Law of Gravity

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In the morning, we say nothing.

When dawn begins to warm the city skyline and casts a violet-blue glow against the hotel walls, I move away from Jasper and sit up, wrapping my arms around my legs. My skin looks odd in this light, porcelain tinged blue by morning. It looks like I'm bruised, and maybe I am — this silence between us feels almost physically painful. Jasper sits up too, and the two of us stay there, side by side, saying nothing, both of us looking out the window as if the new day might have all the answers to our unspoken questions. After a few long minutes, Jasper gets up, goes into the bathroom, and shuts the door behind him.

I know what he's doing because I've already seen it in a vision: leaning against the sink with both palms on the counter, his eyes steady on his own reflection. He will stare at himself like this until I knock on the door, until I forcefully tear him away from whatever new form of self-hatred and punishment this unmoving stand-off with the mirror represents.

He's made a decision, and a bad one, though not nearly as terrifying as the choice to return to Monterrey and Maria. He doesn't want to stay with me anymore — that much is clear, but he can't leave me either. So he'll take me north until he feels it's safe and tell me to leave instead, the same way he did when we were trapped in the warehouse. As if being at his side holds the same level of terror, the same level of danger. But instead of walking away then as any normal man broken would do, I can see that he will remain on the edges of my life forever, watching from a distance to assure my safety. He will never truly leave me, but we will never be truly together either, because he's deeply afraid of something that I can't see or understand, and that fear outweighs any selfish desires of his own.

I hate him for this. I love him for this. I don't know how to make it right.

Slowly, I stand up from the bed and wander over the to bathroom door. I put one hand on the handle and press my ear against the wood to hear Jasper's slow, steady intake of breath from the other side. There is a quiet stutter of air, and I know he knows I'm there — he can probably feel my frustration emanating through the door. For a moment I wait for him to open it, and realize with a sinking heart that he never will. Not on his own. He won't answer unless I knock, and I won't knock unless I know he'll answer. Our fears and insecurities suddenly seem despairingly foolish; we're acting like children instead of the adults we actually are, we're acting like the fear of rejection is greater than the hope of love.

Sighing, I tap my knuckles against the wood.

After a couple of agonizing minutes, the door finally opens, and both of us try to get through it at once, awkwardly bumping into each other. To touch him now is an ache in my chest, a burning in my throat that has nothing to do with hunting or blood. I move past him into the bathroom, and as I do I swear I can feel his fingertips between my shoulder blades, just barely brushing the cotton of my shirt. I shiver, but when I turn around he isn't even looking at me, only taking an old book out of his jacket pocket and brushing a thumb over the faded cover.

We check out of the hotel just as the sun crests the horizon, and make out way into the shadowed parts of the streets. The world around us is just awaking, oddly normal display in comparison to the tension between the two of us. Shopkeepers unlock doors, traveling businessmen in fedoras head for the train, and an old woman puts out a saucer of milk for a sickly-looking cat. Someone turns on a radio, and cheerful jazz music pours out into the quiet morning, an annoyingly unfitting soundtrack for my mood.

I'm wearing an old dress the color of a robin's egg that doesn't match the season or the temperature, certainly not one of my favorites and certainly not my first choice. It was the only thing left in the suitcase though after Maria's minions pawed through my clothes — that and a set of delicate French lingerie that looks and feels odd beneath the simple blue cotton. I feel wretchedly ugly and unkempt, and for once avoid looking at myself in the darkened windows of the stores we pass.

Jasper walks beside me with his hands in his pockets, and it hurts to remember the way his arms had felt around me last night. His entire body had moved to embrace me, the whole length of him twining around me until I couldn't tell where I ended and he began. He had touched me too, ceaselessly, rhythmically, running a hand over nearly every part of me that he could reach: my arm, my shoulder, my back, my neck, my collarbone, and the ribs just to the side of my breast. His deliberate touch after so long an absence made it seem like he was a painter completing the final details of a masterpiece: each stroke was slow and purposeful, with an intense single-minded focus.

