A/N: This is my first attempt at any FF and am really nervous about posting it, so I just decided to go for it.

As we all know, I do not own any of the characters, please thank SM for allowing me to borrow them for this. Without her, none of this would be possible.

Prologue

Jacob and Bella's fight

"Jacob, I just can't do this anymore." I couldn't make myself look at him. I knew seeing the realization show in his eyes would be too much to bear, so I just sat there looking down at my lap. I still loved and cared about him, but I wasn't in love with him anymore, and I hadn't been for a long time.

"But Bella, We can make it through this. It's just a rough patch. We've gone through this before." I knew that tone so well. It was the one he used when he was trying to convince himself of something that he didn't believe. "I have never failed at anything in my life. I will not let this be my first." He shouted that last sentence and even though I was still looking down at my lap, I could see the expression on his face as clearly as if I had been looking directly at him. I had made him angry.

I couldn't back down now. I had come this far. There were just a few more words to say before I was finished. I took a deep, slow breath, and as calm as I could, I spoke, "Jacob, I have made my decision. There is nothing that you can do or say that can change that. Kaitlyn and I are moving out."

"No. You can't do this." This time he spoke in a whisper, and I could still tell that he was trying to convince himself that I really wasn't leaving him.

"Jacob, I am doing this. I have to. This really isn't fair to any of us, this lie that we've been living. You and I both know that if it weren't for Kaitlyn, this would have been over with years ago." And there it was. The one thing that I swore I would never do and I did. I put Kaitlyn right in the middle of this. None of this was her fault. We both knew it. Even though we knew deep down that our marriage wasn't working, when I found out I was pregnant, I had made the conscious decision to at least try, hoping that the love we both shared for our child would help strengthen the love between us. And it had for a while, but when that new parent glow had faded, things went right back to the way they had been before. And I knew he knew that too, just by his lack of response, "You can't even deny this, either, so why can't you let this end peacefully so that we both can get on with our lives and be happy?"

When I finally looked up at him, I was not staring into the angry man I had been picturing in my head, but into the red swollen eyes of a hurt man. Was he really crying? There were only two other times that I had ever seen him cry, and those were our wedding day and the first time he held Kaitlyn, just minutes after she was born. "Jake, you know that I am not doing this to hurt you. This is just how it has to be. We have spent the last ten years trying to make a go out of a high school crush. We were never going to work. We were doomed from the beginning. Come on, how many times do the captain of the football team and the captain of the math club actually manage to last longer than a pity date?"

O.K., so the term "pity date" may have been an overreaction, but how else was I supposed to describe it? Jacob had agreed to take me out to dinner after I had helped him to pass our math midterm. This was a dream come true to me. I had been crushing on him ever since junior high school PE but we ran in different circles so I never said anything to him. Even now, after ten years of marriage, we still ran in our own circles. Our two groups of friends never mingled together.

None of that matter anymore anyway. He needed to know how truly incompatible we are, how little we really did have in common. I just wanted him to let me go, so I had to use the only thing that would hurt him, "Kaitlyn and I are moving out. I will be in touch to retrieve the rest of our belongings when we get settled."

"Is this what you really want?"

"Yes."

"Then you and Kaitlyn stay. I will leave. No need to interrupt her life because of this. This is her home. She will need her routine to stay as normal as possible in order for her to heal."

"No, Jacob, this is your house." I stood up and headed toward the front door. When I put my hand on the door knob, I turned towards him, "I already have a place to stay and Kaitlyn really loves it there. She has a yard to play in and friends to play with. Everything will be OK with her. I'll make sure of it. I'll be in touch." I then walked out the front door, and never looked back.

-000-

Thank you for reading this. Chapter 1 is being edited (by me) as you are reading this and should be posted soon.

Comments are always welcomed.