "From where I'm standing, both of you are in very much the same boat. Both of you are struggling to reconcile hurting the people you dearly love in order to attain your own personal happiness. Bella worries about her family. You worry about her.
"And from someone just a little bit older who is also a doctor, if you weren't frozen at seventeen, I'd tell you that all this worrying is going to make you go prematurely gray," he laughed lightly at his dad joke. "She needs you just as much as you need her. Everything else will work itself out. It always does."
I nodded thoughtfully. "Now that I've fully accepted the inevitable, a semester of college has never seemed like such an eternity," I admitted with a rueful laugh.
"Tell me about it! You're not the only one on pins and needles waiting to see how all this turns out. But if Alice isn't worried, neither am I...
"I wonder, does it sort of make me like a grandpa that my creation is becoming a creator? I feel so proud," Carlisle teased, dabbing an invisible tear from his eye. "And old," he added with a wide smile. I couldn't help but laugh.
Oh, and Edward? Do you think you could do me a favor when we get back to the house? Carlisle asked in his thoughts as we ran.
"Name it," I answered automatically.
Take your brothers out for a hunt so your mother and I can have some alone time? She all but kicked the girls out the door this morning.
I shook with laughter at his request. "Hot wifey week has its benefits, then?"
I beg your pardon?
*BPOV*
"So I have a question for you both," I asked as we sped across the New York state line. "What was Edward like before me? He never wants to talk about himself."
"Miserable"
"Lonely"
The words were spoken simultaneously. It hurt my heart to think about him like that.
"You want an Edward story, I'll give you an Edward story," Rosalie made eye contact with me in the rearview mirror. The mirror was too narrow for me to see her whole face, but her eyes went soft.
"I know Edward and I get along about as well as cats and dogs do, and that's mostly because he's the only one on the planet who really sees how imperfect I actually am," Rosalie jutted out her chin and tossed her perfect blonde curls over her shoulder.
"But underneath all the infantile squabbling, I can never forget that when I finally killed the men who hurt me, Edward was the one who disposed of the bodies. He didn't even say anything. He was just there, handling it."
Then Alice took up the story, "And before that, when Edward rebelled from Carlisle, do you know who the first person he killed was?"
I frowned, "All he told me was that they were bad men."
Alice nodded gravely. "And the very first bad man was the one that beat Esme."
My eyes grew huge and incredulous as I processed what they were telling me.
Suddenly Alice's words from before took on a new meaning. "Think of what that must have felt like to him. Seeing his own handprints on your body."
"For someone who walks around with the weight of the world on his shoulders because he has to hear it all-the most depraved thoughts from your kind and ours-you'll never meet someone who cares more than Edward does," Alice added fondly.
"Don't get us wrong, Carlisle's the greatest! There's a reason why we all look up to him. But sometimes you don't always need a pep talk and a warm smile. Sometimes you need someone to help bury the bodies, and that's Edward," Rosalie finished. In the mirror, her golden eyes looked far away.
I thought back to our early days when he'd ask me about my theories about what he was. I'd guessed that he was bitten by a radioactive spider. He'd snarked that Kryptonite didn't bother him either. "What if I'm not the superhero, what if I'm the bad guy?"
Imagining him now as a furious angel driving around in fast cars, saving the city from violent scourges ... Perhaps I should've asked him if he had a butler named Alfred.
*EPOV*
Having just hunted, Emmett, Jasper, and I were screwing around in the woods midway up the mountain, not trying to hurry back to the house just yet as a courtesy to Carlisle and Esme.
Out of boredom, Emmett picked up a fallen tree, about three feet in diameter, palming it in his hand like a spear, and then launched it down a steep gulch with a thunderous crack.
"Dude, I gotta know, what is it like? Not looking for details, but how do you not break her?" Emmett asked with an awestruck expression.
I shook the image of Bella's bruised body from my mind. "Not without difficulty…You know how some human girls hold in their sneezes and it sounds like a small bomb went off between their ears? I imagine it feels something like that."
Emmett imagined me "absorbing" an orgasm and exploding into dust and then burst into laughter.
"Brutal," he laughed again, shaking his head at the thought.
I shook my head. "You know what's brutal? When she cries. You guys, well maybe not you, Jasper," I quickly amended, "are so lucky that you'll never have to know what it feels like to make your wives cry." I blanched.
Emmett's loud guffaws scared away a flight of morning doves from the top of a tall spruce.
"Barely unpacked from your honeymoon and you've already made her cry?"
I saw it coming but let it happen anyway. Emmett's huge arm caught me tightly around the neck in a headlock.
"Bet you won't be so smug next time Rosalie is pissed at me." He ground his knuckles into the top of my head with his boulder-like fist then released me as I shoved him off.
"What did you do?" Jasper asked, in a mocking sing-song.
I sighed, torn. I hadn't planned to share this story from our honeymoon, I was too ashamed. But I knew my brothers would never judge me, and the ability to unburden myself with people who could understand, even in some small way, was too tempting.
"Without going into detail...the morning after she woke up covered in bruises." Emmett and Jasper instantly recoiled, not out of scorn, but out of sympathy.
He must have felt like a monster, thought Jasper.
