-Chapter Twenty-Eight-
"You know," Jasper murmured against Maisie's lips. "We're liable to be caught one of these nights."
It was a routine of theirs that a couple of nights a week, Jasper would sneak into Maisie's bedroom. In the shadows of her room, they quickly evolved from sitting in the window seat together and whispering to more…physical activities.
"We will not," Maisie argued. She lay beneath him, her hair fanning into a blonde halo around her head. "Who even was that?"
"Gunner, it sounded like." His concerns were dismissed with her eye roll.
"Ava's the only one who ever comes in here at night." Her little hand on the back of his neck pulled him down and brought their lips back together.
He sighed before picking up where he left off. Maisie was bolder than he was with their clandestine time together. While he was worried about getting caught, she focused more on kissing him so slowly and tenderly that it made him ache.
These sensations were simultaneously new and old for him. There had been Maria before Maisie, sure, but that had been a farce on Maria's part. She hadn't loved him, no matter what she whispered in his ear. It was nothing more than another means for Maria to control him.
Jasper, to that day, was ashamed at how long it had taken him to see through her pretty Spanish sweet nothings to the truth.
Here, with Maisie, was entirely different. He slid his hand behind Maisie's back, spreading his palm to press her closer to him, making her breath hitch.
"And what if someone does come in here, one night?" Jasper asked, trailing kisses along her jawline and down her neck. The fire stayed at bay, not igniting his throat, though he had to swallow back the reflexive rush of venom. Just a small bit, he cursed himself for his inability to fully control what he was.
"Then you better do your best Houdini impersonation," Maisie countered, her fingers becoming tangled in his hair when he reached her collarbone. Perhaps he took more pleasure in teasing Maisie in this way than he should have. The tempo of her heartbeat was a great reminder to keep himself in check.
Though she smelled like a vampire, thanks to Maria's mark, and her blood certainly didn't call to him the way Bella's did Edward, Jasper had to be mindful. His Maisie was still only human.
Should something happen—his strength forgotten, so that her bones break; his teeth nicking her skin and human blood touching his tongue for the first time in years—he was not entirely confident that his former self wouldn't take over. Jasper would turn himself over to a newborn army to be ripped limb from limb before he would hurt Maisie.
Jasper reminded himself, too, that despite her bravery and maturity, Maisie was only sixteen. Seventeen in three days, she would have reminded him if he said it out loud. It was a tricky thing, in his own mind at least, reconciling his immortal age with her adolescence. That was not to say that Jasper thought what they were doing was wrong, only that he was painfully aware of the imbalance between them.
Seventeen in three days. The passing of time still meant something to her. Every minute he spent here, kissing her in her bed, was a minute that Maisie grew older.
It was something they would have to discuss eventually, but not tonight. Not now, when her skin nearly burned against his palm where he rested it on her thigh.
"I don't think even Houdini would be able to escape this," he mused, his words washing over her mouth before he kissed her again.
Maisie turned seventeen on February twentieth. Rosalie was notably absent from the little birthday party Alice insisted on throwing for Maisie, but Jasper had warned her not to take it personally.
"She's jealous," he explained to her when he came to pick her up.
"You're still talking about Rosalie?" The incredulity in Maisie's voice almost made him laugh. Almost. In the glow of the dashboard, Maisie tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear self-consciously. "Why would Rosalie ever be jealous of me?"
"What's today?"
"My birthday."
"Exactly. I don't like to speak for my family, but there's something you need to understand about Rose. Despite what she has—our family, Emmett, her beauty and wealth—she's deeply unhappy with being a vampire. In the seventy or so years I've known her, Rose has come a long way, but she still has miles to go. Does that make sense?"
The pity was plain to see in Maisie's eyes, and he desperately hoped Rosalie would never see it. Feeling bad for Rose wouldn't win Maisie any favors.
"Yes," she said softly. Though she took his hand, he imagined she would have liked to take Rosalie's in that moment. "It makes me sad for her, though. I take it this wasn't a choice she made?"
"Our kind rarely get to choose," he told her, smiling sardonically. "But, no. She's slowly accepting and coming to terms with it. Esme says we just have to love her through it."
Painfully slowly, in Jasper's opinion. It was still not an unusual occurrence for Emmett to spend his nights holding Rosalie while she cried and lamented all she had lost by becoming a vampire. He knew, eventually, that Rose would likely share her story with Maisie, as would Esme.
Emmett, Edward, and Carlisle had all been more than willing to tell their stories to Maisie. Bear attack, Spanish Influenza, wrong-place, wrong-time. Maisie had played a role in uncovering Alice's, and of course, Jasper had laid his own past bare for Maisie before anything began between them.
Rosalie and Esme, though. Their stories were much darker, and Jasper could still feel the black clouds of the past that haunted them to that day.
"Yeah," Maisie's voice brought him out of his thoughts, "that's a pretty mom thing to say."
Esme made Maisie a cupcake. Well, technically, she had made a full dozen, chocolate cupcakes with whipped icing, but the other eleven got sent to the hospital with Carlisle since she only needed the one for Maisie.
She sat good-naturedly and let his family sing to her and blew out the sparkly pink candle Alice had put in the cupcake.
