Twilight and its characters belong to Stephanie Meyer

A rush of bubbles trailed up towards the surface as I was pulled down into the water by the human hand around my ankle. Putting my hands over my ears, I shouted Bella's name into the abyss, stupidly using up my breath to do so. I pulled my knee up to my chest, kicked where I thought the mermaid might be, and was proud to have made contact. The hand released me, but I was only able to swim a few feet towards the surface before another hand grabbed my hair. I was already running out of air as it dragged me further below. I tried to kick again but missed. Suddenly, I was free, and my arm was pulled around a pair of slight shoulders. This time, the creature brought me up with the trail of bubbles, towards the surface.

I breeched like a goddamn dolphin, spitting out ocean water and gulping down air. Bella grabbed my chin to look into my eyes, and I was relieved to confirm that she was the one tucked under my arm. She checked for something in my eyes and seemed satisfied that she had found it. She made sure I was properly breathing before she wrapped her other arm around me to swim us back to the shore at mermaid speed. Abruptly, she let go and clamped her hands over my ears, pushing my tragus in with her finger. I was about to ask where the mermaid was when I felt one crawl her fingers up my back and into my hair.

Bella glared furiously over my shoulder and spoke. She threw me a demanding look and I immediately knew to replace her hands over my ears with her own. Then, she shoved me out of the way towards the shore and tackled her sister into the hidden depths of the ocean.

"Bella!" I cried out, stupidly. I was about to dive down to rescue her before I realized that I was being rescued. If I were to hear one of how ever many mermaids utter a single word, I would be dead, and Bella was giving me an opportunity to escape and survive. I had to take it. Repeatedly reminding myself that Bella was strong and capable and wanted me alive, I swam back to shore as quickly as I could. The shore was much further away than I had anticipated, and by the time I had made it to sand, I was basically dragging myself out of the water. Worn and out of breath, I forced one, final push to get to my bag where I kept my iPod and headphones. I shoved the headphones into my ears and cranked the volume like Bella had done before to drown out any voices that might have followed me to shore.

I whirled to face the water. No mermaids had followed me, a fact that was both relieving and devastating. Bella should have been right after me. Suddenly, I felt sick. How could I have left the girl I loved to fend for herself like that? There was nothing I could do for her here on shore and even less I could do if I swam back out to try to find her. I sank to my knees into the sand, uselessly scanning the ocean for Bella or one of her sisters.

The sun had sunk fully under the horizon when a small, dark figure crawled out of the ocean a few yards from me. Hope swelled in my chest. "Bella! Bella?"

The mermaid was still in her ocean form, breathing heavily. I dashed across the shore to get to the mermaid's side and crouched before her.

"Bella," I whimpered in relief when I could see that it was, in fact, my love.

As I reached to brush her hair over her shoulder, Bella lunged at me. Alarmed, I fell backward into the sand and scrambled away from her. Lip curled over her teeth, the warm depth of her eyes replaced the cold blackness of her sisters'. She might have even growled, but I couldn't hear over the music. It was the first time I truly saw my girlfriend as the bloodthirsty, oceanic predator she was.

Whatever had come over her vanished, and Bella immediately regarded my fear with horror. Her beautiful eyes melted back into chocolate, and she crawled over to me to take my face in her hands. Under her soft touch, I wheezed an exhalation.

"Okay," I whispered as her thumbs continuously stroked my cheekbones. I wasn't sure who I was comforting at that moment—her or me. "Okay, it's okay."

I stared deep into her deploring eyes for a long moment before I thought to remove my headphones. Once my iPod was off and the headphones were tucked safely into my pocket, I brought my hand up the cup Bella's cheek, just as she was holding mine. "I'm okay," I assured us both, "I'm okay."

My thumb traced a pool of wetness under her jawline that should not have been there. Suddenly alarmed, I moved my hand to her chin and angled her face so I could see. My breath caught in my throat as I revealed the three deep, angry gashes that barely missed her neck.

"Oh, Bella!" I gasped, "Oh, no, Bella!"