Now though, he keep is keeping his distance, both physically and emotionally. And even though he's walking right next to me, I've never felt more alone.

We walk for what seems like days, saying nothing, until the landscape changes from low and wet to high, dry, and littered with golden leaves. The trees around us are aspens now, tall and speckled white, with flickering leaves that look like fire and smell like autumn. We pass through a valley that perhaps no human has every wandered through before, a long line of gold surrounded by a wall of aspens on either side, an aisle carpeted by freshly fallen leaves. Without even verbalizing the decision, we both slow as we pass through this place, and when we reach the lowest point of the valley, where the sky is only visible in a thin ribbon of blue above us, Jasper stops.

I know what this is — I can see it before it happens. This is where he tells me to go on without him. This is where he says goodbye. It doesn't matter that it's midday, or that we are in the middle of nowhere, or that I haven't had time to say what I need to say or hear what I need to hear. Jasper's limit has finally been reached, and I know without even glimpsing the future that he won't take so much as a single step further. Not today. Not with me. I stop too, and struggle to catch my breath; I am panicking, and something that feels like insanity is slowly beginning to choke off my air supply.

I don't even bother turning around. "Why?"

He seems almost startled that I've spoken, and is silent for a moment before I hear the material of his jacket move up in a shrug. "What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean," I hiss, whirling around. Suddenly, I am furious with him, absolutely incensed. If he's going to walk out on me, if he's going to pretend like none of this mattered, and that I don't mean anything to him, then he can at least be man enough to own up to it. He can at least be man enough to give me a reason. "Why?"

He scowls at me. "Why, what, Alice?"

Glaring, I stalk toward him like a wildcat and shove a hand into his chest. "Why are you doing this to yourself? Why are you doing this to us? Why?" I punctuate each question with another shove, satisfied when he stumbles back, looking at me in alarm. "Why are you leaving when I know you want to stay? Why are you pretending like I don't matter? Why do you let your dead-and-over-with past dictate every god-awful decision you make? And why are you walking out on me now, when you could have left months ago— before I fell, before you made it impossible for me to let you go? Why, huh? Why?"

When his back hits the aspen tree behind him and shakes down a rain of leaves, Jasper's eyes flash and he grabs my hands. I struggle against him and he moves at me in a predatory motion I recognize and fear, gripping my wrists together so tightly that he could crack them into a thousand pieces. He clenches his teeth and twists me around until he pins my back to the tree, trapping me there between the smooth bark and a wall of uncontained anger. The look on his face is unrecognizable and injured, as if each of my questions had beaten something out of him and left him for dead. His emotions are terrifyingly obvious, so wild and uncontrolled that it frightens me. He is desperate and vulnerable and furious, and each facet of his pain seeps into me too.

"Why?" I demand one more time, feeling like I'm about to cry.

"Because I love you!" he yells out, inches away from my face. "I love you, Alice."

For a moment, I am stunned silent. I watch in numb disbelief as he releases me and turns away, his head in his hands, as if he didn't mean to say what he just said, as if hearing the words out loud in his own voice is what finally broke him. The word 'love' seems to echo in the quiet forest, falling down on me with a fresh wave of leaves. I blink my eyes rapidly; there is an odd prickling sensation beneath my eyelids. He loves me. He loves me. He loves me. I keep repeating it over and over again in my head, until I'm finally able to comprehend that it's true— that it must be true. Jasper loved me, and that's what this, all of this, has been about. I reach forward and tentatively place a hand on his back. "Jasper—"

"Don't."

I pull my hand back and clutch it at my chest, undeterred. Whatever this resistance is, it comes from love or from the fear of love, not out of lack of feeling for me. No matter the circumstances, no matter his decision, I at least had that. He is afraid, just as I am afraid. We both stand here terrified to lose the one thing that has held us together all these long, lonely years. Staring at him then, at the familiar line of his back and his tense, guarded posture, I can't help myself. All of the secrets I've been holding in come tumbling out at once.

