18. Tantrums, Markers & A Breakthrough

EPOV

Bella was completely right. I was jealous of that dog, but she was also completely right that it was my own damn fault. So I just shut up and let her have her say on the matter, because I was speechless. There were no excuses for my behavior and I had already told her my reasoning at the time for leaving, which she accepted and forgave me for.


I really shouldn’t have made a big deal about this, because I clearly wasn’t hiding my emotions as well as I thought I was. She had called me out on my jealousy less than three minutes into the conversation. But…jealous, or not, I was still concerned. What exactly had Jacob been doing to help Marie out with money? What had Marie been doing to earn the money? All my thoughts turned to prostitution as a possibility, but I quickly squashed that idea. Bella was still a virgin, and I knew for a fact that the dog thought he had some sort of claim to her, which was just sickening and completely false, but it gave me peace of mind that he wouldn’t let another man put his hands on her. Especially if he thought that she was his. Which she isn’t. She’s fucking mine.


I noticed that Bella started breathing a little hard and squinting her eyes a bit. She bit her lip, looking distressed.


“Bella?” I asked, wanting to know if something was wrong.


She sighed heavily and mumbled ‘love you, Edward’ before her eyes shot open from their previous droopy state.


She smirked at me and said, “Edward I will take care of my pretty Bell. I always have, no need to worry,” Marie assured me lightly and turned back to the movie shelf to stick My Dog Skip and It Takes Two in their spots.


Hmm...Marie will answer my questions.


“How, Marie?” I asked, looking at her side profile as she concentrated on the alphabetizing task. “How will you take care of it?”


“Jacob takes me to Quil’s house. Quil gives me the goods. I sell the goods at a marked up rate, then I give him the money for the goods and keep the profits for myself,” she explained casually.


I growled low in my chest, suddenly very angry at picturing her dealing drugs to make a profit.


“It’s all very fast and easy,” she assured me in a light tone.


I just stared at her while she finished adding Isabella’s movies to our dvd collection. I couldn’t speak, I was so angry. What she was describing was so dangerous…not to mention illegal. She was a drug dealer on the side?

No.


Absolutely not.


And to know that the fucking mongrel had facilitated all of this. He had allowed her to be in danger of junkies and crack heads who wouldn’t think twice before they cut her throat and stole the drugs off of her dead corpse, instead of paying for it. The next time I see him, I’m going to break his fucking neck. And Bella won’t be seeing him again at all, so I don’t need to worry about her being endangered by his and Marie‘s stupidity again.


When Marie was through, she turned to face me and furrowed her brow in confusion. I’m sure my eyes were black with fury and my chest was just fucking rumbling away…


Okay, I need to calm down.


There really was nothing to worry about because Marie wouldn’t be calling him…wouldn’t be going to his house…wouldn’t be going to the Reservation at all…wouldn’t be seeing him anymore.


So, I don’t need to worry.


I’ll just give Jasper the $300 to take down to the court house tomorrow to take care of Bella’s fine that was Marie’s fault in the first place - *growl*


FUCK! Wrong thing to think about…


Okay, so nothing is going to happen since Marie won’t be getting the chance to sell any of those drugs anymore, and Bella’s court fine will be taken care of tomorrow, first thing in the morning.


I looked into Marie’s eyes and lost myself in them, trying to further relax my emotions. I concentrated on those chocolate depths, the delicate curve of her jaw, that adorable button nose, perky little ears…rosy pink lips…


I could feel my gaze begin to soften as the growling in my chest came to a complete stop. I took in a deep breath, basking in her scent, reminding me of why I needed her alive, to prevent me from wringing her fucking little neck for being so goddamn stupid, and I-


Okay, calm down…


After a few more deep pulls of her scent, and some help from Jasper downstairs, I was completely back to normal.

For the most part.


When I thought I could trust myself to speak without it coming out as a snarl, I spoke. “Marie, you won’t be ‘selling any goods’ anymore, and the matter of your fine will be taken care of in the morning,” I informed her in the calmest voice I had available at the moment.


“No…“ she protested slowly, before she continued on. “My Bell said that you couldn’t pay it, and that I was going to fucking take care of it. I know how to get the goddamn money Edward, it’ll only take me like ten minutes,” she said with a shrug before I interrupted her.

I couldn't hold my inevitable anger back anymore, and just fucking lost it. “Well, I said NO and that’s fucking final, Marie! Alright? Bella does not call the shots around here, especially when it comes to her safety, do you understand? I will not have you turning into a fucking little hoodlum, running around with werewolves and selling drugs everytime you get yourself into a bind. Is. That. Clear?” I practically yelled at her while giving her a stern look.


