“That boyfriend of yours sure was something. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I have to admit I was a tiny bit jealous. I had been serving him drinks for a while, and flirting pretty hard, but he didn’t seem to notice me and then he saw you come in and there was no talking to him after that. Can you hold on a sec?” She asked as she moved down the bar to a guy that was flagging her down without waiting for a reply. After serving him a beer, she returned to Alexa. “You’re a lucky girl, he was a great tipper and in my experience only really nice guys tip like that when they’re not trying to get in your pants. That’s just my luck, I only seem to attract assholes.” She laughed.
Alexa took another sip of wine. “Actually, he’s not my boyfriend, I just met him that night. That’s kind of why I’m here. I was wondering if you knew anything about him.”
“You’re shittin’ me? Really? I would have put money on you two being a couple, especially after what he did to Jim for running his big mouth at you. That douchebag is a regular and is constantly hitting on me, like non-stop,” the red-headed bartender recalled. “You’d think he would at least give me a decent tip once in a while if he ever hoped I’d actually go out with him. Sorry though, I’d never seen your hottie before and I haven’t seen him since.”
Fucking great. Alexa though to herself.
“Thanks anyway,” Alexa said before downing the rest of her wine.
“Listen, I don’t know what happened with you two and I’m not trying to be nosey or anything, but that guy was seriously into you. I see a lot of shit working here, and he was not the kind of guy that is just looking to hook up.”
Alexa gave her a half-hearted smile, laid a five dollar bill on the bar and headed for the door. When she stepped out onto the sidewalk she let out an audible sigh as she considered her last option.
Maybe she won’t be working.
✧
After a short walk, Alexa reluctantly climbed into her car and headed to the zoo.
When she arrived at the entrance, she was grateful that the girl from before wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Steeling her nerve, she approached the admissions window and asked to speak to Mr. Ross. The attendant looked surprised, but then nodded and disappeared for a few minutes before returning with Mr. Ross in tow. The friendly gentleman came out to greet her enthusiastically.
“Such a pleasure to see you again, Miss….?”
“Ryan, Alexa Ryan.”
“Yes, of course, I apologize, I don’t believe we were properly introduced the other night. Are you here with Mr. Kellar again?” He asked as he looked around curiously.
“No actually, that’s why I’m here. Mr. Kellar and I are, um, fairly new acquaintances. I had his number but I somehow managed to lose my phone and he left something rather valuable in my car that I would really like to return to him.” Alexa hoped the lie would be more effective on Mr. Ross than it was on his catty employee.
“Since we haven’t known each other very long, I don’t know where he lives or how to contact him to return it. When we were here he mentioned that he donated some money to the zoo and I was hoping that you could give me his address from your records.” Alexa placed her hand on Mr. Ross' forearm hoping to convince him to go against protocol and give her the information.
“Ms. Ryan, I’m terribly sorry, but I couldn’t help you if I wanted to. Mr. Kellar only provided an address for a post office box when he signed up for his membership and made the donation.”
“Oh. Well, do you know the name of his family’s foundation?”
“Again, I’m sorry, but to tell you the truth, I really don’t know anything about him at all. I had never seen nor heard of him before when he showed up at the zoo’s charity ball a few months ago and made the largest donation in our history. He even requested that his generosity remain anonymous to the public.”
“Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Ross. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
“It is no bother Ms. Ryan, please come back anytime.”
CHAPTER 8 - Life Resumes
Nearly a month later Alexa still hadn’t been able to find any trace of Ethan. It was like he had never even existed. Each morning before that she woke up hoping he would show up at her door apologizing and professing his undying love, and each night when he didn’t she would sink a little further into despair.
This morning was different. She had finally given up. When she opened her eyes, she simply wanted to close them again and remain asleep forever. She saw Ethan in her dreams and now she knew that was the only way she could be with him.
