Disclaimer: Twilight belongs to Stephanie Meyer. I'm just playing with her characters. Also, I did not come up with Jasper as the God of War or of Peter 'just knowing shit'. Those ideas belongs to IdreamofEddy and I thank covenmama for telling me this.

A/N: Thank you to my beta Laurie Whitlock, my pre-readers AlwaysJASPERsLOVE, Shadman, and Shelljayz, my beloved sister. Thank you to shirleypositive72 for her story The Lists and the Facebook group she created for it. Thank you also to hiddenfanggirl16 for making sure I didn't get any details about Louisville wrong.

Holy crap guys! 212 reviews! How crazy but so incredibly awesome is that? Thank you so much for that! I can't tell you how much I appreciate everyone who has read, followed, favorited, and reviewed. You are all amazing and you make me so happy.

I have added pictures of Peter and Charlotte to my photobucket album for Longing if you want to check them out since they will be playing an important part in the story. The link can be found in my profile which sadly still remains unfinished.

I may or may not be updating next Sunday. That week is finals week and even though chapter 15 is already written it still takes me a fair amount of time to prep it for posting, and I really need to study. I should be done with testing by the 12th which means that if I don't get chapter 15 to you next Sunday, I'll probably get it to you that Wednesday. After that, posting will go back to normal.

I suppose now we should see what Bella has really been up to since she left the Cullens, hmm?

Chapter 14

oOo

September 2080

BPOV

I hadn't had a particular location in mind when I left Forks. The only thought in my head had been that I needed to put as much distance between myself and the Cullens as possible. I had traveled for five days straight, sometimes hitching a ride from semi-reputable looking travelers and at others stooping to picking the pockets of obviously wealthy people so I'd have the money to buy bus or train tickets. I wasn't proud of that but what's a fugitive genetically-engineered girl to do? At least I drew the line at stealing cars. That's gotta count for something.

When I hit Louisville, Kentucky, I knew it was the right place for me to stop for a while. It was a big city with a population of over one million people. One sixteen year old girl could easily get swallowed up there. Plus, it had a major shipping port, an international airport, and two freight railroads that could make for easy means of escape if I came to need one, as well as a shitload of stuff to keep me busy if I ever found myself to be bored. Considering I didn't need to sleep much and was in constant need of engaging myself in some sort of activity, boredom was an inevitability. Between the museums, galleries, university libraries, parks, performing arts options, sporting events, and indie scene my boredom was sure to be easily alleviated. Those things weren't the true selling point though. Churchill Downs and the fact that it was home to the Kentucky Derby was. I liked horses. I'd never had much opportunity to be around them, but I liked them and had hoped that spending time in Louisville might give me a chance to change that.

I had gotten myself settled in a cheap motel room that first day, eaten some greasy but delicious diner food, and procured necessities in the form of a toothbrush, toothpaste, decent shampoo and conditioner, and a couple changes of clothes and underwear, sadly all procured from the fruits of my pick-pocketing. My hypocrisy knows no bounds, I'm aware, but there is a certain amount of work involved in the bump, grab, and slip technique and the pressure distraction so that makes up for it a little, right? I am so going to hell.

After that I made my way to Churchill Downs to watch the race horses being trained. Quite frankly, it was awesome and I knew I wanted to learn how to ride, so I'd found a stable boy with a weakness for pretty girls and flirted shamelessly, or attempted to and had apparently been successful, since he had agreed to give me a lesson after his boss left later that afternoon.

