-GUNNER-


What Maisie conveniently left out of Alice's torture was that my best man's suit would be bespoke, not simply altered from a store-bought piece like I was expecting. Alice needed measurements of my entire body to make the suit. I didn't even know what an inseam was until she made me stand as straight as I could for her to get an accurate measurement.

Listen. I love Leah, but that does not negate the fact that the Cullens are all insanely attractive. I think I'm safe in saying that any guy who liked women would blush to have Alice that close to their crotch.

I can still hear her laughing about how red my face got. Alice Cullen's amusement at my death by embarrassment will haunt my dreams for the rest of my life.

"Maisie's right," she teased, expression coy and her golden eyes glittering with mischief, "you do match your hair when you blush."

To say I was infinitely grateful that Alice's memory was far beyond the 'measure twice, cut once' adage was putting it mildly. Very, very mildly. Leah thought it was all hilarious, but of course she did. I made the mistake of telling her about it before we went to dinner with Maisie and she brought it up while we were at the restaurant. Traitor.

"Aaaw, Gunner!" Maisie giggled. "I'm sure Alice was loving it. She always says you're 'such a doll'."

I felt my face going red again while I glared at my sister. Leah was laughing, too, kissing my blushing cheek. I could feel her own teasing smile in her lips. Despite that, Leah's searing kiss was calming for me, as it always was.

"Yeah, yeah, laugh all y'all want."

"Don't worry, ῤíćha, we will." Sue had given me the nickname, ῤíćha, the Quileute word for 'red'. Now the whole Clearwater family, including Charlie, used it. Leah's use of it didn't faze Maisie, but then, she was called 'my love', 'my heart', 'my life' with every breath Jasper Hale took. She probably assumed it was something as sickeningly endearing.

Alice's fitting was not the only painful wedding preparation I was subjected to. Never had I given much thought to my eyebrows, but Leah insisted they needed to be 'shaped' before the ceremony. She took this task on herself, pinning me to the bed in our rented house the next morning.

"There's better things we could be doing in this position," I grumbled beneath her, running my hands over the muscles of her calves and thighs. Leah was undoubtedly stronger than me. Any resistance on my end would be futile. It was much easier for both of us if I just sank into the pillow and gave myself over to Leah and her ministrations.

"I can't let these unruly brows be immortalized in Maisie's wedding photos," she argued, running her thumbs along said brows. I glared at the pair of tweezers she held in her hand.

"But my unruly brows were fine for your mom's wedding photos?"

"Being the best man is way different from being a guest, Gun. Now stay still." Like I have a choice. I closed my eyes and accepted my fate. Leah rocked her weight forward, leaning over me. The tweezers were cold, in stark contrast to the heat of her palm holding my face steady. That was my last, brief moment of peace.

"Ow, shit!" That was only the first hair and it felt like someone had burned me. Leah laughed at my pain, pressing down with her thighs when I tried to sit up. "Why do girls do this to themselves?!"

"To avoid unibrows," she told me between laughs. Now that I knew what to expect, the rest wasn't as bad. I managed to keep my outbursts contained to sucking in my breath and whimpering. That is until the last pluck, and I can't even say if Leah intended for it to be the last or if she was only taking pity on me.

"Son of a bitch, babe!" I shouted, bucking beneath her in reflex. Leah's humor quickly dissolved from laughter to genuine concern.

"Oh, you're bleeding!" She pressed me down again, gently, wicking away the blood with her thumb. "I didn't think I'd make you bleed!" The concern was short-lived. As soon as it was obvious I was fine, Leah started laughing again. She tossed her torture device onto the bedside table and kissed me.

"I promise I'll make it up to you."

"I think I might be entitled to compensation for wrongful injury." Ever-warm, Leah had changed into pajama shorts when we got home from dinner. I toyed with the lacy hem of them now, raising what was left of my eyebrows in suggestion.

"Are you suing me?" Leah reached past me to turn off the bright bedside lamp she had used in her torture. The ceiling light was still on, but she pulled the covers up over both of us so that we were cocooned beneath them.

