Disclaimer: All Twilight characters are property of Stephenie Meyer, I just use them as lesbian Barbie dolls and make them play house.
A/N: No excuses valid enough for my absence. Only work, females, and well... life. I am sorry for the wait, and I hope I have readers left. For my Hide and Seek readers, expect an update soon... I am trying to fight with my silent muses, guys. Thanks for the reviews, the support, and the major love you guys show in every add/alert/review.
AlicePOV:
I didn't even have the usual "Where am I?" thought when I came into consciousness, I knew exactly why I was warm, toasty, and satisfied. The lingering smell of her Curve cologne was now mixed with my Dior, and it was intoxicating me, making my mind wander over the last few hours of my life. Everything was fresh in my mind: every touch, every kiss, every whisper, every gasp of her pleasure and mine. These memories were something that would never fade, as I smiled to myself in my reflections of the past few hours, and then the smile abruptly faded.
I had to leave to go to Texas today.
Feeling a shock roll through me, I realized that I might be running late, and jerked up into a sitting position in Bella's bed, frantically looking around the room for a clock. Bella had woken up with my sudden movements, and was now rubbing her eyes while muttering my name disorientedly, but I ended up flinging the blankets off of myself and scrambling around her room, looking for my purse. I remembered leaving it in the living room, and threw her bedroom door open, running down the small hallway, bare-assed naked all the while. I spotted it beside the door and grabbed it, hurrying to the couch. I didn't bother with the usual rummaging I would have to do to find it; I dumped the contents out on Bella's sofa, and snatched the device right up.
7:10 A.M.
Breathing a deep sigh of relief, I quickly set an alarm to go off in exactly an hour, and made my way back to Bella's dim room. She was finally off for a day, and it bothered me just the slightest that I had to leave on that day off. We had decided that she wasn't going to the airport with me, that it was too dangerous for her to be exposed like that without Emmett near; he was still very paranoid about James' inactivity. It didn't seem right, for him to come on so strong, then to just back away.
All thoughts of James, Texas, and leaving Bella and C.J. for three days while I was so far away flew from my mind as I stopped to appeciate the beauty sprawled across the bed before me. Bella was on her stomach with her arms wrapped around the pillow her beautiful head rested on, the blanket pulled down to her waist, leaving the succulent stretch of her back bare for my appreciation. She had shifted to the middle of the bed, so there was just enough room for me to slide right in beside her, and I did so slowly and carefully so as not to wake her again. I laid on my left side, facing her, keeping my head propped up with my left hand while I trailed the fingers of my right down her spine and back up again, before moving to follow the curve of her hip, dipping just below the blanket, where my eyes couldn't see. I smiled when I heard her sigh, and bent forward to place a kiss right at the top of her back, between her shoulder blades. She was so perfect, I could cry.
Though she was taller than I, she was still thin, with not much muscle to her at all, very soft. There was not a violent bone in her that I could see, though she had gotten herself a shiner in my honor last night, showing me how protective she could be. There was a certain strength to her silence, to her compassion, and it made me feel safe, safer than I had ever felt. Bella was a concrete pillar in my life now, and I knew I could trust her to never let me fall, or to ever break me. I saw it in her eyes when we made love; it was just that, to both of us: love. But I also knew it could be a while before either of us admitted it to the other, despite the fact that I also suspected she knew more about my feelings for her than I have told her thus far. I was head over heels in love with her, and it was nothing I had felt before.
I felt the tears fall before I ever even realized they'd formed at all, and before I knew it, I was curling up against Bella's prone body, sobs racking through me. At first I felt silly, not knowing exactly why I was crying. Then it all hit me: C.J.'s face when I told him Jasper had died, his broken blue eyes. Whatever emotion I had for Jasper turned into a bitter anger, one that I had held dormant for six years, and it shook my body violently as I tried not to hate him for leaving, for dying without ever meeting his son, the perfect little person he had a hand in creating. But we had only been children ourselves then, neither of us had a clue about where we would go, or who we were going to become, but a child came into our lives; he ran away, leaving me to raise our son alone. I remembered listening to Pink Floyd in my room at my parents after he left, C.J. in his baby bed with his beautiful smile that reminded me of Jasper's, despite the hint of my dimples in his cheeks. I remembered singing "Wish You Were Here" softly to C.J. when he'd cry, and how it seemed to help. Pink Floyd got me through a lot in those first few years after he was born.
