Disclaimer: I own nothing and am not Stephanie Meyer.

Author's Note: My first straight Twilight fic. I love Twilight so I hope you enjoy this. All the characters are human in this. I'll write vampire Twilight eventually too. Eventual Bella/Edward. This fic is dedicated to Marcia R. (Marcy!) my best friend in the whole world and an incredibly talented girl to boot. I love you.

Chapter One

The rain was keeping me awake. Every time I attempted to close my eyes and sleep, a loud rumble of thunder or a bright flash of lightning would flash across the sky, and I would be wide awake and alert once more. The rain didn't seem to be affecting James the same way it was affecting me. In fact, it hardly seemed to be affecting James at all. He had been asleep for hours and was snoring loudly, loudly enough to occasionally be heard over the sounds of the rain above. Nights like that one, nights where I was condemned to remain awake, I often thought of what had begun my relationship with James in the first place. I had just graduated from Forks High School in Washington State where I had spent my junior and senior years living with my father. Although I was born in Washington, I have actually spent the majority of my life living in other places. Until I was seventeen, I lived with my mother, Renee. I love Renee. In some ways, I am closer to her than I have ever been to anyone else in my entire life. Still, though, there were many times while I was living with my mother that I felt she was the child and I was the adult. All the same, my years with Renee were, for the most part, good ones. We moved a lot and she went through many relationships that didn't work out. Whenever a guy woulf brake up with her or leave her behind, she would turn to me. I would be her comfort, her shoulder to cry on. Sometimes, that was a big responsibility. It was rewarding though. I always felt accomplished when I was able to help her get through a difficult time in her life. My mother has always had a tendency to behave a bit silly and during my freshman year of high school, she met a baseball player called Phil who is now her husband. We were living in Phoenix at the time and I watched, somewhat entranced and somewhat dismayed as my mother fell more and more in love with Phil with each day that passed. When I was a sophomore, they married. Being a baseball player required Phil to do a lot a traveling and frankly, by that point in my life, I was sick of travelling. So, I moved to Forks, the tiny town where I was born, to live with my father. My father, Charlie, is a quiet man, but he is more thoughtful and intuitive than my mother. I actually have fond memories of the years I spent with him as an upperclassman in Forks.

Initially, I detested the town of Forks. It was tiny and the people were mostly shallow, boring. I did make a few friends, but they weren't really people I had much in common with. To be honest, I liked being alone as a teenager much more than most people my age did. In fact, at Forks High there was only one other kid in my class who seemed to be as aloof as I was. We never talked though, he didn't seem to want to talk with anyone. His name was Edward Masen. When I first arrived in Washington, I was, I'll admit it, a bit taken with Edward Masen. To say he was a feast for the eyes is putting it mildly, in some ways, it's an insult to his appearance. Edward is still to this day the most beautiful man I have ever seen. I was fascinated by his dark, quiet attitude and of course, his stunningly attractive appearance. I didn't really know him though. I wanted to get to know him, but every time I would have the opportunity to say something to him, I would lose my nerve. He never actually talked much in high school. I'll bet I can count the number of conversations Edward Masen and I had in High School on one hand. They were all simple conversations and they never lasted long. Edward didn't seem interested in talking with me but I didn't take it personally. Edward wasn't interested in talking with anyone at school. He made the highest grades in the class and was a complete gentleman, but he never went out of his way to be friendly, he was just polite. The other girls in our class detested Edward. They hated him for being so beautiful, so intriguing and so uninterested in them. I didn't blame him for ignoring us though. There was something about Edward that seemed strangely adult, as though he didn't really belong with our age group anyway. Even still, though, I had something of a crush on him until the summer after eleventh grade, when I ran, quite literally, into James.

I still remember the first time I saw him as though it were yesterday. He moved into town with his girlfriend, Victoria, who for some reason or other, had always wanted to live on the West Coast. He was twenty-five, she was twenty-three. I was nearly eighteen. James was a lawyer who had just moved his practice to Seattle but, because Victoria wasn't wild about living in the city, they had purchased a small, one bedroom home in Forks. I didn't pay much attention to them when they first moved in, I didn't think I would end up having much in common with a twenty something couple. A few weeks after they moved into town, I was shopping at the supermarket. On my way out of the store, I wasn't really watching where I was going and I crashed into James who was walking into the store. Needless to say, I was horribly embarrassed. I felt myself blush and knew I must have looked absurd. The red, flushed color of my face didn't match my pale complexion well at all. In fact, blushing usually made me look like a circus clown who had slapped far too much makeup on her face. "I'm so sorry." I blurted out, reaching one hand toward James and running the through my long, dark hair, a nervous habit I have always had.

