When I got home from the store, the house was very quiet--an odd thing, something I wasn’t used to. It was Sunday afternoon--I wondered where everyone was as I put down the paper bags on the kitchen counter.

“Hello?” I called, looking over my shoulder, listening carefully for movement. Not a sound. Curiously, I moved upstairs and opened my bedroom door slowly.

Carlisle was sitting on our bed, smiling sweetly. “Hello.”

“No one’s home,” I said simply, surprised by him. He smiled again and stood up.

“I have something for you,” he murmured, walking to me and kissing my forehead softly. I looked up at him, struck dumb for a second, before he moved over to our closet. He pushed the double doors away, and it was empty, our suitcases lying on the floor.

“We’re moving?” I whispered, confused and suddenly heartbroken. I knew I didn’t spend enough time with him, that sometimes I felt our children got in the way, but that wasn’t reason enough to move! “Where are they?” I asked, panicking slightly.

Carlisle’s eyes widened in surprised concern. “Oh, no, Esme! Nothing like that! They’re just giving us some privacy--they’ll come back.” He walked back over to me and took the tops of my arms. “It’s okay, sweetheart. I have a present for you, and they wanted to give us some privacy.” He kissed my head again, and my breathing slowed.

“Okay.” I smiled again, relieved. “So. What’s the present?”

Carlisle chuckled softly. “I can’t tell you yet,” he murmured, his lips brushing against my skin as they moved down to my throat.

“I suppose we could make use of this empty house,” I suggested breathlessly, and I felt Carlisle’s deep laugh in his throat.

“As tempting as that offer is,” Carlisle said, his lips trailing back up my neck, “I’m afraid it would make us miss our plane.”

We went from the cold and blustery Maine to the warm and sunny Florida in ten hours; I was so bewildered by the heat--I had only lived in colder areas since my transformation, and it was a welcomed change.

Carlisle didn’t let me daydream for long, however, because, in the cover of the night, he pulled me onto a small boat he said he’d bought, and we drove out into the ocean.

“A boat?” I asked, confused. Simply being in warm weather was enough of a present for me. “Are we going somewhere else?”

Carlisle only smiled cryptically, pulling me to him and pressing his lips softly to mine. I didn’t care anymore where I was going--as long as I was with him.

“Privacy, darling,” he murmured, brushing my hair behind my ears, holding my face close to his. “We’re going to privacy.”

He kissed me tenderly in the moonlight, the stars our only observers. I could get used to privacy.