AN: hey friends, so this is a new paul/bell story. let me know what you think?

BELLA POV

Déjà vu… Jake had called me this afternoon a week after the movie incident. He said that he was going through things and it would be best, safest, if he didn't see me anymore. Safe. What exactly could be so dangerous that Jake would say the same things that he had said to me? Am I too fragile to be around a 16 year old boy who does nothing but work in his garage all day? My breath caught and my mind started swimming. Was that really why he had told me he couldn't see me anymore? Maybe he was just trying to come up with an excuse not to be around me.

I set the phone down on my dresser and slowly sank to the floor. Who was going to hold me together? I couldn't do it on my own. Sadness started to creep up into my mind and I pushed it away. I couldn't let depression consume me. If I was going to keep going I couldn't let it ruin me again. But I couldn't just ignore the feelings in my chest. In my heart.

So I let something replace the hurt. I let my anger at both of them for abandoning me take over the pain. Anger was easier than what Edward had put me through.

I needed to show Jake just exactly how tough I can be; that pain isn't a big deal and that I'm not a freaking china doll but a living breathing person who can actually take a few scrapes a bruises and come out on the other side. I would find something to prove that I was stronger than he thought.

I grabbed the yellow pages and started to flip through it. Base jumping… that's way too high for my tastes. Cave diving… I don't need to be anywhere near bats, what with the legends about vampires and all.

I laughed out loud at the image of the perfect stone-cold Cullen's morphing into small fragile bats.

Powder-puff football… there are too many girls in that, I would rather hang out on la push than do anything that requires me to spend any amount of time with girls.

I flipped through the entire yellow pages until I found something that was perfect.

I grabbed my coat and my wallet and head out to my rusty old truck. I type in an address into my phone and start driving toward the direction of the reservation.

The whole way there I was psyching myself up. I knew this was gonna be painful but that was the point. I was gonna prove to them and myself that I could take a little pain and come out on the other side.

I slowed down as I pulled up to a small one story house painted a light dingy blue with faded cream colored shutters. I stepped out of my truck and walked up to tentatively knock on the large door.

I waited a few moments before I lifted my hand to knock again when the door opened slowly.

There stood a man leaning lazily against the door that he had just opened. He was wearing only a pair of dark jeans and held a rag that he was using to wipe paint from an extremely roped stomach. At first glance he was just a man with shoulders thick with muscle, dimples that danced along his deep brown skin and thighs that looked like they could bend a steel bar; in one word: hot. But if you looked at him, really looked at him, you could see that as his tongue traced his sinfully full lips with anxiety every muscle in his body was pulled taught with tension. That his eyes brown eyes shone with anger; a fury that burned bright and strong and it would take a hell of a lot to put that fire out. Behind that though, there was the smallest kindling of pain. A kindling that disappeared when he smirked at me and spoke, "yes?" he asked expectantly.

Oh crap! He just completely caught me giving him a great bug eye-fuck. Great.

"Hi," I whispered. Keep it together Bella! You came here to prove that you're tough! "umm… hello," I said louder, "I came to get a tattoo,"

He looked at me and raised an eyebrow at me but then stepped back from the door giving me just enough space to squeeze by but not without my chest brushing up against his.

I walked into the house and was met with a kitchen on one side and a living room on the other. The living room was small but homey, walls lined with beautiful artwork, paintings that scream of anguish warmed over. There was a large black leather couch on one end of room and a giant easel with a canvass on it that had a painting, of an Indian boy with long hair standing on the edge of a cliff with a look of pure joy on his face and his arms wide almost embracing the nothingness ahead of him, halfway complete, "that beautiful," I said gesturing to the unfinished painting.

"Thank you," he said gesturing me towards a long hallway, "it's of my older brother, Jared- well my best friend really; I have just always considered him a brother. We used to cliff dive together during the warmer days of the summer,"

He put his hand on the small of my back as he nudged me into a room. In the room was vanity with an array of plastic containers and vials of colorful liquids on it, a small massage table in the middle of the room and a rolling stool. He looked at the table poignantly and I took a seat on it.

"So what are you looking into getting…?"

"It's Bella, and I'm not quite sure yet, I was hoping to have some ideas by now," he rolled his eyes at me and picked up a small binder from the corner of the vanity and handed it to me. I began flipping through it. As I was flipping through the binder I glanced down at the long scar on the arm that was holding the binder and I knew what I wanted.

"How about a butterfly, maybe a tramp stamp?" he said with a wink.

I closed the book and started scanning the room, "do you have paper and pen?" I asked him

He handed me a white sheet of paper and a cup of colored pencils, and I began to draw what I wanted. When I was finished I handed him the paper, "I want this, over the scar on my arm," I held out my forearm to him.

He glanced at my scar then looked at the paper that held one thing:

He gave a little approving noise and set the paper back on the vanity, "Okay, well I need to make you aware of the fact that tattoos over scar tissue hurt almost twice as much as any tattoo you can get,"

"Good," I said.

He looked at me like I was crazy but he sighed and said, "Okay. Well this is going to be $60 flat and I'm going to need to see some ID,"

I pulled out my wallet showed him my ID and handed him $70. He prepped my arm and then filled a tiny cup, almost like the ones they give you to take communion, with a deep red ink and got to work.

It hurt like hell. Luckily I had endured vampire venom and nothing could touch the pain of burning from the inside out. But it didn't change the fact that I was in pain. I bit into my lip until I tasted blood and held back a scream.

45 minutes and a lot of pain later, he was done and wrapping my forearm in a thing white gauze.

"Thank you, it looks amazing! I'm really happy with it," I beamed. It really was exactly what I needed to prove to them that I was indeed, stronger.

"You were tough, Girl," he said to me, "I've never seen a girl take a needle like you just did," he said a little proud.

I felt heat creep into my cheeks, the tell tale sign of a light blush. He chuckled under his breath and walked out toward the front room.

I stood there staring at the beautiful paintings that lined the wall and an idea came popped into my brain, "do you paint all of these yourself?" I asked. He nodded at me and I quickly asked my next question,

"So I have this really annoying art class that I have to take, not that art is annoying it's just that I'm bad at it, and for my final project I have to paint a self portrait and I was wondering if maybe you could give me lessons. You know kind of teach me the basics of painting? I kind of spaced out the majority of the semester and I have no idea what I'm doing," I finished in a hurry.

He looked at me like he was thinking it over and I added, "And I can pay you obviously,"

"okay." He pulled out a small black touch screen phone, well why don't you give me your number and I will text you so we can work out the details?"

"Sounds good," I said as I saved my number into his phone. I headed to the door but at the last minute I realized something and I stopped, "I feel kind of foolish but I never got your name,"

"Paul. Paul Lahote."

AN: sooo... what did you think. let me know! also im writing a series of oneshot wolf pack smut and i need your guys's prompts in order to write them so give me those also.

love love,

zoe / raivynblack