Disclaimer: The characters belong to Stephenie Meyer...and I am not her. It's sad really, but at least I get to play dress-up with them once in a while.

This is my first All-human story. I know it seems like a BellaxJake story, but I assure you, it is very much Bella and Edward once it gets going. Enjoy. I hope to be updating regularly, and I hope you stick with me.

Growing up in Forks Washington was far from spectacular. For most it was a town, an entire world, painted in the melancholy of gray and green. For me there was a third color, something much warmer that helped sustain me even without the light of the sun to warm me. It was the red-brown that was Jacob Black.

He was a driving force in my life for as long as I can possibly remember. He was the most beautiful part of my life on the Olympic Peninsula. He was a year younger than me, and until I was 10 years old, he was only a part of my summers in Forks. He was simply the young son of my father’s friend Billy.

My parents divorced when I was only a few months old, and I went with my mother to Phoenix. I would visit Charlie in the summertime and spent a vast chunk of my time at first beach with Jacob Black and his group of friends. I enjoyed my time on the reservation during those summers but I didn’t truly appreciate them until Phil came into my mother’s life.

Phil was much younger than Renée, but I recognize, as I get older, that he makes her happy. Sometimes that’s all it takes to love someone, to recognize the way that they can make you smile without any effort. They married when I was nine and by the time I was ten, I was tired of being a hindrance to the honeymoon period of their lives.

I moved back to Forks. It made my father immensely happy to have me back and my mother incredibly sad to see me go. I’m sure that Phil helped her get through the mourning she felt for my departure. Charlie dealt well with my return and it was then that I realized how helpful it was to have friends in a place that had never truly been home.

Jacob and I spent weekends together because we went to different schools. He went to the elementary school on the reservation while I attended school in Forks. Charlie never complained about carting us back and forth, though it was a relief to us all when I turned sixteen and received two things. The first was my driver’s license; the second was the old monster of a truck that had once belonged to Jacob’s father.

It was then, when Jacob and I were 15 and 16 that we stopped being just friends. I’d fought the idea, I was afraid that it would ruin the only real friendship I’d ever had, but Jacob was hard to resist. In the end we were the talk of Forks high and the reservation. Generally, I hated attention, but I didn’t mind it when I had Jacob there to help make the tongues wag.

We weren’t one of those high school couples who were on and off for the majority of their relationship. Jacob and I just were. It was one of the reasons that we attracted attention and rumors. We never broke up. We never hated each other. We never questioned what we had, for that we were immensely lucky. We knew what we wanted from our lives, and one of the things that each of us wanted was the other.

When I graduated high school I made the hard decision to go off to Seattle for school. I spent a year there, the entirety of Jacob’s senior year of high school. I studied journalism like I’d intended to since I was old enough to know what I wanted. Jacob and I spoke on the phone, causing the bills to be astronomical from the length and regularity of our conversations. I never minded paying the bill, though I’m sure Billy wasn’t as happy about his.

It was, up until recently, the hardest year of my life. I didn’t like being away from Jacob and the thing that made it even harder, was that I knew what Jacob’s goals were. He wouldn’t be going to college. He’d arranged his future with my father when he was 14. He was going to join the Forks Police Department. He was going to serve as a Deputy under my father, the Chief of Police. We could have made it work, Jacob and I were always able to make almost anything work, but I didn’t want it to be so hard.

I transferred from the University of Washington to the community college in Port Angeles. I moved from the dorms back into Charlie’s house. I didn’t mind it, I didn’t even think of it as a downgrade in the direction of my life. I kept the same major, still held a part-time job after agreeing to work at Newton’s Olympic Outfitters, the same place I’d worked while in high school. I paid fewer bills, but the best part of the entire situation was that I was able to be with Jacob much more often.

He’d come to our house after a shift and eat dinner with my father and I. They would leave their day behind them. They were never cops in our kitchen; they were my father and my boyfriend. At that point, they were the two most important men in my life.

