*BPOV*

We were somewhere on a mountain road in Colorado when Emmett happened to notice that a campground had bear-resistant garbage bins. Unsurprisingly, he insisted we stop to sample the local fare…er…bear.

"Emmett, we can't–" Edward started to protest, once again concerned that we wouldn't make it to our planned destination on time.

"Do you know what hyperphagia is, Edward?" Emmett asked without pausing to let Edward answer the question. "It's the late summer feeding frenzy that occurs when bears are fattening up to get ready to hibernate. They show up on camping grounds and in backyards attracted to improperly stored food.

"2 to 5 people die every year from bear attacks in North America alone. I would know. I'm one of them. It would be irresponsible of us not to protect the humans from the Yogi Bears out there wanting to steal their delicious picnic baskets!

"Now, maybe you've forgotten your duty to protect human life, but I haven't! By God, man! What would Carlisle say?" Emmett grandstanded, sounding appalled and outraged.

"Em…2 to 5 people die every year from falling coconuts. Should we vanquish the world of coconut palms, too?" Edward asked dryly in reply.

"Don't be ridiculous, Edward! There aren't any palm trees in Colorado," Emmett argued as if Edward were the one who was being a liitle bit thick. "But there are plenty of bears, and I'm parched from being around all those strippers. And it's my Jeep. My Jeep, my rules!"

And with that, Emmett yanked the wheel to the right making the Jeep swerve off the narrow mountain highway following the signs deeper into White River National Park.

Edward sighed, and in a voice meant only for me, he muttered "Remind me to replace the Volvo when we get home."

"Sorry about that time I drove it over a cliff," I glibly answered back under my breath. "It was sort of necessary at the time."

"Give women driver's licenses, they said. It'll be fun, they said," Jasper trolled from the jump seat in the back with a shit-eating grin on his face. He loved to tease me about my feminism, and reveled in the instant ire it drew out of me. I turned to snarl at him and Jasper just tossed his head back and sniggered in return.

"Oooh, good one!" he needled. "I'd give it 7.5 on the Pissy Missy scale," he drawled.

Inhaling sharply through my nose, I ground my teeth together at the provocation and bit back my sharp-tongued response. I knew he probably didn't even mean half of what he was saying, but like any big brother, both he and Emmett enjoyed getting a rise out of me. They teased me regularly under the pretense of "helping me control my newborn temper."

Seemed to me, though, they had just a bit too much fun doing it, I sniffed testily.

Edward squeezed my hand. From the furrow of his brow to the thin line of his mouth, Edward's flawless features were steeped with empathy. He'd had nearly a century to learn to keep a stiff upper lip whilst his brothers (or Rosalie) constantly goaded him. He then turned to glare murderously at Jasper, giving him an emotional reaction of his own.

"We're here!" Emmett cheerily declared as the Jeep jerked to a halt in front of a dense grove of golden aspen trees where the unmarked trail he'd been forging became too narrow to go any further.

"Just give me two minutes to make sure we're in a safe zone. Try not to kill Jasper before I get back," Edward teased once we'd all piled out of the Jeep. He quickly kissed my cheek, then disappeared into the trees to do a check for stray humans.

"No promises," I grumbled to the empty space where he'd just been standing.

And then I heard the unbidden laughter bubble out of my chest. My shoulders shook first with soft giggles that deepened into full-on belly laughing, which escalated into hyena-like cackling as the feeling grew into one of side-splitting hilarity.

"See? You can't stay mad at me!" Jasper grinned, empathically tickling me from a dozen feet away.

"That is so unfair!" I protested breathlessly through the insuppressible paroxysms of laughter, though my giggles only intensified.

However, this wasn't the same torturous kind of laughter experienced by wriggling fingers along your ribcage that made you lose control of your bladder while struggling to get enough oxygen into your lungs.

I had no burning bladder since I had no fluids inside my body to lose control of. And I didn't need to breathe so it didn't matter that I couldn't. It was merely annoying because I wanted to stop laughing but I physically couldn't.

"Say you forgive me," Jasper coerced with a wide smile.