I never wanted to be with Jasper again; no, it wasn't that kind of sadness a lover experiences at loss, and I did not feel like his widow just because we shared a child, and he was now gone forever. Jasper and I's time together was just a memory to me, but C.J. was my gift from it. I loved Jasper in a different way, and in my young inexperience in the matter, at sixteen and seventeen years old, I mistook it for romantic love. I knew better now, now that something as extraordinary as my feelings for Bella had taken root and begun to flourish.
I snuggled further into Bella's warmth in her comfort, thinking of how she held me the night I heard the news, how sweet she was to me, how there she was with me to hold what pieces of me she could; she caught the shattered parts of my heart and held them safe, and was now slowly placing them back together, sealing the cracks with her slightest touch, healing me more with every embrace... God, I don't know what I would do without her, especially now, when all of this...
All of a sudden I was in that very embrace, and she was nuzzling the top of my head, her arms tightening around me to help hold me together once again. I folded up into her, allowing myself to be consumed in all that was Bella, just losing myself in the soothing balm that she rubbed sweetly all over my heart, until the sobs lessened, and finally became none. She still didn't let go, even after I became still, her nose buried in my hair, her lips against my ear, whispering.
"It's okay, my tiny dancer. We're here for him, and I am here for you. We'll get through this, baby, trust me."
I nodded, not trusting my voice at the moment, smiling softly at the nick name. Her words did spark some fiery flame of hope somewhere inside, and I was more than grateful for it. I was aware that Bella was slowly becoming a somewhat parental figure to C.J. in my mind, because Rosalie had pointed it out the other day to me when we all went out to the park for Bella and Emmett's lunch break: Bella looked at my son much like I did, and it was no secret that my son adored Bella almost as much as he did Rosalie, who was like a second mother to him.
"Are you okay?" she said softly, reaching down to tilt my face up, looking square into my eyes.
I cleared my throat, nodding again, but she wasn't accepting my dismissal of the sobs she'd woken to, and gave me a semi-stern look that had a concerned tenderness behind it, and she said my name in a tone to match the underlying emotion. "Alice..."
"Hmm?"
"Nothing, I just really like saying your name."
I smiled at the memory. Despite the circumstance it had been under, that was the moment that I knew I had met the most adorable person on the planet.
"I'm fine, I promise," I said to her now, reaching up to push a lock of hair behind her ear, brushing my thumb across her cheekbone.
"Do you wanna talk about it?" she asked, grabbing my hand and intertwining our fingers.
I shook my head, holding her steady gaze, subconsciously moving closer to her. It had registered in my head that we were both still very naked, lying pressed together in her bed, and the with the realization came the prickles of arousal. It was like something went off in Bella's head as well, because her eyes changed from that concerned look to one of slight amusement. "You are quite the little bunny," she chuckled, shaking her head in amazement, but complying by throwing her leg over my hip and pulling me into her.
"Can you blame me?" I said in a dry whisper, letting my eyes fall down her beautiful body before coming back up to meet her still-laughing dark chocolate eyes. "Look at what I have to work with, it's Absolution." With that praise I dipped my head forward and tasted her collarbone with a generous suck, feeling a jolt shoot through me at the soft moan she gave. I loved it, it made me feel possessive, like scary possessive because it was such a rare, beautiful thing to be intimate with Isabella Marie Swan. It was something to be cherished, this right that I, and now only I, had.
Her hips began to move against mine, and she ducked her face to catch my lips, kissing me hard for a long moment, then pulling away to ask in a breathless whisper, "Don't you have to leave? We don't have time for this, do we?"
"About forty-five minutes," I breathed back, not stopping the slow, delicious grind of my clit against her thigh.
She chuckled lightly, rolling me over on my back, pulling me further into her in this position. It was amazing how well my little body fit into her longer one, snug and intimate, pressure in all the right places when she moved against me in that thoroughly fulfilling way she did the night before, buried deep inside of me. I moaned a little at the memory, and at the way her hand lightly cupped my breast now, her thumb rolling over my nipple, slowly teasing it to harden, before lowering her lips to it, pulling softly and letting the tip of her tongue touch it for the most brief of moments. I arched into her soft kisses, my chest beginning to heave with the onslaught of sensations, and the ever-present knowledge that it was Isabella Swan I held in this moment. It was she, the Absolution, that was conducting the choir that my heart, lungs, and hips merged to form, raising my body in such a hymn that I felt I could fade away with end notes, disappearing into the unknown.