"I think I could make a pretty solid case against you and the company that made the tweezers." Her hands were already sliding under my sweatshirt. "Lucky for you, I accept bribes."

"Mmm, lucky for me," she echoed, sliding my shirt off in one smooth motion.


I don't know if Maisie realized it, but she was molding Jett into a tiny version of herself just like she had done when Ava was born. He mimicked all her facial expressions and hung on her every word. They both looked at Jasper like he hung the moon and every star in the sky. But he looked at them just the same way, watching Maisie feed some foxes on the back porch with Jett balanced on her leg as she crouched.

"She still does that?" I had just come into their house from next door. Alice made me come over to try the suit on. It fit perfectly, of course, and I was still too embarrassed to speculate if Alice's smug grin was due to her skills or the memory of me blushing. She had made it out of a navy-blue fabric with a snowy white shirt beneath. I had no idea what either Jasper or Maisie would be wearing, other than Alice said she was still working on our bowties.

The warmth and affection were clear on Jasper's face. After learning the truth about the Cullens, they had always looked like vampires to me. Jasper looked most human when he was looking at Maisie, his strong features gone soft and that little smile playing at his lips.

"Jett loves it," he told me in that honey-smooth voice of his. "Which, of course, only encourages Maisie to do it more often. It started with one, at the beginning of spring, but now she has an entire fox family she gives handouts to."

One of the foxes, braver than the rest, ventured closer to my sister than the others dared. She held out her hand for inspection, letting the fox sniff her over for a few seconds before gently petting the fox between the ears. When it proved favorable to the affection, Maisie took Jett's hand in hers and guided his to do the same. His squeal of excitement filtered to us through the glass, only slightly muffled in its enthusiasm.

"It will be good for him, learning to interact with animals." Once I learned the truth, Jasper had dropped all pretenses around me. He tended to speak plainly about his kind, foregoing the human façade the Cullens used with others. "He wouldn't get the chance if he were being raised by two vampires."

"Honeybun always liked you well enough," I pointed out. Our old, giant golden lab had asked Jasper for pets just as she had everyone else in the family. She spent many afternoons when we were home from school sprawled at Jasper's feet.

"That dog doesn't know a stranger," Jasper humbly deflected. "If I walked outside, the foxes would scatter."

He nodded to the largest fox, who sat just as calmly as all the others, but kept flicking a watchful eye Jasper's way. It sat lighter on its haunches than the others, ready to sprint at a moment's notice.

"She's still okay, right? She doesn't get sick anymore, like she used to?"

"She'll never be poisoned by venom again." The softness drained from his face, features closing off to me. Neither he nor Maisie liked to talk about what happened to them in Italy. "I've read the accounts and seen the proof myself. Aro, in that regard, was not deceitful."

It was easy to believe, looking at the flush in Maisie's face when she stood and turned toward us. Jett was leaning over her shoulder, waving goodbye to his fox friends. They slipped inside together, bringing their wide smiles and a wave of fresh spring air with them.

"Hey, Gun, I didn't know you were coming by." Maisie passed Jett to me, and I was immediately assaulted by chilled little hands patting my face to get my attention. Jett pointed outside, where the foxes lingered, finishing their dinner and playing with one another.

"See!" Jett commanded. "See!"

"Yeah, buddy, I see," I told him before turning to my sister. "Alice was torturing me again."

"Where's Leah?" With her arms free now, Maisie hugged herself to Jasper's side for a moment. They were always doing that, touching each other, seeking the physical reminder of the other.

"Working on a summer course list. She says she's making up for lost time, but I say she's a nerd. She goes all out for school."

"Go get her, Rose and Emmett will be in tonight. Edward and Jasmine went to pick them up from the airport. I'll make y'all food."

Maisie's signature bribe, I thought, shifting Jett's weight in my arms. "You can eat as much of it as you want, too, since you won't have to share."