Horseback riding is a tough thing to learn and master. It takes time, patience, love, and devotion, and I have an extraordinary amount of respect for the people who have those qualities and have used them to do precisely that, but seeing as I'm not your typical human it only took me a day to refine my skill to the point that it looked like I'd been riding for years. The trainer for a thoroughbred racehorse named Wildfire had seen me riding during my second lesson with Jeremy the stable boy. Ordinarily, he wouldn't have noticed me because Churchill Downs was chock full of talented riders, making me in no way a rare commodity, but Wildfire had spooked and managed to jerk free of the stable hand that had been leading him back to his stall later that day. He'd been tearing through the stable at a dangerous pace both for him and everyone else, but the second he'd come across me he calmed right down and nuzzled into me. Maybe we really had formed an instant connection or maybe I had some horse DNA intertwined into mine that spoke to him, the idea of which bothered me, but I loved Wildfire immediately. His trainer, Jack, had been impressed by this, explaining that Wildfire was a bit willful with trust issues - my soulmate if that sort of thing existed - and if he could just find someone who could get him to respond, he had the potential to be the next Triple Crown winner. He'd remembered seeing me ride and had asked if I'd wanted to give riding Wildfire a shot in the hope that I might be able to get him to respond just as well on his back as I had on the ground. I had agreed without hesitation. I'd focused on all the things Jeremy had taught me during our lessons, all the things I'd read on horses at the library, which was a lot considering I could read 20,000 words per minute, but mostly I'd just focused on Wildfire and felt. Under my direction, Wildfire had ridden like a dream so Jack had offered me a job as his exercise rider on the spot. Jeremy the stable boy had been none too happy about that. While he hadn't been looking to snag a job as an exercise rider with Wildfire specifically, it was something he had been working toward for a year but I wasn't going to turn down a job I knew would make me happy just because it hurt his feelings. The longest I'd ever stayed in one place was five weeks, so when I left he had a decent shot of taking my place.

I'd worked from seven o'clock in the morning to three o'clock in the afternoon five days a week. In the morning, I worked with Wildfire and three other racehorses named Flame, Delight, and Indy for a few hours. After that I did whatever else Jack needed done whether it was mucking stalls, hosing down the horses, cleaning out the horse trailer - you name it I did it.

It wasn't glamorous but it was the best job I had ever had, and my most favorite by far. However, at the end of that first week it became very clear that I needed to find something to supplement my income if I didn't want to have to relocate from my cheap motel to an abandoned building of some sort and live solely on peanut butter. I hadn't been thrilled with the abandoned building idea but it was something I had done before and could do again. It had been the strictly peanut butter diet I couldn't do. I had still been recovering from my hibernation and I'd needed to gain weight in the worst way. It's true that peanut butter is chock full of carbohydrates and protein, but a girl needed more than that to survive on ... well, maybe not but I wanted more than that, more variety, and had felt I deserved it. I'd done a pizza delivery gig recently and had no desire to do one again so soon nor had there been many other options readily available to me at the time; plus, I needed cash sooner rather than later. The cheap motel with the distasteful kind of retro wallpaper and cheap, porn star, faux-silk sheets required payment in advance and the sleazy manager had been riding my ass for a couple days for the money I owed. The only reason he hadn't kicked me out already was because I batted my eyelashes at him every time the opportunity presented itself. I never flirted beyond that or said anything remotely sexual because that's not the kind of girl I am, but even doing that made me sick to my stomach.

There was only one thing I could think of that could score me the kind of cash I'd needed that quickly: poker. With an IQ as high as mine and an eidetic memory to go with it, I was a damn good card player. I could win both by cheating and by playing honestly; I preferred going the honest route, but it all depended on the circumstances. Were the people I was playing with shysters or were they honest? How much of a bind was I in? It was all about weighing and measuring. I didn't like it but it was what it was.

I'd managed to rake in $3000 with a clean conscience that night and it had been at that card game that I'd met Christian.

-Flashback-

"Hey!" I heard an earnest male voice call out. I recognized it as belonging to one of the guys I'd just played cards with but dismissed it, tucking a third of the money I'd won into my bra, another third into my purse, the final third having already been tucked snugly inside one of my over-the-knee boots. I'd had to dress up a little in order to look old enough to get into the bar to play the poker game, which included wearing mildly-slutty clothes and makeup I usually didn't bother with or need.

"Hey," the guy called again, coming up quickly behind me. I had no idea why he would want to talk to the chick who'd just cleaned him out but out of the corner of my eye, I could see that he was genuinely serious about it. His arm was extended like he planned on grabbing me to get me to stop.

I sidestepped him, and he'd been moving so fast that he lurched passed where I'd been, grabbing air instead of me. He stumbled but when he regained his footing, I had turned to face him, my elbow leaned casually against the bar as I eyed him; my gaze was even and measuring as I waited for him to tell me what it was he wanted.

"Hi!" he said with a bright grin. He had been the youngest one at the game outside of me, probably 23, with dark hair and green eyes, standing at a lanky 5'11", and he was hot. I noticed this but was strangely unaffected by it. "I'm Christian."

I lifted a brow quizzically, still waiting. He seemed like a nice guy but I was still aware that that didn't necessarily mean he actually was, and his earnestness reminded me eerily of Emmett. I didn't want to deal with anyone or anything that reminded me of the Cullens.