She took my hand away from her face and signed, "It's fine."

"No, no." I sat up on my knees to get a better look at the cuts. "No! it's not, baby."

"It'll be fine." I was already helping her stand, so I didn't quite know what she signed, but I assumed it was something to that extent. She didn't seem nearly as alarmed as she should as a person with a jaw gushing with blood should be.

"I need to take you to the hospital…" I whirled, trying to find my bearing and the fastest way to a vehicle.

Bella forced me to look at her and her hands, "I can't go to a hospital."

"Bella, you might need stitches!"

"What do you think would happen if I went to the hospital? I'm not human."

The longer I thought through that scenario, the more I wanted to scream. She would get discovered and sold or killed if she went to a hospital. My wheels in my mind spun out as they tried to come up with a viable solution. "Fine. I'll take you to Carlisle, then. He'll do it."

"You don't think he'll ask questions?"

God, she was right. He wouldn't just sew up my girlfriend at the house instead of a hospital without asking any questions. He probably wouldn't even have supplies. Just because he was a doctor didn't mean he took a sewing kit wherever he went.

Frustrated and defeated, I brought my hands up to my hair. My beautiful, bleeding girlfriend gently rubbed my elbows and coaxed my hands into hers. She kissed my knuckles, then my palms before she released my hands to sign, "I promise you that I'm going to be fine. You're going to have to trust me."

My hands fell limps against my sides.

Of course I trusted her—I trusted her with my whole heart.

What I didn't trust was the swarm of mermaids hidden in the dark depths of the ocean.

"Will I see you tomorrow?" My own voice sounded strange to me—it sounded like one of a sad, lost child. I hadn't heard that voice in years.

She nodded and pulled my chin down so she could reach my lips.

As she turned to leave, I wanted—so badly—to say I loved her, but I didn't want to relive that moment of the night again. Instead, I said nothing as she waded back into the waves.

oOo

My heart, already heavy and sunken in my chest, managed to dig a bit deeper when Bella wasn't perched on a stool in the kitchen the next morning. Then again when she wasn't waiting for me outside of my homeroom. By lunch, it had dug so low, it felt like it was at the bottom of the sea, like where my mermaid might be.

I had grown used to Bella disappearing for a day or two when she needed to be alone, but I couldn't brush off her absence so easily. Not today. Too much had gone wrong in the past forty-eight hours. Worse than my unrequited love for her, or Lauren's discovery of her aversion to water, Bella could be floating lifelessly in the ocean right now, and there would be no way for me to find out, let alone do anything about it.

Hopeless and miserable, I held my head in my hands.

"Hey."

I jumped at the sound of Angela's familiar voice.

I stared blankly as she sat down across from me, as she would any other day. With my mind whirling with mermaids, I had genuinely forgotten she existed. It took me a few extra beats to greet her back like a normal human being.

"Are you okay?" she asked. "You seem a bit… distracted." It was the polite way of telling someone they looked like they were completely off their rocker. Which I was sure I did.

"Yeah, yeah."

She pursed her lips but didn't pry—it was one of the best things about Angela. "How was the concert?"

The question was obviously meant to be a distraction. Little did she know, it was the jump start to my horrific weekend that led me to where I was, and I didn't want to respond.

"Fine." It was probably the best way to describe the evening. Like I knew she would, she didn't push with any follow-up questions. However, her innocent question did raise a few of my own. I watched her as she took a bite of pudding, wondering if her demeanor was one of someone who had recently rejected their best friend.

She scrutinized my scrutiny. "What?"

"How was your weekend?"

"Fine," she chirped, innocently.

I opened my mouth to ask her to elaborate, but she beat me to it, posing another question to bring the conversation back to me. "Where's Bella?"

"I don't know." I accidentally let my utter hopelessness due to that fact seep into my tone, alerting Angela to my distress. She put down her lunch and immediately glanced around the courtyard, hoping she could spot Bella and alleviate my pain.

"Have you seen her today?"

"No," Angela responded regretfully. My expression must have visibly dropped, because she quickly tacked on, "But I usually don't see her until lunch, anyway."

