I had one major decision to make, and I knew it would rip me apart to do it. Never was I good at making decisions I constantly agonized over what I would do about the certain problem I was faced, but once I had decided I followed through.
Now I had a feeling it might just be a little different this time. I had two options and one big question.
Now that I had forgiven Edward I had to choose. The Cullens or the Grays. It tore my already stressed heart into tiny pieces. I would die without Edward, but I would be just as unpleasant without The Grays. Yes, Gideon loved me like a daughter but he knew I could make my own decisions. Josh, well there was simply no hope there. After I broke his heart he would hate me. Somehow I could survive that. But Jamie and Arielle, who I would miss with all of my soul would never forgive me. And Gabriel my best friends besides Alice, would probably hunt me down.
It was a problem a big problem, but the question I had to answer myself first was, who would I miss more. The answer was easy, Edward I would never live without Edward now that I had found him again. It would be pure torture to be without him. That still didn't settle my question. I simply could not leave Gabriel, Jamie, and Arielle behind.
I didn't return to my house. Instead Edward drove me directly to the Cullens home. I was baffled when he pulled up to his beautiful home, and all of the Cullens were waiting on the porch.
"Edward!" I gasped, my stomach twisting into nervous knots. "Your whole entire family hates me. What are we doing here?"
"Silly Bella," he chuckled. "They don't hate you." I shot him a less than subtle glance, that reminded him of exactly what I had said when we had first seen each other for the first time in twent-five years.
"They don't hate," he reassured me. I rolled my eyes. For that he just smiled my favorite crooked smile, and rushed out the car door.
Even at Vampire speed I couldn't open it before him. I scowled as he helped me out of the car. Some how I still managed to trip over the cars wheel and send myself flying to the ground. He caught me right before I hit the ground, snickering the whole time.
"I thought you would have been rid of the clumsiness thing since you were a vampire," he chuckled.
"So did I," I muttered in a dark voice. This only made him laugh harder.
"Bella!" A speeding bullet of short black hair flew at me with alarming speed. Even to my eyes I could barely see Alice hurtling towards me, finally giving me the tightest hug that I had ever received. Vampire or human.
"Alice," I squeaked, my words unable to properly come out.
"I knew it, no one believed me, but I knew it. Emmett owes me two hundred dollars! That I'm going to spend on buying you the proper wardrobe."
"Alice," I gasped, she was still squeezing me by the waist. If I had been human I would have passed out by now.
"I suggest you allow her to breathe, Alice, or I shall have to kill you for taking her away from me now that I've just gotten her back." Edward said, pulling Alice's marble arms from around my waist.
"I knew it," Alice whispered to him in reply.
"I'm never betting against you again," I heard him answer. I grinned turning away from the siblings. The Cullens were staring at me a range of different expressions on their faces. There was Emmett who was giving a scowl that looked as if someone had stolen his candy bar, I assumed because he had just lost a reasonable amount of money to Alice. Japer who had a small smile playing at his lips. He never bet against Alice. Carlisle was pleasantly surprised, Esme glowed with excitement. And then there was Rosalie. Her beautiful porcelain face was contorted with fury. Had she actually been smiling at me yesterday, when I had come to make Gabriel apologize.
Edward's arms wrapped themselves around my waist, resting his chin on top of mine. I was sure that if I had a heart, I would have gone into shock then and there.
"Would you like to see the house," he asked in a voice that made me think it had a doule meaning to it.
"Yes. If that's all right." I could feel him grinning widely above me.
"Of course."
He gripped me by the hand, and pulled me towards the Cullens. The anxiety I had previously felt returned. Edward glanced at my wide-eyes nervous expression. One eye brow shot up.
"I'm nervous," I muttered in an extremely low voice, that I was positive he barely heard. The corner of his lips twitched with amusement. It grew to a very pronounced smirk.
I growled at him, slightly revealing my teeth. "Isabella Swan," He said stopping me, right as we were about to mount the porch steps. His whole entire family watching us speaking. "Did...did you just growl at me?" His voice was on the edge of breaking out laughing.
"Sorry," I whispered, embarassment flooding my features.
"You just growled at me." Incredulity ruled every single word her spoke.
"I'm sorry." I really meant it to. Growling was one of my new found vampire reactions that I had used to annoy my family.
"I'm in shock that's all."
"Shock is better than anger."
"That's true."