After the extravagance of her Christmas gift—the rose gold bracelet that now always shimmered on Maisie's wrist—she had insisted that Jasper not buy her anything else. He had complied, but…
"I don't control Alice," Jasper defended himself when Maisie shot him a look after Alice pressed a box wrapped in shiny paper into her hands. He held his own hands up in a sign of peace at Maisie's little glare. It was all a façade, though; Jasper could feel how excited she was over a present.
Alice had given her something vintage, but still costly: black kidskin gloves. The accompanying cashmere scarf was new, and both, Alice had insisted, would match Maisie's red and black plaid winter coat perfectly. Even though Alice had chosen the gift and wrapped it, she had graciously written all of their names on the gift tag. Rosalie's included.
While Maisie ate her birthday cupcake, Emmett asked her a question he just seemed unable to contain.
"So, birthday girl, now that you are seventeen and older and wiser, with plenty of time to reflect upon the world of vampires, can you please tell me how the hell you never questioned your life until you met Jasper?"
Maisie was still chewing her cupcake, so she held up one finger for Emmett to wait. She shrugged at the same time that she swallowed.
"I don't know, I really didn't think that much about it when it happened." By it, she meant getting her scar from Maria. By that point in Alice's little party, they had all moved to the living room, with the whole family lounging around. Maisie curled herself up, tucking herself close to Jasper under his arm.
"What do you mean, you didn't think about it?" Edward asked. "It didn't strike you as odd?"
"Everything in New Mexico is odd. The whole state is haunted." This made everyone laugh. Jasper squeezed Maisie's shoulder and kissed the top of her head.
"So, a strange woman showing up on your porch and her eyes turning red wasn't concerning?" Carlisle asked her. All of these were questions Jasper had asked Maisie himself before.
"I mean, yeah, but it wasn't like I was immediately thinking, 'Oh, this lady's a vampire!' It was just weird."
"But not weird enough to never tell anybody until this loser?" Emmett asked, hooking his thumb at Jasper. If he hadn't had his arm around Maisie, he might have lunged forward to smack his brother. As it was, though, he was more than comfortable the have Maisie's head resting on his shoulder.
"I knew no one was going to believe me, anyway. My parents always told me I had a huge imagination. I thought every story I heard was real."
"I like how you used the past tense there," Jasper teased her, making Maisie roll her eyes.
"Okay, so I still do believe in pretty much everything, and don't any of y'all try to tell me that things aren't real, because vampires and werewolves aren't supposed to be real, yet both are here in Forks."
Emmett and Alice forced Edward to go with them to Maisie's first softball game of the season. Rose had even come, if for no other reason than to wear the sparkly Forks Spartans t-shirt Alice had bought her and to get attention. It was certainly an unusual sight to see the Cullen siblings at a school event.
"Think, Teddy." Alice only used that pet name when she was trying to get something out of Edward. "If all of us came, and you didn't, that would look odd, wouldn't it? Besides, Bella neither plays nor apparently enjoys sports, if the gym class stories everyone trades around are any indication."
Rosalie leaned against Emmett's legs, as he was sitting behind her on the bleachers. Absentmindedly, Emmett played with her hair while he watched the teams warm up with Jasper.
"She's got a good arm, bro." He nodded his head toward Maisie, throwing a softball back and forth with her friend, Jessica Stanley. Maisie was obviously the more able and skilled player of the two, though Jessica wasn't terrible by any means.
Within the team, you could still see the silly human cliques formed. Maisie and her friends—Lauren and Jessica—had matching bows in their ponytails that no one else on the team seemed to own.
Jasper was glad that his siblings had wanted to come, too…well, most of them wanted to, anyway. Either way, they were there, which was nice because Maisie's own parents were missing the game since Ava had come down with a bad head cold.
"Let's hope nobody gets hurt," Jasper mumbled, low enough that only Emmett could hear.
"Ali said you'll be fine, though." That was true; he had asked her to look beforehand. "Either way, that's why I dragged Eddy's ass here, just in case. But, seriously, you'll be fine."
If someone did get hurt, Jasper wasn't sure that he would have even noticed, because he was too busy watching Maisie. She was funny, when she played. What Jessica had said about Maisie's softball strategies were true; her impulsivity definitely showed.
"Is she going to steal third, too?" Rosalie tipped her head back to look at Edward and Alice.
"She's thinking about it," Edward confirmed. "But she knows the catcher is watching her, too."
"Maisie will make it in time." Alice was confident, her eyes returning from the future to focus on where Maisie was inching away from second base. She hedged her bet and ran before her teammate even hit the ball, but true to Alice's word, she made it before her teammate's hit ended in her getting out before she reached first.
When Maisie was up to hit, she did so with considerable accuracy. She aimed them well, to fall in defensive gaps in the outfield. Maisie was small, though, and didn't have the strength to hit them terribly far, but she used that to her advantage. The balls dropped between the bases and the players in the outfield, leaving neither the baseman nor the outfield players enough time to run and catch them.
"She might be fun to play with, if she weren't so weak."
Jasper figured that was the closest Rosalie was going to come to paying Maisie a compliment.
A/N: Hi, lovelies! I'm so sad that summer is almost over. I hope you guys are having a wonderful week! You guys seriously make me so happy with your comments. I'm glad you like the way I characterize the Cullens. Several times in the books, we were told they were a tight-knit family, yet we didn't get to see as much of the Cullens as I would have liked, so it makes me happy that you guys enjoy how often I have them in this story!