"I forgive you, you sexist hillbilly!" I shouted, still raucously laughing, but a little more genuinely that time.

"Oh, alright," Jasper relented with a sigh and my melodic peals of laughter finally let up. "And not to split hairs, darlin'…but I'm a redneck. Emmett's the hillbilly," he corrected with a wink and nodded to my mountainous brother-in-law who was amusedly looking on from where he stood leaning up against the trunk of a tree.

"You're darn tootin'!" Emmett concurred, bending down to pluck a foxtail from the earth and pinch the stem between his teeth.

I could only roll my eyes and harrumph in response. Then my ears perked up and I turned toward the southeast, hearing what could only be the low thrum of Edward's lightning-fast footsteps as he flew across the forest floor with scarcely the snap of a twig to announce his return.

In seconds he'd reappear through a break in the trees. I felt my shoulders sag with relief, unburdened by the slight tension I always felt in his absence.

And then he was suddenly there. Edward's long, lithe body molded against the back of mine, his powerful arms entwined around my waist. In a silent greeting, he lowered his face to press his marble smooth lips against the bare skin of my shoulder revealed by my form-fitting charcoal gray tank top.

Then resting his chin on my shoulder Edward smiled, sighed, and announced to the group, "All clear."

Pushing my shield aside, I thought, Someone's in a good mood.

"I suppose hearing you laugh from miles away has that effect on me," Edward acknowledged, dropping another soft kiss to the curve of my shoulder.

"Last one to find a bear has to eat deer!" Emmett called and turned and sprinted headlong into the trees.

And then, like points of a star, we were all running in slightly different directions away from the Jeep parked in the center. On group hunts like this, we tried to give each other space so that nobody went after the same kill or got accidentally tackled to the ground by the hair-trigger newborn.

As the forest flew under my feet, I ignored the familiar scent of a nearby herd of elk in favor of something tastier, reasoning that I could always circle back and find them if I was still thirsty later.

Moments passed and I heard the fearsome bellow of an enraged bear a couple of miles to the north followed by a second louder roar belonging to Emmett who was taunting his breakfast. I smiled and shook my head, but was otherwise undeterred from my own hunt.

Closer, to the southwest, in the direction Edward had run, I heard the hair-raising scream of a mountain lion echoing through a canyon. I smiled even wider knowing that Edward would be in even better spirits after bagging his favorite feline food source.

But now I was even more focused on the hunt because I didn't want to have to resort to circling back for the elk. I let my senses span out around me, listening for the telltale sounds of snapping twigs or a thick tongue lapping up water. And that's when I heard the promising sound of powerful claws stripping away the bark of a tree. Jackpot.

I took to the trees so that when the majestic beast came into sight, I would have the strategic higher position.

I perched on the branch of a towering douglas fir as the large black bear, the smallest of the North American bear species, stood over six feet tall and was marking the trunk of a neighboring tree with his razor-sharp claws.

With one deft leap, I soundlessly jumped from my tree to the one occupied by the bear, landing some thirty feet above where the large male was still obliviously gouging his mark into the bark of the tree. Wrapping my legs around the thick trunk I slid down it like a fireman's pole, painlessly shearing off all the small shoots and branches on my way down.

A few meters from the bottom, I pushed off the tree so I could land on the stunned bear's shoulders, letting him give me a two-second piggyback ride before he furiously tried to fling me off. My grip on him was too strong, though. With one hand buried in the fur between his ears and my other arm wrapped tightly around his immense neck, I easily hung on as the enraged animal tried to rip and tear me from his back.

I let out a visceral snarl as he slammed me up against a tree, trying to dislodge me. I could hear the pounding of his heart, could feel his blood pumping through his veins under the thin barrier of fur, fat, and sinew.

I imagined sinking my teeth into the pulsing artery there under his jaw and feeling the hot, wet relief of his blood flowing down my throat. And then before I was even fully conscious of the fact that I had bitten him, I was moaning with satisfaction as pull by pull, the salty-sweet taste of his life slid down my throat.

He fought valiantly, but moments later, the enormous beast crumpled to the forest floor, drained and defeated.