If my heart could have beat it would have pulsated through my veins, sending heat to my face, causing my infamous blush. I stood paralyzed by his golden eyed gaze, he was dazzling me like he had so many times before. Unlike all of those times, I could do something about it.
I pulled the collar of his shirt lower, so he would be on the same height level, as I kissed him softly on the lips. He seemed a little surprised, but quickly responded.
"Ahem," Someone coughed on the porch. We both pulled away, startled, neither of us had remembered the Cullens standing on the porch behind us. Edward grinned, leaning his forehead to touch with mine.
"I'm sorry," I said quickly to the Cullens. Esme just grinned at us.
"No need to apologize dear, Come in." She waved us inside the house, Carlsle right by her side. Edward clasped one hand around mine, and followed. I felt the eyes of the rest of his family on us, but for once I didn't seem to care. I was too happy to be near Edward, and not feel that the earth was going to swallow me up whole.
When I had forced Gabriel to apologize to Jasper, I had completely disregarded the house. It was much the same as their previous residence in Forks, but it was less open, due to the lack of time for remodeling.
The entry way led was positively huge with light creamy paint, I had figured Esme had already gotten to work, with a giant staircase leading to the higher levels, on the opposite end. Off to the left side of the entry was a their living room. The doors had been pried off their hinges, revealing the large grand piano, that I knew was Edwards.
"Welcome to our house," Esme said in a very merry voice. She was happy that I was back to make their house glow with the absent music that had once flowed from the piano.
"I love it," I replied truthfully. Nothing could be more Cullen like.
"I'm glad," Alice chirped, coming up behind Edward and I. "Well Bella it's pretty much the same things," she was pushing Edward and I up the stairs, with a rather mischevious glint in her blackening eyes. "You should see Edward's room." I glanced back at the rest of their family, who was all, except Rosalie, laughing quietly behind us.
The instant Edward and I had reached the door that I assumed was his room, did she race downstairs to as Edward explained, laugh quietly at how cute we were with the rest of the Cullens. I turned away embarassedly when he said this, but his marble fingers caught my chin, tilting it upwards, until out lips were pressed together. We pulled apart softly, as he pushed open his bedroom door.
I let out a gasp of surprise when he opened it. My expressions instantly became an embarassed grin. I whirled on him, glowering, secretly pleased, at his arrogant expression.
His room was the same set up as it had been before, but the open windows were missing this time, and there was one very big change. Written on his bedroom floor, in red rose petals were the words 'I LOVE YOU'. I felt my lower lip begin to tremble as I stared on at his bedroom floor.
"Do you like it," he whispered, instinctively kissing the top of my head. "It was Alice's idea, incase you forgot how much I loved you."
"I love it," I murmured, laying my head against his hard chest. "I love you too." Careful not to ruin Alice's craftwork, Edward carried me on tip-toe over to the black couch. I sat on his lap, comforted by my favorite sound...his steady breathing...no heart beat.
"I want to know," he finally said after a few minutes of letting me listen to the most beautiful noise in the world.
"Want to know what?" I asked confusedly, looking up into his deep honey colored eyes.
"About Josh, have you two ever..." He trailed off suggestively. I stared at him, mortified that he'd just asked me this.
"No," I replied truthfully. "I never wanted to, I missed you too damn much." He seemed much happier by this.
"I have another question."
"Anything," I answered softly. I would have answered him anything about now. It felt like my empty insides had been fully mended in the little space of a weak.
"Your family...it's a little confusing." I had to laugh at this. "What?" I kissed him lightly on his cheek, before answering his question.
"Would you just like a rundown of everything that has happened to me over the last twenty-five years."
"I want every last detail, from how your hair looks in the morning to how you ended up learning French." I sighed, now this would be a long story.
"I promise you can know every last detail later, but I think footnotes are the best right now. They're quicker."
"We have time, are you planning on running out of here again." I knew he was joking but there was definitely an undercurrent to his question.
"No, I am not running out of here, but I do have to return to my house at some point because Carlisle is due to my home for a discussion with Gideon." Edward nodded, remembering our painful conversation the night before.
"Thats what that whole ting was about?" He sounded skeptical when he spoke. I nodded.
"What did you think?"
"Well...well," he was getting flustered now. It took every ounce of self-preservation I had to stop from giggling. Edward Cullen was nervous...embarassed by what he was about to say.
"Well," I pressed.
"I thought you were talking about...me." I let out a strangled giggle. Imediatly I stopped, for he shot me an icy glare. "Not how much you like me, quite the opposite, how much you detested my presence."