It was only a few weeks after I moved home and a week after Jacob was deputized that he proposed. It took seven seconds for me to find the ability to speak and reply with the affirmation he’d hoped for. Charlie was ecstatic, Billy was glad to have Jacob out of his hair. My mother was disappointed at first; she’d married young and feared the same result for me. She softened up to Jacob when he hugged her tightly and called her Mom.

I’ve never regretted marrying Jacob when I was 20, and I will certainly never regret what came of our relationship. Regret isn’t something that I would link to the life I had with Jacob. It isn’t something that I would ever even considering linking to Jacob himself. He was one of the best decisions that I ever made, but I’ve made a few good ones since as well.

I don’t regret that we only got to be husband and wife for two years. I don’t regret the fact that we never got the chance to fix up the house that we bought not long after we married. I do wish that we’d had more time. I wish that there’d been an opportunity for him to be more involved in what we had together and what we could have had given just a few more months.

I sometimes wish I could go back to that icy day in January and beg him not to leave me. I sometimes wish that I could simply go back and make that last kiss last for a few more seconds, for it to have gone a little more deeply.

But strangely enough, even if it was one of the worst experiences of my life so far, I can’t bring myself to truly wish that it hadn’t happened. I feel terribly cold when I think of it that way, and I know that Jacob doesn’t hold it against me. But I know, that my life would be terribly cold without certain additions that I’ve gained since my one great loss.

Jacob was my one great loss. The accident that took him from me on that cold day will never leave my mind.

I remember the phone ringing. It was early on a Sunday morning. Jacob and I had risen earlier than what was normal for us but I didn’t complain as we curled up on the couch together. He’d draped a blanket over us as he surfed through channels on the old television set that had once been Charlie’s. I picked up a book from the coffee table and sipped at the cocoa he’d made on the stove while I was in the shower that morning.

I was engrossed in the story and the warmth of Jacob’s body pressed tightly to mine. I jumped out of my skin as the phone rang loudly. Jacob heaved a sigh as though he knew that he didn’t really want to answer. He stood from the sofa and retreated to the kitchen to answer. He murmured on the phone for a few minutes before returning to the living room to shoot me an apologetic glance.

“The Chief.” He said in his deep baritone.

“Oh no.” I grumbled.

“Sorry sweetie.” He replied. “There’s a major pileup on the freeway. The crews are doing what they can but they need some extra hands.”

I dropped my head onto the back of the sofa. I was suddenly cold with him standing on the other side of the room. I knew better than to beg him to stay even though I really did want to. He moved towards me swiftly. His long strides brought him to my side after only three steps. He kneeled on the floor in front of me and stared deeply into my eyes.

His stare was intense as he smiled at me lovingly. “Forgive me.” He murmured.

I nodded as I tore my eyes away from him. He leaned forward and caught my lips with his. I smiled despite my displeasure for spending a Sunday without him. He stood and turned to the stairs. He took them two at a time and disappeared from sight for a few minutes.

I turned my attention back to the book I’d been reading, though I couldn’t get back into the story. I assumed it was because my space heater was a story above me changing into his uniform to join my father out in the cold. If my father wasn’t a cop I don’t think I would have understood the call that my husband felt to his duties as a civil servant. I loved him all the more for it, even if it did mean I would spend the day alone.

I had work to do anyway. I was working as an editor at the local paper. It didn’t pay a lot and it certainly wasn’t the writing gig I’d been hoping for, but coupled with his salary it was enough to pay the bills with just a little bit left over for incidentals. The pieces I had to work on would be enough to keep me occupied until Jacob arrived home, then it would all go back to normal.

I heard him trotting down the stairs and into the open area of the first floor. I looked up to see him latching his gun belt and throwing his jacket on over his tan uniform. His long black hair, the only detail of Jacob that my father wasn’t keen on, was pulled back into a sleek ponytail. His dark eyes flitted from the front door to my face.