“Don’t fucking yell at me,” she said with a glare.


“Then don’t fucking question me,” I said in a low, angered voice. There might have been some growl in it too.


She huffed and said, “I wanna call Jake.”


“No,” I snarled at her.

Just the sound of that mutt’s name had my muscles coiling for a fight.


“Yes!” she yelled, then stomped her foot in a very Marie-like manner.


“Stop it,” I told her, cutting her tantrum short. “If you want to start throwing a fit, then I’ll give you something to cry about. Do not start with me right now, little girl,” I warned her.


“I wanna call him, give me the phone!” she screamed, then tried to go for my pocket.

I quickly moved away, deciding that distance between our bodies was a good thing right now. I was just this fucking close from making my threat to beat her ass come true. About five seconds away from it, actually. And that wasn’t good at all. Sure, the circumstance might call for it, but my anger couldn’t be present. None of it could, or I would end up hurting her. I had to quickly get my emotions in check before I did something that I would regret forever.


She was standing over by the foot of the bed, scowling at me and I had my back pressed up against the door, putting as much space in between us as possible. Her eyes started watering before she screamed and stomped her foot, picking up the nearest thing, which was a pillow, and throwing it at me. The soft pillow landed it’s target on my hip, before falling to the floor at my feet.

I fixed my hard glare on her and watched as tears streamed down her cheeks before she yelled at me, “He’s my friend!”


“He is not your friend!” I shot back at her, the growling in my chest starting up again. “He taught you to ride a motorcycle with no protection, put the insane idea of cliff diving in your head, and let you hang around with drug addicts, encouraging you to do their dirty work for them,” I informed her in a hard, clipped voice.


She stood there, huffing and blushing furiously with her anger, but I didn’t let her get a word in. “Junkies and drug addicts don’t give a shit about you, Marie! They would rather slit your fucking throat and leave you for dead, than to have to actually pay for their addiction,” I informed her before I decided to voice the new rules I had just decided on.


Isabella needs rules about language, and Marie needs rules about the company she keeps, apparently.


“There will be no more Quil, no more ‘goods’, no more goddamn La Push Reservation as far as I’m concerned. And if that fucking dog wants to see you, then he can come here and visit, NOT the other way around. That is final,” I said, my tone leaving no room for argument.

After she swallowed down a sob and sniffled, I added, “Do not try to persuade me any differently, Marie…it will only get you into trouble,” I said, warning and reminding her of my threat to actually spank her. I wouldn’t do it now, but there was always later, after I had calmed down.

She wiped her eyes and stomped her foot again, before flinging herself on the bed and crying into her pillow. Mumbled words of, ‘I hate you’, and ‘he’s my friend’, and ‘it’s not fucking fair’ kept falling from her sobbing lips but they were all muffled by the pillow.


About ten minutes had passed before I felt Jasper sending Marie some waves of calm to relax her breathing and soothe her sobs.

A part of me was feeling really guilty and horrible for yelling at her like that. But frankly, I just couldn’t fucking help myself, and…it needed to be done. I stayed by the door, keeping a safe distance and watched her breakdown at the thought of losing her best friend.


I was calmer now and I decided that when she would be receptive to my embrace again, I would approach her and clarify her misconception of Jacob. She was thinking right now that she could never see him again, and that’s why she was so devastated right now. But that’s not what I said. It might have been what I was thinking, and what I wanted to say, but it isn’t actually what I said.

She could still see him, just over here…on my territory, so that I could monitor that mutt and his impure thoughts towards the love of my life.


She is mine and I plan on making that fact abundantly clear to him.


I was interrupted out of my reverie by the movement of Marie’s body. It had been still while she had sobbed into her pillow, but now she was sitting up. She hopped down off the bed and reached for a tissue. After she blew her nose and wiped her cheeks, she started walking in my direction.


Her lip was trembling and her eyes looked so full of sorrow, that it made my breath hitch at the sight of it. She was very, very upset…


I was really surprised when she stopped in front of me, bit her lip, and held her arms out for my comforting touch that only I could give her.


Me.


Not Jacob.


That's fucking right.


I immediately embraced her fragile little body in a hug. As soon as the tears started up again, I hooked my hands under her shoulders, picking her up and holding her to me.

Once her arms were around my neck in a death grip and her legs were wrapped securely around my waist, she mumbled into my neck, “He’s my friend, I don’t care what you say. My Jacob is my friend.” Then she lifted her head from my shoulder to look into my face. Her eyes were filled with determination as she spoke in a shaky voice. “You can’t take him away,” she pleaded with me.