"Sold," I told Maisie, wrapping Jett up in a hug when he laid his head on my shoulder. Me, Leah, Maisie, and Jett ate chicken alfredo that night and listened to Emmett regale us with stories of people he had encountered in New York. He sat on the kitchen counter, his hulking size eclipsing the cupboards behind him.

"Listen," he told us, leaning forward eagerly. I was impressed that counter was still holding his weight. "I'm gonna show my age here, but people in New York just do things. Do you know what would happen if a lady was walking down the street topless back then? A whole hell of a lot more than Rose smacking me for looking, that's for sure! There would be whole church sermons dedicated to the remedying of the souls of the men in town."

"It's not illegal in New York," Rosalie asserted. She was meticulously cutting noodles into tiny bites for Jett before they made it onto the tray of his highchair. "Besides the fact that it's her body and she can do whatever she likes with it."

"Babe, I get that, you know I do." He held his hands out in front of him in a show of innocence. "But you gotta understand how shocking it is for someone who, by all means, should be severely geriatric at least, to be confronted with the modern world. Babe, Eddy would have died on the spot! Ankles were too hot to handle in his time, let alone whole chests!"

"Jasper's older than me," Edward grumbled, but Emmett waved that argument away.

"And yet he's considerably less sensitive than you, and the guy's an actual empath."

I glanced at Leah, who was watching all the back and forth with a bemused smirk. "Is it always like this?" I whispered to Maisie. She nodded, leaning in close to whisper in my ear.

"Emmett's my main form of entertainment when he's around. Watch." She turned away from me, leaning back in her chair to get Emmett's attention. "Hey, what about Pigeon Guy? I need updates on him."

"Fucking Pigeon Guy!" Emmett shouted, earning himself twin glares from Rosalie and Jasper for cussing in front of the baby. "Sorry. Okay, Pigeon Guy. Gunner, Leah, you need some backstory. There's this guy that lives across the alley from us and he always leaves food on his little balcony for the pigeons. The first time it happened, it scared the hell out of me, because it's a whole legion of birds. Their wings are so loud, I thought there was a helicopter or some crap."

Emmett went on to explain how the pigeons' eating schedule had caught the attention of stray cats, who quickly figured out how to navigate the fire escape to reach the birds. All the strays proved extremely skilled at taking the pigeons out, which in turn led to pigeon guy going on quests to catch the cats and relocate them to no-kill shelters outside the city.

"It's an actual battle between Pigeon Guy and these cats. Last time I saw him on the street, poor dude was covered in scratches. I'm convinced he and Maise would be best friends."

"I do love Pigeon Guy from afar, I hope he gets everything he wants in life. He gives me Birdman from Hey Arnold! vibes."

Most of the two weeks before the wedding was spent like this, hanging out with Maisie and various groups of the Cullen siblings. And Jett, always Jett. Honestly, he was really funny. I could see how Maisie and Jasper both were so enamored with him. My favorite thing was when they would put him in his walker, and he would tear through the house like a bat out of hell. They would be in for it when Jett learned to walk on his own. He had a lot of catch phrases, too. Mama hold. Readabook. Da-da, Da-da, Da-daaaaa! See? See?

But my favorite time in Alaska was the hike I went on with Maisie and Jett just days before the wedding. It was early, enough so that Leah had given me an enthusiastic 'hell no' mumbled into the pillows when I asked if she wanted to come. I left her in the bed, kissing her temple before I left.

Spring was mild in Alaska, to say the least. Maisie had Jett bundled in a sweater and little baby beanie. I could see wool socks peeking out of the top of his tiny pair of boots. We were all dressed for warmth, the day much cooler than the bright, early morning sunshine would lead you to believe.

"It's so pretty here," Maisie said, stopping beneath a tree so that Jett could stretch up and touch the pale green leaves. "I'm sad we have to leave it. It all makes sense why Alaska is a favorite of the Cullens'."

"You mean the biggest draw isn't the month of darkness in the winter?" I teased, but Maisie only laughed.

"They don't burn up in the sun, you know. You've heard the Cold Ones legends before."