"And you are?" Christian prompted patiently, his grin widening a little.

"The girl who just kicked your ass at poker," I answered with a slight smirk before I began examining my nails disinterestedly.

Christian chuckled and moved closer to me, resting his palm next to mine on the bar and straightening his elbow so he was looking down at me. There wasn't anything predatory in his body language or gaze but there was still something about him that gave me the impression that he wanted something I wasn't interested in giving. "That's actually what I want to talk to you about."

"You want to relive the crippling humiliation of losing to someone whose fun bags are on their chest instead of between their legs?" I asked, hoping the crassness of my language and the innuendo might get him to go away. There was also the chance that it would just make him more interested but when it came to men I didn't have much clue what I was doing so, essentially, I was just winging it.

Christian was one of those guys that wasn't turned off by that kind of thing but he didn't seem grossly turned on by it either. Mostly, it appeared as though it amused him but not in a condescending way, and I found that attractive.

"Uh, no," he said, his smile still good-natured, "I'd really rather not relive that."

"I would get to point if I were you," I urged impatiently. I had to get some of this money to Sleazy Landlord and try to get some rest. The last time I'd slept was twelve days ago, when I'd been staying with the Cullens and my fatigue would soon be getting to the point of being unmanageable. Ordinarily, twelve days wouldn't have been such a big deal but going into a nontraditional hibernation had fucked me up more than I had anticipated it would.

"See, that is exactly what I need," he told me, his tone both serious and giddy. "Tiny little thing like you walks into this shady place, sits down with a bunch of hard lookin' sons of bitches-"

"You don't look particularly hard to me," I interrupted smartly, not realizing both ways that could have been taken until after it left my mouth. It took a lot of self-control not to blush and act as though I had known exactly what I'd said when I said it, but I managed it.

I expected Christian to be offended by this but he didn't seem to be. "Get to know me and you might change your mind about that honey," he responded lightly but the innuendo was still there. "Anyway, like I was sayin', tiny little thing like you walks into a place like this and holds her own the way you did ... damn, you didn't just hold your own, you might as well have owned all of us without even tryin' or bein' a bitch about it unless it was necessary," he let out a low whistle. "You any good at slingin' drinks?"

"Why do you ask?" I hedged.

"'Cause I'm short a bartender," Christian explained, eying me appreciatively. "You gotta have a certain kind of mettle to work my bar and honey you got it."

"You want me to work here?" I queried, my voice slightly incredulous. Louisville really had been the right place for me to stop. Everywhere else I'd lived, I'd had to fight tooth and nail for work of any kind but here people were offering me jobs left and right.

"Not here, no," he said. "This place is a friend of mine's. The bar I run is called The Finish Line just a few blocks over. I just come here for the poker," he finished with a grin.

"I already have a job," I told him.

Christian shrugged and pulled something out of his pocket - a napkin emblazoned with the name of the bar he said he ran. He jotted his number down across the top and closed my hand over it. "The hourly is pretty decent, the tips are good, would be great for someone like you, and it would give you an excuse to beat the shit outta people that annoy you which seems like somethin' you might be into. Just think about it and give me a call."

I stared at him suspiciously, "How do I know this isn't just some lame, bullshit attempt to give me your number?"

His grin brightened. "You don't," he said simply, "but you'll never know for sure if you don't call."

I rolled my eyes, never giving him any indication of which direction I was leaning and left the bar without turning back to give him a second glance.

"You never told me your name!" Christian called out as I walked away.

I just lifted my hand high enough over my shoulder for him to be able to see me wiggle my fingers in parting.

-End Flashback-

I hadn't really needed to get another job after that. I'd earned myself some clout with those "hard lookin' sons of bitches" after I'd wiped the floor with them fair and square, and they'd told me about a couple underground games that went on there in Louisville. One night a week of shut-out Texas Hold 'Em would have been enough to keep me well in the black while I continued working my dream job with shit pay. If I'd chosen not to go that route, and poker really wasn't my favorite thing to do, there was the race track. I had been there to observe enough, had a sharp and analytical enough mind to devise an accurate algorithm that would predict which horses would win races, plus an innate sense of which horses had the heart and gumption for it. A few well-placed bets would have had me set for a good long while. I had still planned to do that, and had, but I needed something to keep my mind occupied. I could read all the books in the world, watch all the movies, see all the plays, and listen to all the indie music, but I needed to be distracted by people and not the refined kind.