"Exactly!" I half-shouted, throwing my hands exasperatedly up in the air. "So I told her we couldn't make love again until she was turned."
"I bet that went over well," Jasper drawled with heavy sarcasm.
"You have no idea," I grimaced. "She spent the next week prancing around in string bikinis and lingerie, when she wore anything at all, trying to tempt me when all I was trying to do was keep her safe. And when that didn't work, she cried."
The cringes on my brothers' faces were identical.
"That's dirty pool, man," Jasper shook his head sympathetically.
"You held out for a whole week? Impressive." Emmett nodded appreciatively.
"Well, you seem to have figured it out since then, because you two have been awfully...busy since you got back," Jasper teased, bowling a boulder into a grouping of young pines making them shudder and quake.
"Yes, well, as Bella likes to remind me, practice makes perfect," I rolled my eyes.
"Well I, for one, am in favor. Because ever since Jasper got a whiff of you two bein' all sex-crazed, all of us up at the house have been reaping the rewards," Emmett chuckled.
"You're welcome," Jasper said in a deeper than usual voice, grinning unrepentantly.
"Speaking of which, are they done yet? Can we go back?" Emmett asked, impatiently wanting to get back to his PlayStation.
I concentrated, listening for Carlisle's thoughts, just barely in range. Getting my answer, I screwed my eyes shut. "Nope. Not yet."
Emmett and Jasper howled at my scandalized expression.
*BPOV*
"I don't know," I balked. "It's really short," I tugged self-consciously at the hem. "Where would I even wear it?" I said looking at myself in a huge three-way mirror in the middle of a very exclusive boutique.
Calling it a little black dress was being rather generous. It was a bandage-style dress with nude strips of fabric strategically woven in, giving it the illusion that my most important bits were just barely covered. My rear, however, really was just barely covered.
"On a date. At home. Or in public, if you really want to get under Edward's skin," Rose laughed devilishly.
"I can't imagine why I would ever want to provoke him like that," I gnawed at my lip.
"I could think of a reason," Rose snorted in derision.
"Rose…" Alice's tone was sharp. "Haven't you caused them enough drama?"
Rose gritted her teeth. "I wasn't going to say anything because of that, but you know what? She deserves to know. I did the loyal sister thing by saying all that stuff about what Edward did for me. But he's no angel, and she deserves to know that, too.
"I may not agree with Bella's choices, but she's my sister now, and above all, sisters stick together. When has that ever not been true?" Rosalie crossed her arms stubbornly across her chest, staring down Alice.
"Would someone please tell me what it is that I deserve to know?!" I wailed and stomped my foot.
Alice stood down. "It's your funeral," she relented to Rose. I looked at her expectantly.
"Edward made Emmett promise that he wouldn't fill you in on the fact that we can all hear you down at your house. Edward didn't want you to be embarrassed, but I think that you deserve to know the truth, and I made Edward no such promises."
"He what?" I fumed, aghast.
"Bella," Alice interjected, "He was just trying to make you more comfortable. He knew the lack of privacy would be a difficult adjustment for you. He wanted you to be able to get more comfortable living around us before he let that cat out of the bag.
"No cats! No bags! We're married. This is...this is bullshit," I raged.
"And Bella, just so you know, nobody cares what you get up to down there. Until you came along, Rosalie and Emmett were the youngest in the family. I know it's easy to forget, but..." Alice lowered her voice to barely above a whisper. "Rosalie and Emmett are going on ninety-one years old!" Then her voice rebounded to a more normal volume, if not slightly louder.
"Nobody is sitting around with their ears perked up listening to you because, honestly, sex just isn't that interesting and we've all got better things to do," Alice threw her hands up in exasperation.
Rosalie nodded emphatically in agreement.
I stormed back into the fitting room, peeled off the dress, and threw it over the top of the door. "Wrap it up," I growled without even looking at the price tag.
*EPOV*
It was just past sundown when I heard Rosalie's M3 make the turn onto the long gravel driveway lined on both sides by tall, wiry birch trees. The thin, smooth trunks were covered in a papery white bark that made them look ghostly against the dusky, twilight sky.
They were singing along to the radio, or at least Alice and Rose were. If not for Bella's heartbeat, I wouldn't have suspected a third person was in the car.
I ran to the garage to meet Bella upon arriving home. I opened the car door to let Bella out. It pleased me to see that she carried shopping bags in both arms. I took them from her, carrying them by their handles in one hand, and extended my other hand to help her out of the car.
By the time I closed the door behind her, I realized that Alice and Rosalie had already dashed up to the house without so much as a hello. Odd, but okay.
"Did you have a nice time?" I asked, holding her hand as we walked the short path to our house,
"I sure did," she said smiling. "But I'm starving. Would you mind taking me out for a bite?"
"I'd be delighted!" I said honestly. I missed her more than I should have in the short time she'd been away from me.
"Great!" She said with a weird sort of smile. " Let me just run inside and...freshen up."
*A/N* I had so much fun writing this chapter. I just love this family, and I could write about their shenanigans for the rest of my days. (And what's to stop me since they'll never die? Bwahaha.) Thanks for reading and reviewing! I just love hearing what you think.