by K. Cantrell
All at once, it hits me that if the test is positive, he’s getting exactly what he wants. What about what I want?
Ten
When we get home, he barges into the bathroom with me to see what I’m doing with the package. What, does he think he gets to be present while I pee on the stick just because he has super alien sperm?
I shake my head. “You can’t be in here for this.”
He quirks a brow and crosses his arms, leaning one thigh against the vanity. “You family.”
I don’t know how to respond to that. “You have to leave.”
He does but the moment I’ve capped the test and clutched it my hand to wait the painfully long two minutes for the result, I realize I want to share this with him. He’s my husband and we’re waiting on the results of our first pregnancy test. Sure, I never thought this would be something I’d ever do in my life but it’s happening whether I like it or not.
I exit the bathroom to find Eros sitting on the bed at stiff attention, his expression blank. “You family.”
“Yeah, I know.” I sit on the bed next to him and show him the test. “And if this gets a little plus sign, we’re going to be even more of a family.”
He stares at the results window and then glances back at my face. “Baby.”
“Um, yeah. How did you know that?” Some gears turn in my head. “Did Clementine say something to you about it?”
Eros shakes his head and rubs a hand over my arm. “Learn.”
“You’ve already learned all there is to know at this point, buddy,” I say with a laugh. Typically male. Finds out he’s got a fully loaded cannon and he wants to celebrate with more sex.
But he shakes his head again and runs a hand over my arm more firmly. “Learn you feel. Touch.”
“Now you’re just babbling.” Something has started to appear in the window, and I train my gaze on it as the symbol materializes. Plus sign. I’m pregnant.
A million and one things wheel through my brain and all of them are nonsensical.
“There is a baby,” I whisper.
I’m going to have Eros’s baby. I’m completely freaked out and slightly in awe and panicked and maybe delirious with something unnamable that threatens to bubble over.
“You happy.” Eros nods once and a smile breaks out over his face. “Happy baby.”
“I don’t know,” I admit and shut my eyes.
There are so many reasons this is horrible. I have a business to run. Our marriage is supposed to be temporary. I really shouldn’t have even told him about the baby yet.
How am I supposed to figure out if I’m happy about this? But as I question myself, the unnamable something isn’t so hard to label after all. It’s joy. Which is different than happiness in my book because I’m not happy about this.
But I can’t ignore the fact that I don’t have to figure out how to give up the husband I really want to keep. And the baby will be beautiful. It will look like Eros and now I have a real piece of him inside me to go with the mystical presence I’ve always sensed.
He nods. “Learn you happy.”
It was almost easier to communicate when he didn’t know as much English. “You can’t learn whether or not I’m happy. And I’m still not sure how I feel.”
It’s a hedge, no doubt. But I’m still getting used to the idea of being pregnant. Used to the idea of permanent.
Eros shakes his head again and lifts his hand, then puts it back down on my arm. “Learn,” he says slowly as if our positions are reversed and he’s trying to teach me English. “Tell you feel. Happy. Love.”
I stare at him as something in what he’s saying clicks into place. And I do not like the picture that just formed. “What are you saying, you can tell how I feel when you touch me?”
He nods. “Tell you feel.”
My skin crawls under his fingertips and I jerk away from him, away from the bed. “What is this, some kind of Torvian power? You can sense things?”
Confusion mars his face and I can see that he’s not sure what just happened. He’s been trying to explain this to me like I’m supposed to be thrilled to find out he has some kind of Torvian ESP. But then my lungs unhitch. I understand him pretty well, and I don’t have any kind of ESP. I’m overreacting.
But then I think back on all the times he seemed to just…get me. Like when I tell him to stop doing something but inside, I’m really waffling. He ignores me until I’m really serious. I thought he was just good at reading me. And he knew about the baby, without being told. He can read me but much differently than I thought.
I’m even more freaked out about that than I am about the baby.
“How does it work?” I ask him and he shakes his head. He doesn’t know. I have an inkling. “Touch me.”
Tentatively, he puts his fingers on my arm and that presence I’ve always felt flows through me. He’s got some kind of weird alien powers that he can push into me whenever he wants to know what’s going on with me and I don’t like it.
This has been going on since the first in Charmaine’s living room. He took my hand. I thought it was kind of sweet, old school chivalry. He was learning me even then. Maybe even to manipulate me in some twisted fashion.
I like it even less that I’m only just finding out about this, now that it’s too late. I’m pregnant and confused and the one person I thought I could trust to always be on my side is some kind of alien mutant.
“Stay here,” I tell him and he nods because he can sense that I’m serious. So his mind-reading abilities are pretty accurate then. That doesn’t help things.
I call Charmaine. “What is this crap about the alien you gave me who can read people’s minds?”
Charmaine hesitates, as if she’s thinking through what to tell me. “What we know is in the paperwork I gave you. All I can say for sure is that it’s the result of the genetic modifications they did to him. Are you just now reading about it?”
Yeah, I’m a special kind of stupid apparently. I’m probably the only human on the planet who would let herself be seduced and knocked up by an alien without using the sense God gave her to at least read the fine print.