Everywhere I looked, I saw him... Jasper fucking Cullen. The smell of the leather of the saddles I used to ride Wildfire, Flame, Delight, and Indy and the hay in the stalls of the barn all reminded me of him. If I saw a flash of honey blond I found myself craning my neck so I could reflect on how imperfect it was in comparison to his. I passed by an antique jewelry shop once that'd had a startlingly clear golden topaz pendant that was on display. Looking at that pendant felt like looking into his eyes for a moment. When the moon shrank down to a silvery crescent, the only thing I could see or think about were the scars inlaid on his pale skin and the overwhelming curiosity to know how they had gotten there and what they would feel like underneath my fingertips. When I closed my eyes, I saw his face, the broad lines of his shoulders, the fullness of his lips, the sadness in his guarded golden eyes. During the rare times I had slept, he was in my dreams. I was a person with a lot of ghosts sticking around to spook me and probably always would be, but never in my life had one person haunted me the way Jasper Cullen was haunting me. It wasn't a nightmarish kind of haunting but I still hated it; therefore, I hated him. The way things had ended between his parents and I hadn't really done much but exacerbate those feelings. I was constantly annoyed, keyed up, and, strangely enough ... itchy, but it wasn't a skin-deep kind of itch. It was an itch I felt in my bones and it made me want to crawl out of my skin. It didn't help that my chest felt strange either. There was a tightness there that was unfamiliar and I knew it had nothing to do with poor health, but I couldn't figure it out.

So I'd taken that job at The Finish Line, giving Christian the name Paige Donnelly, in addition to my job at Churchill Downs at which I was known as Kristine Hastings, to get my mind off of Jasper Cullen and the rest of his family and it had worked, sort of. It had started to work, would have started to work, when one night just three weeks after I'd started working there, as my back faced the front entrance to the bar, my whole body had lit up like a damn firework. Someone had been watching me, I could feel their eyes like a caress on my skin, the strange tightness in my chest easing. It fucking unnerved me but I kept my cool, finished taking the order I'd been writing down, turned around, and there he was ... Jasper fucking Cullen ... in my bar ... in Louisville ... staring. at. me.

What. The. Fuck? What the hell is he doing here? How did he find me? had been the questions running through my head, but I had tried my best to look as though I was unaffected and unsurprised by his presence. Part of me had wanted to storm up to him, shove him against the wall, wrap my hand around his throat, and threaten to crush his trachea unless he answered every single one of the questions flying through my head to my satisfaction. The only thing that had stopped me was that I hadn't wanted him to know just how much he'd gotten inside my head. I had been afraid that one look at me with those damn penetrating golden eyes of his, always filled with smoldering, irresistible challenge, would give me away. He'd have known that he was practically all I'd thought about in the time we'd spent apart and I would have been fucked, but our eyes had met anyway.

Just like that time at the breakfast table I found the whole world fading away from me until he was the only person that existed, and when I shook myself out of it he looked absolutely furious; and, also just like that last time his eyes had gone black with that anger. It had made me wonder if the same thing had happened to him or if he just thought I was a creepy stalker bitch for staring at him. If that had been the case, to save face, I'd taken a cue from the last time it had happened, cocking an eyebrow at him before he could do it to me as if to ask, What the fuck are you staring at?

He'd just smirked at me, found a table and ordered a drink from another waitress named Ashley, who had fallen all over herself in her haste to be the one to serve him even though he had been sitting in my section. I'd found myself both annoyed and relieved by this but hadn't had a chance to ponder over it before a fellow bartender named Sharon had readied herself to ream me for slacking for 2.5 seconds. I hadn't let her get far into said reaming, immediately setting about busting my ass taking drink and food orders from the new influx of customers that had just flooded the bar, including switching sections with Ashley so I wouldn't have to deal with Jasper. She may have gotten to him first and served him that initial drink but if that had remained my section, I would have been responsible for any refills or food orders he might have placed. I hadn't wanted to deal with that or him. I'd wanted to stay as far away from him as possible, in fact, and Ashley had jumped at the opportunity to swap sections with me so fast I'd actually been embarrassed for her. The dude was good-looking but shit, he wasn't that good-looking.