"I told you, when we first met, that I'd seen you before," I say, speaking softly. "That wasn't the truth. Not the whole truth anyway."

I take a deep breath, feeling lightheaded. "The truth is, I know my name because I heard you say it. The truth is, I knew your face before I knew anything else. You were the first thing I saw when I awoke. It was you, that vision of you, my first and my best, that gave me the strength to leave that mirror room and live. I searched for you for twenty-eight years. Every day. Every day I'd watch you in visions, every day I'd wonder and hope. Before the diner, before everything. Even when I was in Middlebury, even when I was with Margaret, even when I had a life and a home and a job, and should have been happy."

My voice wavers a little, and I press the back of my hand to my mouth. Jasper's shoulders straighten and he turns slightly, still not looking at me, but listening.

"I never stopped hoping," I say after a moment, my voice gaining strength again. "I never stopped. Not even when it seemed impossible. Not even when it seemed like fate would never let it happen. I knew you before I ever knew anything else, and if I can't have that— if I can't hope for that, for you, then I have nothing."

Jasper is so still that he could have been carved of marble, and he stares at the leaf-covered ground with hard, unblinking focus. "Why?" he whispers, echoing my own question from earlier. A rolling tremor moves through him, and through me, an emotion that feels like a wave about to break.

I reach out again, and this time he doesn't flinch away from me. I put my hand on the side of his face, stroking the ridges of a dozen crescent-shaped scars. Each scar seems precious somehow, a tangible map of all he had fought and survived through, a visible representation of a heart that never gave up or gave in. This is what I love about him the most: this fierce, unbeatable spirit of his — a strength that never dies or fades, no matter what the hell he has to walk through. I need this part of him, just as he needs my hope and brightness, just as we both need to know peace, love, and family.

My mouth trembles violently. "Because in all that I've said and done... in all that I've learned and loved and lived, my life has only ever been nothing more than the hope of loving you."

Jasper's eyes move to meet mine, his gaze blazing and almost painful in its intensity. He stares at me without speaking, and his chest heaves as he takes in three ragged breaths. Something forever changes in those three moments — I watch as his decisions visibly melt from fury, to passion, to love.

And then suddenly the world falls out from underneath me, because lifts me off my feet.

The first kiss is not a barely-there brush against my mouth, but crushing embrace that I feel coursing through every inch of me. This time there is no gentleness, no timidity. He kisses me like he's been dying of thirst and I'm his first cool drink, touches me as if I'm the only thing that could quench the fire. The passion he'd been holding back is now wildly, beautifully obvious, sparking against my own and making it twice as urgent and visceral. My body melts, my mind glazes over. His arms are the only thing keeping me from falling to leaves beneath us, his slow-moving lips are an aching contrast to the tension in his hands.

I open my mouth as if it is the most natural thing in the world, as if my lips had been made to move against his. This is Jasper, I think, my head spinning. This is the real Jasper. All that he had had been hiding, all that he had been guarding. All that he had never let me see. His hands, his lips, his cool breath against my mouth. The scent of him surrounds me until I feel I'm drowning in it — cedar and leather and something else new and indescribably, blissfully sweet. His fingers tighten at my response, digging into my hair and my back, and I feel myself being shifted as he falls to the ground with me still in his arms. He presses me back against the leaves, and pulls away for one dizzying moment to look into my eyes.

I ache at the expression on his face, so open and honest that I barely even recognize him. Jasper, my Jasper, finally free of the walls that cage him, finally free of the ghosts that haunt his every step. What it was that released him, I don't know. And right here and now, I couldn't care less. I only know that it's a redemption story, our redemption story, permanent ink scrawled out on faded yellowed paper, the perfect ending sentence bringing it to a close.

He bends his head down again, and his lips meet mine with such burning undiluted, unbearable love that I feel I could fall apart as his touch. And I know it's not a vision, and I know it's a dream, not a transparent image that will fade when I open my waking eyes — not this time.

Not ever again.

