"You always deserve to be validated." Edward murmured as he brushed his hand through my hair. My arms were still wrapped around him and everything seemed to be falling into place. He held me for a few more minutes before we climbed into the jeep again.
"So… Beatrice." I sighed, still overwhelmed from the day before.
"What about her?" Edward asked as he turned in his seat and watched me struggle to buckle myself into the harness in the low light.
"What is everyone… think…ing… DAMN IT!" I dropped the buckle I was fumbling and looked at Edward defeated. "Help." My voice came out small and pitiful as I pouted and gave my best puppy dog eyes.
Edward laughed and reached forward, buckling them with ease. "Alice is curious but excited, Jasper is conflicted but mostly wary because they were created by the same vampire for the same purpose."
"Wait really?" All the information I had heard last night never really processed in my mind, and I couldn't even be one hundred percent certain that this was something I had learned regardless.
"Yes ma'am." Edward nodded grimly, seeming to want to move on from the subject. He had the face I recognized as him knowing the more intimate details due to his knowledge of thoughts rather than what someone actually divulged. "Esme and Carlilse are Esme and Carlilse, they are willing to accept her with open and eager arms so long as she sticks to the diet." Edward always smiled when he talked about his adoptive parents, and I couldn't help but smile alongside him.
"What about Rose and Emmett?" I asked nervously, fully aware of how Rose was towards strangers.
"Emmett is himself as always, I think he is more excited about the fact that Beatrice may be an equal match in skill to Jasper, so he has another sparring partner." Edward rolled his eyes, like he could hear Emmett's thoughts by just thinking about it. "As for Rose, she is more worried about you than she is about the family. She hasn't landed on a specific concern but she doesn't want Beatrice anywhere near you, especially alone."
I nodded as I listened to him relay the information. "And you?"
"To say I agree with Rose brings me more pain than I expected… but I agree with Rose." He grimaced slightly, like it physically hurt to agree with his eldest sister. After the look left his face, he looked me dead in the eyes. "What about you?"
"Apprehensive to say the least. I don't even know how I am supposed to talk to her. How am I just supposed to build a relationship with someone who knows more about my history than I do?" I shook my head, suddenly wishing I could just pull out my phone and mindlessly scroll instead of face the issue. "I don't know how to be a sister, let alone a good one."
"I don't think she knows either." Edward leveled, his tone making me drop my gaze.
I sighed and bit the inside of my lip as I mulled over the statement. With another sigh, I pulled my eyes up from where they rested on my hands so that I could look Edward in the eyes once more. "Fair… but I don't even know how I am supposed to get to know her, it's not like I have her number or anything."
Edward smiled lightly, likely seeing the end of our conversation coming as my mind turned away from the topic. "Surely that issue can be rectified."
"Where is my phone anyway?" I started looking around, knowing this was the last place I had it before the game. I had realized at some point I didn't have it, but the game moved so fast I didn't want to spare a second looking for the device. "Found it!" I proclaimed as I spotted my phone in the cup holder. "Oh it's dead." I frowned as I clicked the button a few times and received the dead symbol. Before I could even ask for it, Edward held up the charger with a smile. "Thank you!" I grinned, plugged my phone in, and dropped it back into the cup holder. Edward laughed as I wiggled in the seat to make myself comfortable for the ride. Then, promptly starting the jeep, Edward began to drive us out of the woods.
I still felt emotionally raw from the conversation with Edward as I settled back and stared out the windshield, my eyes focusing on the various flora we jostled past. Casting a glance toward me, Edward reached forward and turned the radio on. Once the music started to bump through the speakers, one of the new summer songs that I knew by heart but not by name, he reached over and held my hand. If it weren't for the off roading harness that held me like a infant's car seat, I would have slid down lower in the seat and curled myself in. "Don't we think this harness is overkill?"
"In Emmett's words," He then began to mimic Emmett's tone of voice, "'Daredevil over there would get whiplash from sneezing wrong, so I installed this in her seat.'" Edward grinned as I scowled. "I can't say he's wrong." A small shrug started on his shoulder's seconds before he swerved around a tree.
"It's been almost three years, Edward, how long until we get over my hospital visit repertoire?" I groaned, rolling my eyes in a teasing way.
