"Bella!" I cried.

Without telling my body to do so, I shot up from the picnic blanket and rushed to close the distance between my mermaid and me. My feet hit the water. I took two large steps and dove straight into the waves. When I broke the surface of the water, I was met by the most beautiful face I had ever seen in my life. Without hesitation, I took her into my arms. As I wrapped my arms under the tail and around her waist, she wrapped her arms around my neck.

And there I stood. In the middle of the ocean. Dumbstruck.

For months, I feared I would never see her again. First, because of my own ignorance. Then, because of our separation. To have her in my arms again felt nothing short of a dream.

"Bella," I marveled. I brushed her wet hair back so I could see her entire face, "God. I wanted to say you look pretty, but you, Bella, are breathtakingly beautiful." She blushed; I melted. "I thought of you every day… I thought I remembered your face…" I studied her beautiful face, hoping to memorize the details of her perfection that my memory had missed. The sharp intelligence that deepened the color of her chocolate eyes. The exact curve of her soft, pink lips, perfecting their shape. The shade of pink that hinted at a blush on her cheeks. I shook my head in utter disbelief, "No memory has done you justice."

She smiled gratefully and pressed her lips to my jawline. She notably did not speak. Not that I cared in the slightest. I never needed to hear her voice; I only needed her. And I would take her any way I could get her.

"May I?" I nodded my head towards the shoreline, indicating I wanted to take her out of the water.

She nodded.

I took my time wading through the water. I rubbed my thumb along the scales of her tail, cold, slick, and oddly alluring. It never went unnoticed that I held a literal fantasy in my arms, and today felt exceptionally magical. With each step, I placed a kiss on the spot between her eyebrows, letting my lips linger against her skin for the next kiss. I tightened my grip on her as I lifted her out of the water—even after all this time, the weight of her tail was clear in my memory. I took the same steps up the shoreline as I took a dozen times last spring when we were together.

I tried to set Bella down on the blanket, but the tight hold she maintained implied that she had no interest in separating. So, I kept her in my lap as I sat down, awkwardly and without any grace, but we managed. Each week, I brought two towels—one to wrap her in, and one to drape across my shoulders. The opportunity to finally use them was even a thrill. She released her hold on me briefly to help with the towels but latched back on the second she could.

In my embrace, Bella curiously surveyed the picnic. The record still spun on my portable player. The small, electric tea candles flickered their unrealistic LEDs in the evening light. I suddenly regretted the choice to stop bringing food each week.

"I won't be able to feed you shrimp, but I still have these." With one hand, I opened the picnic basket and pulled out the bouquet of flowers. This, at least, I did not need to scale back on. I would have to pick up a second bouquet for Esme now that she was used to receiving them each week, but it was well worth it to see Bella's face alight with the memory.

It took a major effort on her part to unclasp her grip from around my neck to take my offering. She traced her fingers along the petals of each flower—the green hydrangeas, the white lilies, the blue irises. The flowers made me think of the sea, and of Bella. She sniffed them adoringly then threw her arms around me once more, whacking me in the back of the head with the bouquet. I chuckled at her shy, apologetic smile. She was too cute. It felt as if I hadn't smiled in months. Now, I couldn't seem to stop.

"So, I take it you got my note?"

She quirked her head.

"One of these?" Balancing her in my lap, I reached across the sand to grab the bottle left at this beach, in case she returned when I wasn't present. "You didn't get one from Charlie?"

She shook her head.

"Then how did you know to come here?"

She pointed to the portable record player.

I wanted to laugh. All the energy put into a wasted effort.

The bouquet of flowers plopped on the ground behind me, and she held out her hand for the bottle, which I gave her. Holding it up to her face for a close inspection, she opened it. It took a few tries and some help from me, but she eventually got the message out and unfurled it.

Bella,

My heart has been yours since the moment I saw you. I offered it to you then, and now I am asking you for the chance to offer it again.

Please join me for a picnic. Sunday at sundown. Do not worry about receiving this message too late. I will be there. I will wait for you forever.