***

At some point between the beginning and the end, I realize there is no one else in my world or in my heart — there never was. The broken memory of Maria disappears like glass crushed to dust and blown away, taking every bit of hesitation with her. I have never felt like this, I have never touched like this. I have never lost control like this, not even in my most heated moments of passion or battle. I forget where I am, I forget what I'm doing, I even forget my name. There is only Alice. Only Alice, and this uncontrollable, uncontainable emotion that I finally, finally recognize as love.

And it hits me twice as hard and twice as deep, because I can feel it radiating from her too. It is pure and golden, an emotion so breathless that it tangles up in my throat, sinks into my stomach, and melts every thought from my head. There was pain once, I know, some distant time when I was dead inside and alone. But the feel of her hands in my hair heals everything, the movement of her lips against mine erases it all. Every scar is gone. Every wound is healed. Every dark memory fades at this new golden light.

I take off my jacket without ever breaking our touch, tossing it aside into a bed of autumn leaves. One thing at a time, I take away every barrier; hers, mine, anything that stands between me and her skin, anything that lingers between her heart and mine. When there is nothing left but the two of us, I draw back to look into her eyes. She is gazing up at me with an intoxicating mix of desire and trust, a look that pierces straight through me. Her eyes are bright, feverish, and inescapably beautiful. I stroke my thumb along the hollow beneath her ear.

"Alice," I say, nothing more.

At this one simple word, she freezes, and a sound escapes her lips: a half-sob, half-laugh — the most glorious sound I've ever heard. And I realize with a sweeping of love that this is her vision of me: her first one, the one that meant the most.

What I feel for her then — for her gift, for her love, for the magic of the two of us together, is so powerful that it seems to light the entire forest with its glow. Silently, I vow to make every year she waited for me worth it. More than worth it. However broken I am, I will love her with all that I have and all that I am, all that she sees in me and all that she believes. I will love her until she forgets what it is to be lonely, until I manage to bring strength and veracity into her life, the way she's so vividly brought color and love into mine. There may be hardship and suffering along the road, because all lives real and worth living include their fair share of pain. But I swear with every shred of honor still in me that I will stand there beside her through it all.

I run a hand along her spine when she arches, cup the back of her head when it falls. My lips are fire on her skin, my hands never let her touch the earth. I touch her, not as if she's made of fragile glass, but as if she's fully flesh and blood, mine and mine alone, the most precious thing I have ever touched, tasted, and known.

It lasts for hours, it lasts for days — until I no longer remember a time when I didn't know the scent of her skin or the feel of her beneath my fingertips. And still she reaches for me, and still I am drawn to her, over and over again. She asked me once what it was like — making love. The truth is I had never known, and even if I had, I never could have explained this. Not in words. Not ever.

I only know that before this began, we were two separate lives. And now, still or moving, silent or brimming with words, I feel so a part of her that I can't imagine how I ever existed without her smile.

***

White stars are beginning to shine in the peculiar gold-spun rose of the sky when we finally lay still, and crickets are chirping in a quiet, rhythmic way that sounds like heartbeat. We are a tangle of white limbs and golden leaves, lying on our backs in the dazed, peaceful way of lovers between passion and waking. One lone gold leaf falls from the tree above us and we watch as it falls gently to next to my hand on Jasper's chest. I run a finger over the veins and stem, across the soft, jagged edge and the vivid color. Strange how a symbol of death can seem so much like life to me, so much like a new beginning.

Jasper sighs, and plays with a strand of my hair. "Let's stay here forever."

I smile against his shoulder. His slow southern voice sounds half-drugged, and his contentedness washes over me like warm sunshine on skin. "I think I'd be willing to consider that. But what will we eat?"

He shifts slightly beneath me. "Well, if we stay still long enough, we could probably lure the animals in under a false sense of security," he says, and the corner of his mouth lifts into a wicked, sexy smirk. "If we stay still."

I roll my eyes. "You're funny after sex."