She was a wonderful musician in more ways than one.
And what, I ask you, do dancers do in response to the music? Why, they move to it, of course; and it was pure reflex for me, as I drowned in her song with the rhythm she played for me. "Inside, my Bella," I whispered to her as she met the base of my neck with her kiss, feeling her body shiver in my arms with the request, before she nudged my thighs further apart and moved between them.
She lifted herself up on her right hand as she snaked her left between us, tracing her fingers lightly across the very bottom of my stomach, watching my eyes as I squirmed from the sensation, my muscles rolling with her touch. There was no smirk in her gaze, no playfulness. It was serious, deep in her dark eyes that seemed endless in that moment. My heart skipped a beat when she pressed the tip of a finger against me, not breaking that eye contact that I felt like was burning me, making me want to fall into her, give into whatever it was about this woman that made me fly. She never said a word as she pushed into me with a firm pump, forcing a small whimper from me as she immediately hit a sweet spot inside. By some unspoken knowledge, I did not dare to close my eyes, wanting to see her just much as she wanted to see me as we moved slowly together.
I didn't like her supporting her weight above me, and I gave an impatient tug on her to pull her down against me, bucking against her hard as our bodies crashed together, gaining a moan of approval from her as she mirrored me and thrusted just a bit harder, pushing herself up again, but I didn't relent my grip on her and came off the mattress as I wrapped my legs around her waist as well, pulling myself hard against her. She held my weight and hers easily on one arm, showing me that she did have some physical strength despite how thin she was, and only seemed to move harder and faster against me based on how loud I was getting, trying to muffle myself in the crook her neck. I was very close to coming, and Bella knew it, pushing a very direct finger against that spot inside again, almost tapping it like it was a guitar string she was hammering. Here it was, I was rising, there was that tingling feeling that started in my toes and came up my calves, that great shuddering of muscles, the white explosion behind my eyes... And there was Bella, crying out when I sank my teeth into her neck as I climaxed, the sound making me cling onto her even harder before my back hit the bed again, Bella fully on top of me.
It wasn't until after I'd kissed the sky that I registered the knocking coming up the hall from Bella's front door, and the voice that was shouting words through it.
"Mary Alice Cullen, this is your mother! Open up this door right now!"
Though we were both equally exhausted from before, and couldn't catch our breath, both of us went silent with the realization that we were busted.
Oh, god, I hope she wasn't serious about the no-spending-the-night thing. I didn't take her seriously, but thought it was funny that Bella had, and then asked me, anyway... but whatever, let her be mad. I just had the most wonderful night of my life, and her bitching me out was not going to ruin it.
"Shit," Bella hissed, throwing herself off the bed and running circles around the room to find something to put on.
"Calm down, I'll handle this," I said soothingly, sweeping my legs off the mattress and finding my discarded clothes easily. I smoothed down my sex-hair, glancing breifly in the mirror of Bella's bathroom to make sure I was presentable. My lips were a little swollen, and my face still had the remnants of the flush from my orgasm, my skin a little shiny from the remaining sweat. I probably reeked of sex, but it didn't matter. Mom knew why I was in here, she had seen it coming since the night Bella came downstairs from my room with the hickey on her neck. I just didn't want to put it in the open so brazenly.
Bella tugged a hairbrush through her hair quickly, a pair of basketball shorts and a baggy black t-shirt now covering her. I frowned a little at that; I rather approved of Bella in absolutely nothing. But I digress...
"Ready to face the dragon?" I teased her, and she looked at me with an audible swallow, her face chalky pale (aside from the brilliantly purple bruise around her right eye) and covered in a sheen of sweat that I was positive had nothing to do with our previous encounter. I reached for her hand, and she took it gratefully before we went up the hall to open the door together.
"Young lady, what did I tell you when Bella moved in here?" were the first words out of my mother's mouth when I opened the door, blinking at the new sunlight filtering in from the trees to the east.
"No spending the night for the first six months," I replied automatically, and the corner of her mouth twitched in what I knew was a smile, but she hardened the line of her lips.
