A Promised Fate

by Cat Mann

  Chapter 18

  Breath

  “Hello?” I whispered from the doorway of our darkened home with a small hope that Ava was possibly still awake. It was Friday, near the end of Fashion Week. Rehearsals had kept me away from home much later than I intended.

  “Meow.”

  “God dang it!” I jumped.

  “Mew.”

  The stray cat sat just on the other side of the glass door on the open sun porch and begged for food.

  “Shoo! Go away.” I whispered at the stupid, black, fluffy thing.

  “Meow, meow, meow.”

  “Arg! Ava, why did you feed the damn thing?” I cursed under my breath and stared back at the tiny kitty that looked up to me through the glass with wild, hungry eyes.

  “Mew.”

  “If I give you this will you go away?” Deli meat danced between my pinched fingers.

  “Mew. Mew.”

  Blocking the bottom of the doorway with my foot, I kept the cat from sliding into the house and tossed out a few slivers of fresh turkey. The kitty pounced on it with delight and finally shut up its incessant mews.

  And that is when I first heard desperate breathing. My legs locked frozen in place at the sound of loud, breathy gasps that echoed throughout our dark home.

  “Ava?” Chills crept up my back, tingling along my spine and then prickled my scalp. Hairs lifted on my arms and stood on end in high alert.

  The scared, panting breaths were followed by a tortured, pain-filled scream for help.

  “Oh, my God. Ava!” Running through the house, I followed the source of the screams to a beam of light that came shining down the stairs from the upstairs hall.

  “Ava!” I yelled in a panic. “Ava!” I screamed for her.

  The cries for help, for someone, anyone to make the pain stop grew louder and turned into grunting, animalistic howls of agony.

  Flying up the steps so fast that my feet barely touched the floor, I threw open the bedroom door with a crash and skidded to a confused halt in my effort to find her. Ava’s palms were pressed against her cheeks, her mouth hung open wide and she sat in silence on the bed alone. She stared ahead at the TV with a look of horror marring her otherwise beautiful face.

  “What the hell!” I shouted.

  “Shh.” She didn’t take her eyes off the screen and I moved forward to look at what she was viewing. With one glance at the TV, I immediately whipped my head back around, blocking the ghastly image from my sight.

  “Good God! What on Earth are you watching?”

  “Birthing videos. Remember?”

  My palm smacked my forehead. “You had a doctor’s appointment today.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “They gave you the videos to watch.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Oh, Ava, I’m sorry, Baby.” A shaky, relieved laugh chocked out from the depths of my lungs. “Jesus…” my heart pounded so fiercely it felt as if it might explode in my chest.

  “Shh!”

  We had planned to watch the videos Ava’s doctor sent home together. We had made a date. A weird date, but a date nonetheless and I had stood her up. My job had been to bring home some dinner. My idea had been to bring home takeout from our favorite Italian place, but from the looks of the screen, Italian would have been a piss-poor choice and I was lucky to have forgotten.

  Ava’s jaw dropped in absolute terror at the pictures before her. Her hands pressed to her smooshed cheeks and her eyes bugged out of their sockets. The woman in the video screamed again and Ava cringed. As much as I really didn’t want to watch a woman who wasn’t my own girl give birth to a child that definitely wasn’t mine, I sat next to Ava on the bed and forced my eyes open wide. I wrapped my arm around her and she eased her body toward me.

  Fifteen agonizing minutes of screaming horror passed and I don’t think either Ava or I had the benefit of a single full breath.

  The baby was finally delivered and Ava cried.

  “That was… sure… something.” I shoved my knuckles into my eye sockets and rubbed hard in an attempt to erase the images that were burned into my brain.

  Ava let out a half giggle, half cry. “What have you done to me?” She wiped the moisture from her eyes and moved her hands away from her face and onto her swollen belly.

  “I would tell you I am sorry for knocking you up, but I’m not. I am so happy you are having my baby.”

  “I’m scared.” Admitting to fear was a big confession for Ava.

  “You? You are the bravest person I know. What could you possibly be afraid of?”

  “That.” She nodded towards our paused, flat screen, HD TV, probably regretting her choice of the huge screen for watching a birth. The visual of a stranger giving birth had no need of being blown up and offered in high definition. I would have suggested watching the birth of a child on a laptop or an iPad -- something much smaller.

  “Is it going to hurt?”

  I coughed back a laugh. “Um, yeah. Like, a lot. Did you not just hear that woman screaming like a wild animal? Christ, Ava I thought someone was killing you when I got home!”

  “Ugh, Ari!” She prodded me with her elbow.