The manual is maddeningly vague. The Torvians were trying to create a soldier who could interrogate enemies by reading their minds, but it didn’t work like they hoped. It only allows Eros to sense feelings not learn information such as military coordinates—thus useless.
They don’t understand it either. That means he might even have the ability to change how I feel.
Horrified, I think back on how easily I accepted him into my life. How quickly he got me naked. How I slowly drifted away from the salon, which had previously been my whole life. I was sure I didn’t want to be pregnant but almost immediately after seeing the plus sign, I started imagining what the baby would look like. Had he done that?
Worse than that, I was starting to fall for him. Had he made that happen too?
My hands shake as I tell her, “I need you to take him back.”
“Oh, Penelope, are you sure?” She sounds disappointed, but I can’t worry about that right now.
“He can’t be here.” That much I know. The rest, I have no idea, but my insides are raw and I can’t deal with all of this, especially when there’s not an option to take time to understand my own feelings before Eros announces it to me.
If that’s even the extent of it. How do I know he hasn’t been controlling this situation all along? That’s the absolute last straw. I have to be in control of my life.
“Take him back,” I tell her firmly and that’s when I look up to see Eros standing in the doorway of our bedroom.
I don’t need ESP to understand that I just broke his heart.
Two days after Charmaine collected my husband but left me married because I couldn’t deal with that legal hassle either, I still have morning sickness. It sucks. As I lay in bed alone, I run the back of my hand over the pillow where Eros used to be. It’s cool of course. His heat would feel good right now.
&nb
sp; I’m miserable and trying really hard to blame it on being pregnant but I’m dead on the inside. I miss my husband, miss how he lit me up beneath my skin and I hate myself for sending him away. I haven’t been to the salon since he left. The worst sort of irony. I wanted him gone so I could focus on my career, and I’ve done nothing of the sort.
Instead, I lay around and eat ice cream and berate myself for being such a control freak. But I can’t let an alien with powers I don’t understand run my life.
This has gone far enough. I swing my legs out from under the covers and get out of bed. A shower goes a long way toward making me feel human again. When I make an appearance at the salon, the girls give me a wide berth accompanied by small, pitying smiles. What did Clem tell them?
I pull her into the back room where no one can overhear us. “So everyone knows, I guess?”
She shrugs. “I only told them that you and John had a falling out and he went back to Europe. I had to say something to explain your absence because they were worried about you. I didn’t tell anyone that you’re pregnant.”
“His name is Eros.” My eyelids flutter closed. That was the first of many deceptions which should be corrected. “Not John. They made that up at the facility where he was processed.”
Clem’s eyes widen. “Processed? You process meat, not people.”
“He’s not from Europe. He’s from…farther away.” Oh, God. How am I supposed to explain that he’s not “people” to someone else when I scarcely understand it myself? And then it dawns on me. Maybe I don’t have to understand. Maybe I just have to believe and that’s enough. “He’s from another planet.”
I pause for a moment to let that sink in, waiting for the laugh or the snort of derision. I wouldn’t tell anyone this other than my oldest friend, and in this case, it is definitely a need to know situation, so I believe I’m covered under the agreement I signed. To her credit, she doesn’t even blink.
“Somehow this doesn’t shock me,” she says casually. “Obviously he’s not like any other man I’ve ever met.”
“That’s it? You’re not going to ask me any questions?” She’s giving me far too much leeway here.
“Only one—can you get him back? Because I’ll take him if you don’t want him.”
“What?” I scowl. “You can’t have my husband. He’s mine. Get one of your own.”
Her smile is smug and condemns me thoroughly. “Then my real question is, what are you doing here? You’re pregnant and clearly unhappy without him. Can’t you patch up whatever is going on between you two?”
I pinch my nose with my fingers but it doesn’t stop the flood of emotions inside as I imagine telling Charmaine I made a mistake. “It’s not that simple. He’s got some kind of special powers that no one understands. I’m carrying a baby that could end up being green and scaly. I don’t know what to do.”
“No one understands?” Disbelief crowds through her features. “Not even him? Did you ask him what the baby will look like? Maybe there are other people who have been through this who can help you understand.”
“Stop talking.”
Beleaguered I try to sort through what she’s telling me. No, I didn’t ask him. Because I don’t trust him. He didn’t admit he had mind-reading abilities and…well, he did tell me pretty frequently that he was learning me. I just didn’t understand that he meant something other than my bone structure. That’s not his fault.
Neither is it his fault they experimented on him, then kicked him to the curb.
Or that the pages stuck together in the manual that was on my bedside table the whole time.
I don’t know what to think. Eros would know how I feel and that’s a hell of a realization. He’s always been so instinctive with me, from how to pleasure me to what I need from him. Almost before I do. I didn’t give that enough credit and now that it’s gone, I want it back.
I’m such a mess. “I should go to the facility where he came from. Maybe someone there can help. Will you come with me?”
“Of course. I keep my passport up to date just in case I’m asked to jet off to Europe with a guy at the last minute,” she says loftily. “But this is just as good.”
