"Bella?" I turned my head at the sound of my name.
"Bella, there you are. I've been looking everywhere for you." Edward's relieved sigh was audible even as he still stood several feet away. "I thought I might find you here."
I was standing at the brink of a stream, my stream, the place that I seemed to be drawn to whenever I needed to be alone. Of course, I never needed time alone from Edward. He was the one person that I had shown my little river to. It wasn't far from my house, but it was tucked away in a corner of the woods that no one else ventured into. A year ago Edward had helped me hack a path for us to more easily find our way.
The stream was beautiful, a lazy bend in the forest, calmly trickling past the tiny sandy beach that nature had deposited in the middle of the woods. The water was always very cold, but it never froze, not even during the winter. However, living in Kansas, the winters were not all that harsh. I took my eyes off the stream to smile at Edward, watching him shake his bronze hair out of his eyes.
"Looking everywhere? It took you fifteen minutes to find me."
"Exactly." He took my hand, and pulled me over to sit on a log. "That's fifteen minutes of our time lost. You worried me when you ran off." He ran his thumb over the back of my hand. I blushed, looking down.
"I can't stand it when they fight. I'm so afraid Edward. What if mom leaves? Or what if dad leaves? What's wrong? Don't they love each other?"
Edward slowly pulled me into his lap, putting his arms around me, cradling me like a very small child. He stroked my hair, humming.
"It's going to be alright Bella. Everything is going to be okay." I put my arms around his neck and cried a little bit. But everything was going to be alright. Edward promised.
We sat there for awhile, listening to the stream as it gurgled contentedly on its tiny way.
"Our parents are going to notice we're gone if we don't go back soon," Edward whispered.
"I don't care." I didn't want to go back to them. I wanted to stay next to my stream with Edward. But I knew that if the adults found out we were missing, them my mom would blame my dad for not watching us closely enough, and my dad would say that was her job, she was the mother, and mom would ask how she could watch us when she was cooking dinner, and so on… Edward was right. We needed to head back.
"Come on," He said, gently planting my feet on the ground and pulling me up into standing. He kept his hand firmly in mine. "Lets go back."
I nodded, mentally bracing myself for the noise of my parents bickering. I hoped that they had stopped by now, but that was unlikely. I looked up into Edward's eyes. They were vibrant green, and comforting. He reached his free hand over to stroke my hair.
"Its going to be okay." He repeated. I smiled, the trust I had for him written in my eyes.
We wandered back into the forest, hand in hand, following the path that was too small for our parents to follow. It didn't matter that I was two years younger than him. We didn't care that we were only seven and nine years old. We didn't care that we were too young for the rest of the world.
We were in love.