A/N: Thank you so much to those who reviewed last chapter, and to those who added the story to alerts and favorites… you have no idea how big that makes me smile. I was walking around like a grinning lunatic all week.

Enjoy! :)

If I leave here tomorrow,
Would you still remember me?
For I must be traveling on now,
'Cause there's too many places I've gotta see.
But if I stayed here with you, girl,
Things just couldn't be the same.
'Cause I'm as free as a bird now,
And this bird you cannot change.

Free Bird - Lynyrd Skynyrd

x.x.x

"Peanuts?"

I folded up the giant map I had spread out over my lap and scooped out a handful from the bag Jasper offered me. "Thanks," I smiled. The sun was beaming down on us as we cruised down an empty highway somewhere in southern Utah. We had the windows rolled down, the warm spring wind poured over my face and whipped my hair in my eyes. I let out a long breath and sank back into the worn-out leather seat, letting my eyes flutter closed. If I relaxed enough, it sometimes felt like we were flying. Just Jasper and me: two birds, soaring high about the ground with not a care in the world.

Free Birds, was what I called us. Because of the song, the feeling, and us. It was who we were, utterly and completely.

It would always be my favorite song, but for two very different reasons. The first was because to brought me back to a place with a sixteen-year-old Bella lying on a gold comforter in a warm, loving pair of arms, and a boy who insisted he'd never heard a song so magical, or seen a girl so beautiful. It took me back to an entirely different time and place, when my home had been permanent and my life mapped out for me. Simple times; happy times.

I adored that song from the first second I heard it; before I even truly listened to it, before I knew what it was really saying. It hadn't meant the same thing to me when I'd first heard it at sixteen as it did now. Back then… I didn't know if it was the song or the moment, but I loved it all, every second of it. And I still did.

And it's funny how that shit works, how you can love something so much without really even knowing why.

But after nearly two years of living on the road, it had come to mean something completely different. Like the song had been meant for Jasper and I. I'd never forget that hot summer day, three and a half years ago, when I'd first told Jasper that we were free birds. Because the song had been stuck in my head for days, but I refused to sing it or play it and let it out.

And I could never explain to Jasper just how much the song truly meant to me. Because he wouldn't understand. Because some things you just cant explain in words.

And he didn't know what I was doing the first time I heard it, or the first time I sung it, or the first time I danced to it. And he didn't know about the scrap of paper I'd slipped in a locker the day we left home for good. All the memories, all the good times…

It was the one small piece of me I kept hidden from Jasper. Not because I was afraid of him finding out, no, that wasn't it at all. It just meant too much to me to share with someone else. It was selfish, but it was one small piece he could never have.

The song led to my first tattoo, a lyric tattooed on my ribs in a small, quiet tattoo shop in a small, quiet little town in California. And that tattoo had become a blessing and a curse. I would always have it with me, that piece of my past permanently etched into my skin. But at the same time, I'd always have that reminder – the reminder of the pain and all that I'd lost; the reminder that some things are just better left forgotten. Because some things… some things are just too painful to be remembered.

So I did everything I could to forget.

Jasper let out a long breath from beside me, almost startling me. He scooped up another handful of peanuts and offered them to me again. "I know it's crazy, but I'm so glad to be on the road again," he said, watching me out of the corner of his eye as I shoveled peanuts into my mouth.

"I know," I said after swallowing. I glanced at him quickly and giggled.

"What?"

I shook my head, tossing the rest of the peanuts in my mouth and reaching across the seat for more. Jasper was happiest when we were on the road. Well, maybe happy wasn't exactly the best way to put it; Jasper was rarely truly happy these days. But he was most content on the road. And I think that if we could spend all our days cruising down the highway or getting lost on back roads, he'd do it. I'd do it too, to please him.

