Chapter One

Edward

The one thing that sucks about having a really big family is that none of them want to live together in the same place. When my brother, Emmett, married Rosalie, he obviously didn’t know what he was getting himself into. Rose wanted everything--the huge white house, the five snotty-nosed kids running around, and she wanted it all in New Jersey. And whatever Rose wanted, Rose got. Then my younger sister, Alice, met Jasper when she went to a fashion show in France. Why the hell he was even in France at a fashion show when he’s from Texas and wears cowboy boots and chews tobacco, I’ll never know. Alice said it was fate, and two years ago my parents and I watched as she and Jazz got onto the plane that would take her far away from us. When she first told me she wanted to move to France, I tried to talk her out of it. She was tiny and definitely no match for a man should he want to take advantage of her four-foot-eleven body. I hated the idea of my little sister living out of my reach, away from my protection, but she insisted that Jasper was going to take care of her, and who was I to tell her how to live her life?

So then it was just Mom, Dad, and me living in Chicago. My father was Chief of the local hospital, and I had followed in his footsteps. I was an intern at the same hospital, had been there for two years after going to the University. Emmett was the oldest of children, being twenty-eight. I was twenty-four, and Alice just made twenty-two.

And my little sister was getting married in seven days. I liked Jasper, but for so long it had just been Alice and me. Emmett had married Rose right after graduation, when I was a freshman in high school, and Alice was in seventh grade. My parents expected me to get married next, since I was next in age. But I never met anyone worth keeping. I had girlfriends in high school, being the popular basketball player I was, but no one ever held me long, nothing serious. Then I went to college and did everything from losing my virginity to snorting cocaine, which neither were very pleasant, seeing as I remember nothing from both experiences. I’m never mixing tequila with Jack Daniels again. Marriage and children never crossed my mind like it did Emmett and Alice and, unfortunately, my parents. My mother was so adamant about me living the American life that she even tried setting me up with a few women, the daughters of her friends, the picks of the pack, the most beautiful and classy women in all of Illinois. Sure, they were beautiful, but they were boring as fuck, and I felt like Eddie Murphy on Coming to America when he meets his future wife and she does everything he tells her to. So yeah, those girls weren’t for me. Then my mom started to worry that I would be gay, and I felt compelled to show her the scratch marks on my back from my previous encounter with a woman. Needless to say she never questioned my sexuality again. She still worried, though, that I would never reproduce and give her the cute little chubby-cheeked grandchildren she always wanted. I figured I would leave that to Emmett and Alice.

So when Alice announced that she was tying the knot before me, I had to hear it from my mother again.

The wedding was going to be extravagant, and I was serving as a groomsman. Emmett and Rose left for France with my mother and father two weeks before the wedding, but I decided to take a later plane so that I could get more hours at the hospital. My plane was leaving at seven in the morning and arriving in Florida, where I would take another plane that would bring me to a town just outside of Paris, and I would get there around seven in the evening…well, seven over here in America, who knew what time it would be over there.

I really hated flying. Being in a seat in the air for hours made me extremely uneasy. I didn’t know how the plane stayed in the air. Hell, I was a doctor, not an engineer. I was always afraid the plane would crash, not that I was afraid of death, I actually kind of welcomed it into my monotone life, but I really didn’t like the shaking and the feeling of your stomach in your throat. I sighed as I put the seatbelt on and tried to sleep.

***

The flight to Florida had been okay overall, but now I was going to be on a plane for much longer on the trip to France, going over the entire Atlantic Ocean. My seat was in the back, which I was grateful for, and I was next to the window. All the other passengers got onto the plane and about fifteen minutes later, we were off. The first two hours went on without problems, and I was starting to get bored. I took out my iPod and started listening to Debussy, hoping it would calm me down and help me drift into dreamland.

I must have fallen asleep quickly because in the middle of the song, the most beautiful girl I had ever seen walked down the aisle towards me. She was looking down at her feet intensely, as if she were afraid of falling. She must have sensed my gaze on her, because she looked up and I was met with dark, chocolate eyes that were so deep and expressive that I felt like I could drown in them. Her face was pale, her hair the same color as her eyes, but when she caught me staring at her, her face broke out in a completely beautiful blush, highlighting her cheekbones and made her look other-worldly--a goddess. Then I felt a huge jolt under my feet, and she broke eye contact, falling straight to the plane floor. I rushed out of my seat, cursed when I was pulled back by the seat belt, ripped it off of me, ignored my sleeping neighbor, and helped the beautiful girl up. I gripped one of her hands and her other elbow gently, but not soft enough to not notice the tingle than ran through my body when I touched her. She looked up at me in surprise, her big eyes full of wonder and confusion. Had she felt it too? She averted her eyes from mine again and muttered a ‘thank you’ as she stood up and hurried to the bathroom, her original destination. I sighed and sat back down, buckling up again. I looked out the window. Of course this wasn’t a dream. If it had been, I would have asked the girl her name and her phone number. I wouldn’t have made a fool of myself staring at her.

“Would you like a peppermint, sir?” an overly sweet voice said to me. I looked toward the bowl of candies held out to me and my eyes met cleavage. A lot of cleavage. I looked up more and saw a nametag that read Lauren. I chuckled and cocked an eyebrow at her. She had the orangey fake tan skin and blonde hair extensions. I never really had a favorite type of girl, but I knew this one’s flirting was useless. She leaned in closer, her bubblegum breath filling my nostrils.

“No,” I said sweetly, “but I think you should have one yourself.” Her little grin faltered faster than you could say ‘hoe,’ and she gave me a mean look as she stalked off. The plane started shaking more, and I took deep breaths to calm down. The beautiful brown haired girl came out of the bathroom then, still looking at her feet. I decided to ignore my fear and help her to her seat.

“Hi,” I said to her. She looked up at me, the same confused look in her eyes, but after a few seconds of staring at me, she smiled.

“Hello,” she said. Even her voice was beautiful, like the classical music I liked to listen to.

“I’m Edward.” I held my hand out to her. She looked at my hand for a second, and then held hers up to show me that it was still wet from washing them.

“I’m sorry. It’s Isabella, but everyone calls me Bella,” she said. Her smile lit up the whole plane cab. Her name was fitting…Italian for ‘beautiful’. I was about to tell her this, but the plane suddenly jerked violently and we were thrown to the ground. I guarded her with my arms to make sure she didn’t get hurt. I heard loud beeping and screaming. The plane was shaking violently, and we started rolling around crazily. The breathing machines popped out of the ceiling and I gripped Bella with one arm and the bottom of a seat with the other. It was hard to breathe, and I couldn’t see straight, I was so dizzy. I managed to yell something to Bella about holding on to me, and she gripped my waist. I held my breath in my lungs, gripped onto the seat for dear life, and prayed that we would be okay.

Because we were going down.