"Yeah, I know. They kind of, like, glow in the legends. Like, they look like they could be burning, but they're fine. I guess that's one vampire myth they got kind of right, huh?"

Beside me, Maisie nodded. "You might see it, while you're here. Jasper refuses, but Alice and Emmett couldn't care less. They'll spend all day in the sun if they know they won't be chanced upon. How's Leah? She hasn't shifted since she left the pack, right?"

"She's so much happier," I told Maisie. "We've been weighing if she could feasibly go to therapy, though. Her dad dying like that, it's still really hard for her even though she's happy for Sue and Charlie. She still blames herself for his heart attack."

"I mean, you don't have to tell a therapist everything, right? Surely she could talk about Harry's death without revealing the entire context." This hike had an actual destination: a field bursting with wildflowers. Maisie took Jett out of his carrier and plopped him down in the flowers. Immediately, he grabbed two tiny fistfuls of flowers and held them up for Maisie's inspection.

"Mama!" He shouted, disturbing a bird into flight just a few yards away. "See? See?"

Maisie bent obligingly, carefully looking through each bloom in his bouquet.

"How's that therapy going for you?" I asked, watching them.

"Fabulously." Maisie shot back, not missing a beat. "Sometimes me and Jasmine come out here to scream."

If she meant to throw me for a loop, it worked. I paused at that, trying to decide if she was kidding or not. There was no follow-up joke, though; instead, Maisie was pointing out a little beetle crawling along the petals of one of Jett's flowers. She let the bug crawl onto her finger and gently relocated it to a different, intact flower. Shaking my head, I decided it wasn't worth it to comment on it farther. Instead, I sat down in the field with Maisie and Jett.

The sunlight was warm on the crown of my head while I watched Jett meticulously pluck the petals off a daisy. "Maisie."

"Hmm?" She held her hand out flat, letting Jett place all his discarded petals onto her palm.

"You're sure?" I asked. "I mean, not about Jasper, I know you want to marry him. But I mean, you're sure you'll be okay? You really are… like Jett, I guess, since neither of y'all are quite like the Cullens?"

She stilled for a moment beside me before relocating Jett's petals into a neat pile between them. Maisie pushed up her sleeve, exposing the vampire bite scar on her wrist. Seeing hers made my own tingle; I couldn't resist the urge to slip my fingers under my sleeve and touch it. "Aro made Jasper do it, to prove to me that I was no longer quite human. Only vampires—or quasi-vampire beings, I guess—are immune to the venom."

We had caught Jett's attention. Discarding his flowers, a tiny hand shot out to touch Maisie's wrist. "Dada!"

"Mhmm, like Daddy's." Maisie pulled her sleeve back down, plucking a few new flowers for Jett to investigate. "I can't stay, Gun. How could it be explained? I'm already twenty, but what happens when we're twenty-five, Gunner? When you're an adult and Jasper and I still look like teenagers? When everyone around us ages, and we don't? That's why the Cullens move so often, why they usually don't make lasting relationships in any of the places they live. I have to leave, to protect the secret."

"But do you have to 'die' to do it? Can't you, like, just pick a bigger fight with Mom and then go no-contact?"

She was shaking her head before I even finished my sentence. "I would if I could, you know that, but it's not just me and you. There's Ava, too. Even if I never talked to or saw Mom and Dad again, when Ava hits eighteen, what if she comes looking for me? Or finds me? You have a pardon from the Volturi, not Ava. I have to do this," she said resolutely, nodding to herself as she did so, "to protect them. Mom, Dad, Ava, the other Cullens, Jett. It has to happen, to keep all of them safe."

Even though it made my stomach hurt, I had to admit that Maisie was right. It didn't mean I had to like it, though. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep myself from crying over it. Instead, I nodded and accepted the gift of crumpled flowers that Jett offered me.

"Not to be a downer, Maisie, but your wedding's gonna suck."

To my surprise, Maisie laughed. "Yeah, I know. But don't tell Alice. She's put a lot of work into making it a really nice day for us."