I did love being on the road. It was exciting; we were free on the road. Nowhere in particular to go, no responsibilities – the world was ours for the taking. We'd drive until we found a cozy little town we could settle down in for a few months, find a place to stay, and get jobs. We'd settled into a comfortable routine, but no two places were ever the same. And that's what I loved most about our way of life. If there were something we didn't like about one place, we'd pack our bags and be gone the next day – or within the hour if the circumstances called for it. And we travelled light: one small suitcase each that held all of our worldly belongings, plus my guitar case. That was it. The bags fit neatly in the trunk of the Mustang, and my guitar took the back seat. We'd leave behind everything that wasn't a necessity and hope it found an owner who truly needed it.

"Where do you want to go?" Jasper asked, pulling his aviators down. He looked over at me, one arm draped over the top of the steering wheel and the other tossing peanuts into his mouth.

"Hmm…" I unfolded the map and leaned back in the seat, resting my bare feet on the dashboard. We never actually used a map for directions, because we never really knew exactly where we wanted to go. It was more of a guide; close your eyes and pick a direction, and that's where we'd head.

"I'm a little sick of the south, to be honest. A couple weeks and it'll be summer, and I know how much you hate working in the heat." I glanced over and he nodded shortly, his eyes not leaving the road. "Let's keep going north from here…" I traced my bitten-down fingernail up the map. "We could go up through Idaho, or Wyoming? We could even go up to Washington from there. I've never been that close to the border, you know. I bet it's beautiful this time of year."

"Sure," he agreed. "We'll head that way, at least. You're right about the summers. So north it is."

"North it is," I repeated with a smile. North was good; north I liked. I loved the green, lush states. I'd seen enough of the prairies to last me a lifetime. I wanted to hike up a mountain, see a bear, swim under a waterfall, get lost in the forest. I always thought being there was like living in a dreamland: all the green and the towering trees that had inhabited the land far before we ever discovered it. And I was born in the northern states; but my mother was always so careful not to disclose the specifics. Apparently my real dad lived somewhere in the north. But I'd given up on finding him long ago.

So on we drove. We sat in comfortable silence the majority of the time, with the windows rolled down and the radio blasting. Sometimes I sung along to the songs I recognized because it made Jasper smile, but mostly I stared out the window. I watched families in the cars next to us, inspecting the small towns as we passed through, or watching the green fields and budding trees, the long, rolling hills disappear behind us. I wanted to take it all in and lock it away in my memory, because everyday on the road I saw things I knew I'd never see again. It never ceased to amazing me how different, yet how much the same the whole country was. Nothing was ever the same in two places; yet somehow it was. All around the country farmers harvested crops, and people got up and went to work after starting their day off with a cup of coffee. Everywhere we went, people took vacations with their families, and kids went to school and wrote exams and complained about homework. People ate supper and played with their dog and watched television and went to bed. It seemed, sometimes, that Jasper and I didn't belong here. Our way of life was far from conventional. So it was reassuring sometimes to meet other people who lived like us. There weren't many, but they were out there somewhere.

As the sun rose higher in the sky, the temperature grew with it. After a few hours Jasper pulled on to the shoulder and took the top off the old Mustang.

He rubbed his stomach as he stretched, gazing up at the clear blue sky. "How much you wanna bet I can catch one of them horses?" he asked, nodding his head to the field just off the highway where a herd of about twenty horses grazed lazily in the green grass.

I felt my eyes widen. "Jasper! You wouldn't."

A mischievous grin curled on his lips.

"Those horses belong to somebody, Jazz. They're in a fence. Besides, you almost got yourself trampled messing around with those wild horses in Colorado."

He rolled his eyes, brushing off my comment. "The horse missed me by a mile," he said, stretching out his arms as far as they would go.

"Try, like, this," I held up my pointer finger and thumb less than a quarter inch apart. "What is with your fascination with horses, anyway?"

He shrugged, turning back out to the field. "Dunno. Musta been a cowboy in a past life."

"You were a cowboy in this life," I sighed.

"I may have been born in Texas, but that don't make me a cowboy," he drawled, grinning over at me.