Despite her pain, Alexa laughed at herself. I have become one of those pathetic women I always made fun of. Not having any close friends, other than Tilly, she had a lot of time to read and watch movies. For years she had scoffed at the women in the stories who immediately fell hopelessly in love with men that would disappoint them. It had always seemed so ridiculous to her that after a brief encounter, they would be in love, unable to live without this man they barely knew. Now here she was, living it. But in those stories, the men came back. For those women, there was a happily ever after.
It was a Thursday, and of course she was supposed to work that day, but she just couldn’t bring herself to get out of bed. She grabbed her iPhone and typed a quick email to work letting them know she was sick and wouldn’t be in for the remainder of the week. A four day weekend was just what she needed.
A few minutes later when Tilly pushed her out of bed demanding to be let out, she regretted the little white lie she had just told as she actually got sick and vomited all over her bedroom floor, unable to make it into the bathroom in time.
She stumbled into the bathroom, rinsing out her mouth before getting a towel and some cleaner to take care of the mess. She often complained about how cold the hardwood floors got in the winter, but this wasn’t the last time she would feel grateful about how easy they were to clean when compared to carpet. Feeling one-hundred percent better physically, but emotionally exhausted, she wearily slipped on some sweatpants and a sweater and headed out with Tilly. Watching the big dog relieve herself, it dawned on Alexa that she really needed to pee, immediately.
With Tilly in tow, she sprinted up the stairs and back into her apartment, not even bothering to remove Tilly’s leash before she rushed into the bathroom. Sitting there, Alexa reached for the toilet paper finding there was none left on the roll. She really was in a funk. She was not the type of person to use the last of the toilet paper and not replace it. She leaned over and opened the cabinet below the vanity to fetch a roll, moving a full box of tampons out of the way to get to it.
Then it hit her.
Oh. Shit.
She finished up quickly and rushed out to grab her phone from her nightstand, immediately opening the calendar app. She started scrolling back through the days looking for the notation she always made for the start of her monthly visitor. Before long she had scrolled back over seven weeks with nothing.
She scrolled forward back through the days, hoping she had simply missed where she had marked it.
No, there’s no way. He said he’s practically sterile! She hadn’t sensed a lie from him, then again, she had sensed that he loved her, and look how that turned out. Maybe her telepathy was on the fritz. He was the first person she couldn’t actually hear, maybe that meant her intuition about him was blocked too.
Seven pregnancy tests and a trip to the gynecologist later, Alexa finally accepted that she was pregnant. With Ethan’s baby. The lying bastard.
But she wasn’t really mad. Suddenly the hole that he had left in her heart felt full again. She took all of the love she felt for Ethan and poured it into the tiny life growing inside of her. All of the anger disappeared and was replaced with gratitude. Their encounter was brief, but she had really loved Ethan, he had loved her, and their love gave her this incredible gift. For that, she was grateful.
✧
After the first trimester, Alexa felt absolutely amazing. She felt strong, vibrant, and alive. Better
than she had ever felt in her life. The only problem she noticed was that her telepathy was far more sensitive and it took far more energy to block people out.
Everything was progressing perfectly according to the home midwife Alexa hired. She left her one bedroom apartment in Indy and bought a nice little house about thirty minutes away in Fishers, Indiana. She didn’t know the sex of the baby so she kept the nursery neutral. Each night she would sit in a rocking chair in the nursery, silently imagining what it would be like to sit there with her precious baby in her arms. Then one night, something miraculous happened. She heard her baby for the very first time.
It wasn’t really words, more like flashes of thought, images of what the baby could see and feel from within the comfort of her womb. It was the most beautiful experience of Alexa’s life. From then on, she kept her shields down when she was at home alone wanting to soak up every bit of information from the miraculous life that had been growing in her belly for the previous five months. Alexa grabbed her swollen belly, looking down in awe of the miracle that was her baby. There was a lot she didn’t fully understand, considering her baby didn’t yet think in language, but she could sense its emotions and moods, see what it saw. She knew her baby didn’t like it when she ate spicy food, or when she slept on her right side. She knew it loved when she sat in the rocking chair and sang. Doing just that one evening, she realized her baby was a girl when she saw the images of her looking down at her cute little legs.