"Then why did I find your bed empty this morning, when I came in to get you up and moving?" Mom said, her hand going up to her hip, her head cocking to one side as if she could hear my reply better if she jutted her ear towards the sound of my voice.
"Because last night was the night," I told her simply, and she paused, looking from me to Bella, who was very interested in the dirt caught on the metal brace of her doorway's threshold, the curtain of her dark hair covering the black eye from my mother. "You know, the night where you don't ask, you just do."
Bella chanced a glance up at me, her eyebrows furrowed in question, and I gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze, and her dark chocolate eyes shifted away and back to the floor.
"Isabella?" Oooh, not her full name, Mom, come on! I flinched a little at that, but my mother pressed onwards as Bella turned her tortured brown eyes up to look directly into my mother's hard emerald gaze, which widened at the sight of the affliction. "What do you have to say for yourself? You knew the rules, too."
Bella swallowed hard, and didn't break her eyes away from my mother's as she croaked out her reply. "It's hard to sleep without her, Esme. Sex, or no sex, I love having her against me when I wake up."
I grinned in exultance, hearing her say that, and my heart swelled once again with my affection for this skinny, awkward, amazing woman. Mom's eyes softened at her response, but she didn't release the purse of her lips quite yet. "I'm not going to ask about the eye, yet, Bella; but do put some ice on it, dear. And Mary Alice, you have to be at the airport in an hour. I suggest you get moving."
"I'm coming," I promised, and by the way my own mother looked at me with a slyness to her eyes, I knew what was coming before she said it.
"So I heard, while I was trying to get you out here," she said dryly, turning and walking down the steps to return to the main house.
Bella's jaw was on the floor, and I giggled at her expression, reaching up to close her mouth. "Aw, love, where do you think Emmett gets it from? My father? Ha, that's a funny joke. Mom is the perv in the family."
Bella shook her head in utter amazement. "Wow, I pictured that going a lot differently. I thought she was about to evict me."
I closed the door, pulling Bella to me by the strings of her basketball shorts. "She would never," I said confidently. Mom and Dad liked Bella, and loved having her around, because she was a blessing to each of us in various ways.
"You have to go," she whispered as I ducked my face beneath the curtain of her long hair, attaching my lips to the soft skin beneath her jaw.
"Not until I say goodbye to you," I argued softly, kissing my way up her jaw to her lips. I could kiss Bella for hours, and never grow bored or tired. She was perfect for kissing, with her soft bottom lip I loved to lick and nibble on. Don't get me started on how responsive she could be when I sucked it between my teeth and tugged at it, the sexiest little whimpers coming from her throat as her body pressed so firmly against mine...
Alice, you have to leave, and you can't stand here and tease Bella into a frenzy before you do. It's easier to tell yourself something, rather than to just do it.
It was Bella who ended this assault of my lips and tongue, reaching up and tangling her fingers in my hair to gently guide my head back far enough away to look me in the eyes. "As much as I love this, you are going to be late for your flight if you don't get going, tiny dancer," she said, and my soul lifted with just that little nick name. I loved it.
"Okay, fine," I said, pouting just a bit, and moving a fraction of an inch back from her body heat. "And what's with this new name you've given me?"
"No one has ever called you that before?"
"No, and why are you so surprised about it?"
"Just suits you, is all... hey, come here, just for one more minute..."
With that soft request and my obliging, she kissed me again, and I felt in this kiss everything she would not voice aloud for now, every bit of love she possessed for me, and I gave it all back to her before we broke away, noses touching and foreheads pressed flush. "Be safe, while I'm gone," I said to her almost pleadingly, and she chuckled.
"I could say the same... God, Alice, I don't want you to go," she whined, pulling me tighter against her. "I want to pull you back into my room and make you sleep all day with me."
"There's plenty of time for that, Bella. I am sure that's not the last night we'll spend together... it was amazing, unreal, being with you like that," I admitted shyly, turning pink as I casted my eyes downwards.
"Last night was the best night of my life thus far," Bella said in a low whisper, catching my eyes for my reaction to the news, but I felt relieved. At least she felt the same way about our night as I did, and that information in itself sent me flying. Her hand lightly traced the curve of my jaw, and she leaned forward just bit to place a gentle kiss to the corner of my mouth. Seeing the dreamy expression float across my features at the romantic gesture, Bella smiled. "Hurry back to me, baby. I have the feeling I won't be the same without you."