"No matter how angry I could ever possibly be with you Edward, I would never detest your presence. It takes all that I have not to turn into a puddle every time I see you." He smiled at this, making my insides turn to butter.
"Well I promise we will get you and Carlisle there on time, but for now I would like you to tell me everything that happened to you, I will push for details later." I nodded in agreement.
"Well, foot notes version, when I found out you had left I wanted to throw myself in the grand canyon." He frowned at my ideas of dealing with his leaving. "So I was pissed at you, really, really angry and I did the exact thing you didn't want me to do. I walked into the woods...and got lost." I had waited for his reaction, but he made his face expressionless as I continued my story. "Well I ended up tripping over a tree root and lying in the forest for hours, thinking of how my life was going to be without you, when Gideon, who was passing by, attacked me." Edward let out a low growl when I said this, a vicious expression on his perfect features.
I kissed him lightly on the cheek and continued my story. "Of course he was half dead with hunger, and only his inner conscience told him to stop drinking from my blood. Long story short I was changed. I woke to find my life in Forks was gone and I had nothing to go back for. Besides they'd already faked my death any way. I met Gideon and he told me all about his family, how they didn't hunt humans. I agreed, finding my ability to read humans minds, extremely perplexing.
" The rest of my family were already with him, Joshua is Gideon's biological son, they were changed when Joshua's mother died in the late 1700's. A vampire decided to take his anger out on them by cursing them to eternal hell, or as he so thought. Gabriel was changed next, he was found on the streets of New York in 1832 by Josh. Gabriel and his fast talking mouth had gotten himself into a lot of trouble. They found Jamie, who is eleven shortly after in 1841 in Boston, he was dying from a rare type of cancer. Then there was Arielle who they found while traveling in France in 1917, she is thirteen. Then there was me.
"We've moved a lot more than you do. Mostly because Gabriel has a hard time not sinking his teeth into people, he's getting much better since I've been forcing him to stick to his stict diet, but he used to slip a lot before I forced him to see things from a humans perspective. This is the ourth time I 've been in high school. I had to wait a few years before I was sure I was strong enough to be around humans. And to answer your question of how I learned French, Arielle taught Jamie and I so we wouldn't keep asking her to speak in English every time she went off in one of her crazy rants."
I took a deep breathe, that had been the clipped version of the last twenty-five years of my life. "I want to know what happened to you, now," I added before he could ask anymore questions about me. We would get to those later.
"We moved from Forks to London for awhile then to Seattle, then here. Carlisle let us take some time off from school in between each new city, we never stayed long in one place. Personally I think the others didn't want to spend that much time with their depressive brother. I was a bit of a damper on all things when it came down to it. Nothing happened besides that I was desparetly wishing I could smell your sweet strawberry shampooed hair."
I kissed him again, he was being so sweet that it was making my dazzled state become more and more unhealthy. By this rate, tomorow I would be unable to stay more than a few feet away from him without wanting to jump back in his arms, much less spend a whole entire day without him.
A soft knock echoed on Edward's door. Both of us were surprised that Carlisle was outside our door. Neither had heard his thoughts coming.
"Come in," Edward chuckled lightly, he was just as shocked as I was losing ourselves in the little glass bubble that felt so right.
Carlisle entered smiling slightly as he did so. "Bella, I think we should be heading over to your home now. I am quite interested in speaking with Gideon. I would like our families to meet, would they mind much if we all came to introduce ourselves and discuss the issue that we have presented."
I knew it would be fine with Gideon. "It will be fine, but I suggest you seat Jamie and Emmett and Jasper and Gabriel on the opposite sides of the room. For cautionary reasons. And now that I think about it Rosalie would do better to keep far from Arielle." I heard Edward snicker ny my side.
Carlisle agreed, I wasn't surprised that he knew about the disputes between out to families. Edward and I followed him out of the bedroom and down the stairs back into the entry where everyone was waiting.
"I should go inside first to keep Gabriel from attacking Jasper and Jamie from doing the same to Emmett," I said reviewing my plan with the whole entire family before I went through with it. "Arielle might be a little more to handle but if I can get Gabe to help it will be a lot easier." The Cullens all nodded in unison, though Jasper's lip curled slightly when I mentioned Gabriel's name.
"You lead," Carlisle said eagerly. I knew he was excited to meet with Gideon and see how much our lives differed from theirs.
I took Edward's hand in mine, squeezing it tightly and took off running.