"Yeah, same." I glanced at the entrance to the courtyard for the thousandth time, naively hoping for a miracle, and Bella would walk through it, unscathed and smiling.

"It'll be okay," Angela reached across the table to pat my forearm. "She gets into these moods sometimes, right?

"Yeah." I closed my eyes. "Sometimes."

"And she always comes back."

I wondered if Angela would have the same simple, positive outlook if she saw the three scratches on Bella's jaw or knew that she didn't love me back. "It might be different this time, is all."

"Is it because of…" she stopped her sentence short by taking a bite of food.

When she didn't finish her thought, I encouraged her to continue, "Is it because of what?"

Angela looked down and picked at her grapes, "Oh, I shouldn't gossip."

In every other scenario, I would have appreciated Angela's high moral standing, but when my mermaid girlfriend was seemingly missing, I couldn't appreciate anything.

"Is it because of what?" I repeated, slowly losing my grip.

Instead of answering, Angela bit her lip and looked about. She spotted something that triggered an idea. "Ask your sister! She has the same classes as Bella, right?"

Just like I had forgotten about Angela, I had forgotten about Rose. Clearly, I was useless in stressful situations, only able to dwell on the worst possible scenarios instead of making any sort of logical deductions. Rose would know for sure if Bella was in school. Even though I had no idea what I was going to do with the information besides possibly breaking down and crying, I stood and crossed the courtyard to where I knew Rose sat with her friends.

"Hey, Rose," I stood behind her, feeling more like an awkward little brother than I ever had.

"Edward," she offered, stiffly turning around. Rosalie had set up clear boundaries when we were in school since day one. She never drove me to school, or offered to show me around, or introduced me to anyone. In her mind, at school, we were strangers, which usually suited me just fine. I spent all my life on my own and didn't need to be coddled. But today, I needed my big sister.

"Is Bella in school today?"

The table grew silent as the people sitting around it stopped talking to share sympathetic looks that brought my stomach crashing to the floor. Rosalie was the first to compose herself. "She didn't try to find you?"

"No," I shook my head. The relief that came with the fact that Bella was in school was short-lived, as worry quickly shifted into dread. "I haven't seen her. Is she still here?"

Rosalie licked her lips and tucked them into her mouth, considering. "If she hasn't tried to find you, yet, I think she wants to be alone."

If she hasn't tried to find me? What the hell was that supposed to mean? "Is something wrong?"

"No," Rose responded quietly, in a tone that very much meant yes, and my heart sputtered.

She had been discovered. It was the only thing that made sense. Lauren had spread the rumor about Bella and water, and someone jumped to the right conclusion. As I stood here panicking, Bella was probably being sold to the highest bidder where she would be put on display or experimented on in a lab or… or… destroyed.

"Do you know where she is?" I asked, helplessly.

Genuine concern softened Rosalie's features as she geared up to say no again. The girl next to her—the girl Rosalie liked—spoke up. Her voice was deeper than most, but warmer than most, as well. "She didn't leave class to come to lunch with the rest of us. She might still be in the classroom, or went home."

I really hoped it wasn't the latter; I wanted to see her. The girl told me what room their last class was in, as well as their next class in case Bella decided to go there early. I thanked Rose's friend—who told me her name was Leah—and left the courtyard in hopes of finding Bella.

There was no sign on her in the first nor the second room, meaning she might have gone home already. On my way to the ancillary parking to check for her truck, I spotted that guy with the douchebag ponytail looming over someone against the side of the building. My gut told me exactly who he would be harassing, and I figured why not? Why not tack this onto the list of things gone wrong? At least I could stop this one.

They were beside a side exit to the building, like Bella had been attempting to make an escape when this asshole intercepted her. Douchebag Ponytail had his hands on either side of her head, whispering into her ear, while Bella cringed away as far as she could while pressed up against a wall. Her face was pinched—her eyes squeezed shut and her lips tucked into her mouth.

When he took her chin between his fingers, I just about lost it. "Back the fuck off!" I snarled.