I rolled my eyes, settling back into the seat and crossing my arms over my chest in a pout. I didn't have to patience for his stupid games today. "I'm hungry," I whined.

He cast one last longing look into the field before hopping over the side of the car into the drivers seat. He grinned over at me. "Well, how 'bout you let me wrangle ya'll up some eatin's, darlin'."

"Only if you drop the accent."

Now it was his turn to pout. "But it's fun."

"You sound like an idiot."

"I do not."

"You somehow make a Texan accent sound like a British pirate."

He put the car in drive, muttering something under his breath about how at least he didn't sound like a crazy Arizonian.

x.x.x

He stopped at the next truck stop, and I bought us club sandwiches and milkshakes with the check I'd cashed this morning.

"It was good of Denyse to give you your money," Jasper commented, popping a ketchup-drenched French-fry into his mouth as he settled back into the red vinyl-covered bench of the booth we sat at.

"Yeah, well, when you're mother's dying of cancer, it's amazing what people will do for you."

"You told her that?"

I shrugged. "You didn't give me much time to come up with a better reason for leaving with such short notice. She even gave me a little bonus for being such a top notch employee." I rolled my eyes.

Jasper laughed and shook his head. "You know, if your mom were alive, she probably would have cancer with the amount of times you've used that one."

I let out a short, bitter laugh. "If my mom were alive, I wouldn't need to use that excuse."

Our laughter died off almost instantly.

"You know, I wish every day of my life that it had been my parents," he said quietly, leaning across the table and placing his hand on top of mine.

"But it wasn't," I whispered, staring down at table as I flipped over my hand and intertwined my fingers with his.

He gave me a gentle squeeze. "I'm sorry, Bells."

"Jazz, I know."

He let out a soft breath and reached across the distance separating us, brushing the hair from my cheek. "I love you, you know?" he murmured. "I don't tell you enough, but I don't take you for granted. Without you… I'd have nothing."

"I love you too, Jazz," I said gently. I had the sudden urge to crawl over the table and curl up in his lap, like I used to when we were younger.

He smiled and hummed, squeezing my hand again.

I remembered briefly how I used to think the love I had for Jasper and the love I had for my parents was the same as being in love. I'd never realized there were different levels to love, like how you can love two people but in very different ways.

I'm sure that if some alien came to earth, they'd think love is a very simple concept because it's a word we throw around every day. You love a song, you love a TV show, you love a food, an animal, a season… but it's not like the love that you hold for your friends, or your family. And it's nothing, not even close, to the love you have for The One, for the person you're in love with.

I loved Jasper, more than anything in the entire world. If he died, I would die. But still, we weren't in love. We never were, and we never would be.

I learnt this all when I was fifteen, and I met the one person who taught me what love really was. I'd never been in love before that; and I hadn't been in love since. To be honest, I was beginning to question whether love like that really existed, or if it was some silly fantasy I'd built up in my mind. But then I always remembered the the pain is what made me believe it was all very real. Because for suffering to have such endurance, the loss must have been great. I had my heart broken once, and it was enough for me to pray to a God I didn't even think existed that it would never happen again.

I still remembered very vividly what it was like to be in love. It was the most intense, indescribable emotion I'd ever experienced. Sometimes it was those memories that hurt the most, because it seemed that no amount of time could fade them. Whether I liked to admit it or not, I thought about him everyday. And from time to time I had these dreams – these nightmares, really – that something had happened to him, and I'd wake myself up mid-scream, reaching out for him. Those were the nights that Jazz worried about me the worst.

"Bella, what do you think about Canada?" Jasper's voice broke through my thoughts and looked up at him in confusion. Cocking my head to the side, I shrugged, taken aback by the randomness of his question.

"Um… I think… it's cold, isn't it?"

"Some places it is, I'm sure. I don't think its much different than here."

"Oh. Well Canada's all right, I guess. Never really thought too much about it. Why?"

"Well," he said, a twinkle in his eye as he looked down at me, "I've been thinking lately." He paused.

