Till Death Chapter 14

Rosalie and I had arrived at Charlie’s just in time for the pre-game to start. Charlie had originally planned to watch the game with some friends from the reservation, but after a quick call with Jake, it seemed his friends had other things they had to do. This made sure that it was just Rosalie and I with Charlie to share the news with. Jake hinted that he knew what we were doing, I tried to keep him off our trail but I’m starting to think that this engagement was going to be the worst kept secret we ever had. But we were going to go through with claiming to not know anything or have any news because we had, mostly Rosalie, had looked forward to surprising everyone with the good news.

While neither Rosalie or I were big sports fans, Rosalie actually tended to keep up with what was going on in the sports world because of her best friend. Emmett was doing everything he could do go professional and since he was on the college team, we knew he had good chances to go professional because there had already been several scouts at his games. So, Rosalie was able to keep an easy conversation with Charlie while I just listened. I liked to think it endeared her to Charlie because while he knew she wasn’t necessarily a fan, she still took the effort to keep up with it.

I couldn’t help but smile fondly as I watched Charlie and Rosalie talk about the different athletes and how they thought the game was going to play out and what they thought may happen between the two teams that were apparently known to dislike each other.

Personally, I blamed the absolute blissfulness that I was feeling at just being with my family, at just watching them interact. Everything in my life at that moment just felt so right. Everything inside me felt so light and euphoric that I couldn’t stop from opening my mouth if I had wanted to. The moment felt so right, so perfect that I couldn’t help myself.

“Rose and I are engaged.” I said with a smile. The smile immediately dropped and I felt horror cover my face as I realized what I had accidently done. Rosalie and I had already decided on when and how we were going to tell him. We had it all set up to happen during half time and I just ruined everything. “Rosalie, I’m so sorry.” I said, shock starting to set in about my own lack of control.

Before Rosalie could answer me, Charlie practically bounced off his seat and pulled me up off the couch and brought me into a tight hug.

“I knew it!” Charlie shouted in my ear, “I told everyone that if you two weren’t already engaged then it was likely to happen on someone’s birthday. But I told them I knew it would have been over the holidays.” Charlie pulled back and gave me a huge grin before turning to do the same to a still startled looking Rosalie. Charlie eagerly pulled Rosalie into his arms as well, “It’s about time you two finally got serious and started to get this whole Vegas wedding thing behind you two.”

“Thank you.” Rosalie said, shock still clear on her face, obviously thrown off by my declaration that I was still mentally sending out apologies for. As Charlie pulled away, she seemed to come back to herself though and the Rosalie I knew and had fallen for came back, “We had everything planned out, but your daughter had to fumble the pass by being too early.” Rosalie said with a mock glare towards me.

Charlie couldn’t help but laugh as he fell back into his chair, “Well, Bella has never been very graceful, either physically or with conversations.” He said with chuckle, throwing a teasing grin towards me as my face blushed in embarrassment.

“Well, it just seemed like really good timing.” I said with a pout, causing Rosalie to wrap her arm around my shoulders and pulling me into her.

“And the timing we had spent all night planning wasn’t good enough?” Rosalie asked with a teasing tone and a smirk that did things to me that made me want to do things to get teased about so I could get that look from her.

“Well, this time seemed better.” I said with a pout, causing Rosalie to chuckle at me and then to kiss me on the cheek in an apology that I didn’t really believe but also didn’t really need or want; just getting a kiss from Rosalie was more than enough reason to pretend to be offended.

“I think it’s perfect timing because now we can watch the game in good spirits.” Charlie said with a wide smile, even as he continued talking, “Even when our team eventually loses.”

While he seemed genuinely happy at the moment, I was sure when his team lost, he would be in a worse mood. But at least he was happy for me and while he didn’t surprised by it at all, in all honesty he probably had a betting pool going on with his coworkers at the station, he started up a conversation with Rosalie about being able to bring her in as ‘one of the guys’ for game nights to get time away from the wife. I couldn’t help but smirk because while Rosalie didn’t mind keeping up to date with the different teams for her brother and now her future father in law, she wasn’t as in to it as Charlie probably thought she was. But because Rosalie was Rosalie, she didn’t do things by halves. She wholeheartedly agreed to it and I could just imagine hearing her complain about future game nights and how she wasn’t much of a fan of the name calling and shouting during the games that my dad and his friends were.