I stood and joined him near the door, knowing that he’d be leaving. I heard a car horn sound in front of the house. I assumed it was my father in his cruiser. I stood in front of him on my tiptoes, though it only brought my eyes level with the top of his chest. He knew what I was waiting for and leaned down to close the gap between us. He placed his forehead against mine for a long moment before pressing his warm lips to mine.

“I love you.” He whispered as he pulled away from me.

“I love you too.” I replied.

He didn’t say anything else as he made his way to the front door. He pulled it open allowing a brisk wind to enter the house. He turned back to smile at me, his bright white teeth standing in stark contrast to the russet skin of his handsome face.

“Forever.” He murmured as he walked onto the front porch of our little house.

“Forever.” I responded as he closed the door behind him, leaving me alone.

It was our little ritual. It was something that we’d said, and surprisingly enough, meant since we were in high school. Our friends thought we were crazy for it, but they hadn’t ever expected us to survive my freshman year of college let alone his rookie year on the force. They’d been wrong and most had admitted it.

I stared out the window in large wooden door as I watched my father pull away. He honked once as they took off down the street. It was a common enough occurrence when your father and husband worked together, but I didn’t like the feeling it left in the pit of my stomach this time.

I sauntered back to the living room, picking my laptop up along the way. I settled in for a long day as I opened my inbox and began to sift through the submissions I’d received for the next week’s Sunday edition of the paper. There were plenty there to keep my busy for most of the day. I was sure that by the time I finished it would be time for me to cook dinner. I just hoped that Jake would be home in time to eat it fresh. I didn’t want to have to microwave it. I was sure that Charlie would stick around long enough to eat, he usually did, and then Jacob and I would have our house to ourselves until we left for work in the morning.

I read through the majority of the submissions I’d received. I tried not to get distracted, but I glanced up at the clock every hour or so. I wasn’t sure why I kept checking the time. It didn’t really matter, I had a feeling that if the accident was a major as Jacob had made it sound, then he wouldn’t be home until it was dark.

Close to six oclock I stood from my place on the couch and stretched. My back cracked a few times as I extended my arms out and groaned. I’d been sitting hunched over the keyboard for too long. I made a quick detour to the bathroom before I decided to start on supper.

I dug through the cupboards, noting that I needed to make a trip to the Thriftway sometime in the course of the week. We were beginning to run low on the staples. It was never a good thing to run out of groceries with a husband who ate the way Jacob did. I found a box of lasagna noodles and searched for the sauce that I knew would be tucked away in the pantry. I found it hiding behind a can of soup on the bottom shelf. I put the water on to boil and pulled a package of hamburger out of the fridge.

I began to cook the meal that I hoped to share with my favorite men and flicked the radio on. Jacob had bought it for me during our first Christmas as a married couple. He said he loved the way I sang and danced along with the music when I cooked. He insisted that as much as he loved my cooking, he loved the act of me cooking even more.

I switched through the channels; the first two I hit were all talk. I needed music. I found a rock station that didn’t seem to have too many interruptions. I returned to the stove as the hamburger browned slightly. I drained the noodles I’d been cooking and pulled out a lasagna pan and began to layer the ingredients.

The front door opened and I smiled as I heard it close.

“Bells?” my father called.

It was odd that he would be the first one to speak. Usually he would have stayed quiet as Jacob stepped in the front door to call out “Bella!” a la Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. It never failed to make me giggle.

“Kitchen.” I called back as I heard boots on the wooden floor between the front room and the kitchen.

I only heard one set of footsteps. I turned to see my father. His eyes were red and swollen. I’d never seen him look that way. There was something remorseful almost frightened, in his deep brown eyes. I scowled at him.

“Where’s Jake?” my question came out as more of a demand.

He didn’t answer me. His eyes fell to the floor and my stomach followed.

I knew then that I lost my heart that day. I didn’t know that one day it would come back, but I knew that it was gone and that I was alone.

I hope you like the story. Let me know what you think.
Until next time...

xo,
Courtlyn