Hi everyone! I've been thinking about writing a Jacob/Bella story for a while now and this idea randomly came to me a few days ago. So I decided to sit down and write, and this is what I came up with. It's a little rough, I apologize for any grammar or spelling errors. This also included a few mild lemons. It's my first time writing them, so I hope they're ok! I was originally going to post this as a one shot, but it was beginning to get a little lengthy, so I decided to split it into a few chapters. This is already complete, though everytime I read through, I add more. I don't think it will be any longer than 4 chapters, but we shall see! Please let me know what you think!

Disclaimer - Stephanie Meyer owns Twilight and her characters. I own nothing! If I did, Jacob and Bella would be together and the wolves would not imprint on 2 year olds. Just sayin! :)

A few things I should mention before reading. Bella is a little OOC, I didn't want to make her drown her sorrows for too long. Imprinting does not exist in my story because for the most part, I hate it. This story is in Bella's POV and is the life that I think Bella should have had after Edward and the Cullens left. It does highlight some of the bigger points in Bella's life and is for the most part a reflection on her relationship with Jacob. It does lead to the Newborn fight.

Enjoy!

Chapter One

When I was 8 years old, my only concern was staying up past bed time or how many times a week my parents took me to the park. I watched cartoons on Saturday mornings with my dad, went grocery shopping with my mom on Sundays, and went to elementary school 5 days of the week.

When I was 13, I was becoming a teenager and getting ready to start high school. It was only the 2nd year after my dad moved out and I was used to a life with one parent. I worried about typical teenage girl things. Boys, grades, friends. At the time, I thought the lessons that I was learning were harder lessons of life. Boy was I wrong.

When I was 17, I moved in with my father, Charlie and started attending Forks High School. This time I was worried about starting over. I was afraid of being the new girl who didn't fit in. It didn't help that my first day of school was everyone else's first day of the third semester.

I fell in love with a vampire just a month after moving to Washington, and in the same year, he left me. Months later, I learned my best friend was a werewolf and hunted vampires. I also realized that there was a good chance that all things I believed to be fake or fairytale truly existed.

Suddenly the worries that I'd had in the past 18 years of my life paled in comparison to the life I lived nowadays.

It was in the last year that I did things I never in a million years imagined myself doing. Isabella Swan from Phoenix lived a safe life, a boring life even. But Bella Swan from Forks, she lived on the wild side. Just kidding! It was more like I was forced to live on the wild side. I wished for a simpler life, but now, looking back… I wouldn't change it for the world.

The year after Edward left, I rode motor cycles, I jumped off cliffs, I spent 99% of my time in La Push with a bunch of overgrown werewolves and I may or may not have fallen in love with my best friend. It had been a long year for me.

10 minutes ago I was forced to make a choice. Standing here now, looking at the two groups of people standing before me, the decision was easy. I was choosing life, or I was choosing death. Fire or ice. I was choosing between the one I could live with, and the one I couldn't live without.

I'm getting ahead of myself, though. Let me start from the beginning.

When Edward left a year ago, I was heartbroken. I cried myself to sleep for weeks. I mourned the loss of not only my first love, but the family that came with it. It crazy to think of vampires as family, but that's what they'd become. I couldn't escape them even in my sleep. They starred in most, if not all, of my dreams, though I could hardly classify them to be dreams. Dreams didn't make you wake up crying your eyes out and gasping for breath.

I barely ate. I got a few hours or restless sleep. I avoided the few people I considered friends at school. I was a mess.

It was exactly 3 weeks after the Cullen's left Forks that I was on the way to La Push with Charlie for dinner at Billy Black's house. I didn't know it then, but it was that day my life changed.

I know now that that day was the first day of really figuring out who Bella Swan was. I wish someone would have clued me in; it would have saved me a lot of blood, sweat and tears. Well maybe not the blood. I hate blood. But plenty of sweat and tears. Anyway, back to the story.

