-GUNNER-

Moving Leah in wasn't as easy as I had tried to trick myself into thinking. For one thing, the apartment I was sharing with Derrick wasn't exactly spacious. I didn't want her living out of boxes, basically, but my bedroom was never meant to fit two people. So, I put my stuff in the boxes and gave Leah the closet and dresser. Or forced her, really, since she argued with me about it the whole time even if she did eventually accept it.

Then there was Derrick himself, who was not at all happy about our new living arrangement. Well, for the first day, anyway. Once he realized Leah was a much better cook than either of us, his attitude did an about-face.

"You're way better than Gunner," he praised her often. "And he did pretty much all the cooking before."

"I learned from my cousin, Emily."

She didn't talk about the guys in the pack, but Sue, Seth, and Emily came up often. Emily the most. Leah left La Push so quickly, she didn't get a chance to tell her goodbye. Even with everything that happened with Sam imprinting on Emily while still dating Leah, her cousin was still one of the people Leah loved the most.

"And I learned from Maisie, so I'm definitely going to tell her about this conversation."

"I wasn't criticizing Maisie, jackass. We all know you're not the best student."

"My 3.7 GPA from last semester would beg to differ."

"Whatever," Derrick shrugged, dribbling a generous amount of sriracha on his stir fry. "Maybe with those big brains of yours, you can figure out how to leave me some hot water in the mornings."

The first few weeks were the roughest as the three of us settled into a new routine. Leah and I ended up showering together every morning—out of necessity, not intimacy. It was the only way to move all three of us through a time frame that allowed me and Derrick to get to class on time and for Leah not to be late for the barista job she landed at the coffee shop down the street from our apartment. In the evenings, when me and Derrick were done with classes and Leah finished her shift at the shop, we all sat in the living room floor, eating off the coffee table. We did homework and Leah worked first on her U of W application for the upcoming semester and then on scholarship applications and essays.

Me and Leah had to share my laptop; we traded days. I wrote my essays by hand before typing them and Leah did the same. We were completely settled in a routine by Thanksgiving. It was weird, that year, without Maisie there. I didn't have Leah with me, either. She spent the break in Forks—at Charlie's instead of La Push—so that she could see Seth and her mom. Riding in the back with Ava all the way to Oregon was weird without Maisie. The backseat was too quiet, and Ava pouted most of the way there. The whole day felt hollow without Maisie around. And the only excuse Mom could give was a paltry one about Maisie spending the holiday with the Cullens, which was fine, I guess, if you didn't know the Cullens were vampires and had no use for a holiday centered around eating.

Derrick for sure thought me and Leah were getting it on every morning in the shower, but that couldn't be farther from the truth. Under the cover of the shower head, with the water pattering off the tiles, was the only time we could talk. Even then, it was in whispers, each of us desperate not to be overheard.

"Sam wants the Cullens to leave, according to Seth."

"Most of them have." I reached behind her for my shampoo but came back with Leah's. White tea and ginger. There were worse things to smell like, so I squirted some into my hand, ignoring Leah's little huff of annoyance. "Maisie said Carlisle and Esme were planning to, anyway."

We swapped places so Leah could wash her own hair. Now that she was no longer regularly shifting, she was letting her hair grow out. Her raven locks were still short, but slowly inching toward her shoulders.

"Leave and not come back," Leah clarified. "Seth says Sam wants to alter the treaty."

"All because of Jett?" I thought of the tiny, laughing baby Maisie and Jasper had taken in. He was happy and bright. I couldn't ever imagine him being a threat, not with Maisie around. "He's a baby."

"For now, but he's going to grow," Leah pointed out. I handed her bottle of conditioner over to her.

"I'm cold; switch with me while your hair marinates." Rolling her eyes, Leah obliged. I slipped back under the relief of the hot water. "Duh, he's gonna grow. But what do they really expect him to be able to do? Carlisle expects him to be like Maisie, and as much as she likes to think she's Wonder Woman, even she can't take a vampire on alone."

Not that it's ever stopped her from trying, I added silently. "I think it's Jasper that Sam fears more than what Jett may grow into."

"Jasper?" Tall and blonde and oozing Southern manners, I hadn't thought much of Jasper besides acknowledging he was Maisie's boyfriend in high school. After everything came out, my opinion never changed much. I liked Jasper. He was quiet and steadfast where my sister was loud and impulsive. They balanced the other. But now Leah was looking at me with one of her silly human looks.

Vampires. Werewolves. Both were guilty of this. Silly human looks happened when our inferior facilities left us unable to notice something obvious to those who were in possession of supernatural status.

"Oh, right, he's covered in scars. Scarier than the others, right? I would have picked Emmett to be intimidated by, on looks alone."