"You know I will." I love you.
I swallowed those three words and turned away from my heart, leaving it in the strong, callused fingers of the woman I saw standing sentry in my life for years to come. Sometimes I got strong feelings about events, and people, and I very nearly always was right. I had this feeling, as strong as the one I had when I "saw" Jasper leaving me... my Bella would be right beside me for a long time to come.
BellaPOV:
Somehow I made it back to my bedroom when Alice left, seeing it in the dim light coming in from the blinds. My bed was a tragic disaster; there was no other way to describe the tangle of sheets and blankets Alice and I had left in the wake of our love-making. Staring at the bed, knowing what its dishevelled appearance meant, I stood still, having flashbacks from every moment in the walls of this room from the last six hours. It all came to a rush of heat flowing through me, this happiness, this excitement, this unrestrained feeling of OH MY FUCKING GOD FINALLY surged through me, and I, Bella Swan, squealed. I squealed like a five year old girl finding out she's going to Disneyland, and took a running leap into my bed, burying my face in the linen, inhaling deeply for confirmation through finding Alice's scent on the fabrics. I found it and resultantly moaned when she invaded my sense of smell. Then I came down from my Alice-high with the reality that she would be gone for three days, and I would be here alone, and completely bored out of my mind, as I didn't even have to work for the first two days she would be in Texas.
But we made love for hours before she left, I reminded myself, and couldn't stop the grin that stretched across my face. I had it bad for Mary Alice Cullen, and for some reason, I was damn proud of it, damn proud of who held my heart, who owned my affection.
I forced myself out of bed and into the shower to get ready for the day, because I had promised Esme and Rosalie that I would come to the gym with them and Garrett today, being as Emmett expected his affable partner to keep tabs on me and Rosalie. In result I was Rose's bosom-buddy for the extent of Emmett and Alice's absence. Once upon a time, that would have terrified me, but Rosalie and I got along great, as she had come to trust me a little more with her best friend, and her nephew, for that matter.
It was C.J.'s third day of school, and I knew that after we finished lunch, we were to pick him up from the private school he attended. I was excited, because I had fun with him after school the day before, helping him do his homework, then playing guitar with him for about an hour before I left with his mom, aunt, and uncle for our double-date. His progress on guitar was baffling, to be soft. He had learned and memorized eleven chords, had discovered half of them by himself, and had taught himself... a version... of the intro of "Iron Man", all by ear. I was more than impressed with his enthusiasm, and his ability. One day, he was going to end up teaching me things on the strings.
"Jesus, Bella, that guy sure did a number on your face," Rosalie said with a scowl, reaching out and taking my chin in her hand, turning my face this way and that, eyeing the damage that asshole had inflicted.
"I know, but I am sure Alice did something much worse to his," I answered grimly, and I noticed Esme's eyes flicker to me in the rearview mirror of the Suburban when I metioned her daughter's name. Rosalie leaned back into the passenger seat from where she had streched across to the back to survey my shiner, and Esme gave a brief look at her daughter-in-law.
"What exactly did you kids get into last night?" she asked Rosalie, who shrugged and looked over her shoulder at me again.
"Bella, what did you and Ali get into last night?" Rosalie said in an innocent tone, as if she weren't one of two people dragging Alice and I away from that pervert on the dance floor. I rolled my eyes as I scratched under my chin to give Rose the finger without being too blatantly obvious with it in front of Esme.
"Nothing, really. A guy tried to dance with Alice, and he didn't seem to want to respect her decision not to," I said airily, as Rosalie rolled her ice blue eyes at my hand gesture.
"And you felt the need to have a physical altercation with him, because of it?"
"Of course, he called my Alice a bitch, I wasn't going to have that... Esme, I'm not a violent person, I swear, I just couldn't handle the way he looked at her... like he wanted to, I don't know, eat her." I shivered at the memory of the way his eyes roamed over my girlfriend like he would fuck her right there in front of everyone, if given the chance. It wasn't the normal "Oh, hell yeah, I'd hit that!", either. It was more like a sickening expression where you just know this freak is going to end up killing you; wild-eyed, predatory. It reminded me alot of James, actually, and I stopped with that thought.
