A/N- Finally! I have written a Jake/Bella story.

FYI, For the record: In this story Bella has a smart phone. I know she doesn't seem to have one in the cannon books. But p-lease… even when this series was first written (circa 2008) most high school kids had some kind of mobile phone at their disposal. And the Bella I've created in this story most certainly does. It's hers and it's a decent one; with data and stuff.

Right. Enough about telecommunications and more about digital Bibliophilia (I get the irony).

Enjoy…

Marina Namaste.

.

THE RUNAWAYS

Chapter 1- Leaving home

…"you can't imagine how tight I'm bound…"

I didn't like that—didn't like the way his eyes closed as if her were in pain when he spoke of being bound. More than dislike—I hated it, hated anything that caused him pain. Hated it fiercely.

Sam's face filled my mind.

For me, this was all essentially voluntary. I protected the Cullen's secret out of love; unrequited love, but true. For Jacob, it didn't seem that way.

"Isn't there anyway for you to get free?" I whispered, touching the rough edge at the back of his shorn hair.

His hands began to tremble, be he didn't open his eyes. "No, I'm in this for life. A life sentence." A bleak laugh. "Longer, maybe."

"No, Jake," I moaned. "What if we ran away? Just you and me. What if we left home, and left Sam behind?"

"It's not something I can run away from Bella," he whispered. "I would run with you though, if I could."…

(Stephenie Meyer, p.253, New moon)

"Then let's go, Jake. Let's leave. Right now."

His eyes looked over to the window, out to the moonless sky hanging low with clouds. "I can't."

"Why?" I begged, not understanding all the secrecy and mystery. What did these men have over the loving boy who'd given me warm sodas and warmer smiles only a few weeks earlier?

"I can't say. I just… can't," he choked.

"Okay," I nodded, gripping his warm arm as hard as I could. As if my grip could somehow give him some strength to overcome whatever secret he was being blackmailed with. Anger flashed hot inside me. I hated them for what they were doing to my Jacob. I wasn't going to let it happen anymore. I owed this much to Jake. I owed him so much more than simply helping him to run away from his troubles. But it was the best I could do for now.

"You don't have to tell me, Jake. But we're leaving anyhow. We're getting out of here until this thing cools down."

I turned, falling on to my hands and knees as I searched under my bed for my duffle bag.

Jake stood, bare foot at my side, his whole body tremoring. "What?" he asked, as if his mind was focused on a hundred things at once.

"We're leaving," I said with an officious, commanding certainty to my voice that I didn't feel in the slightest. "Even just for a few days." I stood up in time to see the panic in his eyes. "Or as long as you need," I added as a new, desperate hole in my chest opened for the boy who I loved like a brother. It was pulling and aching for him as he stood with nothing but a pair of cut-offs on in my dark bedroom, his changed body was tight with tension and a haunted air. This wouldn't do.

With more finesse and grace than I had ever achieved in my life, I stuffed my duffle bag with clothes as a plan formulated in my head.

I packed warm clothes, comfortable clothes, and the samples of hiking clothes I'd been given by Newton's. I pulled a hoodie over my pajama top and slipped my feet into the sturdiest boots I had. I tied my hair back into a low ponytail, then packed all the toiletries I could fit into my wet bag. All the while Jacob stood, bare foot and half naked in the center of my bedroom. Not helping, but not running—like he look like he wanted to do.

I tiptoed in the dark to the cupboard in the hall, grabbing two towels as Jake still stood, tremoring, half naked, barefoot in my bedroom.

"Do you have a shirt with you, Jake?" I whispered as I re-entered my room.

He shook his head, looking out over the forest outside my bedroom window. "All my stuff's at home."

I looked him over again, his feet and legs were lightly caked with mud, his fingernails were crusted and dirty. He even had a little leaf stuck in the side of his hair. Jake always had those mechanic type, oil stained nails, but this was something else. This was like he'd just run through the rainy forest—barefoot and shirtless.

I reached up and threaded the little leaf out of his damp hair as I looked over his shoulder out the window, to the front driveway. "How did you get here?" I asked, my head shook a little, side to side in confusion. The only cars that I could see in the street were Charlie's cruiser and my truck.

"I ran," he shrugged, like it was a perfectly normal thing to do; to run from one town to the next in the middle of the night. To jog fifteen miles— bare foot and shirtless.

It really, really wasn't.

