BPOV

No. Please, God, no. This couldn't be happening to me.

I stared at it in disbelief, my mouth dropping open as my shoulders and hands started to shake. I dropped the pregnancy test on the table and held my head in my hands.

"Well?" Edward walked into the room, holding a glass of water in one hand and a beer in the other. He thrust the water towards me while taking a long sip of his beer. "What did it say?" I didn't respond, just leaned over and took the beer from his hands, gulping it down quickly, and then shoving it back towards him.

"There's your answer." I said gruffly, picking up the pregnancy test and showing him the little blue minus sign. "I'm not pregnant."

Edward sighed quietly and put his arm around me, running his hands through my hair gently. "I'm sorry, babe." He murmured, kissing my temple as I started to cry silently. "It's okay, Bella. It can still happen." He assured me, and I just shook my head pathetically.

"I can't do anything." I said softly as Edward wiped his tears away with his callused, ink stained fingers. "I can't even get pregnant, and we've been trying for a year."

"Shh." Edward soothed me, and I sniffled a little more. The tears were stopping, but the whole in my heart was continuing to grow.

I was twenty seven and Edward was thirty, and we had been trying to have a baby for a year, after dating since I was eighteen. We weren't married, and we weren't planning on getting married anytime soon. We both had divorced parents, and didn't want to fail our kids the way our parents had failed us. We loved each other, and neither of us saw any point in finalizing our relationship with something as self-fulfilling and frivolous as marriage.

Edward was the sexiest man I had every laid my eyes on, with his sleeves of tattoo's and stained hands. He was a tattoo artist, and had been the person to give me my one and only tattoo. An EC on the inside of my right thigh, standing for Edward Cullen.

I too had my place on his display of body work- he had my name, Isabella, tattooed across his otherwise clean chest, right above his heart. So many times I had just traced my fingers and my tongue over the ink permanently painted on his flawless body, and thanks to that I could read him through the ink. Not that I needed to. I knew Edward better than I knew myself.

He had given me everything I had ever wanted, and I could not give him the one thing he asked of me. A baby. The one thing he wanted from me…and it wasn't happening after a year of trying. Edward never pushed me on it, though. He said things would just happen when they happened, and to just keep trying. But I knew how badly he wanted it.

And it was killing me.

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"You gonna come down to the shop tonday to see me?" Edward asked, pulling his shirt on and mussing his bronze colored hair.

I shrugged, still lying on my stomach in our bed. "Yeah, probably. I just have to clean up the apartment a little bit and then I'll be down." I said, rolling over onto my back. Edward nodded, coming over to kiss me on the forehead.

"Love you, B." He said, and then leaned down to kiss my flat stomach. "It'll happen, baby." He said softly, and I nodded wordlessly. "Don't worry." Edward then kissed me quickly on the lips and tapped my nose before he left the apartment.

My fears were sneaking up on me in that moment.

I feared that Edward would want a child so badly he would give up on me, leave, and find someone else to give him what I wanted. I feared that something was wrong with me, making it unable for me to have a child with the man I'm so in love with.

Eventually, I managed to push back my fears and get out of bed, telling myself that it would happen.

Edward and his brother's Jasper and Emmet owned a tattoo parlor, and Edward and I lived in the apartment above the shop. Thanks to all the business the guys were getting, I didn't have to work and spent a lot of time in the shop with Emmet, Jasper, Edward, and Alice, who wasn't a tattoo artist, but specialized in piercings. She was so persuasive- she was responsible for both the small stud in my nose and the tongue ring Edward had.

Before I could go downstairs, I gave the house a quick scrub down until my knuckles started bleeding. I need something, anything, to relieve the pain building up inside of me.

Eventually I got dressed, slipping on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt that was Edward's. Pulling on my converse, I stomped down the stairs and let myself in through the back door of the shop, only to see that the couch and four chairs in the waiting room were taken by customers. Edward was standing at the front desk with his back to me, talking to a female customer.

She was leaning over the counter, her boobs hanging out all over the place as she ran her tongue over her lips, gazing at Edward as he was trying to help her picked out a tattoo to get.

I felt a flare of jealously spark up, so I walked up behind Edward and placed a sloppy kiss to his neck, standing on my tip toes to do so. "Hey, baby." I growled, and the girl rolled her eyes at me, jabbing her finger at a picture in the book.

"That one. On my ankle." She said shortly, and Edward nodded, flipping the book around to get a better look at the tattoo design.

"Okay. Just wait out here while I get the stencil all ready and then I'll come back and get you." He said to her. "And B, can you please handle the desk and phone while I'm doing this?" Edward asked as the girl leaned against the wall and gave me a jealous glare.

"Yeah, sure." I said, leaning my elbows on the desk as Edward headed to one of the back rooms.

"Hey, babe?" He turned around with his hand on the doorknob. I glanced up at him and raised my eyebrows. "You okay?" He asked softly, and I nodded without looking him in the eye.

I knew he wasn't going to let this drop, that he would pick it back up tonight, but he left me in peace for now.