"Rose," I whispered dryly, thinking hard back to last night. He was about the right size, his voice could have been the same, but I couldn't really tell over the music because we were so close to the speaker stacks. "You don't think that guy last night could have been James, do you?"
Rosalie turned around again, her face carved into a look of deep thought. "I don't know. I can barely remember the guy from school, and I haven't seen anything but the footage from the camera in the club. You know how pixels distort images... I don't know, but I hope not."
"I don't think you kids need to be at the club during operating hours," Esme said angrily, her hands tightening on the steering wheel. "It's too dangerous, with this insane man stalking you two! I told you and Alice when this all began that neither of you girls needed to be out in public late at night."
"Emmett was with us," Rosalie countered, not argumentively, but just stating the fact.
"I just wish I could get my hands on that little son of a bitch! I'd show him just whose daughter he is messing with!" Esme said loudly, making Rosalie and I both jump at her volume in the enclosed vehicle.
We shot each other scared looks; I'd never heard Esme cuss, and I was left under the impression that she didn't. By the look on Rosalie's face, I was quite right. But it didn't just stop there.
"I'm scared for all of you, because if he would go after Bella in an attempt to affect Alice psychologically, who is to say that he would not go after someone else she loves?" she went on, and I didn't let on my surprise that she had implied that Alice loved me. Was it that clear? Could everyone see what I merely thought I could see? "God forbid it be my grandson he goes for, or I will personally plant a bullet between his fucking eyes myself!"
"Esme?" Rosalie said meekly, cautiously reaching out to touch her mother-in-law's arm. "Do you need me to drive? I'm not sure, but I think Garrett is getting ready to pull us over for failing to maintain your lane."
Garrett was indeed behind us, following us to the gym to work out, and Esme was indeed swerving a bit in her anger at the situation. Considering he was in his unmarked squad car, he had every bit of ability to flip on his blue lights.
Esme took a deep breath and let it out, letting her window down a crack to let some fresh air into the truck. "I'm just frustrated that this is happening to my children, and there's nothing I can really do about it," she said a second later in tired voice, sagging a little in her seat.
"It'll be okay, he will get every bit of what's coming to him, Emmett will make sure of it," Rosalie said confidently, looking back out towards the road, a far away look crossing her light blue eyes. I had a feeling of where her thoughts had drifted, and then my own floated to Emmett's sister.
They had left Sea-Tac at ten this morning, it was a four hour flight, but they were two hours ahead of us, so... they would be landing at two, our time, and four, Central time... I glanced at my phone, seeing it was not even noon, yet. I still had two hours before Alice was supposed to call me and let me know they landed safely in Killeen.
"So, Bella, are you sure you don't want to try out that yoga class?"
Rosalie's coercing tone brought me back to reality, away from thoughts of Alice, which were quickly turning into memories from last night and this morning. I groaned, letting go of all hopes that she had forgotten about trying to drag me into a yoga class for beginners, and resigned myself to the fact that it was going to be a long three days.
AlicePOV:
Texas was exactly what I pictured it to be: a whole lot of nothing. Emmett and I exited the plane to the rental car he had set up to tote us around for the few days we'd be here, and we set out for the hotel. The first thing I did after taking my phone out of airplane mode was call Bella.
"Hey!" she said happily into the phone as a greeting when she answered on the second ring.
"Hi," I said just as happily, relief from homesickness I'd not yet registered flooding through me. "We made it, and we're on the way to the hotel."
"Okay," she said agreeably, and I could picture her serious nod that she gave when she had the tone she held at this moment. "We just got home from the park, and now C.J. and I are going tackle some math and science homework so he can get on with his recreational reading... isn't that right, dude?"
I heard my son give a grunt of acknowledgement from somewhere near Bella, and I chuckled at his reluctance to do his homework. "Oh, yeah? Well, what's after homework?" I asked her, and she gave a long hum as she thought about it.
"I don't know, dinner, a shower, some guitar, and then it's lights out for C.J., and then I get to go home and play some guitar, too, since you're not here to keep me company tonight."
I felt a twinge of sadness that I wasn't there to help out with the homework and watch them play together. I loved watching Bella show C.J. things on the guitar. She was so patient with him, and they had a great time cutting up and laughing together at things that it seemed only the two of them understood, because all of it sailed over my head (insert random short joke here). Witnessing her interaction with my son was a major contributor to how hard I fell for her. How could I not love her, when it was plain she loved him?