Yours, Edward

She ran her wet fingers over the small piece of paper, smudging the ink.

"Believe it or not, that was my twentieth attempt." I had never been the best at words. And the desperation made me even less eloquent.

Her shoulders shook with the silent laughter I adored and missed so much. She rolled to the piece of paper carefully and kept it in her hand as she wound her arms back around my neck. When she was settled once more, she looked up at me with deep, imploring eyes.

"I've waited on this beach for twelve Sundays now. I would have waited longer," I told her honestly. She held onto the note, but I took back the bottle. "I put these at all your beaches. I gave one to Charlie. I even threw them into the ocean… It felt ridiculous, but I was desperate."

I could read the questions in her eyes. Part of me wanted her to voice them, but I didn't want to push her.

"I needed to find you. I had to apologize."

For what? The quirk of her head and the furrow of her brow seemed to ask.

"For doubting you. For letting everyone else break my faith in you. I got it all wrong. I'm not in love with you because I'm under your spell. I'm under your spell because I'm in love with you."

Her perfect lower lip trembled; her brow crumpled in sorrow.

"I love you," I repeated over and over, pressing my nose into her hair, her neck. The most I said it, the more I knew it to be true. I loved this perfect creature with everything I was, from the start. "I love you."

"I love you, too," she spoke aloud.

I bolted upright.

Her voice was quiet. Uncertain. Accented strangely from disuse.

But I still heard it.

We stared at one another in shock. She hadn't expected to speak either. Her hand clamped over her mouth. We stayed perfectly still as we waited for her magic to seep into my heart and fill it with the inexplicable desire to walk into the waves with no intention to walk back out.

But just as I expected, I had no urge to be anywhere than where I was right now. Arms wrapped tight around the love of my life.

Bella realized it when I did, that I was perfectly fine. She unclamped her mouth and brought her hands up to my face. Her lips twitched up into a small smile.

"Edward."

My name.

She said my name.

I choked with satisfaction. I hadn't caught my breath before her lips were on mine again.

"Say it again," I gasped between kisses.

"I love you, too, Edward."

I tilted her head back to deepen the kiss. She made the softest sound of pleasure. It was so sweet. I realized I could hear all her sounds now. I tested her, trying the elicit different sounds with different touches. I hovered my lips over hers to hear her whimper. I squeezed her bottom to hear her gasp. I kissed the hollow of her throat to hear her moan. When we reluctantly broke apart, we were both panting heavily. Another of her sounds was added to the list.

She placed her hand over my heart, reverently. "I was so sure you had taken it back."

"Never," I swore, tightening my hold on her. "My heart will always be yours."

"You were so hurt…" the quiet words broke. I rubbed my thumb down her neck, as if my touch could soothe her voice, "So angry with me…"

"I know. I was..." I shook my head, still furious with Lauren. When the word got out that her lie caused the orphan to dump his disabled girlfriend, Lauren became somewhat of a social pariah. She quit the coffee shop and Angela dropped her as a friend. I barely saw her nowadays, even in passing.

"But, it was never you. It was unfortunate timing. I think if things happened one at a time, we could've worked everything out… but..." With a deep breath, I shook my head. "Alice and Jasper broke up, and I let her get in my head. And then Lauren was mad at us because we got her in trouble at the coffee shop, so she lied to me. She told me she saw you speak to James."

Bella's beautiful eyes widened in alarm. "I would never…"

"I know, I know. I should've never believed her. I was mostly scared that he hurt you and you had to defend yourself. So, I came here to ask you about it…"

Bella slumped against my chest, understanding where my story was headed. "And you ran into my sisters."

"And I ran into your sisters," I echoed. At the worst possible time. "They told me you manipulated me, stole my heart, I was ready to believe what you said. I honestly wanted to work things out with you. But Alice's heartbreak was fresh in my mind, and I thought I needed to test your loyalty. And I thought I had the perfect test…" But, of course, that test had been based on a lie.

"They weren't lying," Bella admitted, regretfully. "Not really."