Whatever Sam and his gang of thugs had over Jake was some messed up stuff. I wasn't going to let it control him anymore.

"I'm gunna get you out of here." My cold vow of liberation whispered through the room. I stuffed the towels into the bag and zipped it. The metallic whiz seemed loud in the quiet night. As I hefted the bag over my shoulder I paused to listen for Charlie's continued snore in the room next to us.

With as light a movement I could manage, I unplugged my cell and wrapped the charger up in my pocket before I tiptoed to the top of the stairs. With a pausing look towards Charlie's closed bedroom door I started down.

"Come on," I whisper yelled to Jacob, pausing on the second step, "Jake!"

Nothing.

I stepped back into my bedroom to find Jacob still standing, bare chested and bare foot in the middle of the floor. My hand found his, it was warm, dry, and tremoring still and I pulled him out the door.

"Come on, Jake. You need to come now. We'll figure this out, we've just got to get out of here first."

Silently, his chest rose and fell as he took a settling breath, he nodded almost indiscernibly and then took the duffle from my shoulder. Hand in hand he followed me down the wooden stairs and out the back door.

…

"Stay here," I whispered as I wedged my fingertips under the large rusting latch that held the hefty timber double doors of the shed closed. With a clink and a low wooden moan, the door opened. The noise echoed into the large space. My footfalls were hollow as I stepped over the assortment of tools and gear my dad had stored back there.

In the distance, far off to the west, the howl of a wolf repeated through the valley, followed by another, then another.

"Bella," Jake hissed from the doorway. "I don't think this is such a good idea." He sounded edgy and nervous. Scared.

"It's the best idea I've had for a long time Jake. Come help me." I waved him over, handing him two bed rolls and a butane cooker from the shelf. As I unhooked a sleeping bag from a hook on the wall I was, for the first time in my life, actually thankful that Charlie was such an avid fisher and camper.

I searched around the mess using the light from my cell to illuminate a small patch of the woodshed. In the far corner, I saw the folded pile of blue tarps and the large rectangular bag of Charlie's deep green polyester tent.

With my eyes trained to the back of the shed, I marched in, blindly getting my foot caught on a strap and tripping on the bar of a weed whacker. With my hands full of sleeping bag and cell phone, I braced, ready to hit the hard, cement ground.

But I never made contact with the floor.

Jake was by my side, his scorching hands holding me by my waist, my face suspended inches from the blade of a snow shovel. I could have sworn he'd been by the door only seconds earlier.

"What are you looking for?" he asked quietly. His voice was deep as he placed me back on two, unsteady feet.

"The tent," I answered, pointing to the polybag in the corner. I lifted the cell in my hand, illuminating the area for Jake to go fetch it more safely than I could.

There was another howl, this time much closer. It was in the forest behind the house. I felt the goosebumps rise on my skin. The animals were wound-up tonight.

Jake paused midstride towards the back wall. He turned, the whites of his eyes bright in the darkness as his tremoring increased. "I have to go Bells," he breathed, not meeting my eye.

"No, Jake don't," I said, stepping closer and holding him as tight as I could by the wrist. "We'll go now. We won't worry about the tent. We'll just go, right now. No one will know. We'll go where no one can find us."

I shoved the cell in my pocket, there was a clink of pots and plastic pesticide bottles as I dumped the sleeping bag on the floor. I reached my hands up, his height was much taller than the last time I'd stood face to face this close to him. My hands gripped at the cropped hair behind him, "I hate this Jake. What have they done to you? What have they got on you?"

"I can't tell you Bells. Trust me, if I could, I would, but I literally can't. You've just got to remember."

"I'm trying. But whatever the reason, Jake, I'm scared for you. I want you to come with me," I urged, pulling at the bare skin of his shoulder.

"It's not going to work Bella," he resisted, my pulling didn't move him in the slightest. It reminded me of the way I could never move Edward unless he wanted to be repositioned. Jake leaned into my side, whispering in my ear, "They'll find me." His voice was of the same as the boy who pointed the gang out to me only weeks earlier, the boy who was worried that he'd be next.

He'd been right.

"You have my word, Jake. We'll drive, and we'll keep on driving. And we won't stop until you're safe. I promise, Jake." My eyes filled with unshed tears. "For everything you've done for me these last few months, and because I love you like you're my brother, I'll keep you safe."