The wedding was only one week away at that point, when we took our hike. Carlisle and Esme arrived in Alaska the next day. As always, Esme greeted Leah and I with kisses on the forehead. Leah was always cavalier about it, keeping her instincts where vampires were concerned tamped far down in order to accept the affection from Esme. There was a lot of family time during that week, which I think was an effort to keep both Maisie and Jasper from dwelling on what was coming.

Just two days before the wedding, there was a 'reverse bachelor/bachelorette night'. Or, at least, that's what Emmett called it. Jasper and Maisie were left alone that night, a reprieve of solitude while Esme and Carlisle took Jett and the other members of the Cullen family did…something, I don't really know. Leah and I stayed home that night, too, hunkering down in our rented house with the bottle of wine Emmett had bought and delivered to us.

We didn't bother with glasses, instead sharing the bottle between us on the wooden floor of the living room. The house was quiet without the TV or any music on, and it became dark, too, after neither of us bothered to get up and turn on the lights. Instead, we sat in the gathering shadows with our wine and talked quietly.

"I wish Maisie would've tried to make amends with Mom first," I confided in Leah and the shadows alike. "It has to happen either way, and I get that, but I don't think Maisie realizes how bad it's going to be on Mom."

Leah rolled the bottle between her palms before taking a pull and passing it back to me. My own drink was hardy, washing away the shards of what I just said. Hell, it hurt to say aloud, and I couldn't say it to Maisie. But I needed to say it.

"Maisie will have to live with the regret of it longer," Leah pointed out in a soft whisper. Her tone didn't blunt the blow of the truth in her words.

"God, I just wish they weren't both so damn stubborn! But that's where Maisie gets it from and I know neither of them are going to budge, regardless of what me or Dad say to either of them. We've tried." Leah's hand found mine, giving it a squeeze.

"I know," she soothed.

"This is going to really fuck up Ava, too. She asks about Maisie all the time, every time I talk to her, and Mom always tries to squash that." I took another big drink. "Ava's vindictive, for a kid. She's gonna remember this, all the fighting between Mom and Maisie."

I was gearing up for another drink when Leah's hand stilled mine. "I think that might be enough, ῤíćha."

Only then did I notice how light the weight of the bottle was in my hand. I had drunk significantly more than Leah. The rush of the wine hadn't hit me yet, but we both knew it would soon. "Let's get some food into you instead, huh?"

Even then the lights weren't turned on. Leah brought back the plate of cookies Esme had baked for us and we passed that back and forth instead of the wine.

"There's just no winning," I said after my third cookie. "It sucks."

The tears surprised me, running hot and fast down my cheeks without warning. I hiccupped on them, trying to wick them away with my sleeve. Leah reached for me through the dark, drawing me to her. It didn't matter that we were the same height; somehow, she managed to pull me into her lap and wrap her arms around me. Her hot hands caressed my face and dried my tears.

"Sometimes it's just like that." She kissed the top of my head, rubbed a soothing hand down my back. "We have to make choices anyway, and I can't blame Maisie for choosing what's going to be best for herself."

My breath came out in a shudder. Was I blaming Maisie? No, I couldn't. Not when the life she was forming wasn't the one she meant to choose. Irina and the Volturi had taken that choice from her.

"It just sucks," I said again, lacking the words to express the mix of anger, denial, and deep, deep sadness inside me.

"I know, ῤíćha," Leah murmured into my hair. "I know."


A/N: Hi, friends! Quick note: the Quileute word I use here isn't quite right due to the fact that I could not get the right letter for the c. I am sorry for this inaccuracy, but after combing through keyboard codes, symbols in Microsoft Word, and searching for a copy-and-paste set of Quileute letters, I came up hopelessly short.

We are FINALLY at the wedding next chapter! I went back and forth about whether I should write it from Gunner's or Maisie's point of view. I did a quick rough draft of both and decided to keep it in Maisie's point of view, which makes this chapter a tad bit short, but hopefully it will be worth the wait!