"But they weren't telling me the whole truth, either, baby. They purposely left out a very significant detail." In which Bella's magic worked the same way if a heart was given to her, rather than stolen.

"They weren't lying, because they didn't know."

I found that hard to believe, but I let Bella continue without voicing my opinion.

"That night, when we first ran into Alana, she congratulated me on my human pet. When I explained to her that our relationship was mutual, she said it was that it was impossible. That you could never love me. She truly believed what she said, but I thought she was only being mean, so I didn't think anything of it."

"I love you," I reminded her, earning a smile.

"My sisters have always been so cruel. I figured they saw the one happiness in my life and wanted to take that from me, too. Never once did I think they were actually trying to help."

"Well, drowning me and scratching you doesn't exactly scream good intentions," I noted, tracing the place on her face where Bella's sisters cut her.

Bella smiled briefly. "And after that… that…"

Fortune frowned upon us as Lauren decided to bully my sweet Bella, which led to James assaulting her… "I know," I whispered. To this day, my fists clenched in anger whenever I thought about the way I found Bella: cringing away from James' looming figure, covered in gunk her classmates put on her to test Lauren's theory of Bella's fears. Everything about that week had been awful, and there was no need to speak of it.

"You asked me to stand up for myself, and I did. For you." She ran her fingers through my hair. "Putting Lauren in her place felt so great, and I wanted to do the same with my sisters. I wasn't going to let them touch you ever again, no matter what. I swam right up to my mom, made my demands, and she actually agreed." Bella still seemed shocked over that fact.

I recalled what her sisters told me. How they continued to torment Bella over the fact that she didn't understand what was happening to us, despite the fact that they hadn't explained themselves properly. "But you thought they were still going to hurt me."

"I did." Her fingers curled into the hair at the base of my neck. "I was terrified they were going to hurt you."

I had been right, after all. Bella's unbearable clinginess was a result of her sisters' threats.

"I wish you had talked to me about this," I said, honestly.

"I know." She tightened her hold on me again, almost painfully so. "I'm so sorry."

"Why didn't you?"

"I was scared and confused."

"Which are the exact two things I would like to help you not be."

"I didn't understand why they wanted to hurt you. I was terrified it would be too much, and you wouldn't think it was worth it."

"You are worth everything to me, Bella. The work I put in to get you, is the same amount of work I'm going to put in to keep you. I would have jumped through every, single loop to stay with you. I still will."

"You love me more than I deserve."

"I disagree," I pressed a kiss to her temple. My lips on her skin reminded us both that we were really, truly together once more. She pulled on my neck to bring my mouth to hers.

By the time we were ready to return to the conversation at hand, I had Bella on her back. We looked down at our tangled legs and shared our first laugh out loud together. Hers was shaky, breathy, uncertain. And undoubtedly the most beautiful sound of them all.

We untangled ourselves, and sat back up. I opened my arms for her, welcoming her back into my lap. She graciously obliged.

"What brought you to believe your sisters?"

The day on the beach with her sisters, Bella had been horrified to discover they were right, but immediately understood what had happened. At some point, she must have figured out the truth.

Her sweet face warmed with a pink blush. She switched back to sign language, clearly too embarrassed to say the words out loud. "We had sex."

Bella's blush deepened into a deep shade of red. I, too, felt my ears warm.

"You… lost yourself in me when you were inside. I could tell you had no control over yourself."

I opened my mouth. "Was it… bad?" As soon as I asked the question, I wanted to take it back. My performance should have been the furthest thing from my mind.

"No, it was actually quite nice," she smiled shyly. That was nice to know. "You were perfectly attuned to me in every way. But I could tell it was… unnatural."

That was a bit embarrassing.

"It wasn't your fault," she assured me, speaking out loud once more. "My mom told me it's what happens to humans we've… overcome."

We both blushed deeper. The music faded out just then, and Bella and I were left in silence until the next song started.

"Is it something we can…" I wasn't sure what the right word was. Fix? Practice? Change?