I shook my head. “Marie, I’m not taking him away. You can still see him, he just has to come over here to visit,” I told her, my voice no longer hard, but velvety soft as I felt my ingrained need to always comfort her come back to life when my anger dissipated.


“You fuckin promise?” she asked, her worn out voice cracking a bit.


“Yes, I promise,” I murmured against her wet cheek before giving it a kiss, savoring her tears on my lips.


She nodded and laid her head back down on my shoulder.

I started pacing the room slowly with her in my arms, like I had done earlier today. I wasn’t sure if she’d fall asleep, but it was a possibility since she had just worn herself out, throwing that dramatic fit of hers.


Not a minute later, her heart rate slowed and her breathing deepened, notifying everyone in the house that she was, indeed, asleep. While she lay asleep in my arms, I had a whispered conversation with my family, that were in various places around the house, from my room.


“Dude, is she alright?” Emmett asked. He was outside, jumping on the trampoline while Rosalie looked on in amusement.


“Yes, she is fine. This is the second temper tantrum today, so I have a feeling this might be a normalcy with her for a while. She can be violent and aggressive with a lot of people, but she won’t stand up to me like that. I’m not sure why…”


“She respects you,” Jasper added in his two-sense. He was in his bedroom with Alice.


“Or she’s just afraid that you’ll make good on your threat to bust her ass,” Rosalie remarked.


“I don’t know, maybe it’s a little bit of both. I know she looks for my approval and that she likes to please me, so maybe she won’t put up a big fight on things with me, because she thinks I won’t love her anymore...” I hedged.


“She wants to please you because she shares Bella’s love for you,” Alice said. “So, instead of physically fighting you to try and get her way, like she normally would, she just…doesn’t and lets her frustration and anger on the matter come out through tears and temper tantrums.”


“I hope she didn’t hurt her throat with all that screaming,” Esme said, sounding concerned.


“She’ll be fine. Her throat just needs to rest a bit…” I informed her.


“I’ll make some hot tea for the child,” Esme decided and made her way into the kitchen.


“Edward, I want to get started on scheduled therapy sessions with Bella. I want it to become a routine, so that she gets comfortable with it as soon as possible,” Carlisle told me.


“Sounds good, maybe you can talk to her tomorrow about forming some kind of schedule,” I reasoned before turning my attention to Jasper.


“Jasper, will you take $300 down to the court house tomorrow, please? Around eight o'clock. I need that situation cleared up and over with. Bella doesn’t need to worry about the law being on her ass right now, she needs to focus on her therapy and getting better.”


“Yeah, no problem,” he answered.


“Oh, I can go too, and while we’re out, we’ll look at a place for that tire swing!” Alice exclaimed excitedly from her bedroom.


I chuckled quietly, “Thank you, Alice.”


“You can thank me by letting me play with the girls. You’ve been hogging all of their attention!”


“Well, actually…Isabella is very shy and still wary of everybody, so you can’t blame me that she’s been glued to my side every time she wants to come around. And as for Marie, you can hang out with her whenever you like, it really just depends on her mood.”


“Alright, alright…but I bet Isabella will love me and Jasper when she sees the badass tire swing we’re going to bring home for her,” Alice said smugly.


“I have no doubt she’ll love you anyway,” I assured her.


Marie started stirring against my shoulder and I shushed her. When she eventually lifted her head and opened her eyes, I knew that I wasn’t dealing with my sassy girl anymore.


She cleared her throat, “Edward, can I have a lolly?”


I smiled softly at Isabella, not realizing how much I had missed her adorable voice until she spoke again.


“Pretty please?” she asked hopefully.


I kissed her button nose. “Of course you can, baby.” I set her back down on her feet and asked, “What flavor would you like?”


“I like red,” she informed me, then turned towards the bathroom while softly muttering, “I gotta potty.”


I turned and ran downstairs, grabbing Isabella a red tootsie pop and returned to the bedroom to find that she was still in the bathroom. I sat down on the bed, her ‘lolly’ in my hand, and smiled as I heard her softly humming the tune to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. The toilet flushed then, and I heard the water in the sink running, so she could wash her hands.


I noticed that the movie that had been playing on our TV was rolling the end credits now. I got the idea to put on one of Isabella’s new movies for her, so I went over to the dvd shelf and a second later, Isabella was standing next to me.

She whispered, “Pretty please?” then held out her hand for the candy.

I laid it in her palm and after she untwisted the wrapper, she stuck the tootsie pop in her mouth, where it would set up camp for the next hour or so.


“What movie would you like to watch, sweetie?”