"God," Edward said in a low groan from downwind. I had been so focused on the hunt that I hadn't noticed he'd been watching. "I never want you more than when you're wild like this," he admitted in a rough, gravelly whisper.

I swiped the back of my hand over my mouth, wiping it clean, and then stood up from where I was still crouched over the bear. Edward's mouth popped open in the most satisfying way when he took in the tattered state of my jeans. They'd been torn to ribbons by the bear clawing ineffectually at my thighs and biting at my calves when I'd been sitting on his shoulders.

I reached down and tore away the ravaged remains of my pant legs, turning the jeans into a crude pair of cut-off short shorts.

Edward exhaled loudly. "That is so…unfair," he lamented with a growl.

"What is?" I asked confusedly, not understanding the cause of the tormented look on his face. I took a few steps closer to Edward, closing the distance between us and Edward met me in the middle.

"That I won't get you to myself for close to a thousand miles," he pouted as his buttery golden eyes traveled down the lengths of my newly exposed legs. "I think I like your jeans better this way," he confessed with a smirk.

"We're alone now," I stated the obvious as I took in the state of Edward. As usual, his clothes–a white button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and pressed khaki pants–were barely mussed. Only his hair was disheveled, but it only made him look sexier, in a rugged, messy sort of way.

Edward's answering sigh was an exasperated one. "There's no time. If we're going to make it, we have to go now." The look on his face was positively forlorn.

"Are you…turning me down?" I said incredulously with a stunned laugh. "When was the last time that happened?"

"Tell me about it," he muttered irritably. "It's killing me, you have no idea. But trust me, love. Please? It'll be worth the wait."

Being the brat that I am, I teased in a husky voice, "It always is," and brushed my hand over the front of his trousers as I sashayed past him in my minuscule shorts. He reached down and caught me by the wrist, pulling me in for a long, hard kiss on the mouth which I eagerly returned.

When we finally drew apart a moment later, Edward's eyes blazed down at me, pale gold and endless as a wheatfield. I could've gotten lost in them.

"You promised you'd never leave me wanting again," I pouted a bit childishly, jutting out my lower lip. I knew he was just trying to do something nice for me, but I wasn't used to the rejection anymore and it stung a little.

With the hand that was gently pressed against my cheek, Edward glided the pad of his thumb along my pouty lower lip. "And I can't wait to make it up to you," he avowed with fire in his eyes. "But we really do have to go," he murmured, kissing me one last time just before he turned and ran full tilt for the Jeep with me hot on his heels.

A few hours later, the mountainous terrain of Colorado leveled off into the giant cornfield that was Nebraska where scarcely a tree could be seen for miles in any direction. Unless we wanted to start hunting cattle, it was pretty safe to say we wouldn't be settling down in Nebraska anytime soon.

Finally, we passed a sign that read "The people of Iowa welcome you" with a picture of a cartoon sun rising over a flat, green horizon. Printed along the bottom of the sign was the slogan "Fields of opportunities." Needless to say, the topography didn't change much.

It was just…so…. flat. I was used to seeing the forest and mountain landscapes of the west coast or the craggy red-brown foothills of Phoenix. Here, in the absence of the trees and hills to break up the scenery, with farmland stretching as far as the eye can see (even vampire eyes)...the road just seemed to keep going on forever.

We kept driving inland, following the signs toward Des Moines. Rural farmland bled into sprawling suburbs that bled into the concrete jungle that was the state capital.

Studying a map of Iowa on her phone, Alice broke the comfortable silence that had descended over the six of us for the last stretch of driving. "Did you know that in this state there are towns named Jasper, Carlisle, and Eddyville?" she giggled.

"No Emmett? That's horseshit!" Emmett complained, spitting out the window as if the state had offended him.

"If it's any consolation, there's the town of Emmett in Idaho," Rose offered, looking up from her own phone.

"Sweet! We'll stop there on the way home!" Emmett said in a considerably more cheerful voice.

"Idaho isn't exactly on the way, Em," Jasper piped up from the back.

"Like I care," Emmett snorted, undeterred. A chorus of groans erupted from the Jeep's other occupants at the idea of being dragged all over middle America in pursuit of what was certainly a one-horse town just so that Emmett could grab a selfie in front of the city limit sign. "My Jeep, my rules!" he reiterated.