"It's not his looks," Leah explained in a hurried whisper. We were cutting our time close. "Well, not just that. Sam says the way he fought that night, with Maria…"

Derrick's knocking at the door cut her off, but I didn't mind. I shivered as I turned the water off. I may not have seen Jasper that night, but I had seen Irina against Maisie. I didn't like thinking about any of the Cullens in that way. Picturing them as animalistic as Irina had been that night always made my blood go cold.

"If Jasper is as protective over Jett as he is Maisie, I would be worried, too. Sam thinks it best if the Cullens just vacate the entire area, and honestly, I don't blame him." To whisper that last bit to me, Leah had drawn flush against me. Her slick, hot skin made me inhale sharply. Of its own volition, my hand caught her hip to keep her there. The smile she gave me was wicked; she knew exactly what she was doing.

"Stop screwing, I'm gonna be late." I kissed Leah even as Derrick shouted at us, but I knew there was no time for what I wanted to do. Begrudgingly, I got out and dried off quickly, pulling on clothes. Leah did the same and we opened the bathroom door to a rather annoyed Derrick. But his annoyance melted into a smirk when he saw how flustered I was.

"Shut up," I told him, pushing him into the bathroom and shutting the door before he could say anything.

"You know, I don't actually work until this afternoon today. Sara needed to swap shifts."

"And you couldn't have told me that before torturing me?" I asked, reaching behind me to take hold of Leah's hand. Laughing, she let me pull her in the direction of our bedroom.

"Are you ever offended that Derrick assumes we just have sex on everything in this apartment?" Leah asked. I didn't much care about my best friend's opinions at the moment. Getting past the barrier of clothing to still-damp skin, that was more important.

"He's just jealous he's not getting any," I told her, locking the bedroom door behind us even as Leah's hands were tugging my shirt off for me. "I'm skipping western civ this morning, it's a review day for finals, anyway."

Our bed was the only place I cared to be, presently. All thoughts of vampires and werewolves and treaties slipped forgotten from my mind when Leah tilted my head to kiss me just below the jaw. "Maybe we should wait until Derrick leaves for class."

"Do you want me to die? I'm starting to think this is an elaborate murder plot." Derrick be damned. Leah laughed when I lifted her, taking her with me when I fell into the bed. We were quiet, at least, taking it slow until we heard the front door bang shut just loud enough to let us know, without a doubt, we were now alone in the apartment.

I forgot what Leah had told me about Sam wanting to rewrite the treaty until weeks later when Maisie brought it up. We still played video games together every week, but if Jett was with her, we steered away from our usual rounds of Mortal Kombat to play something else. That day it was Super Smash Bros.

"Not our best combo there, Jetty Boy." Maisie's voice was intercepted by a high-pitched squeal and the smacking sound of little hands hitting her controller.

"Jetty Boy?" I snickered, easily landing a hit while it sounded like Maisie was struggling to regain her controller. She eventually came out triumphant, narrowly avoiding losing pitifully while I took advantage of her distress.

"You have no right to be as strong as you are," she grumbled. "Don't make fun of my nicknames. One day me or Emmett just might find one that sticks."

Our gameplay lapsed into the relative silence of competition, only interrupted by grunts and huffs. And Jett's laughter. When the round concluded with my hard-won victory and we were back to selecting new characters for the next round, Maisie said, "Carlisle and Esme are moving."

"Oh, yeah, Leah mentioned something about that. They weren't in town for Thanksgiving, huh?"

"No, we were all in New York, at Rose and Em's."

Neither of us bothered to mention the fact that Maisie had never missed a Thanksgiving in her life until this year. "Yeah, Seth was telling Leah about it."

"Did she mention Sam being a di—I mean, jerk?"

Maisie trying to coach herself not to cuss in front of Jett was one of my favorite things. The next match was starting, so I only said, "Uh, kind of."

We were mostly quiet again, most of the input coming from Jett's giggles and coos. At the end of the round, Maisie picked back up. "Yeah, so anyway, Sam basically wants to rewrite the treaty so that the Cullens can't ever return to Forks. Which I kind of get, but also, Jett's a literal baby."

I didn't like to agree with Sam, ever, but even Maisie had said that she understood. "He has the pack and all of La Push to think about, Maise. That's a lot of responsibility."

"I know," she admitted after a long pause. "It's a big thing. I get it. But I can get it and still be offended. The Cullens have always abided the treaty. It's rude to assume Jett's gonna be some uncontrollable thing when he gets bigger."

But nobody knows if he will, either. I bit the words on my tongue, trapping them. Maisie didn't need to hear anything like that. It was almost time for Derrick to get back from class, anyway, and we couldn't keep talking about supernatural stuff with him around. I reminded Maisie about that, our conversation lapsing into mundane things like class and homework and life updates.