"Well, do you think maybe you could give me a call, you know, when you get out to your place later?" I couldn't fight my voice dropping into a bit of a private tone, surprising the both of us with what I think we both found: it sounded like I planned to seduce her over the phone. Not a bad idea, but also not what I really meant. I wanted to talk to her about what happened between us the night before, since we hadn't really had the chance; we had gotten a little distracted with round number seven... or was it eight?
"Y-yeah," she stuttered out, and I couldn't help but smile at the thought of her cheeks tinting red right now. "I can call you tonight, after I am out of the shower."
"You can play your guitar first, Bella, I won't be going to sleep early. I have some things to do with some paperwork that I have to email to Edward before we go to the lawyer's office in the morning."
I heard her shift and tell C.J. that she would be right back, and I knew she was sneaking off to talk to me away from his ears. "Sorry," she mumbled to me, "I just didn't want to talk about this in front of him. Are you okay? How are you feeling about the meeting?"
"I'm okay, and Em will be right outside if I throw a tantrum. The worst of it is that I have no idea what they are going to tell me." This was true; it bothered me that I didn't know how Jasper had died, and how they wouldn't tell me over the phone. It bothered me a little that he had been killed in the three weeks that James had fallen off Seattle's map... but it was too far-fetched, wasn't it? Why the hell would he go after Jasper, anyway?
"It's probably some legality or another regarding his life insurance, or something simple as that," she said, and I sighed, thinking about how I didn't want his goddamn money; I wanted him to be there to help raise his son.
I had been following Emmett through the small terminal, and we stopped in front of baggage claim and read the small screen to find our flight in the order. "You're probably right." The call waiting on my phone beeped, and I pulled it away from my ear to look at the number calling me, seeing a number much like the lawyer's. "Bella, I'll call you back or text you, the lawyer's calling my phone right now."
"Okay, I'll talk to you later."
I watched Emmett wrangle all four duffel bags, shaking my head at him as I switched the call. "Cullen," I said, as per usual when I take business calls.
The voice on the other line was not the deep gravely baritone of the lawyer, but a light and sweet voice. "Hi, Miss Cullen, this is Ashley with Mr. Hanerfrom's office, I am calling in regards to your ten o' clock meeting with Mr. Hanerfrom, and Mrs. Jasper Whitlock, scheduled for tomorrow?"
My head went numb, and I stopped walking through the airport. "Mr. Hanerfrom and who?" I said, not sure if I had heard her correctly.
"Isn't this Mary Cullen?"
"Yes, but- I have a claims meeting with Mr. Hanerfrom at ten tomorrow morning, yes. But who else did you say?" My throat was dry by now, the truth of what I heard beginning to sink in even before she confirmed my fear.
"Mrs. Whitlock, the beneficiary for her husband's estate. She will be attending the conference with you, which has been moved to today."
"WHAT? TODAY? MRS. WHITLOCK?" Suddenly my phone was taken from my hand as I ranted on in public, and I didn't notice nor care.
How dare he leave me with a month old child and then go get fucking married! Doesn't karma exist? Where the hell was that bitch when that blonde-haired rabbit-toothed redneck left me for Uncle Sam? And now, apparently, Mrs. Whitlock...
Why do I even care? It's not like I ever wanted to be with him again... but C.J. shares a surname with a woman he nor I knew existed.
William Jasper Whitlock and his many secrets. Fuck him.
Emmett snapped his fingers in front of my eyes after my yelling had subsided into a silence that stretched long enough for him to take care of the rescheduling like a professional assistant, and to tug me gently through the front doors into the sunlight. I blinked rapidly, looking around at my surroudnings, and saw the dark blue Ford Focus sitting curb side with our luggage sitting in the back seat.
"I know it's not your Beemer, tiny, but it'll do," Emmett said playfully, mistaking my silence for disgust with the vehicle.
I merely shrugged and got into the passenger seat of the vehicle, opting to let Emmett take the wheel to the office. I had enough on my plate, dealing with this nice little Texas Howdy.
"How could he, Emmett?" I said in barely more than a whisper on the ride a few minutes later, breaking the monotony of the whirring engine of the car.