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “I want you to lie to me.” She looked up at me from under her lashes. Her green eyes were wet with fresh tears. My breath hitched in my throat at her words. I do not lie but I would do absolutely anything for her.

  “Lie?”

  “You know - everything will be fine, it won’t hurt a bit - lie to me.”

  “OK.” My stomach soured. “Here it goes…” I sucked in a breath and looked anywhere but into her eyes. Even for love, I couldn’t look into those melting eyes and lie to her beautiful face. “You won’t feel a thing. We will fall asleep together in each other’s arms and dream about our little brown-haired baby with pink lips and rosy cheeks and a tiny kitten-like cry, ten fingers, ten toes, a little nose and two bitty ears. And when we wake up, the stork will have come and left our baby resting happily in your loving arms.” I lied and my stomached churned with the unease.

  “Do you swear?” she whispered.

  “Of course I swear. I promise,” I lied again.

  “Thank you.”

  “Anything for you.” I moved her chin up to look her in the eyes. “Ava, I would do anything for you.”

  “You would lie to me?”

  “I would lie to you, but only to keep you safe and happy.”

  She leaned up and kissed my lips. “You were late tonight, Ari. Your greatest responsibilities lie here at home. Not at baio. I need you. Max needs you. This baby is going to need you. Please try harder at keeping your work from interfering with your home.”

  I nodded. “I will.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So what’d the doctor say anyway? What did I miss?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “The baby weighs three pounds and is about fifteen inches long. He has a strong and beautiful heartbeat.”

  “Healthy?”

  “Yep.”

  “We still have nearly ten more weeks before we can hold him. I don’t think I can wait that long.”

  “Me either. I can’t take my mind off this silly pregnancy. This baby is all I ever think about anymore. I am going crazy with all the unknown fears that this child brings. I have so many questions.”

  “Your doctor isn’t addressing your concerns? Maybe you should call Phillips and have him refer you to another obstetrician. I don’t want your concerns going ignored. Ava, this is very important, it’s serious.”

  Ava rolled her eyes at me. “Not those kinds of questions.”

  “Then what?”

  “Us.”

  “What do you mean “us”?”

  “You are the person ignoring my concerns. Who will this baby be? Will he be a fate or will he be like you? If he’s like you, what does that mean -- what will his responsibilities as a deity be? And how will we ev
en know and when will we know?”

  “He'll be like you,” I answered and her bunny nose scrunched in response. “Our child is a Fate, Ava. Any child we ever have together will be a Fate.”

  “Why?” Her face fell in a sort of disappointed frown.

  “It’s predetermined.”

  “But how?”

  “It’s hard to understand.”

  “Try me. I want to know. I’m not an idiot, I’m sure I’ll understand. You can’t just know this stuff and assume that I know, too. You have to tell me these kinds of things, Ari. Who we are may not be important to you, but it is to me.”

  “Who we are is important to me, Ava.”

  “Then explain this to me. Make me understand. Why a Fate? Why won’t our children be like you?”

  “You are a Moirai. As a Fate, you are above us all. Gods and mortals have to submit to you. It has been suggested that even Zeus is bound by your orders. Your bloodline is dominant, especially over mine. See Ava, you are way up here,” I lifted my arm, pointing to the air above our heads, “and me, I am somewhere down here.” I lowered my arm and drew a line in the air near my stomach. “Our children together, all of them, will be Fates.”

  New tears clouded her eyes. “I wanted something better for this baby. I wanted him to be like you. Whatever that is, it has got to better than a Fate.”

  “Oh, Ava.” I kissed the top of her head. “You are perfect, Max is amazing and this child is going to be awesome. You did the hard part already for them, eliminating the Kakos and making them safe. Together, you three are going to rule my world.”

  “Tell me about where you come from and who you are. I want to know.”

  She wasn’t going to stop. She would never stop. I would pacify her until the next time and eventually, I would have no choice but to cave. We would fight and she would win. The truth was that it didn’t matter, I wasn’t lying. Who I am does not matter. But to Ava, the real story, the long version – that would hurt. She would question me and that’s when the real fight would begin.

  My lips continued to press into her sweet smelling, soft hair.

  “I’ll tell you what you need to know.” Sinking down into the pillows, I took her with me, snuggling her into my arms. “Adonis is the god of fertility,” I rubbed her tummy and she giggled. “No, seriously, it’s true, I’ll probably knock you up as often as you let me. But Adonis is known best for his beauty... he is desire.”

  “And?”

  “And women love him. And the rest does not matter because you are the only woman I love in return.”