Nothing magical happened during dinner. I ate in silence for the most part, watching Charlie and Billy bicker like old women. I noticed Billy's son smiling at me, and I couldn't help myself, I smiled back. For the rest of the night, I sat with Jacob on the couch, watching movies. I pretended to not notice the look on Charlie's face every time I laughed or smiled at the boy sitting next to me. I don't think I've ever seen Charlie give anyone a hug as big as the one he gave Jacob that night.

After that night at the Black's I started hanging out with Jake fairly often. He'd come to the house, hang out with me most of the day, watch TV with Charlie most of the night and call me when he got home. It normally only took 2 days and I'd be in La Push. It was a cycle.

It wasn't a secret that our fathers were pleased with mine and Jake's friendship. Charlie and Billy weren't very good at hiding their feelings. I didn't mind. I knew it didn't bother Jake either. He was just as happy as them that we were hanging out, if not more. I didn't let it show as often, but I was happy too.

After a while, I realized that I was healing. When I thought about the Cullens, the pain I felt just a few months back over them leaving was gone, and in its place was a very dull sadness. Somewhere deep inside I knew there was a reason for this change, and that the reason had a name.

The summer I spent with Jake was one of the best. We spent nearly every day together. We rebuilt motorcycles. Well, he rebuilt motorcycles. I watched. We watched movies all day, drank warm soda, ate cold pizza. We never got tired of each other. I was happy again.

But not every day was a good day.

Some nights I was shaken awake by a worried Charlie, asking if I was alright. I couldn't tell him that I kept having nightmares about the vampire family that had left me behind, I told him I was fine.

After I started surrounding myself around Jacob for most of my days, the nightmares became few and far between. They didn't completely go away, obviously. The nights that they did make an appearance, I found that the only thing to really calm me down was Jake. Being able to call him in the middle of the night (I really had to thank Charlie and Billy for buying us cell phones) and hear his reassuring words that everything was okay and nothing was going to happen to me, was what kept me going. He promised me he'd always be there for me, and I believed him. That was what helped me to become Bella again. I had to admit… I missed her.

When Jake got 'sick' it was 2 of the worst weeks of my life. Not knowing what was going on was killing me. He promised he would never leave me, and I was terrified that he was going back on that promise.

It didn't take me long to finally get fed up and make the trip to La Push to see for myself how sick he really was. Seeing him outside his house that day, his hair cropped short, a tattoo on his arm and his body completely transformed was hard to swallow. He told me that I shouldn't be there and that I needed to go, but I could see in his eyes that he didn't mean the words that were coming out of his mouth. That was the day I realized my feelings for Jake had shifted.

The ache in my chest on the way home to Forks made me realize that I not only missed my friend. I missed the feeling of his arm draped across my shoulders as we watched a movie in his living room. I missed the way his hand fit perfectly into my own. I missed his random smiley face text messages and his good morning phone calls. I missed my Jacob.

I'd been desperate when he begged me to remember the legends he'd told me the year before. I lay awake for hours the night Jacob showed up in my room, replaying his words over and over before it finally hit me.

I had been up and out of my house at 7:00 that next morning. Somehow I don't think Billy was too surprised to see me.

Learning Jacob was a werewolf was difficult, but not hard to grasp. I had been surrounded by mythical creatures before, being surrounded by them again didn't faze me much. He was still the same boy who had become one of the most important people in my life, just minus the hair and adds on about 100 pounds of muscle.

I found I wasn't surprised to learn that Jake knew what the Cullen's were. He'd been the one to tell me who they were in the first place, albeit he hadn't known at the time, but he sure did now.

I was ecstatic to have my best friend back. Though it had only been 2 weeks, it felt like 2 years. It opened my eyes to how much he meant to me, and while it scared the hell out of me, it excited me all the same.

I could tell our relationship was changing, but neither of us mentioned it. I didn't know for sure but I had a feeling Jake realized it too.

We started doing things together more, if that were even possible. We'd already spent pretty much every single day together before the change.

He took me cliff diving, that was quite the experience. I thought I was going to die that day of a heart attack, but I survived. Just barely. I'm kidding.