For the second time that day (but actually meaning it this time) I thought, Really, REALLY sorry about the Volvo, in the same exasperated tone that was clearly written all over Edward's face. He loathed being a passenger, or in this case, a hostage.

"Not as sorry as I am," Edward grumbled, but then he winked and squeezed my hand so that I'd know he didn't really hold me responsible. Then, with narrowed eyes and an impish smile, he added "It was worth it to get to spend the day with you in those jeans" as his eyes traveled down to where my bearly there shorts were riding up the tops of my thighs.

I smiled at him coquettishly and crossed my legs, making the denim ride up even further. Edward made a growling sound in the back of his throat and my expression turned smug. It would never get old driving Edward wild with desire. I coyly turned my face away, smiling out the window.

It was a blustery gray day. We were the only vehicle, literally, the only vehicle on the interstate in the middle of the day near a major (sort of) metropolitan area. What the hell was going on?

"Would somebody please tell me what we're doing in Iowa?" I pleaded as I watched the dreary world pass by my window.

Edward pointed to a spot in the sky toward the southeast, far on the other side of the Des Moines river. As the wind batted the Jeep around the road, I focused my eyes on the darkening, menacing sky. What must've still been a good distance away, I counted two, no, three funnel-shaped clouds forming perilously just above the horizon.

"You have got to be kidding me," I exclaimed, feeling the flutters of nervous excitement in the pit of my belly. "We're really just going to go get swept up in a tornado?" I screeched, my voice rocketing through multiple octaves.

"Unless you're chicken," Emmett taunted with a haughty laugh.

"I mean, I've always wanted to go storm-watching in one of those armored storm-chasing vehicles," I prattled nervously.

"HA! Now you ARE one of those armored storm-chasing vehicles," commented Jasper with a grim smile.

The Jeep shuddered, rocked by another powerful gust of wind as we crossed a bridge that spanned the river, heading straight for the eye of the storm.

The surface of the water was choppy as if a helicopter were hovering directly above, but there was nothing, just the howling wind ripping through a savanna of oak trees on the other side of the turbulent water.

"No wonder Esme didn't want to come," I snorted, thinking back to the comment she'd made about not being one for "extreme sports."

"Esme's so full of it," Rose snickered. "You should see her on a snowboard. But she never turns down time alone with Carlisle, no matter what she might be missing out on."

Gazing desirously at Edward, I mused, "I can empathize with that."

*EPOV*

When we'd taken the Jeep as far as it was safe to go without risking it to the storm, we parked and went the rest of the way on foot against 65 mile-per-hour (and rising) winds.

The funnel clouds seemed to follow the river southeast where the storm system spared the high school and the middle school, preferring to skitter along the cluster of family farms that occupied the land there.

I was never more grateful for the safety goggles Alice passed out than when we'd gotten closer to our destination. The dust and debris whirling around in the air were incredible. And while nothing could harm us, per se, it could still get rather uncomfortable being pelted in the eyes by dirt and sand traveling at wind speeds of upwards of a hundred miles an hour.

Emmett had even come prepared with a helmet mounted with a GoPro. He and Jasper had made a wager whether or not the camera would survive the day. (If Alice's visions were accurate, it wouldn't.)

"Did you know that when one supercell thunderstorm spawns multiple tornados, it's called a family?" Alice asked pleasantly, as we stood side by side watching half a dozen twisters demolish everything in their respective paths. Crops, rusted tractors, barns, motor homes. unsecured farm animals. Nothing was safe.

Bella barked out a laugh at that. "Kinda like us."

"Kinda like us," I repeated in agreement, squeezing her hand.

"Look! Carlisle!" Emmett boomed.

"What? Where?" Jasper asked with no small amount of surprise, looking around for our patriarch.

"There!" Emmett called over the howling wind, pointing off in the distance to a mustard yellow water tower that was in the direct path of the largest, most powerful tornado. It had to be at least an EF4.