The shifting dynamics between the Quileute and Cullens were not the only concerns taking up mine and Leah's time. We needed a bigger apartment. I didn't intend to leave Derrick high and dry, but I also knew he wouldn't think of things like this. He wasn't the one cramped in a tiny room with his girlfriend. At night, me and Leah would scroll through ads for places on my phone.

"We can't until the summer, though," I reminded her. We—me and Derrick—were freshman, so we had to live in campus housing for our first year. I don't know how Maisie bypassed that rule at her own college, but I was sure that Jasper's Southern charms had played a part in that. The problem with our apartment hunting, though, was that we lived in Seattle. Neither me or Derrick worked, because our apartment cost was part of our tuition and fees, so we didn't have monthly rent to pay. "We're gonna have to get jobs, too."

Especially with Leah saving all her tips to be able to take classes next semester, which I didn't blame her for at all. It was just that apartments in Seattle were so damn expensive.

"Soon," Leah pressed. "So we can all start saving while we're still here."

"Yeah. Yeah, I think so, too." I closed the apartment ads tab and went to the U of W webpage instead, opening up the list of available jobs. "Off campus jobs pay more and you get more hours, but it might be easier? Less to pay on gas, since me and Derrick would already be on campus for class, anyway. What do you think?"

Raising her finger, Leah scrolled through the list of jobs. "I think that makes sense. Just don't take this one." She tapped the screen. I squinted to read the print around her finger. Nude model for figure drawing.

I tapped the link, laughing. "I don't know, babe, they pay fifty bucks an hour to stand around naked." Leah flicked my jaw, but that didn't discourage me. "How long are those junior and senior art classes? Like, two hours?" I pulled up another tab to get to the course catalog for next semester.

"There's four live-figure drawing classes and they're offered on the Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule. Eight, sixteen, twenty-four… Once they see my superior male physique and I become the only nude model, that would be, like, over a grand a week. Easy."

Beside me, Leah was laughing. She took my phone from me, going back to the job ads page. "It says right here that nude models only get to work ten hours a week. That's only have of the twenty hours all the other campus jobs offer, which means you'll only be getting five hundred a week to stand around cold and naked in front of strangers."

"I think you're just jealous," I teased her, catching her at the waist and burying my face in her neck. "Can't stand to share me with anyone else, huh?"

"Yes, that's exactly it." Still laughing, my phone and our work was temporarily forgotten. Leah lifted my face and kissed me. "Most of these jobs don't start until next semester, though, so you and Derrick still have time to bum around."

"Thank God."

But the job thing was important, and luckily Derrick agreed. Filling out job applications was added to our nightly ritual of dinner and homework. We tried to get a jump on it, considering it was still November and the on-campus jobs for next semester wouldn't start until January. Derrick was likewise recruited in the apartment hunt for the summer.

"This is so much better than going home for the summer." He loved the idea of staying in Seattle. "Thanks for being our motivation for staying year-round, Leah."

"I'm here to serve."

As for myself, I was a little nervous to break the news to my parents that I wouldn't be spending the summer in Forks. At the least, though, it might take some of the heat off Maisie for a bit to have Mom mad at me over this. I decided I wouldn't say anything until it was all set in stone, though. Which was probably the best thing, because it turned out I wasn't going to be spending the entire winter break in Forks, either.

In the middle of finals week, Jasper sent me a Christmas gift. Or, rather, a gift for Maisie. Plane tickets to Alaska. The fly-out date was December 26th, though.

She doesn't know, explained the note on top, written in Jasper's fancy cursive handwriting. No pressure if you and Leah have other plans.

Standing in front of my P.O. box at the campus post office, I shook my head. Maisie had explained Jasper's vampiric 'gift' to me as mood manipulation. I was certain, then, that manipulation was the key word. Jasper knew that, given the opportunity, neither me nor Maisie would pass up the chance to be there for the other.

"Dammit, Jasper Hale," I mumbled to myself, shoving the tickets back into the envelope. One for me and one for Leah. Roundtrip tickets, with us heading out of Alaska on January 5th, which would land us back in Seattle the weekend before spring semester classes started.

I just hoped Leah was ready to spend New Year's with at least one vampire.

A/N: Hey, friends! Long time, no see. I'm sorry about that. There's so many little details that go with this story that it always takes me forever to make sure everything is right and not contradictory.

Anyway, I wanted to use this particular Gunner chapter to highlight the differences between the lives my two favorite siblings are living. And also to write some fun scenes between Gunner and Leah, who are definitely currently in a happier place than Maisie and Jasper. I know this one ended up being a little short, but next chapter will definitely be much, much longer. We have a lot to work through on the Maisie/Jasper side of things!