"Yes," Bella answered, correctly guessing my unfinished question. "It's something you'll have to get used to."

I did not mind the idea of slowly attuning my mind and my body to have sex with Bella. "Did your mother tell you that?'

"No, of course not," she scoffed. It was the first scoff I heard out of her—her voice cute when she was annoyed. "My mother told me she never kept any man alive long enough to find out."

I hid my grimace from Bella. She was nothing like her mother; I knew that.

Bella raked her fingers through my hair. "I met another clan of my kind. They told me that."

"Charlie mentioned that."

"You saw Charlie?"

"I did. I gave him one of these," I let go of her for only a moment to gesture to the bottle, and immediately replaced my hand around her waist. "He said that you saw him."

She read the message between the lines: I knew she came here without reaching out to me. "I'm sorry, Edward."

It was the first time she said my name casually. I couldn't get over how much better it sounded on her lips than anyone else's.

"It's okay," I said, when I could speak again. "We were broken up."

Even with my forgiveness, she ducked her head with misplaced guilt. I encouraged her to continue the conversation, "What was this other clan like?"

"They were wonderful," she sighed, adoringly. "They lived on a tiny island in Italy. They never ate a single person."

"That must have been a nice discovery for you."

"It was." She looked down at her legs and wiggled her toes. "We're not all evil."

"I already knew that." Fully aware of the power my kisses held, I pressed my lips to her cheek. Again, we were swept away by the thrill of being together once more. This time, we only shared a few, deep kisses before we returned to the conversation at hand.

"Where were we?" She asked, fixing pieces of my hair that had been pulled out of place by her hands.

"Your mermaid clan."

"Right. They were right off the coast of Italy and cohabited with locals. I spent some of my time with a couple, who had been married for a few years."

"And?"

"Well, the human was under the mermaid's spell. There's no avoiding that, unless you want to give up kissing."

"That is out of the question."

Bella smiled at my resolve.

"But they made it work?"

Bella nodded. My heart warmed. "Interspecies relationships like ours are rare, but not completely unheard of. Juliana and her wife told me it was going to take a lot of work and effort to keep it working, but it will be worth it."

I hummed in agreement. A relationship with Bella was definitely worth any amount of work and effort. "And what did they say?"

Bella looked down at her feet. "They said that it never felt that different. That in a good relationship, partners shared wants and desires all the time."

That made sense. Smart mermaids.

"They said that as long as we were open and honest with one another, there wouldn't be any issues."

"Ah," I nodded my head. "Now there's going to be our issue, isn't it?"

Bella's eyes were glued to her feet that she had buried in the sand. She was aware of all the things she kept from me over the course of our relationship.

"I'll be honest with you," I offered, providing her an opening to say the same.

"You were always honest with me."

There. That was going to be my least favorite sound—the sound of oncoming tears.

"What if I do something that makes you not love me? What if you're trapped with me forever and can't get out?"

"Well, we just have to trust that you would never do anything that would make me want to fall out of love with you."

"How?"

It only took one, real conversation with Bella to know that she would never purposely do anything to make me fall out of love with her. Even before I knew what she was, I could see the bravery in her soul, the kindness in her heart, and the sharpness of her mind that brought me to my hands and knees out of love for her. The discovery of her true identity only solidified that love. There was no doubt in my mind that my heart was safe in her hands.

"I already do." She looked back up at me, with large, imploring eyes. "I always did."

"Oh, Edward."

There was my name, again. I hoped the thrill of hearing her say it never faded.

She made another soft sound at the back of her throat. I loved it. Her arms hadn't fully unwound around my neck this entire time, and only needed to move one hand up a bit so she could slowly rake her fingers through the hair at the nape of my neck. Perfectly at peace, she let her eyes close, and her fingers slowed and stopped in my hair.

I rubbed my hand up and down the length of her calf, wondering how long it had been since she had last been on legs. Eventually, I settled into stillness as well. Tucking her head under my chin, I closed my eyes, as well.

"Bella?" I asked after some time. The sun had fully dipped under the horizon and our only source of light was the flickering LED candle.