"About Canada?"

He chuckled. "Well, yeah. And I was thinking maybe this time… this time we head north, and we don't stop 'till we hit the border. And then maybe we find somewhere, somewhere to settle down. We could live in the city, like Vancouver, where we can get jobs, real jobs. You could play at bars there; make a name for yourself if that's what you wanted. You could go to school… Or we could live in a small town on the prairies, or head east, towards Toronto…"

I climbed slowly from his lap as I digested his words. "You want to settle down?" I asked, genuinely shocked.

"Yeah," he said, a small earnest grin on his face. He watched me intently, gauging my reaction.

"We don't have passports."

"We can get passports."

But I don't have my bir- " I paused, and he raised his eyebrows. "Ooooh," I said, comprehending. I searched his face; just to be sure he was serious. I hated cheating, and that's what this would be. Cheating, lying, escaping. But one small, fleeting thought of a kitchen and a couch and a mattress that truly belonged to me, a key to a door that wasn't made of plastic, a closet for my clothes to hang free, and I was sold. I nodded slowly.

"We could have a home, Bella." He took my hand in his, his grey eyes alive in the light.

Home. It was such a strange word. It bounced around in my head, rang in my ears. Home. I forgot what it was like to have a home. I could have a steady job, a good job, and I could make friends and we could find a bar or a coffee shop to hang out at that was ours, just like on TV. We could have routines, and a Christmas tree at Christmas and we could have bedrooms… I could have a bedroom.

"Let's do it," I said softly, licking my lips, unable to contain my grin. "Let's settle down, Jasper. Let's fucking live somewhere where we don't play a nightly rate… somewhere I know the sheets will be clean and I can fucking cook us a meal."

"Really?" he asked, his face lighting up. "You want to?"

"Yeah, I do," I said, surprising myself with my enthusiasm.

"You won't miss it? The travelling, the road trips -"

"The smelly car? The noisy hotels? The forty-year-old bedspreads? The shitty jobs and even worse pay?" I laughed. "No, I don't think I will miss it."

"All right," Jasper nodded. "Then this is like… our last hurrah. We better make this fucking worth it."

"We will. We always do."

"True."

We were quiet for a moment, as we both began picking at our meals, lost in thought.

"Jasper!" I squealed suddenly, dropping my fork in all the excitement.

"What?" he asked, looking up at me quickly, immediate panic on his face.

I reached out across the table and grabbed his hand, unable to contain my enthusiasm. "I get to go grocery shopping!"

He let out a loud laugh, shaking his head. His grey eyes sparkled in the sunlight as he smiled at me "Yup, Bells. You get to go grocery shopping."

x.x.x

We stayed at a motel that night that had a pool. It wasn't the Four Seasons by any means, but it was a giant leap from the place we'd stayed at the last couple months. Our bags barely hit the floor before we dug out our bathing suits and dashed out to the pool like two kids racing for the last swing on the playground. We canon-balled in and swam and laughed and splashed until it was dark.

"I've got to say, I still don't think any of these fancy pools beat the swimming hole back home," Jasper noted as we were toweling off.

"Seriously?" I cried. "You'd take that scummy leach infested water over this?"

"Sure," he shrugged. "It's where I learned to swim. And no diving board compares to that rope swing. But… the only thing is, I could never do this!" He tossed his towel aside and darted over to me in one lightning-fast stride, scooping me up in his arms before I could even blink. "Jasper!" I screeched as he sauntered toward the pool edge. I thrashed in his arms, trying to break free of his iron grip. "Don't you dare! Put me down this instant!"

"Put you down?" he cocked an eyebrow as he chuckled at my feeble attempts to fight him off.

"Jasper don't," I gasped.

He laughed. "You were just in there."

"I'm dry now!" I whined.

