Sweet Serendipity

Chapter Five : Alley Ways

A. Brandon

It'd been a month.

A month since Alice had shown up in the center Beaumont Texas, jumped on another bus down to Washington Boulevard, and applied for a job in the first diner she saw. She had shown up with three hundred dollars cash, her mother's VISA, a debit card, and an emergency MasterCard her father had made her carry with her in her wallet at all times back when he was still around to live off of and had managed to keep herself alive this long.

But in all honesty, she was lonely, she was scared… she checked over her shoulder every few minutes and she never took shifts that meant walking to work early in the morning or late at night when it was dark outside. She never conversed too long with anyone person, and she avoided as much as she could telling anyone anything about herself in order to keep everything about her reserved. She never completely took everything out of her backpack and she carried it with her everywhere with all her papers and at least one change of clothing, should she ever need it to make a run for it.

She always kept a weekly bus schedule with her, and seldom left her room unless it was to go to work. She wore a hat whenever she could, and hid her face as much as possible without looking too suspicious. She had made it through the month so far without any problems. No one really questioned the new girl, and she tried to be as truthful as she could with their questions so she had an alibi just encase. But she never said too much. Her answers were vague, nothing too revealing… nothing that would give her away.

When they asked her about school, she simply told everyone she was just out and wanted to travel around by herself, find herself and figure out what it was she wanted to do, and who she wanted to be. It was believable, she'd been in her last year at her old school, and with the right makeup, she passed for the age she claimed to be. So far, everything about her appearance and identity was fine.

But the nightmares that plagued her dreams woke her every night with more vigour than the one before. Like frightening warnings, trying to scare her into altering whatever it was about her life that was going to lead to the upcoming event she'd dream about. Some of them were odd though, many of them she knew weren't possible. Like the latest dream she was having. Herself, standing atop a grand staircase dressed to the nines with the same stranger that approached her.

Every time she had the dream, it lasted a little bit longer, or the detail was a little bit better. Like a video you would watch over and over again. You pick out little things that are different every time it plays.

She stood there in the most beautiful dress she'd ever seen. It was dark blue, and flowing, with diamond sequence that made her look like the night sky with millions of stars splayed across her. It was light, and flowing, with one shoulder while the slight up the right side of the dress showed off her flawless legs that looked as if they went for miles, accentuated by the deadly heels she'd been put into.

Alice always had a knack for being able to dress up. But there, at that moment… she looked like a Goddess. Her slightly tanned skin still looked beautiful, and the diamond laced bracelet, earrings, and necklace seemed to shine just as bright as the sparkle that clouded in her eyes.

Her face though, was straight, expressionless. Her shoulders were tense, worried, and as she looked around and scanned the rooms, her anxiety grew.

It was at that point that a tall lean figure walked up the stairs that lead to Alice with a cool, controlled, and relaxed gait like walk. Once more, she tensed only just as he stopped a few steps from the very top and leaned forward to whisper something in her ear as her eyes refused to look at him while he stood before her. When she did nothing to respond, he stared at her face while reaching into his pocket to pull out a beautiful, unique, intricate ring that was placed on Alice's finger.

Raising a hand in a calm gesture, the tall blonde man stood and waited as she tried to avoid his gaze and looked anywhere but at him.

Finally, her shaking hand eventually took his offered arm as he finally turned around to face the crowd. And present her with a possessive gleam in his ruby red eyes.

Horror struck, Alice would wake from these dreams in a cold sweat. It was always the same… always the sandy haired, well built, red eyed, handsome stranger… in every dream without fail.

In some, he was biting her while she drifted into blackness. In others he was simply walked her different places. Odd dreams Alice would be accompanying the red eyed man at events such as the one she was so formally dressed for… and they were, more often than not, accompanied by Charlotte, and another attractive red eyed man.

As of late, despite the many acquiring dreams that Alice was having, there was one reoccurring one that plagued her every thought. So much that she could barely think during her shift at work. It was the same one almost every night.

She was walking home from work at dusk when she saw it across the road. Someone laying, just inside the alley way. As if they'd collapsed face down and weren't breathing. They weren't moving, not at all. When she looked around for someone, anyone that could have seen the body on the ground, she almost cried on the inside when there was no one else around. With a deep breath, she jogged across the road, and leant down next to the man laying on the ground.