Starting the next day, she began reading through all the baby girl names in a book she had purchased the month before, making notes next to names that the baby seemed to like until she came across the name Chloe. When she read that name aloud she immediately felt the baby’s love for it. Unable to help herself, Alexa wondered if Ethan would like the name too.
Efan?
Alexa’s hand shot up to her mouth as she gasped and looked down at her belly in complete shock. That was the first real word she had received from her unborn baby.
Oh sweetheart, Ethan was mommy’s friend, but he is gone now. Mommy loves you so much, Chloe.
Alexa felt the tears streaming down her face.
Wuv mommy.
✧
The next few months flew by. Chloe’s mental vocabulary grew each day and the ability to communicate telepathically allowed Alexa to bond with her so completely. Her lifetime of loneliness and secrets was over. Of course she feared for Chloe and the hardships she would face being a telepath. Alexa’s ability didn’t manifest until she was a teenager. She had no idea what it would be like for Chloe as an infant, toddler, and pre-teen being able to hear every thought of the people around her.
As Chloe developed, Alexa had to learn to shield her thoughts about Ethan or not think about him at all if Chloe was awake, as hard as that was. She still felt him everywhere, and often thought she saw him. Despite the hurt he had caused her, she couldn’t help but feel grateful to him for giving her Chloe.
Mixed in with all that was amazing about her pregnancy, there were some challenges. Once Alexa had started showing, the rumors at work began to fly. She did her best to block out everyone’s thoughts, but since her delicate condition had heightened her telepathy, it was far more difficult.
As her due date approached, Alexa made the difficult decision to leave her job to stay home and raise Chloe, truly appreciating her trust fund for the first time. With her being a telepath, she couldn’t risk putting Chloe in child care and having her ability discovered.
Chloe arrived on a warm, sunny afternoon late in September. Seven pounds, eleven ounces of pure joy of which Alexa had never know the like.
Over the next eight and a half months, Alexa watched Chloe grow, facing the typical trials of motherhood and being met with the unique challenges of parenting a telepath.
She worked diligently to keep Ethan out of her thoughts, an impossible task with his eyes staring back at her every time she looked at Chloe. But she managed to hide that part of herself away, locked up in a far corner of her heart that she only allowed herself to visit when she was alone in the quiet of the night.
And then one seemingly normal morning, Alexa’s world came crumbling down around her. She walked into Chloe’s room, mentally saying good morning as she gathered a few stray toys from the floor. Receiving no reply, she looked at Chloe and spoke aloud.
“Good morning, angel.”
Chloe smiled wide, but still no response.
“What’s wrong, sweetie, you don’t feel like talking to mommy?”
Chloe looked at Alexa curiously, and cooed aloud, but mentally there was silence. Lowering her shields completely, Alexa searched for Chloe’s mind, her heart crashing down into her stomach at what she found. Silence.
CHAPTER 9 - Late Night Appointment
Alexa pulled her car into the parking lot in front of Dr. Kline’s building. It was completely empty and the building was dark except for the front porch light and one other inside that Alexa assumed was in Dr. Kline’s personal office.
Chloe was awake and smiled brightly at Alexa as she started to unstrap her. Alexa checked again to be sure that the new teeth she had seen earlier were no longer visible and breathed a sigh of relief when she confirmed they were in fact hidden. A normal person might have taken their absence as an indication that they had imagined the night’s earlier events. Alexa wasn’t exactly normal. She had spent the thirty minute drive going over the details of what she had witnessed in her bedroom and could only come up with one explanation. It wasn’t really that hard for her to believe, hell, she was a telepath after all. As far as the world around her was concerned, telepaths didn’t exist either. She wasn’t quite ready to say the word, but in her heart she knew what Chloe was, and she loved her all the same.