"Cullen!" James stood upright, unashamed of getting caught. "Your girl here was just giving me a proper thank you."

I ignored him completely.

I stepped between him and Bella, shielding her with my body. "Are you alright?" I whispered.

She nodded her head.

The little liar.

Before I could unpack this whole thing with James and whatever Rose was being weird about, I wanted to check on her cuts. I spent a decent portion of my night convinced that she was going to get an infection and die, so I needed to nip that irrational fear in the bud. Her ponytail was draped over her shoulder, blocking my view. When I went to brush it to the side so I could get a better look at her jaw, she caught my hand and pushed it away.

We were inching closer to my limit with every passing second. I pushed down my irritation and forced a calm voice. "Bella, please show me the cuts." She could do that one thing for me, right? She might not return my love or tell me why her sisters tried to drown me, but she could show me that her cut was healing properly.

She flushed. "It healed."

"What?"

"It healed," she signed slower, like it was only the signs I didn't understand.

I clenched my jaw—she was hiding something from me. "Then, let me see," I demanded.

"No."

From the corner of my eye, I could see James was still lingering far too close for my liking. I never wanted to fight with Bella, especially with a spectator. Taking a deep breath, I pinched the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger.

I lowered my gaze to hers once more and tried again. "Please, Bella?"

Something in my voice or my face convinced her to comply. Very tentatively, she pushed her ponytail back and rose her chin up, like she was asking for a kiss. It was the first time where I was looking for something other than that. I ducked down and searched the area below her jaw that was bleeding with three, deep scratches less than twenty-four hours ago. She was right. Her creamy skin was unmarked. There was no sign of a cut—or even a scar, for that matter.

"How—," I began to ask, but a glob of something on the side of her neck caught my attention. "Bella, what is that?"

She tucked her chin into her neck and threw her ponytail back into place, hiding whatever it was from me. I placed my hand on her shoulder to force her to stay still while I got a better look, but came into contact with something on her shoulder blade that wasn't skin. Horrified that it might be blood again, I snatched my hand away and inspected it. It wasn't blood—that was immediately clear. It was white. When I spread my fingers, the sticky substance pulled with them. I gave the substance a sniff, and it smelled sickly sweet, like it was pure sugar.

"Marshmallow fluff?" I asked no one in particular. "Baby, you don't eat this stuff, how did you get it on you?"

I gingerly placed my clean hand on her shoulder to turn her and to inspect what I just got on my hand, but she flinched away from me, hiding whatever it was.

We found my limit. She couldn't bother to love me back, or inform me that she could heal so quickly to save me from a night of heartache, or reveal what her sisters wanted from me. And now she was hiding whatever this was from me. Anger I hadn't experienced in years flared. "Bella, what's on you!?"

She said nothing. And that was no longer an acceptable response.

Despite her silent protests, I pulled her shoulder forward, revealing marks on the back of her arms all the way to her shoulder blades. Not marks like bruises or cuts, but the remains of various substances. It looked like someone had used Bella's back for finger painting.

"What happened!?"

She tried to turn and hide it from me, but I forced her to stay put, almost roughly. Some of the shapes were full handprints, so I knew someone had done this to her. The sizes of the handprints were too irregular to just be from James. "Who the hell touched you!?"

She pushed my hand off her and shoved me back.

The flicker of anger erupted into a full fire, "So, it's not okay for me to touch you, but everyone else can!?"

She scowled back furiously.

"She didn't put up a fight with me," James said in a tone that begged me to maim him right there, right then. "I think she might prefer if my hands were on her."

"Stay the fuck away from her," I hissed.

He chuckled darkly. "Can't seem to help myself. You've managed to find the perfect woman." I cringed at the wet smacking sound of his tongue licking his lips. "Keeps that little body tight and that mouth shut tight."

We rocketed past my limit.

In one, fluid motion, I spun on the balls on my feet and punched James right in the face.

Another one of my 'everything falling apart at once' chapters. I love these so much. Unlike Eclipse, the next chapter for this is almost done. It'll be up by next week. I promise.