A/N:

1. I don't own. Neither do you.

2. Thank you so much to my lovely betas, StoryPainter and Thir13enth. And to Project Team Beta in general.

3. My goal is to get this whole fic finished in the next six weeks. Because after that I'll be super busy again. Cross your fingers for me. :)

4. I love every single one of you. You can't imagine how excited when I hear from you. And the idea that I've had over 30,000 hits on this just blows my mind.

5. Oh, yeah. There's a possibility that I'm going to have to change the rating to M. Just so you're warned. Not that the material will be very "objectionable". Just following the rules here.

We were on the road quickly, leaving Coeur d'Alene behind before midday, and followed the I-90 toward Montana. We didn't have a map, but that didn't matter. I had a vague idea in my head of where we were, and if I couldn't trace a route on a map, I'd be more inclined to take unexpected turns, making it harder for anyone to follow us. My priority was to make it as difficult as possible for Edward to find us when he inevitably escaped his barely competent captors.

As we passed mile marker after mile marker, Bella remained quiet. She kept staring out the passenger side window at the seemingly endless sections of green and brown. Surely these stands of pine trees looked just the same as the ones surrounding Forks, but she watched them whizz by nonetheless, deep in thought. There was a twinge of sadness in her essence, which concerned me.

I inched my hand across the center console and threaded my fingers through hers.

"What's bothering you, sweetheart?"

"Nothing," she replied, shaking her head.

I squeezed her fingers gently, attempting to be comforting. "You haven't forgotten that I can feel your emotions, right? I know when something's wrong."

"I remember."

"Well I'd really like to know what's running through that pretty little head of yours. If you really don't want to talk about it, I understand, but please know that you can tell me anything."

She turned to look at me. Her eyes were a little bit glassy as if she was on the verge of crying. "It's going to kill my parents if I never come home. Talking to Charlie made me realize that."

"Never come home? We'll get you home again."

"Jasper, you can't know that. Life is fragile – especially mine, it seems. People die every day. And they don't have vampires trying to kill them. We're on the run here, and the way I see it, there are only three possible ways this could end. Two of those endings mean I never see them again. Firstly, we stay on the run for the rest of my life, constantly trying to stay one step ahead of Edward. Or he could find us and you kill him. Or he finds us and he kills me."

Her deductive skills were impressive. With one exception.

"You're not going to die, I promise you."

"You can't know that," she protested.

"I can. Because next time I see him, I'm not holding back. I will kill him. I'm a much better fighter than he is. I should have killed him last time. Even if he hadn't attacked you, he wished you harm. And that is unacceptable for me."

"He got to me last time." She absent-mindedly ran her fingers over her sweater-covered forearm where the impressive scars sat.

I shook my head sharply. "I was holding back. I didn't want to scare you with how much of a monster I can be. If he comes near you again, he's ashes. It's as simple as that."

"Ashes?" she asked with curiosity.

I sighed and explained to her just how a vampire was killed. At this point, I guessed since she had already seen us fighting, a simple explanation wouldn't scare her too much.

"So…. Ashes," she confirmed, nodding.

"Ashes."

She turned to look back out the window again, and I concentrated on the road for a few minutes while she digested the new information.

"He could still get to me though. You're all super-fast, right? So if you were distracted for just a second or even on the other side of the room, it would be enough for him to grab me. Even if he didn't kill me, I could be hurt pretty bad. I could be so easily paralyzed or have head trauma just from him touching me wrong."

My whole body vibrated in anger at the thought of her being hurt. Well—hurt again. The wounds on her arm, while relatively superficial, were already enough to confirm the grave danger she was in. Would be in until he was dead.

I took my hand back from hers and gripped both hands on the already cracked steering wheel before speaking softly. "If you are critically injured, I wouldn't hesitate to change you."

"Change me?"

"Into a vampire. The change would heal any wounds you had. As long as your heart is still beating, there's a good chance you'll come back from anything."