"Better that than during, I guess," he says, and we both laugh like we've had too much wine — a dizzy, stupor in which even the worst jokes are suddenly and uncommonly hilarious. Jasper looks so relaxed and happy in this state that I can barely believe he's the same man who I met a year ago in that diner. I love that he can joke like this now. I love that he can touch me like this now. I love that he's mine, and that I'm his, and that we both know it.

He stretches his head up and scrutinizes the clothes around us as if he's looking for something. I look around too, and note with a great deal of humor that the clearing is now littered with the shreds of what used to be my dress and lingerie. A piece of lace is hanging from the tree above us like a victory flag. Jasper reaches out a hand and fishes for his jacket, trying to grasp it with his fingertips without moving away from me. He drags it back toward him and takes a familiar, faded book out of the pocket, opening it to the middle section.

A small, dry twig falls out, along with a handful of brown needles. He takes this small, curious object and places it in my open palm like an offering.

I look down at it in amusement. "I'm sorry, if you want me to kiss you again, the correct plant is mistletoe," I inform him saucily, but give him a kiss anyway. His lips curve into a smile against mine, and he pulls back to stare at me as if he's waiting for something.

The twig is very, very old, and nearly falling apart but still smells faintly like the spruce tree it must have been taken from. "What is this?"

He is quiet for so long that I almost begin to think he didn't hear my question, but then he strokes his hand along my hair and speaks. "Years ago, I was traveling through the Appalachians with Peter and Charlotte. We had just escaped a bad hunting incident in Charleston and the two of them were trying to make it to Atlantic City in time for Christmas. We went through a mountain pass, and at the crossroads there was a single spruce tree—"

"I've been there!" I burst out, unable to contain myself. I remembered that place well. I had waited for him there before I had been chased off by a group of humans with tracking dogs. I had seen him there in a vision.

Jasper laughs at my enthusiasm, but motions for me to wait until he finishes. "I caught a scent in the branches of that spruce tree. Your scent. And when I smelled it, I had never— it was like home to me, my first taste of anything good. I didn't know who you were or why I felt so close to someone I'd never met, I just knew that I had to find you. So I searched. I searched for years. I followed you around the country, I think almost a year behind your trail, praying that you would stop somewhere so I could catch up to you. I lost you at the train station in Atlantic City, probably when you went to Middlebury."

Of all the things he'd said to me, of all the things I'd realized and felt over the past few days, this one somehow means the most. I stare at the spruce twig in disbelief, ensconced in some wonderful, flickering emotion that feels like flying. "You were following me?" I whisper, my eyes burning. "You were searching for me?"

He bends his head down to rest against mine. "For longer than you know."

This was why I had only ever seen him in places that I'd been before: New York, Albany, Harrisburg, Buffalo, Toronto, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Frankfort, Lansing, Ottawa, Atlantic City... All the places where I'd searched for him, all the places that I had stayed in or stolen in, or hunted in the bordering woods. He had been tracking my footsteps the same way I had been tracking him in visions. He had been drawn to me the same way I had so unquestionably been drawn to him. Coincidence doesn't even begin to describe it — it was fate, it was destiny, it was a miracle. All along we'd been circling each other, pulled together but never touching, bound on the same slow journey.

Jasper wraps his arms tighter around me, and the spruce twig falls from my hand to mix in with the nest of bright golden leaves beneath us. Where it falls, it doesn't matter. This is not the same place we've been before. The blind can finally see, the lost have finally been found, and two people who were never whole without each other know what it is to become one. And I couldn't even say that I wanted to take any of it back, that I wish I had known or that it had happened differently. This was perfect. This was real. This was a love made more by the fight it took to get here, by the years we both waited and hoped.

Love reigns, the crickets sing, and he and I smile together in the dark.

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A/N: The title of this story was shamelessly stolen from Vienna Teng. She wrote a song called Gravity, which is not only one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard, but amazingly fitting. The song is available for listening on her website: www. viennateng . com / listen

Look for the song at the bottom right of the page. And... at the risk of ruining a good story with the terrible epilogue, there will be an epilogue. I'll post it as soon as I can. :)