The ladies at the salon don’t bat an eye when I tell them I’m taking Clem with me to Europe to fetch my husband because I’m pregnant and don’t want to travel alone. Two last-minute tickets to Switzerland are not cheap but I pay it because it’s less than the cost of being dead inside for the rest of my life. Charmaine hooks me up with the people in Geneva who run the alien portal program, which is obviously top secret and not widely known to exist.
The facility is underground, as Charmaine explained to me. We take an elevator three levels down in the company of several grim-faced security types who look like they could take you apart with their bare hands. I wonder if they’re Torvian and have a moment where I’m thankful my alien is sweet and gentle, unlike what he could have turned into, considering. He would never hurt me, and I believe that without question.
He’s mine. And I’m his. That’s been true from the beginning and the time apart didn’t make it any less so. If he does have the ability to manipulate my feelings, you’d think it would fade when he’s half a world away, but it didn’t.
When we get to the front desk, I explain my mission and fill out about twenty pages of paperwork, as well as provide proof of my marriage to the Torvian John Smith and my residency in the United States. These people do not mess around.
A new grim-faced facility employee in a suit leads us down another hallway, but this time, it’s a woman and she’s clearly human. This facility spreads out much farther than I was expecting. How many aliens are they hosting here?
Clem leans in and says, “I have to confess, I keep thinking I’m going to find out this is all a hoax.”
I nod. “Join the club.”
We are ushered into a waiting area and as we take seats, a huge male who can only be Torvian strides by, his muscles rippling beneath his close fitting long-sleeved shirt. He’s roughly the same size and build as Eros but blond and not nearly as beautiful. I mean, he’s hotter than any Earth man I’ve ever seen, but his face has less sensuality and more authority about it than my alien’s does.
He pauses and locks gazes with Clementine.
Clem makes a noise in her throat and murmurs, “Who do I talk to about signing up for my own alien?”
I laugh. “It’s not a rescue shelter.” But it kind of is. “I’ll ask. Maybe you can take that one home with you.”
And then Eros blasts into the room and I forget about Clem and any Torvian other than this one. “Um, hi.”
It occurs to me that he might not be so happy to see me. I have treated him like crap thus far and there’s no guarantee he’s up for another round.
He doesn’t even pause, just yanks me into his embrace, murmuring in his native language. Apparently I was worried about his reaction for no reason. Yeah, I missed him too, and his essence flows into me like a river of warm honey. That’s him learning me, sensing my feelings, being inside me. I lap it up. Why did I think this was a bad thing again?
“You send away,” he says and it’s every bit an accusation. But since he’s still holding me, I guess I’m forgiven?
“I’m sorry,” I whisper and snuggle deeper into his arms. “I was confused.”
“No more confuse,” he says with conviction and I nod because it’s true.
I’m not confused anymore, and he can read that inside me. My feelings about him were there before he touched me, and I’m wholly convinced he’s simply got some kind of extra-sensory perception, not mind control.
Or maybe I just want to believe. Is that so terrible? I need him and he needs me. That’s enough for now.
“Who can tell me about what surprises are in store for us as parents of a mixed race baby?” I ask him.
The facility employee clears her throat. “I can help with that. We have several other couples who have conceived and many have already given birth. I’ll put you
in touch with them.”
The relief washes over me and I can’t stop it. Nor do I want to. If there are others, then it must be fine. I want it to be fine. “Thank you. Do you mind giving us a minute?”
Clem and the facility employee both nod and disappear around a corner. I’m sure Clem is talking the woman’s ear off about how she can get an alien refugee of her own. They both fade from my mind instantly as I focus on my Eros.
I frame his beautiful jaw in my hands. “Will you come home with me?”
It’s not a given. Just because he seems pretty happy to see me doesn’t mean he’s willing to let me stomp all over his heart again.
He purses his lips. “No more send. You family. Baby family.”
Yeah, I deserved that. Just because I have control doesn’t mean it’s in my best interest to wield it. This is a relationship of balance. “I won’t do that again. I’m in it for the long haul this time. Can you trust me?”
He nods. “Love you.”
And that’s that. If he can see inside me and learn all of my secrets and still be on board after that, who am I to argue? “I love you too. Let’s go home.”
Epilogue
Clementine completed her profile with Out of This World Matches and has been bugging me hourly about how long it takes to get a husband. Who knew she’d be so into the idea of an alien dating service?
“Mine came back in like two minutes.” I shrug and fold another foil square around a strand of Mrs. Blanchard’s hair. “But Charmaine said that was unusual. So I don’t know. Maybe you’ll hear tomorrow.”
She’s coming into this deal with her eyes wide open, so she’s got an advantage. I’m still figuring things out as I go but so far, Eros and I are working great.
So great, that when I come home after a late appointment, he’s already there—with flowers.
“For you,” he says in his delicious accent and I smile both at the blooms and his command of English. He learns more every day and treats me like a queen. Having a pregnant wife means he spends a lot of time taking care of me and I love it.