Just then, Jasper came out of one of the back rooms with a slightly overweight blonde girl with a fresh tattoo on her arm. "Make sure you keep it clean and taken care of it, and you can go pay Bella over there at the desk. She'll give you a tube of antiseptic if you need it."

And so my day went. The shop was busy, and I watched customers come and go, observing the stories they had inked on their arms. Getting a tattoo…it's such an intimate thing. Trusting your skin, your body, in the hands of someone else, letting them make you permanently with their artwork? It was serious, and it was deep.

Edward was the only person I would ever let tattoo me. He was the most talented tattoo artist I knew, and managed to give each and every tattoo a personal touch and a flair of individuality. Jasper and Emmet were amazingly talented as well, but I didn't want anybody but Edward making a mark on me.

EPOV

I clicked my tongue ring against my teeth as I worked on the tattoo, trying my hardest not to look at the person I was tattooing. Usually, I believed in not judging a person by their appearances. Like me. Just because I had tattoo's all over my arms didn't mean I couldn't be a mature adult with a long term girlfriend and a business.

But the girl sitting in my chair seemed like a beast inside and out. She had been shamelessly flirting with me and I felt violated as her eyes raked over me again.

"Do you have a girlfriend?" The girl, Jessica, suddenly blurted out, wincing as the needle hit a bone. She was sitting with her foot propped up on my lower thigh, and I kept getting distracted as she wiggling her toes, making the glitter nail polish on them sparkle brightly.

"Yeah." I said, shortly.

Jessica eyed me for a moment, probably trying to size me up. "What's her name? How long have you been dating?" She asked, and I was seriously starting to consider breaking the rules and yelling at a customer.

"Her name is Bella." I said gruffly, clicking my tongue ring again as I continued to work. "We've been dating for…a long time." Jessica finally fell silent, just watched my hands move carefully as I continued the tattoo on her ankle.

Nine years. It was nine fucking years ago that I met Bella and she completely changed me. It sounds corny as hell, but I never wanted to stay with one woman for a long period of time…until I met her. Even though neither of us were believers of marriage, I wanted to be with her forever.

The only thing threatening our relationship were her own insecurities. After eight years together, Bella and I decided to start trying to have a baby. She got off the pill and we stopped buying condoms, sure that after a few months we'd 'get pregnant'. But it's been a year now, and nothing. Bella's period comes every twenty eight days, like clockwork, except for the occasional month when she would be a couple of days late. Like yesterday.

Apparently her period had been over a week late, and Bella had come running into the apartment with a drugstore bag which I knew would contain a pregnancy test. She had been ecstatic, saying that she had never been more than three days late and this just had to be it.

I had waited patiently, grabbing a beer for myself and a water bottle for her, praying to myself that the test would be positive this time. Last time it came out negative, Bella had cried for two hours straight. Hell, I loved her, but I am not good with crying women.

By the time I had walked into the living room, she was sitting there with her head in her hands. Although I feared I already knew the answer, I asked anyway. "Well? What did it say?"

Seeing her like this killed me. Bella was pushing herself so hard and blaming herself for not being able to get pregnant. I had told her time and time again maybe we should both go to the doctor, but she declined, saying we just needed to keep trying. So I went along with that mantra; keep trying, it'll happen.

I definitely didn't mind the 'trying' part. Getting dragged into bed by your sexy girlfriend to have hot sex every single night? Great, I'll take it. But what I did mind was seeing her when the tests kept coming back negative.

Seeing woman I love in pain isn't easy. Especially when it happens so often.

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The morning dragged on until lunch, when I finally got a break. My two brothers, Emmet and Jasper, and Jasper's girlfriend Alice, were already eating lunch, along with Bella.

"Hey."I said, sitting down on the sofa next to Bella and stealing kiss.

"Hey." Bella replied, smiling. But the smile didn't quite reach her eyes.

Everyone else was silent, obviously able to sense the tension between us. It was like this every time. After the tests came back, Bella would instantly go into a shell, secluding herself in sadness. Even though my brothers and Alice didn't know we were trying to have a baby, I think they could tell something was up.

"Are you two okay?" Alice broke the tense silence, and Bella glanced at her in surprise.

"Um, yeah…why?" She asked, her shoulders tensing up.

Alice narrowed her eyes at us, trying to pick up on what was wrong, but then she gave up. "I don't know, you guys have just been acting really weird for a while now." She shrugged, taking a bite of her salad as she continued to eye us suspiciously. "Are you sure everything is…good?"

"We're fine." Bella snapped, and Alice recoiled slightly. Both Emmet and I got off the couch, heading towards the back to get more to eat.

"Damn, Edward. That right there is exactly why I don't need a woman in my life long term. I love Alice and Bella, but they get crazy." He chuckled, but I didn't laugh."

"Shut the fuck up, Emmet. You can make fun of me and Jazz because we're brothers, but girlfriends are off limits." I snapped, and Emmet rolled his eyes.

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Hmm..what did you guys think?

Xoxo- Melodyella aka Mellie