I barked out a laugh of my own as I read the name "CARLISLE'' printed on the side of the water tower in faded red paint. Apparently, we'd strayed farther from Des Moines than I'd realized.

"Baby, get this on video. This is gonna be AWESOME!" Emmett promised as he bounded off toward the water tower like a football player who was excited to be getting into the game.

With one nimble leap, Emmett landed on top of the tower where he sat straddling one of the antenna-like columns protruding from the top. Just then a loud crack of thunder rang out across the plains.

"WOOOOO! YOU CALL THIS A STORM?!" Emmett thundered right back at the sky, taunting the funnel cloud that whirled ever closer.

"You tell him, Lieutenant Dan!" Jazz called toward our brother with his hands cupped around his mouth to be heard over the squalling wind.

With Rosalie's camera phone trained on him, we all watched completely awestruck as the tornado took out the water tower as easily as if it had been a bowling pin.

The tower was shaped like a giant yellow onion atop a narrow pole that broadened toward the base. Caught in the eye of the vortex, the tower spun like a dreidel a few times before the top-heavy structure crashed over to one side.

Naturally, Emmett rode it all the way down to the ground where he hopped off at the last second. He tucked his massive body into a ball to do a series of front flips before landing on the ground with his arms spread wide like a professional gymnast sticking the landing.

The girls cheered wildly and Jasper whistled and clapped his applause.

Not yet finished, Emmett then returned to the wreckage of the water tower, picked up the tank, and posed for Rosalie with it balanced on his shoulders like the statue of Atlas. He then hurled the bright yellow tank into the eye of the storm where it was batted around like a pinball a few times before getting obliterated by the punishing winds.

"Donkey Kong? More like Donkey King!" Rosalie shouted in encouragement.

Emmett smiled winningly in response and pounded his chest like a gorilla. Then Rose stashed her phone in a pocket of her jacket that smartly zippered shut and went running into the middle of the storm system as the family of twisters danced and swirled around her with incredible power and destruction.

In typical–theatrical–fashion, Rosalie stood with her eyes closed and arms outstretched waiting to be swept away.

Then Alice began counting down, "In 5, 4, 3, 2…" and right before Alice could say "one," Rosalie was sucked into the updraft of a nearby twister. It was somewhat weaker than the one Emmett had faced, maybe an EF2, and she was quickly ejected by the vortex. However, the high-speed winds shot her like an (in)human cannonball into the eye of an adjacent twister where we lost sight of her in the thick clouds of dust and debris.

"Where did she go?" Bella asked, sounding concerned.

I closed my eyes, focusing on Rosalie's thoughts so that I could pinpoint her location by what she was seeing. I found her easily enough, and as soon as I saw the world swirling around her like she was being flushed down a giant toilet bowl, my eyes snapped open in search of stable ground.

"She's up there somewhere. But don't worry, she's enjoying herself," I smirked.

"The next one's mine!" Jasper announced eagerly, rubbing the palms of his hands together with anticipation.

Whirling in our direction was a somewhat scrappier tornado than the others had been, narrower at both the top and bottom of the funnel. But it was more volatile than the others had been, cutting and weaving through terrain in much more unpredictable ways. If it had been a rodeo bull, it would've been the one named "Widowmaker."

Naturally, Jasper trotted out to meet it while holding his cowboy hat in place with one hand and pretending to twirl a lasso over his head with the other. When he "released" the imaginary rope, he simultaneously kicked off his back foot, jumping into the mesocyclone making it appear as if he'd snagged the seemingly sentient cloud formation with his invisible noose.

"Alice? After you," I called out over the surging wind. I gestured to the catastrophic storm system with an open palm as casually as if I was merely letting her enter a revolving door ahead of me.

Wearing a navy blue Victorian-style peacoat and carrying a leather-handled carpet bag, Alice marched out into the open field just as Rosalie had. With the wind plastering her short spiky hair to her scalp, Alice calmly pulled a black umbrella out of her bag and opened it up. Like Mary Poppins, her tiny waifish body was carried away by the high-speed winds despite her flimsy umbrella flipping inside out almost immediately.

"Alice doesn't do anything without props, does she?" Bella asked with an amused smile.

