Snow doesn’t bother vampires. That’s why Jasper and I were all buried in it, in the Montana mountains. Sometimes, he and I take off for a few days. It’s good for him. Recharges him. Jasper is an introvert; he gets his energy from being apart from people. I’m the other way entirely—I get mine from being in the thick of things.
But Jasper is mine, and he needs to go away sometimes to recharge, and that’s okay with me. It gives us reason to go together. Which was how we ended up in the mountains, lying in a snowdrift.
I leaned my head against Jasper’s chest and tried to imagine what it had sounded like, when he’d once had a heartbeat. What his body would sound like if it were full of whooshing blood instead of venom.
“What are you thinking?” he asked after a while.
“Nothing,” I muttered.
He laughed. “I’ll buy that one when you don’t come back with some important thing that’s on your mind.” He smiled at me and tucked my hair behind my ear, stroking down my neck as he did so. It made me shiver a little.
I leaned into him a little more, and thought about our family. This group I brought us to, because I saw us all one day, standing together and laughing.
I told Jasper that, back in Philadelphia, when we first met. He was important; he was a crucial piece. He was my piece. Without him, there was no laughing family. There was no future for me.
For him, there was a future, too. One of running after Emmett, taking out grizzly bears, playing guitar next to the fireplace while I leaned against his legs.
There was laughter in his future, too.
So once we had our pieces, we had to find this other piece, this bigger piece—the doctor and his wife, and the two sons and the beautiful daughter.
But we hadn’t lived my vision. Not yet.
Jasper let out a little sigh, which I know is his way of telling me he knows I’m feeling something I’m not letting on.
“You’re thinking about something,” he said.
“I’m a vampire. I’m always thinking about something.” I leaned up to him and kissed him on the nose. Then I scooped up snow and smashed it into his face, and took off running down the mountain with my husband on my heels.