There was another howl. The tenor reverberated through my chest, a fresh chill of goose bumps rose over my skin. Jake choked, his breath caught around his tongue as sweat beaded at his forehead, "If we're going to do this Bells. We've got to go now. No stopping."

"What about your stuff? Your clothes? Shoes?"

He shook his head, his eyes closing in a grimace, "It's now… or never."

"Then let's go," I nodded, picking up the dropped sleeping bags and pushing him towards the doors.

Jacob was like a dead weight with legs. He was incapable of directing himself. He needed exact orders or a physical push in the right direction to move. With my hands full of the equipment I'd managed to find, I tugged him by the hand, towards the truck. Quietly we threw the gear in to the back.

Again there was a howl in the forest out back and Jake visibly jumped, his shaking now easily evident from a few feet away. "Now Bella! We've got to go now, before they find me."

"Get in!" I whispered, trying to find my key in the darkness.

"Don't," he ordered, coming around to the driver's side. He picked me up as if I weighed nothing more than a Pomeranian and placed me in the seat. He leaned over, pulling the parking break off and taking the keys from my fumbling hands. His heat radiated off him, and as his shoulders brushed past, the scent of the forest permeated my senses.

"Steer," he directed as he moved to the hood of the truck and pushed.

Slowly, with the gravel of the drive crunching underneath the tires, the truck rolled out the driveway. Jake jogged around to the back, stopping the backwards motion, and then he pushed.

For half a mile, until we were at the end of my street, Jake pushed my two-ton truck—up. At the top of the street, he sprinted up the side, jumping in as I started the car and took off in third.

I looked over at him once I'd turned into West Street. "How did you do that?"

"What?" he clipped, looking quickly over to me in the darkness, then back out again.

"Push the truck, you pushed it all the way up, by yourself, uphill, at like… ten miles an hour."

I paused, looking over his new found physique. He hadn't even broken a sweat. His muscles seemed to have muscles of their own.

He'd always been kind of built, for a sixteen-year-old, but this was something else. Something unnatural. Something like drugs. And it had all happened in less than a month. Since he'd gone off the grid and started hanging out with Sam and his gang. "Are you on steroids?" I asked, my lips tight, no humor in my tone.

"What?" he asked, feigning misunderstanding. He was hiding something from me. Jake always said I was an open book, a horrible liar and that he could see it written all over my face. Well if that was true, then he was my counterpart. I could read his misdirection, it was in his eyes, his face, and the way he held his shoulders.

"You heard me," I clipped, jerking the car to a hard stop at the give-way sign on Forks Avenue. I turned slightly in my seat, my hands still fisted around the wheel. "Are. You. On. Drugs?"

He scoffed, chuckling darkly to himself. "I wish Bells. I wish it was that cliché."

"Then tell me, how the hell you can push this hunk of rust up that hill, how are you so much bigger in just a month?"

"I can't tell you Bells."

"Why?" I begged, reaching my hand to his, the scorching heat of his skin almost burnt my cold night-chilled fingers.

There was another howl, followed by two more.

Jacob looked out the window, his eyes searching in to the darkness. He rolled his window down and inhaled deeply, like he was smelling the freshness of the forest behind us. With pursed lips and closed eyes, Jake let out a long, pained breath.

Then he turned, his eyes hopeless and scared. "I promise you Bells, I'll figure out a way to tell you, or to help you remember, but we got to go. Now!"

For a beat or two I sat, my clutch pressed in as I idled in neutral, my eyes simply tracing over the lines of his face. His jaw, his cheeks, his lips, his eyes. He really was beautiful. And hurting.

"Now!" he yelled.

I jumped at his panicked harshness, double pumping the clutch and shifting into gear. I rolled into the intersection, not really sure which way to head. "Which way?" I asked.

Jake didn't hesitate. "Right!" he shouted, "Right, Bella! Right!"

I turned, just like he asked, heading south on the one-oh-one. The cool, white brightness from the street lights started to flash through the cabin as we gained speed, it illuminated his face.

I heard his broken whisper as he stared out the window. "We've got to get away from the Res."

A/N: Well, I'm excited, I hope you all are too!

I want to give a big thank you to my Beta, Egratia. She's an amazing editor and brainstormer. Always keeping me on track and in the right tense. She's also my friend. Thanks for you input in this story Les.

Leave me some love if you'd like to see a little more of our runaways.

Hugs, MarinaNamaste