Edward dramatically threw his head to look at me before turning it back to focus on where he was going. "When you stop doing extreme sports as if they are as casual as strolling down the street." He smirked as he spoke, his teasing tone matching the energy I had set.
"Well!" I went to say surfing hadn't gone wrong in those three years since the first incident, but swiftly bit my tongue as I remembered Jacob's transformation fiasco. "That" I scoffed, "is a mute point." I could hear him laugh as I reached for my phone that was now buzzing to life with missed call alerts. "Dad is going to kill me, he must have been trying to get ahold of me while we were playing." My heart dropped and my words trailed off as I stared at the screen. Edward's hand tensed as he glanced over from the driver's seat.
The numbers on my screen glared at me for a few seconds as I processed what the hell I was looking at.
62 missed calls from Gi, Jake, Charlie Swan, Sam, and others
90 text messages from Gi, "Wolf and Co." group chat, and others
5 new voicemails from Gi, Leah, Jake, Charlie Swan, and Dad
"What the hell?" I looked up at Edward. "Why is everyone trying to get a hold of me? None of these notifications are more than an hour old."
"It can't be anything good." Edward mumbled as he swerved around a boulder. The woods were almost pitch black, the headlights being the only source of light I could perceive. The rain had worked its way towards the clearing now and was pouring through the trees, my only concern about our drive was the possibility of getting stuck in the mud or being swept away with how much water coursed down the sodden earth. I turned my gaze back to my phone and began reading the messages that popped in in chronological order.
Gi: Does anyone have eyes on Ari?
Jake: No? What's going on?
Gi Has Started A Group Call - 50 minutes ago
The Group Call Has Ended - 40 minutes ago
My eyes skimmed down the list of notifications as they came in one by one, panic and confusion filling as each new one flashed on my screen. They had all left the group chat to text and call me individually. Each notification continued to pop in before I could unlock my phone.
Gi: Ari where are you?
Gi: Pick up!
Paul: Ara?
Paul: Answer the phone
Gi: Ari why aren't you picking up
Paul: Gi said you aren't home. Where are you?
Paul: I am going to meet Gi at your house and wait for you.
Paul: Please come home
Sam: Arabella pick up
Leah: Where are you? They said your car is at your house, where did you go?
Jake: Are you with the Cullen's?
Jake: They aren't home where did you go
Gi: Arabella please omg
Sam: I'm sending Jacob and Jared to search for you.
Leah: Sam and I are going to wait at the Cullen's to see if you show up.
Leah: Please show up.
I looked up and stared in shock at Edward, without saying anything he floored it, making true use of the harness I had been buckled into. When I glanced back down I was met with one final message from Gaia in the group chat before everyone had gone silent, one I was only twenty minutes late to.
Gi: Her phone died. If anyone gets eyes on her, send her my way.
With an astonishing amount of speed, I immediately called Gaia.
Her voice burst through the speaker the second the line stopped ringing. "Oh my god! Where the hell have you been!?"
"Is that her!" I heard Paul's voice coming from what seemed like another room. "I'll call Sam!"
I looked at Edward in shock, my worry only growing. At some point he had dropped my hand and was white knuckling the steering wheel. "I was playing baseball with Edward! What's going on?" I kept my eyes on Edward as my words tumbled out.
"Get to the hospital." Her voice sent painful shocks of ice through my body.
"What?" I stuttered out, my eyes growing big and my chest tightening. The hospital? What on earth happened? Some small part of me already knew what it could be but I didn't even want to entertain the idea with the glimmer of a thought. Surely if it was something serious they would have called Carlilse. I comforted myself mentally.
"Charlie couldn't get ahold of you so he called me." Gaia's words rushed out of my phone with a cold puff of air, sending the chills further down my spine. "Just get to the hospital."
"Gaia you are scaring me, what happened?" My voice was trembling now, it felt like the whole world was falling apart around me. Each jostle of the jeep sent more fear spiking through me.
"It's your dad." That was all I could hear before my ears started ringing and Edward's driving got faster. The phone slipped out of my hand as the next three words came through the line and truly registered in my mind. Words I had always feared and hoped never to hear. "He's been shot."
Never had the weather felt so appropriate for the ending of the world.