"Woah. Vampire. Okay."

"I don't plan to let him get close enough for that to be needed right now, but it is a back-up plan."

She nodded absently, but she was tense and concerned.

"Are you okay with that, Bella? I can't live without you. I won't let you die. And if that means I have to change you to keep you around, I'm more than willing to do it."

"Yeah, if it's between that and dying there isn't a lot of choice, is there?"

"I can't lose you, Bella."

"Because of this whole soul mate thing?"

I nodded. "Exactly. It hurts to be away from you. Even being at my house while you were at your own caused me extreme pain. I don't want to imagine what it would be like if you were gone."

My body's shaking increased dramatically just from saying the words. Bella noticed my agitation and reached over to rest her hand on my knee. Almost instantly, I calmed. It still amazed me how much influence she had over my involuntary reactions. "Shhhh. It's okay. I'm here," she whispered.

To my great pleasure, she didn't remove her hand from my thigh once I had calmed down. She just reached over and turned the radio on, pressing play on the CD without checking what Carlisle had last been listening to. Wagner came through the speakers, and she turned the volume down to the point she would only just be able to hear it.

Leaning back in her seat, she let the music wash over her and relaxed, periodically stroking my leg with her tiny fingers as we drove.

We pulled in to Butte, Montana, mid-afternoon. Gray skies greeted us, making us Forks residents feel right at home. The feeling around the mining town seemed to reflect the skies, and from the architecture and the odd boarded-up building, I guessed that the town's hay-day had been many decades ago. I briefly wished I had brought a camera; Emmett would get a kick out of the 'Welcome to Butte' sign.

I took Bella to Quiznos to get her some lunch, and as I watched her eat her sandwich ravenously, I reminded myself that she needed to stop to eat more often. Humans ate three times a day. I had to remember that. It would, however, make our journey longer.

"So, are we staying here?" Bella asked between sips of her Coke.

"Nope. Do you think you can handle another three or four hours of driving? I don't feel comfortable still being so close to Forks and still being on a route so direct from Washington."

She nodded. "Yeah, sure. Where are you thinking of going? What's near here? Bozeman? Boise?"

"Good geographical knowledge. Have you got a map hidden somewhere around here?"

She smirked. "I aced U.S. Geography."

A grin spread across my face. "I can tell you we won't be going to either of those places. And as much as I'd like to get us back on the road, I have some tactical things to do before we leave."

She frowned at me. "Tactical things?"

"Yes."

"Are you planning to tell me exactly what?"

I shrugged with a wide smile and leaned over to kiss her on the cheek.

"You're weird. You know that, right?" She stood up to use the restroom, running her hand through my hair as she passed by my chair, causing me to shiver with pleasure.

I filled the tank with gas and drove us over to a used car yard, and while Bella waited in the warmth of the car, I went in and bought us an older model Toyota sedan using some of the cash I had grabbed before leaving home. The salesman was so happy about such an easy sale it was easy to dazzle him into accepting a fake name and minimizing the paper trail.

"Your plan was to buy a new car," Bella stated when I opened her door.

"Part of it." I loaded our few pieces of luggage into the new vehicle and handed her the keys. "Can you drive it? Just follow me. We won't be going far."

"Okay." She was unsure and hesitant.

When she stepped out of the Mercedes, I grabbed her hips and pulled her towards me, letting my scent wash over her. "Trust me."

"I do," she told me, vaguely dazed, before she stood up on her tip-toes and kissed me quickly on the lips.

'Progress,' I told myself. She wouldn't have kissed me if she was mad at me for basically kidnapping her. I could still feel my mouth tingling as she stepped away and got into the Toyota.

She followed me south through the town until we got to the city limits. Two hundred yards down the highway was exactly what I was looking for.