"Okay, okay." He took a step backwards and began to lower me slowly back to the tile surrounding the pool. I almost sighed in relief – I hated being thrown into water against my will. But then he chuckled softly and lurched forward, throwing the both of us over the ledge and back into the pool. The water was in my mouth and up my nose, and I coughed as I surfaced.

"You ass!" I screeched when I regained some air. I pushed my hair out of my face and saw him treading water about two arm's lengths from me, laughing. I splashed him and turned away, swimming back to the edge. "You're just freakin' hilarious. What a riot," I muttered.

"Oh, come on!" he cried, unable to hide the laughter in his voice. "You're fine!"

"Luckily." I turned away from and snatched up my towel. Then I spotted his card key for the room sitting on top of his sandals. I grinned to myself as I picked it up and turned back to him.

He was doing lazy backstrokes around the pool. "Hey Jazz, wanna know what would be really funny?"

"Hm?" he said, not breaking his stride.

"If I stole this key you left sitting here and beat you upstairs. I think it'd be pretty hilarious if you had to sleep in the car tonight, Whitlock."

"You wouldn't," he called out, unconcerned.

"Why not?"

He let out a laugh and disappeared under the water. When he surfaced, he pushed his blonde curls out of his face and turned to me. "Ah, Bella. Well I'd sleep in the car, no problem. But I'd be willing to bet you'd be joining me in there before too long. Do you really want to sleep without me?"

"'I'd be just fine," I said, pushing out my chin, offended.

He laughed and shook his head, his curls flying free. He swam to the edge and pushed himself up and out of the water. "We'll see," he said simply.

"What makes you so sure?"

"You just need me," he replied, getting to his feet and snatching up his towel from where it sat beside me. I didn't realize I'd been rooted to spot, and now my chance at payback was lost. But I wasn't concerned with that anymore.

"Why?"

"Bells," he sighed. "Relax. I was just messing around. And I don't want you up there all by yourself anyway. I'd just go to the front desk and tell them I lost my key. It's a lost cause, so drop it."

"Oookay…" I gave in. He was talking crazy anyway, because I knew I could sleep without him there. I'd done it for seventeen years. I was sure I could handle one night sans Jasper Whitlock.

"Ready to go upstairs?" he asked, pulling a t-shirt over his head. The shirt was soaked immediately.

"Sure."

We got back to the room and smoked out on the balcony, and then he let me use the shower first. It was amazing; the shampoo made my usually unmanageable hair soft and silky, and I finally had enough hot water to shave. The towels were fluffy and white, like towels were supposed to be. I couldn't wait to try out the beds. The prospect of a good nights sleep was extremely exciting.

"Jasper!" I cracked the bathroom door open and poked my head around the corner. "How are the beds?"

"Awesome," he replied, but the tone of his voice didn't match his words. I wrapped the towel snugly around my body and crept out of the bathroom. He was sprawled out on his back on his bed, his hands folded behind his head, staring at the ceiling. He still had the pool towel wrapped around his waist with his trunks on underneath. The jeans he'd worn all day were sitting on the bed beside him.

"You're gonna get your mattress wet," I giggled as I watched him.

He didn't crack a smile.

"Everything okay?"

He sat up. He didn't have to reply, I could tell right away; everything was definitely not okay. His grey eyes were clouded over; troubled. I watched him carefully and waited for him to make the next move.

"Come here," he said, patting the bed next to him. The way he wouldn't meet my gaze made me anxious. I made my way to him slowly, sitting down beside him with caution. He cleared his throat nervously, and he starting digging around in the pocket of the jeans sitting beside him.

"Bells, I have to confess something," he said softly, glancing over at me. His eyebrows were pulled together warily, and the long, deep crease on his forehead was back. He sighed, then produced a thick cylinder of something and held it out for me. I took it, inspecting it, and it took me a few moments to realize what it was. Money. I turned it over in my hands. The outside roll was a fifty-dollar bill. There had to be… a lot in there. I looked back up at him, confused, waiting for an explanation.

He let out a long breath and finally met my gaze. "I… I haven't been completely honest with you."

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