To my surprise, James smiled and chuckled. "Relax, babe," he said, "No harm done." There was something about James's tone of voice that had any immediate calming effect on me. Within seconds, my heart rate had slowed and I was thinking rationally again. For the first time since he had moved to Forks, I got a good long look at James. He had had a rather unremarkable face, a short blonde pony tail, and an attractive, muscular body. He certainly wasn't a beauty like Edward Masen, but I still found him attractive. There was some hint of kindness in his eyes. I felt at ease in a way I couldn't explain as I gazed at him. At last, he broke the somewhat awkward silence that had fallen between the two of us. "What's your name, Sweetheart?"

There was nothing unusual about this question, nothing at all. Yet, somehow, it still left me tongue tied. James's voice was silky and soft, filled with warmth and, at the same time, a kind of sensuality I couldn't explain. "I'm B..Bella." I replied, unable to ignore the tremble in my own voice, "Bella Swan."

A thoughtful expression crossed James's face. "Chief Swan's kiddo, eh? Nice to meet you. My name is James Brun. My girl Victoria and I live on the north side of town." For the first time, I felt my insides twist. I didn't recognize it at the time but I was already beginning to develop a kind of jealousy of Victoria and rightly so, I would have much reason to be jealous of her in my future. James smiled at me and said, "Ah, Tori is a looker, there's no two ways about that. She's got a temper crazy enough to match her hair. I used to believe that the whole redheads have a bad temper thing was just a stereotype until I met her. Of course, I love her temper, her spirit, but occasionally, it bothers me. I have to get away from it. What about you? Do you ever want to get away from people you care about?"

I was surprised. James had turned the conversation around and made it about me again. I have to admit, I was quite happy that James seemed to want to know about me. To be honest, I think that's what drew me to him in the first place. He seemed to care and many people in my life didn't. My friends at school wanted to talk about themselves, about the relationships they were having, the grades they were making, and whatever else interested them at the time. Charlie never seemed to want to talk. I knew he loved me and I did love him, it's just that I couldn't imagine telling my secrets to him. The prospect of confiding in Charlie was, well, scary. I couldn't picture it. Throughout my childhood, I had always confided in Renee and she had confided in me. There was a certain sense of trust between the two of us that I had never experienced with anyone else. But then, she had met Phil and Phil more or less replaced me as my mother's number one person. After I had gone to live with Charlie, I had lost the person I could open up to. That's where James came in. From the day I ran into him at the supermarket on, he became the person I could talk with. That day, he asked me all sorts of questions about myself. He asked about my values, about what I found important in life. We ended up walking through Forks with him asking me questions and seeming to genuinely want to know the answers to each and every one of them. I can still remember the way he used to concentrate on me, as if I were all that mattered to him at that moment. James knew how to make me feel special like no one else. He treated me as an equal, as an adult who's opinion mattered every bit as much as anyone else's. At first, I considered him a really good friend. He would come and see me sometimes after school and we would go and get something to eat and, when he asked, I would tell him about my day, leaving nothing out. Once, a few months after we had begun out friendship, I confessed that I didn't find myself very physically attractive. I had always been too pale, too unremarkable for my own tastes. When I said this, James's expression had clouded and he had whispered, "No, Bella, no."

We had been sitting in a little burger joint in town. Charlie was at work. Most of the town knew that James and I had begun to talk, but if they thought much of it, they didn't say anything. I think most people believed it was innocent. They thought James was looking out for me, like a big brother or a cousin would. Initially, they were right, but things changed in a hurry. When James spoke those words, I looked up, feeling a kind of shock come over me. "What do you mean?" I asked finally.

"I mean that you are physically attractive, Bella." He replied without missing a beat, "You're beautiful. Don't ever underestimate yourself. I don't want to hear you underestimate yourself. Am I clear?"

Stunned, I nodded. There was such passion in James's voice that I was taken aback. He continued. "Bella, there is no one more beautiful than you. I know I have known you no more than a few months, but you've changed the way I look at things, my perspective, if you will. I have something important to tell you today. Last night, I ended things with Victoria." An audible gasp escaped my lips. James ignored it. "I couldn't go on being with her, not when I can't stop thinking about you. The way I see it, you only get one life. A man should have the right to make that life as good as it can be. You're what is going to make my life wonderful, Bella. I am willing to wait for you as long as you want me to wait. When you get out of high school, I'll keep up with you. I want to be near you. Please Bella, please make me happy."

Young and impulsive as I was, I immediately responded to his words by grasping his hand and demanding to know if he truly felt the way he claimed to feel. My head was swimming. He had left Victoria? Beautiful, wild Victoria, for me. Me who was not nearly the woman Victoria was. Me who could scarcely be called a woman at all. I later realized that this was exactly why James had wanted me in the first place, because I was a child, because I was innocent and silly. But at the time, I knew nothing of the sort. I was eighteen and I was stupid. I was going to pay for my rash behavior, for my ignorance. In the end, once all was said and done, there would be only one person I could lean on, one person I could turn to. This is the story of my decent into darkness and the sweet angel who lifted me up and turned me away from it. Without him, I would have been, and still to this day would be nothing.