We continued to watch the pregame and then the game while happily talking about our plans that we wanted for the wedding. There really weren’t many plans, more of just ideas and thoughts. We weren’t planning on getting married again until after Rosalie graduates from school and gets settled in her career. But it was fun to go over different ideas with Charlie and to get his feedback on it all. It was nice to just be there was a family and I honestly couldn’t wait to do more family games with Rosalie and Charlie and others in the future.

Once the game was over and we had eaten more than our fair share of the pizza that Charlie pressured us into letting him pay for since we were apparently saving for a very extravagant wedding, we finally left his house after it was dark outside. We went straight home and the second we were on our own with no interruptions, Rosalie and I spent the rest of the night in our room practicing for the wedding night; it wouldn’t be good for us to not know what to do on such a big night right?

We had to go to the Cullen house on Friday and we were both hoping that Alice hadn’t spilled the beans yet. The little pixie was really good at keeping secrets… when it suited her. If she wanted something from someone or had other plans, she would easily sell out our secret. I was more concerned that everyone would have already figured it out like Charlie, the man who may have been a very good sheriff was very bad at picking out relationship status and issues amongst his friends and family, then it was practically guaranteed that the Cullen’s already knew.

We spent all week keeping away from the Cullen house, which wasn’t abnormal in and of itself. What was more abnormal was how often Esme, Alice or even Emmett invited us over. I wasn’t exactly uncommon for us to migrate over to their house for dinner or to just hang out once or twice a week since Esme was definitely a mother hen currently in the process of losing everyone from her nest. What was odd was that Rosalie and I didn’t accept an offer once and the excuses we were giving were getting to be either repetitive or more and more unbelievable. There were only so many pretend deadlines from nonexistent contract work that I had within a single week that had apparently been in the works for a while and I was out of time to finish.

By the time Friday came around, we were more tired about having to come up with believable lies to her family than we were about the lack of sleep from doing… much more enjoyable things.

“Ready?” Rosalie asked as we walked toward the front door that seemed a lot more ominous than it had any right to. She tightened her grip on my hand as we continued to walk forward.

“It’s just your family, we already know they’ll be happy.” I said, knowing that Rosalie was more concerned about how overbearing her family was about to get with making plans and pushing her to do something a lot more grand than what she really wanted. At the bottom of her worry, she was afraid of a little pixie that may or may not try to live vicariously through her as a ‘test run’ of planning a wedding.

Rosalie didn’t bother to respond and instead, as we walked up to the door, she opened it and allowed us instant access to her parent’s home.

“Why is it so quiet?” I asked as we took our jackets off and hung them in the closet. “It’s unnerving.” I said with a frown.

Rosalie frowned as she closed the closet door, “I’m surprised I don’t hear Emmett yelling about something or another he saw, did or thought about.” She said with a small smile, more than happy to tease her brother even when he wasn’t there or able to defend himself.

I couldn’t help but snort in amusement because she was definitely right, that man got excited about the sun rising.

“Come on, let’s go find your family.” I said as I tugged her hand to move forward, “Perhaps they decided to have dinner outside?” I asked and even as I said it, I knew it wouldn’t be true. It was much too cold to eat outside but that was the only idea I had about where the family could be.

The second we turned the corner and faced the living room, ready to get past it and to the backyard, our ears were blasted with cheers and our bodies were covered with confetti and streamers. Our eyes were assaulted with flashes that we so bright I was sure they were using high beam mag lights.

“Congratulations.” The whole Cullen family cheered as we walked in.

Barely a second after they yelled and while the confetti and streamers from the poppers they had used were still floating to the ground, Rosalie took off running.

“I’m going to kill you Alice.” She yelled as she raced after the pixie that, after I thought about it, had been suspiciously in the back of the group.

“You’ll thank me for the pictures some day!” I heard her shout as both women raced up the stairs.

Well, at least I knew I was getting married into an accepting family and a family that clearly cared. I couldn’t ask to be married into a better family I thought with a fond smile as Carlisle and Esme both pulled me into a hug.