From there, everything went black, the dream just ended. And it terrified her. Would she find a dead person? Would the person still be alive? Would the person be okay? What if no one stopped to help him? What if he was murdered and left there? What if he'd been beaten and left for dead? There were so many frightening possibilities as to what could have happened to him, and how it could have went down. It scared her.

"Ally?" Miranda, the middle aged waitress called out as Alice turned to her with a surprised expression, breaking from her daze as she felt her cheeks flush slightly. Miranda was a tall curvy blonde. She was pretty, and polite, and smart, and if Alice didn't know any better she'd hate her for being so perfect. She had a rich husband, a beautiful baby boy that was absolutely adorable, and she would never need to work another day in her life. But she came back every day because she loved people. She loved being around people, serving people, talking to people. She felt like she was making an impact on all of their lives, no matter how small.

It was admirable… and someday, Alice wanted be the exact same way.

"Hun why don't you head home? It's not to busy, and you look like you could use the rest." she smiled lightly as Alice shot her a grateful look and untied the apron from behind her neck and waist. Grabbing up her coat, backpack and pay check, she ran to the back room to change back into her running pants and a hoodie, throwing her work uniform in her backpack as she pulled the baseball cap back over her hair and walked out of the back of the restaurant.

She refused to leave work or enter work in her uniform. If someone saw her walking around town to her apartment in her work clothes they'd be able to trace her too the restaurant… it was just a risk she didn't want to take. It could have worked the other way too. Someone could have saw her at work and tried to follow her home, but if she changed… she tilted the odds slightly further in her favour.

Walking out the back door, she sighed and pulled the straps on her back pack over her shoulders and adjusted her sweater to make it more comfortable. Pulling the hood up over the hat still on her head, she shoved her hands in her pockets and began her walk down the road towards the street her apartment was on. She usually took the most confusing route home… a route that if it meant she was being followed, hopefully they'd have a harder time to remember which way she'd travelled. She'd taken hundreds of precautions over the last couple of weeks to make it harder for people to find her and track her, and every time she stepped onto her street, a little breath of relief flooded through her at the thought of making it through even just one more day. Quickening her pace to make it home faster, she turned onto one of the back streets, the took a deep breath and rolled her stressed neck to get rid of the day's worries. The same street, coincidently, that haunted her dreams, the same dream that made her look down that alleyway where the man would lay every time she passed it.

At a passing glance, she wouldn't have noticed it… but she was looking for a body. And she was more than surprised when she found one.

Her entire being froze in surprise and shock.

It had happened, her dream had come true. It'd happened.

He was there… right there…

deltagirl74 - oooohhhh just you wait ;p more alice/jasper to come! shits about to get real!

FallenAshe - awww why thank you! haha. um hopefully gonna explain the whole Jasper/Major split personality soon in future chapters from Peter's POV but i'll explain it a little now so you kind of get it ;) like the book, jasper has two personalities, Jasper, the calmer, more collected and reasonable one... and the Major, which... you know. RAWR. hahaha. Jasper is around most of the time, but the Major still has a bit of a hold on his body, while most of that personality is still locked away. Like on a normal Jasper day... Jasper has %70 of his body, and the Major runs %30 of it... like in certain thoughts and such. But when the Major comes out, he takes over... sooo, yeah. I can't explain it very well now, but Peter kind of does a better job than I can right now in a future chapter ;p hahaha. hope you enjoy!

Aprhodite - hahahaha that's hilarious! I laughed sooo hard 'aww shit, jasper is on the prowl'. lol I was literally chuckling my ass off ;p hahaha. I hope your not disappointed as to how they meet ;) it was so difficult to try and come up with something that would do them any justice... so it was tricky getting them together and not making it seem too amateur. hope you enjoy!

.Apples - I just want you to know I was in the midst of updating and posting this chapter when I got that little *ping* saying I got an email, so I had to go BACK to write my little response for your review... because I didn't want to leave anyone out ;p lol hahaha thanks for the review! and I knoowww! im kinda half dreading, half excited to see what everyone thinks about them meeting for the first time and where and how it will all go down ;) hope you enjoyed the chapter update, just in time for you!

Thanks for the reviews!

more reviews = more updates