Though, the rush of adrenaline you got when you made the jump was amazing, cliff diving was not something I did often. Most days I sat back and watched Jake and the rest of the wolf pack throwing themselves over the steep cliff. On those days I hung out with Leah and Kim.

Leah was a part of the pack and also Sam's girlfriend. I'd become closer to her the more time I spent on the reservation. It also helped that Charlie was best friends with her father, Harry. Kim was Jared's girlfriend and one of the nicest people I'd ever met. It figured I'd been at Forks High School for over a year and barely had many acquaintances, but spend a few months in La Push with Jacob and I'd met some of the best friends I'd ever had.

Things really began to change for me and Jacob around the New Year. The pack was having a bonfire at the beach; most of the reservation had been there that night. I was standing with Leah, Sam and Jacob when the countdown began. I was holding Jake's hand, watching everyone impatiently stare at the sky waiting for the fireworks to start.

At Midnight, with a big smile on his face, Jake had turned to me wishing me a happy new year. Thinking back on it now, I don't remember a single thought that had crossed my mind at that moment, there was so many. I just remember feeling this undeniable pull to my best friend and I didn't want to fight it anymore. So instead of responding, I leaned up on my tippy toes and kissed him.

He hadn't responded right away and just as I was about to pull away and apologize, his hands were on my waist pulling me close and his lips molded around my own.

Now, Jake and I had kissed each other on the cheek countless time, and I'd even pecked him on the lips a few times on holidays but none of that compared to the kiss we shared that night.

His warm lips moved against my own for some of the shortest minutes of my life, his hand was buried in my hair and I couldn't breathe. My lips were tingling when he pulled away too soon, and I missed the feeling of his lips on mine immediately. The smile on his face made my heart race and I knew I was blushing, but I couldn't find it in me to care. Not being able to help myself, I reached up and pulled his face lower and kissed his lips softly for a few more seconds before leaning down to rest my head against his chest.

I didn't notice the stares of almost everyone around us, I don't think Jake noticed either. I know it's silly but it almost felt like the fireworks were just for us. He held me the rest of the night tighter than he ever had, and I loved it.

We didn't talk about the kiss, of course. We were Jacob and Bella, and doing things the easy way was foreign to us. So we danced around our feelings for a few weeks, playing the 'will they, wont they' game until finally one day I attacked. Literally. Thinking about it now is funny, but I was not laughing that night.

Jake and I were in my living room, it was a Friday night and like every Friday night, I was laying on the couch, Jake was sitting on the floor leaning his head back on my thigh and a movie was on. I wasn't paying attention to the movie; I was too busy running my fingers through Jake's short hair. I could tell he liked it, every few seconds he closed his eyes and he'd bite his lower lip. My body was on fire.

Halfway through the movie I got up and made my way into the kitchen. I felt like I was about to spontaneously combust. The sexual tension between us was becoming unbearable.

After taking a long sip of the ice cold water I poured myself, I leaned my hands against the sink and took several deep breaths. After a few seconds I felt calm enough to go back into the living room, I turned and collided with a brick wall. Jacob was standing there, staring at me in concern. I couldn't take it anymore.

"You okay, Bell-" He didn't get to finish his sentence before I threw myself at him. I wrapped my arms around his neck, my legs around his waist and I was kissing him like my life depended on it.

He stumbled back in surprise for a moment before wrapping his arms around me and kissing me back frantically. I was so lost in his kisses that I didn't realize I was sitting on the counter until the front door opened and slammed shut. We jumped apart and I hopped off the counter, smoothing my wrinkled clothing as much as I could before Charlie was calling my name through the house.

Jake turned around just as Charlie walked into the kitchen and I busied myself in the refrigerator, searching for something to cook for dinner. My heart was about to burst out of my chest and I felt like my entire body was flushed.

I could tell Charlie was suspicious by the tone of his voice, but thankfully he didn't dwell on it. Once Jake got himself under control, he distracted my father by asking him how his day went. Charlie didn't look fooled, but he didn't say anything, Thank God.

The looks Jake gave me through dinner had my body humming in anticipation. I knew that things would never be the same between us, and I couldn't wait.

Let me know what you think!