"You know Alice…" I evenly replied with a wide smile. "She never does anything halfway."

Bella didn't say anything then, just stood staring at the furious sky with wide, fascinated eyes.

Taking her hand in mine and giving it a gentle squeeze, I leaned in close to her and spoke directly into her ear so my words wouldn't get swallowed up by the wind. "If you're having second thoughts, you don't have to go through with it, you know…," I said, offering her an out.

She shook her head. "No second thoughts. But...do you think we can do it together?" She asked with a certain amount of trepidation in her voice.

"Always," I fervently promised, raising her hand to my lips and kissing her knuckles.

*BPOV*

Hand in hand, with my hair flying in every direction even though I'd made every effort to tie it back, we walked against the wind into the middle of the ravaged field just in time to see a very wind-swept looking Emmett and Rosalie emerge from the squall.

Dirt smudged their smiling faces and bits of their clothing were torn or missing altogether. They returned to the spot where we'd just been standing as if to wait for another turn.

"Nothin' to it!" Rose called out to me encouragingly. I noted with a small sigh how Rosalie somehow managed to look attractive in goggles, whereas I probably resembled a horsefly, but that was Rosalie for you.

Standing in the protective circle of Edward's arms, thunder cracked overhead followed by an almost immediate flash of lightning. I looked up into the irate sky, watching everything from hubcaps to mailboxes…was that Jasper's hat?... spiraling upward into the darkened sinister sky by a mighty updraft.

Then Rosalie and Emmett disappeared from sight, overtaken by an opaque cloud of dust that swelled up in between us by a harsh gust of wind.

And then the ground disappeared from beneath my feet as a forceful wind smashed into us with the impact of a speeding bus.

"Hold on! I've got you!" Edward's voice sounded far away to my own ears even though I could feel his arms tight around me like a steel cage. The bottomless feeling in the pit of my stomach reminded me of my human memories of being carried by Edward as he ran. Dizzying. Terrifying. Exhilarating.

At the speed we were flung through the air by updrafts and downdrafts, it was difficult even for my eyes to keep up with everything that was going on around me. It was like floating in a great ocean of dust, debris, and gravel, but being carried by currents of wind instead of water.

Edward tightened his grip on me with one arm so that he could use the other to bat away a metal trash can lid that was spiraling straight toward my head. I didn't try to talk or even shout for fear of getting a mouthful of grit.

After the initial shock of being swept up into the sky wore off, I was able to get my wits about me enough to drop my shield so that Edward could experience this with me in every possible way.

Edward's arms squeezed around me almost painfully and he pressed his forehead to mine. Our goggles clacked awkwardly together, but we ignored the impediment, fully focused on the profound moment of connection we were locked in.

It might've been seconds or minutes, but eventually, gravity found us again and pulled us back down to the earth just as easily as it had been the first time I jumped out of our bedroom window as a newly turned vampire.

When the air had cleared enough for us to speak, Edward finally asked with an exuberant grin, "So how did that rank for you, Mrs. Cullen?" as we walked back hand in hand to where Alice and Jasper were waiting to go again.

Clearing my throat of all the dust and pollutants I'd inhaled, I hoarsely replied, "It's sort of like love, isn't it? Like falling without a net. You might get hurt. You might get chewed up and spat out…But everyone lines up to do it again."

A/N I CAN NOT believe that this story is finally coming to an end, y'all! I started writing "She's My Blackberry Pie" a year and a half ago. It started out as a one-shot but the ideas just kept coming. And then it evolved into this amazing escape from all the fear and uncertainty that the last two years have brought. I cannot thank you all enough for joining me on this crazy ride!

The next chapter will be the epilogue, and after that, I'm going to be taking a bit of a break to work with my editor on adapting this into an original novel! (Don't worry, I'm not pulling it unless for some reason I have to.)

I also have an idea floating around my head for another Twilight fic, but it will be Post-BD in an AU where Renesmee exists, so not connected to this series at all. If you want to keep up with me and my writing, "smash that subscribe button" (as the influencers like to say. 😄) And again, thank you for all of your many kind words of support and encouragement. I couldn't have done this without you!