I pulled over near the hitchhiker and saw Bella pull up behind me. Since Bella didn't know what I was doing, she was anxious. She probably thought I was going to kill him or something. Just like the hitchhiker himself seemed to think. I sent both of them some calm and trust.

I sauntered over to the hitchhiker, hoping I could pull off acting like a local, and signalled Bella to stay in the car.

"Going to Los Angeles, are ya?" I motioned toward the cardboard sign he was holding.

"Yeah…." He was still wary, so I upped the amount of trust I was pushing at him. "Trying to, anyway."

"I can help. We don't need two cars, so you can have it if you want." I pointed at the Mercedes. "It's pretty beat up on the inside and missing a window, so it'll be more hassle than it's worth to try and sell it. Got a full tank and everything."

He looked at me suspiciously. "What's the catch?"

"No catch. You need a car. We need to get rid of one."

"It stolen?"

"No. I can put your name on the ownership papers and everything. I just have two requests."

"What's that?"

"Don't take it through a car wash or anything. I don't want it washed." The longer our scent could stay on it, the better. "And drive it as far as you can. You're going to L.A. That's perfect. Just take it south. Show the poor girl a bit more of the country than what she's seen with us."

"Okay…."

"Trust me, man. This is a good deal. You can just dump it somewhere when you're done if you want. Or try and sell it. Whatever."

"I still don't get why you're doing this."

I pointed back at Bella sitting in the other car. "My girl just wanted to do something nice for someone. You know—pay it forward or some shit. She's on this 'helping out strangers' kick at the moment. And you know how it is with a girl—what she says goes."

He checked Bella out for a few seconds longer than I would have liked. If he wasn't really doing us a favor, I would have ripped his head off for looking at her like that. She belonged to me. Nobody else.

"Okay. Sounds like a good deal." He nodded and shook my hand. The frigid air temperature disguised my cold skin.

I forged Carlisle's signature on the ownership papers and he took off, looking back at us, confused, a few times as he departed.

Bella moved over to the passenger's seat as I climbed in to drive the smaller car.

"I don't get it."

"Well," I explained, "now if Edward tries to follow the scent of that car, he's going to end up in Utah or California or somewhere." I found the next turning zone, and changed into the north-bound lanes. "Meantime, we're heading in the exact opposite direction."

She grinned. "My man is so smart."

I glanced over at her, taking in her smug expression. "Your man?"

"Well, yeah. If you really are my soul mate I get to call you mine, right?"

"Any time you like, sweetheart. Does that mean I can call you mine?"

She seemed to consider the request for a minute before smiling shyly at me. "I think that would be fair. We had already mentioned the potential 'boyfriend' and 'girlfriend' tags. Belonging to each other is just a bit more than that, right?"

Energy flowed through me. "Mine," I sighed happily. "My mate. My Pereche."

"Pereche?"

"Yes. Sufletul Pereche. It's what we call it. It's the ultimate kind of mate. Perfect in every way. Two halves of the same whole, basically."

"Okay." Her emotions were calm and accepting.

"Not overwhelmed by that?"

"Nope. I'm your mate. I guess. It's a weird word."

"Not something humans use a lot."

"Exactly."

I couldn't take the smile off my face. "Mine," I repeated with a bit of a growl in my voice.

She wasn't put off by the growling. "Yep. All yours."

My heart soared. Even with all the stress I had put her through in the last few days, she wasn't hesitant about being with me. She was accepting that we belonged together completely. Even though she wouldn't feel the extent of the bond until she was eventually turned—which hopefully wouldn't happen for quite a while—she already believed me. She wasn't fighting it. And that made me incredibly happy.

Almost happy enough to make me forget about the threat to her safety.

Almost.

"Tell me more about this Pereche business," she requested as she rested her head against the window of our new car.

I was happy to oblige.

A/N2: I'm actually not reading anything right this second (finished one last night). But I'm thinking my next one will be "Alice" by xDreamlessx. Let's see how that goes. It's very long, and I'm a very slow reader.