She looked at the row of dvds and pointed to Peter Pan. I grabbed that one, and after putting She’s the Man back in it’s case and slipping it back into it’s spot on the shelf, I loaded Peter Pan into the dvd player for Isabella. When I turned around, I noticed that she had grabbed a pack of her washable markers, colored pencils, and her drawing pad, then she sat down on the floor.


I grabbed a book off of my Bella's bookshelf and laid down on the bed, planning to catch up on my reading of The Morganville Vampires series while Isabella had fun with her drawing book.

I looked down and checked on her frequently though. She was awfully quiet, either transfixed on her paper or the movie, while the stick to that sucker hung out of her mouth. Sometimes her cheeks would hollow out and I could tell that she was sucking particularly hard when she did that.


She kept an eye on the screen as the movie started, but soon, her markers were out and the book was open. I went back to my reading then, content in the fact that I had bought everything that Isabella needed today, so maybe she would finally start to relax and get comfortable here. I needed her to stop being so shy around my family. She’s living with them, after all. Everything would just flow smoother if she wasn’t so anxious with them.


It was almost an hour later when I looked down to check on my quiet little Angel again, and I was very surprised by what I saw. I noticed that the empty stick from her tootsie pop was placed on the floor beside her leg. But when my eyes transfixed onto Isabella, I couldn't help but notice that she had been using her new markers to draw on herself.

She had her shirt off, her top half clad in only a bra, and she had drawn a rainbow around her tiny little belly button. Her entire left forearm, from elbow to wrist, was covered in bright pink marker. She was currently drawing dark blue stars around her right wrist and hand.

I reached out to still the hand that had the offending blue marker in it, and grabbed her wrist gently. “Isabella, no,” I scolded her.


She looked up at me with an adorable smile and I could see now that her face hadn’t made it out unscathed. She had purple little hearts decorating her delicate cheek bones and red squiggly lines on the skin between her top lip and button nose, and then all down her chin, effectively giving herself a Crayola mustache and beard.


I was having the hardest time trying to keep a straight face at the….just, fucking cuteness of it all, but she really shouldn’t be drawing on herself. This was a mess that my Bella would probably end up having to scrub off, and I knew that she wouldn’t be happy about it.


“I’m pretty,” she said softly, keeping that adorable smile on her face.


I let go of her wrist and nodded. “Yes baby girl, you are,” I assured her. “You’re very pretty, but you can’t color on yourself like that. That’s what your paper is for,” I informed her, pointing to the drawing book on the floor without taking my eyes off of the half-naked woman sitting below me. “You don’t need marker to make yourself pretty, baby…”


She looked at me for a minute, then started to suck on her lips, seeming to think about something, before looking back at the unfinished stars around her wrist. She lifted the blue marker in her hand again.

I knew then, what she had been thinking and what she was about do now, so I repeated in a firmer tone, “No.”

She stopped again and looked at me. As she kept her gaze on me, she slowly started to move the marker towards her star clad wrist again.

Um...is she testing me?


“She’s testing you,” Alice said from her bedroom a second later, confirming my thoughts.


I squinted my eyes into a glare and gave her a stern look, not unlike the one I gave her in the grocery store this afternoon.

The look stopped her dead in her tracks again.

We didn’t speak and she didn’t look scared, or apprehensive like she had earlier when she thought that she was in trouble…her gaze just remained curious. She really was just trying to see how much I would let her to get away with.

Well, she’ll be learning the hard way that I won’t put up with deliberate disobedience if she decides to put that marker to her skin again.

Luckily, she didn’t, choosing instead to set the marker down, and turn her gaze away from mineto focus back to her movie. I breathed a sigh of relief and a minute later, she exclaimed, “Peter Pan!” as he flew across the screen while she giggled. “I wanna go to Never Never Land, Edward. Can we go?”


“Maybe someday, baby,” I placated, then went back to my book, figuring that I could wait until after the movie to put her in the bathtub. After all, she had obviously worked very hard on all those patterns…and she actually looked really cute.


As I was turning the page in my book, my eye caught the bright red marker colored on her drawing book. I leaned towards it, intent on getting a better look at her mind's creation, after noticing that Isabella was still transfixed on her movie, and soon, I could see that it was not a drawing at all, but…words. But the words were not in my Bella's handwriting. In fact, it was completely different than what I was used to seeing in the classroom notes that we regularly passed to eachother. While my Bella's handwriting was straight and choppy, this handwriting was more rounded and neat. Isabella's handwriting.


She can write?


Apparently so, because I just came across the word ‘fuck’ a second ago. In fact, that’s the word that had caught my attention.