As she approached the door to Dr. Kline’s building, a feeling of dread washed over her.
Oh God, the abnormalities in Chloe’s blood, what if he knows what she is, what if her teeth come back?
In all her consideration on the drive over, she hadn’t thought about what she would do if Dr. Kline, or anyone else discovered the truth about Chloe. If she had learned anything in her lonely pathetic excuse for a childhood, it was that people don’t like different.
She considered leaving, calling the doctor and making some excuse, but what if he already knew? When she thought back to their phone conversation she realized he had seemed almost, excited. She tried to remember exactly what he said. She had been so distracted with Chloe it was a little fuzzy.
She could have stood there arguing with herself for hours trying to decide what the right thing to do was, but she kept coming back to one important truth. She trusted Dr. Kline. Her intuition told her to trust him.
My intuition was wrong once before. Her heart squeezed tight with the thought. She had trusted Ethan and he left her, breaking her heart with a scribbled little note in her kitchen.
Then it hit her like a slap in the face.
That’s what he wanted to tell me, that was the conflict I felt. Is that why he left? Was he afraid to tell me?
Of course he was afraid to tell her the truth about himself. Alexa felt a little twinge of guilt, she hadn’t even considered telling Ethan her secret.
Before she could dwell on it further, the door in front of her swung open revealing Dr. Kline’s smiling face. He was dressed casually in a pair of jeans and a plain grey t-shirt.
As seemed to be protocol when she was near him, Alexa instantly felt at ease, but was afraid to speak, worrying that once she opened her mouth everything in her head would spill out and she desperately needed to play it cool, find out what the doctor knew.
“Thank you for coming in at this late hour, Alexa.” He glanced around outside before continuing. “Please understand that it was necessary. Follow me and everything will be explained.”
That seemed like an odd way to phrase it. She held Chloe close as she stepped past him through the door, but Chloe had ideas of her own. She immediately tried to lean away from Alexa reaching out t
o the doctor, opening and closing her little hands as she whined. This absolutely lit up the doctor’s handsome face as he reached out to take Chloe in his arms.
“What a little traitor,” Alexa joked, trying miserably to sound exasperated. It warmed her heart to see Chloe interact with the doctor and further confirmed her trust in him.
He held Chloe with one arm as he closed and locked the door, then quickly entered a code into the keypad off to the right changing the light on it from green to red.
Without another word he started walking and Alexa followed him through the lobby, down the long hallway to his office. When she walked through the door, she saw the strange painting of the man that reminded her so much of Ethan out of the corner of her eye, yet refused to look at it, she couldn’t think about him right now.
Dr. Kline walked to the edge of his desk and turned to face Alexa, leaning back expectantly. Confused, and realizing it was probably pointless, Alexa lowered her shields. As soon as she did though, as expected, she was met with silence. However, two other important things were evident. There were three distinct minds around her, and they were all blocking her in the same way.
Before she could fully process the information he spoke.
“Hello, Amor.”
✧
Hearing that voice, Alexa’s body immediately betrayed her as fires that she thought long ago burned out ignited with a rampant fury. Her skin flushed, heart rate increased and she felt the moisture pooling between her legs. Without turning or acknowledging him in any way, she closed her eyes taking a deep breath, willing herself to stay composed. Her mind was racing as she calmly walked to stand directly before the source of that voice.
Alexa stared at him for what seemed like forever, realizing that he was even more beautiful than she remembered. Then she raised her hand and slapped him right across his perfect cheek, once, twice, three times, before he finally caught her by the wrist. His hand touching her bare skin sent lust coursing through her veins, which only enraged her further. Employing her free hand, she attempted to slap him once again, but he grabbed that wrist as well, pushing both of her arms together behind her back and pulling her body against his.
Choices of Fate (Fate Series) Page 9