This is an idea that I had....I hope you like it. The faster I get reviews the faster I update. Edward leaves in New Moon and doesn't return. Six years later, Bella is engaged to Jacob, and she's genuinely happy. Her thoughts of Edward are limited and vague, like those of a dream. So what will happen when the Cullens reappear in her life? Will six years be undone with just one word from his perfect lips?

Let me know what you think! -Ashley

"Bella, I don't want you to come with me." He spoke the words slowly and precisely, his cold eyes on her face, watching as she absorbed what he was really saying.

There was a pause as she repeated the words in her head a few times, sifting through them for their real intent.

"You…don't…want me?" She tried out the words, confused by the way they sounded, placed in that order.

"No."

Roughly six years had passed since Edward had spoken those words and disappeared from her life. But Bella was happy. More than happy, she was in love. After Edward was ripped from her life, Bella barely survived. But that was the thing about survival, it made you stronger. Bella had remained relatively catatonic for the first six months, dotted only by brief reprieves brought on by Jacob. Her cravings for Edward had lessened and waned until they were more of a dull ache in the back of her thoughts. But they WERE still there.

Falling in love with Jacob had been an accident. Bella wasn't even sure when it happened. His friendship was all that brought her back from the brink of darkness. And he had saved her. More than once.

Bella faced Laurent in the clearing. She actually seemed pleased to see him, to see some reminder of what she'd lost. It was a mistake.

"Look at it this way, Bella. You're very lucky I was the one to find you."

"Am I?" she mouthed, faltering another step back. Laurent followed, lithe and graceful.

"Yes," he assured me. "I'll be very quick, you won't feel a thing, I promise. Oh, I'll lie to Victoria about that later, naturally, just to placate her. But if you knew what she had planned for you, Bella…" He shook his head with a slow movement, almost as if in disgust. "I swear you'd be thanking me for this."

There was a part of Bella that almost wanted to give in. What did she have left to lose, but her life? Laurent moved closer and Bella barely flinched, unconsciously taking a step backwards. She stumbled, her feet betraying her and she was instantly greeted by solid, cold arms. For a brief moment, she actually believed that Edward had come for her. Her confusion was quickly nullified when she felt Laurent's sharp teeth penetrate the flesh of her shoulder. Her body slumped and her vision blurred. In the distance, she heard an animal cry and then everything disappeared.

She had learned later that Sam, Jacob and the rest of the pack had appeared in the clearing. They were too late to save her human life, but her soul was another story. For three days, she was aware of nothing but the burning. Occasionally she sensed the presence of another being, until the third day she thought that it was imagined. As the burning began to subside, she realized that it had been Jacob who had lay with her. She knew the pack would have wanted to destroy her, no matter her connection to Jacob, or Charlie. And so Jacob had saved her again.

Jacob never hesitated. He didn't care what Bella had become. His love for her was innocent and true and was greater than anything he could imagine. If Bella could love him as a monster, he could owe her the same. Their relationship had grown quickly after. There had been difficulties. Charlie for one, the pack for another. But eventually, Charlie had come to terms with Bella's transformation. They had adopted a "don't ask, don't tell" policy. The pack also learned that Bella was no danger to them, especially as she had adapted quickly, hunting only animals. Sam and Leah each considered her a close friend.

Jacob had proposed only recently. His biological age was 21, still three years shy of Bella's. But Jacob looked to be at least 25, and Bella was forever frozen at 19. They were very much the picture of true love. Bella moved to La Push after Billy had passed away the previous year. The house wasn't large, but it was hard for Jacob to be alone. Domesticity pleased Bella. She would cook for Jacob and the pack regularly, and even for Charlie, who had married Sue a few years before. She didn't know if she could have asked for more.

And yet somehow, it was still there. Her love for Edward; vague and dormant in the back of her mind. She didn't think of him. Not often anyway. Her life with Jacob was satisfying and her nonexistent heart felt full, which was quite a feat since she had thought that it could never be repaired. Bella would lay with Jacob, his skin nearly burning hers, until he slept soundly. Then she would slip out of his tight grasp and hunt, or read, or think…it was the nights that she thought that occasionally Edward would come back to her.

Part of the reason that Bella found him to be vague, was that she remembered her entire human life as though it was an intricate dream, shadow filled and hazy. The other part was that she had finally come to understand that he had tried to save her, spare her somehow from what he was, what he thought he was. Edward had not been a villain, despite his urgings to her at the beginning. He would not have hurt her, Bella was sure of that. She thought of those that she loved, knowing that she couldn't hurt them even if she wanted.

The breeze blew suddenly from the sea. From where Bella sat, on the edge of an impossibly steep cliff, she could smell the salt hanging thickly in the air. The sky was the hazy black that always preceded the grayish purple just before sunrise.

"It's always darkest before the dawn," Bella thought to herself, almost laughing at the old adage she'd heard time and time again. But how true that statement was for her. Before she had been turned, she had been miserable, empty….alone. Now she was content. She took an unnecessary, deep breath and closed her eyes. She tried to picture Edward. Even his features seemed hazy to her now. It was only in the darkest, dark of night she allowed herself these thoughts, because all other moments of her life belonged to Jacob. And he truly deserved them.

When Bella opened her eyes again, the sky had turned a dark shade of purple. She banished her thoughts to the back of her head, where she would retrieve them again someday, and returned to the loving arms of her Jacob.

I will be writing longer chapters, but I had to set the story up. Review, let me know what you think and I will update! Thx! -Ashley