I'd spent the next two hours of my shift concentrating on my work like I'd never concentrated before, which had been hard. With my intellect, reflexes, and memory, I could process a lot of information at once while keeping myself from tripping over air or bumping into people so really, bartending and waitressing didn't take much focus or concentration for me. I'd put my all into it anyway, hoping I might be successful in spite of that. I hadn't been.

For the whole of those two fucking hours, while I had been efficiently weaving in and out of drunken customers on the floor delivering food and drinks like it was some sort of ballet, mixing drinks behind the bar like a juggler in a circus, telling off shitfaced douchebags for playing grab-ass, and picking up the slack for Sharon and Ashley, I could feel Jasper's eyes on me. I had tried to resist looking at him but there had been times when I just hadn't been able to help myself, and every time I'd looked he had been looking right back. We'd lock eyes, our gazes always challenging, he'd smirk that annoying ass smirk of his, I'd get all warm and tingly ... and fucking pissed off. The fact that an endless parade of drunk, shameless bitches kept throwing themselves at him throughout those two hours only annoyed me more. Seriously, he wasn't that fucking hot! There had been a few times I had nearly gone over to one of them, snatched her up by the hair and told her to go rub her rotting crotch all over some other dude, but I hadn't understood that impulse nor had I truly given a shit. The only reason it even bothered me was because it was disgusting and degrading. It had absolutely nothing to do with him.

I had been behind the bar serving a particularly disgusting, lascivious asshole that was shamelessly trying to get into my pants when Christian came up next to me and wrapped his arm around my shoulder. Then he kissed me on the cheek and pretended to get possessive of me, giving the lewd jackass a scary scowl. It had been successful in sending the guy scampering off with his tail between his legs. Then Christian had proceeded to act as though he had saved me from getting hit by a car. It 100% completely fucking pissed me off.

He was an observant guy, it was part of the bartender gig, and I knew he had noticed I avoided touching people; yet, every chance he got, he was fucking touching me. There was also the fact that he'd hired me specifically because I could handle myself with guys like the one he had just run off, but in that last week or so he'd kept coming to my rescue like I hadn't been capable of taking care of it myself. That hadn't been the only way he had been treating me differently lately either. He was constantly up in my personal space, looking at me strangely, laughing when I hadn't said anything funny, but while all that stuff had been grating on my nerves, that night was just too much. I had never been one to let people slide when they had done something I found unacceptable, but I usually tried to be as nice about it as I could when I called them on it while still remaining blunt and to the point. I didn't know what was different about that night but he was pushing his luck; so I snapped, letting him have it, and I hadn't been sorry for it. Okay, maybe I had been, just a little. Still, because Christian was the one that couldn't take a hint I hadn't felt like I should be the one to apologize. At the same time, he really was a good boss and a decent guy, and I didn't want to lose my job for being a bitch, so I apologized anyway. He'd been understanding, forgiving me immediately and sending me on my break with a look that I was sure was meant to be sympathetic. Instead it just came across as pitying and condescending, two things I loathed. I couldn't help but wonder where the guy that had hired me all those weeks ago had gone.

The fact that Jasper had witnessed the whole thing, albeit from afar, had bothered me and it shouldn't have. I mean why did I care that the interaction between Christian and I probably made it look like we were a couple to him? I hadn't exchanged so much as a word with the guy. It didn't make any damn sense.

oOo

A/N: In case you didn't notice, I like horses. Actually, "like" is a fairly weak term to describe how I feel about horses. "Love" is probably not a strong enough word either. Therefore, I simply could not resist incorporating them into this story. :)

The names of two of the horses, Wildfire and Flame, were inspired by two horses of the same names from one of my all-time favorite TV shows Wildfire. The name Wildfire is actually going to be quite important later on. Anyway, I do know about horses though I am far from an expert; however, all the information I got about horse racing is from that show. I don't know how accurate it is but it is my homage to the show nonetheless. :)

Bella's ability to read 20,000 words per minute is my nod to Dr. Spencer Reid of Criminal Minds. He is absolutely adorable, even though his hair is always a hot mess, and Matthew Gray Gubler is awesome in his portrayal of him. It helps that he's hot even in spite of the hair. :)

Next up is what was going through Bella's head during her time with Jasper in the alley. I think you'll get some interesting insight into her reactions despite the revisit to earlier parts in the plot. :)

And, as always, I would love to know what all of you thought. So review? Maybe?

Take care. Muah!