She blinked her eyes open slowly, as if I had roused her from a dream.

"Will you accept my heart?"

She pulled my hair a bit as her hand clenched into a fist. "I would love to."

oOo

Bella stayed in my car, wrapped in a towel, as I ran into Target to buy her a few essentials. I returned with a hairbrush, ponytail holders, sweatpants, and a t-shirt—I wanted to remind her of her favorite parts of playing human. Sweatpants were definitely one of them.

We talked throughout the entire drive home—because we could. No longer did we have to wait for red lights when it would be safe to look at her hands. We spoke of our time apart. Bella was not happy to hear about my dates with other girls, no matter how many times I reiterated that all those dates only solidified my feelings for her. We spoke of our time together, too, now that the walls were down and there were no secrets between us. Bella told me every moment she suspected she used her influence over my heart by accident—most of the time it was to get me to stop talking while she was trying to read. I laughed, too entertained at how perfectly in character it was to be truly upset.

When Bella was clothed, and her hair was brushed back into her typical ponytail, I walked her through the garage into the house.

"Does it feel like coming home?" I asked.

She tugged on my collar so she could whisper in my ear, "I was home when I heard your record play."

There was no ignoring my ever-present desire to kiss her when she said things like that. Right outside the door to the house, I pulled her up for her very thorough kiss.

Like they were most Sunday nights, my family was in the dining room, playing a team-based board game. Rosalie hung on Leah's arm. Alice perched on the armrest of Jasper's chair, his hand stroking her lower back. Emmett sat at the head of the table, boisterous and commanding. Esme had one hand on his shoulder, and another around Carlisle's waist.

At the sight of them, Bella gripped my arm, painfully. She often forgot her own strength when she was stressed.

"It's alright, Sweetheart. No one is going to be upset with you."

I cleared my throat. Everyone at the table balked at the sight of the familiar petite brunette on my arm. Carlisle was the first to compose himself. "Bella! Good to see you."

She released one hand from my arm to wave.

Alice was next. "We just started, if you two wanted to join."

I raised my eyebrow down at my partner. She looked at me, found her courage somewhere in my expression, and nodded at the family.

Jasper raised his arm immediately, "We got Bella!" His entire team agreed, recalling Bella's uncanny ability to win.

Esme made sure to pull Bella into a hug before she sat. "It's good to see you again, sweetheart."

I kept Bella close to me, though we were split onto opposite teams. She sat in a chair beside Jasper. I stood beside her, keeping my hand in reach for her to grab if she needed encouragement.

My mother playfully elbowed me in the ribs. "So, this is what you've been up to on weekends."

I ran my free hand through my hair and laughed, "Kinda, yeah."

"How have you been, dear?" Esme asked, running her fingers through Bella's ponytail with familiarity.

We were with people who couldn't hear her speak, so Bella responded in sign language. "I'm doing well. I'm happy to be here."

Despite the months that passed, no one needed a translation for Bella's usual response to the question. Everyone around the table responded with a variation that they were happy she was there, as well. Save for Leah, who got the translation whispered in her ear from Rosalie. My family held onto their love for Bella enough to remember how to speak with her.

Bella's eyes widened as she turned back to me to share a smile. But, I wasn't surprised.

The unconventional love of the Cullen family was the strongest.

There it is! The ending!

I am so happy with this one and had so much fun writing it. Undertow has honestly been such a passion project for me, I am in shock and awe that anyone else read it, let alone enjoyed it! Thank you all for sticking with me through the story. I hope the end made it worth the wait. As always, I thrive on constructive criticism, so if there is something you didn't like, or something I could've done better, please let me know! I am not above editing my story after it's been posted.

I'll post an epilogue in a week or two.

As for future projects, Bleeding Hearts is going on strong. Next, I plan to start my own version of Breaking Dawn to follow my Eclipse fix-it-fic. I also have a college AU featuring a plus-sized Bella in the works.

I love you all. You're the best readers I could have. I appreciate every like, comment, reblog, and follow. Thank you!