I leaned over the bed and fixed my gaze on the paper, curious as to what my five year old had written. To say that the words on the page had disturbed me would be a severe understatement.


Don‘t cry little girl-Love your fuckable little mouth-Be a good girl for daddy and suck it now-Evil seed-You will burn in hell Isabella-Kike baby-Dirty little girl-Your goddamn mother can’t stand to look at you-I will taint your little kike cunt-Shut up-Swallow it-Stop begging-God doesn’t like ugly-Timid little bitch-Lick it like your lolly-Scream again and I will break your face-I will give you purity Isabella-Taste it-Quiet your fucking mouth-It’s what you need-It’s our secret-Look at that sweet little ass-Your mother likes to be fucked like this-You like it-If you open your smart mouth again I will fuck it-Call me daddy-Want me to tie you down-I will kill you- My tiny slut-My friend will taste you now-You must bleed-Don’t you dare let those niggers touch you-This is the only way.


“Carlisle, come here,” I whispered harshly, as Isabella started to twirl a few strands of her hair, her eyes still glued to the screen.


Carlisle rushed up the stairs from his office, but stepped into the room slowly, mindful of Isabella. When he saw her half naked, marker covered form, he averted his eyes to my face only.

I waved him over and pointed to the paper. He leaned by me and read it over my shoulder. I heard his quiet gasp, and we began our whispered conversation at vampire frequency so that Isabella would be none the wiser and continue enjoying her movie.


“That is a form of automatic writing, and it will be an excellent tool for her therapy,” he whispered to me.


“What?”


“It is usually when you give a child a pen and paper, and they just automatically write whatever comes to mind. These must be the words of her attacker, Jim, and she is inadvertently trying to get him out of her mind, and onto something physical, like the paper,” he explained before saying, “This could be ground breaking for her.”

He seemed entirely too happy about this for my liking, and I was still stunned by the words that were burned into my retinas at the moment.

“Did you read it?”


“Yes. Yes I did, Edward and it is very disturbing, if not sad material, but…you have to keep in mind that this is the reason she has little Isabella as a alternate personality. Because of the trauma she faced as a young girl, not because she went to fucking Disneyland and had an icecream cone,” he said, exasperated, as if I should have known this already.


I sighed, hating the thought of anyone hurting her, but I knew it had already happened and that it was in the past, and all we could do was deal with the present problem.

“You’re right,” I agreed. “How is she able to write like that and spell correctly, though? Isn’t she supposed to be five?” I asked.


“Yes, but Bella’s mind’s basic knowledge of reading and writing is shared with all of her personalities, naturally,” he explained before pausing to say cautiously, “Isabella appears sweet and shy on the surface Edward, but…I can almost guarantee you that we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface that is this personality. She is bound to be a very broken, very disturbed little girl. We need to keep an eye on her,” he warned me.


Isabella turned around then, and noticed Carlisle standing beside me. She gasped and her eyes grew wide as she stared at him.

I tried to avert her attention back to me. “Isabella…” I called out to her.


She slowly tore her gaze away from Carlisle and when her eyes landed on me, she smiled. “Can we go now, Edward? To Never Never Land? We’ll have fun, huh?” she asked me.


I smiled back. “Not right now, baby…you can’t get into Never Never Land with marker all over your skin,” I informed her.


She pouted as I continued on, serious now. “Isabella, baby…” I started gently, “why did you write this?” I asked, pointing to the paper with those disturbing phrases on it.


She looked down at it and shrugged, before moving it to the side and picking up another piece of paper and handing it to me. It was a picture of my face…and it was remarkable. Very detailed, like a professional had done it. There was even some shadowing in all the right places. She had obviously used her colored pencils to draw it, and it looked almost perfect…right down to my evil gold eyes.


“Wow, baby…” I breathed out, and turned my stunned gaze to the beautiful girl below me.


She blushed and smiled before saying softly, “It’s you…it's my Edward.”


Carlisle stared at it in wonder for a few seconds, his thoughts clearly amazed and thinking that we should have taken Bella seriously when she said that Isabella was an artist.


“You’re a very talented little girl,” he commented softly.


She blushed and scooted her body to lean against the bed right below me. I reached out to stroke her hair softly, immediately understanding that she needed my touch to calm her.

After a minute, she visibly relaxed and whispered, “Thanks.”


“Isabella, can I have the paper that you wrote on? It’s very interesting,” he complimented it.


She stuck her thumb in her mouth and nodded her head. He nodded back and picked up that piece of paper, then casually walked out the door, muttering a ‘goodnight’ on his way out.


My Isabella...what am I going to do with you?