"I don't know, Alice," Emmett said slowly, not trying to joke at all for once in his twenty-six years. "I know you think it was because you weren't enough, but Ali... look at what you have now, and weigh that out with what you had with him. Sure, he gave you -us- C.J., but that's all there was to him. You fought, he was jealous, he was selling drugs, lying to you about selling drugs... Alice, you say you were drunk after prom, but from what you described, if you had gotten that drunk your first time, you would have died... I think that asshole dosed you just like that guy did Bella; you just weren't as lucky as she was."
I didn't like to admit that these thoughts had run through my head before, about what really happened on the night that I lost my virginity, and conceived my son, respectively. I liked to think Jasper was dark and misunderstood, and that I could have fixed him. But I knew that Emmett had a valid point in his words. I had so much more with Bella in two months than I had with Jasper in nearly two years, a feeling that was never there with him, even when things were at its best with us. "What's done is done," I whispered, silent tears sliding down my face as I stared out of the window at the endless blue sky.
"I'm sorry." He said it so softly that I barely heard him, but I appreciated it nonetheless. Emmett is not only my big brother bear, he is also very much one of my best friends, and he knows me like no one on this planet. I needed time to get over the shock, and I would bounce right back and be fine. I just had to get this damn meeting over with first.
Outside the Cullen Estate Gates:
So that's Garrett Liberty, the man thought to himself, hitting his cigarette as he watched from the treeline across the paved rural road from the officer pulling into the gates and dialing in a code... If only these goddamn things were stronger, he thought wistfully, glancing at the binoculars in his other hand.
Things had been slow for him since he got back from Texas, minus one of his favorite toys. He cursed himself for using the blade he had picked out for Isabella, tainting it with Whitlock's dirty, mangy blood. But he'd never forget the squeal Whitlock gave as he pulled Frances across his jugular, and the red spurt of blood from the arterial wound. His mouth watered just thinking about it, and his cock hardened at the fantasy of it being Isabella or Mary Alice under the blade next time. He gave the front of his jeans a comforting rub, spasming in the slightest at the contact on his sensitive organ. Soon, he told himself, soon I'll be inside, outside, in front, behind, living and breathing their bodies... He moaned at the thought and gave in, sliding the zipper of his pants down and fucking his hand, tightly wrapped around his shaft, desperately and frantically. Images of their bodies, splashed in red, flashed in his mind and he felt the release building, his breath automatically stopped and he held it as he fell to his knees, jerking and bucking for all his worth as he imagined how they would scream and plead... how he would be their God at that moment, how he would wield the power, and the cock... he wondered if they had fucked yet, or if Isabella was still being a pussy...
He lit another cigarette and leaned back against the rough bark of an evergreen, having tucked himself back in his pants after his ending, and resumed his watchful post. He glanced at the time on the face of his phone. Vic would be pissed at him for being gone this long. Ha, Vic. What a joke, that bitch was, is, will always be. She was on thin ice, and she didn't even realize it. He had wanted to taste her blood for a long time, and though she had let him sample, he wanted gorge himself on her life. He only kept her around because she knew how to take orders, and she was smart, smarter than he could ever claim to be. Without her, there was nothing to this little plan of his, this aspiration he was seeing come to fruitation after so many years, and now, with the addition of Isabella. He smiled, licking his lips. Lucky that they had come together, lucky for him, as it was like killing two birds with one stone... or one blade, anyway. He had wanted her at first sight, and he, himself, couldn't have placed her with a better partner to make the game more interesting for him. Mary Alice would pay, and he would have his fun with her little girlfriend.
He fingered the package in his pocket, and pulled out the sheath of a long hunting knife. Extracting the contents, he gave a sigh of contentment as the silver blade shined seamlessly in the light of day.
"Soon, Persephone, so very, very soon," he whispered lovingly to it before pressing his kiss to the hilt and replacing it in its wrappings. "You get to meet them soon."
A/N: So, everyone likes knowing what's going on with James and Victoria, right? If you guys don't like it, I'll stop lol I think it gives demension, but I digress...
...and I want to state for the record that I hate writing his mind. He's sick lol
I forgot to credit a song last chapter, The Beatles "I Want You (She's So Heavy)"... rectified.
I really didn't like this chapter, so I hope it's okay for you guys. I just felt that it was better than nothing, and I had this waiting... so yeah. Hope you guys can still leave me thoughts and feelings. :)