by Laura Wylde
“Fertility. Shit.”
Chapter 11
Ryder didn't seem interested in talking about the Gods after that. When they got back to the campsite, the other guys were back and they all pitched in to build a new shelter. While they worked, Rose told them about Zeus. Asher seemed to like the idea that he was descended from this big, powerful, overly sexual God.
“So now we just need to know about Ryder's...and yours,” Dexter said.
Rose wasn't going to tell them about Ryder's. She couldn't explain Aphroditus without poaching on his private business. She figured it was his story to tell. She was surprised when he said, “She saw mine today, at the lagoon.” The other three men stopped what they were doing and their attention was immediately focused on Ryder. “I am a doctor. A fertility doctor,” he said. He didn't go into as much detail as he had with Rose, but he told them about Aphroditus. When he finished Beau said,
“So, I'm still confused. These Gods and Goddesses supposedly want us to discover some kind of truth about ourselves...but their “reveals” with the ones they've sent here, aren't really reveals at all, are they?”
“What do you mean?” Asher asked.
“Well, let's take you for example. We all know you're the biggest and the strongest. We could have guessed Zeus. Poseidon for me...duh. The knowledge lady...Athena, for the genius here, and the fertility God for Ryder. If you know your mythology, none of them would have been a stretch, So how is that helping us learn a truth about us that we already don't know?”
“Maybe we need to look deeper,” Dexter said.
“Meaning what?” Rose asked. Suddenly, the shelter was all but forgotten and the five of them sat down on the rocks they arranged by the fire pit the day before. Asher had a bag of berries they picked the day before. He took a handful out, popped them into his mouth and passed them to his left. Ryder took them and passed them onto Beau as Dexter said,
“I mean, these Gods are famous for those things, but there was so much more to them. Maybe we need to look at them as a whole.”
“Okay,” Asher said, “I'll admit that I don't know much about these Gods. So tell me about Zeus, Dexter. The parts of him that aren't obvious.”
“Okay, let me see what I remember about him. He is the King of Mt. Olympus, but I'm sure we all knew that. He is very promiscuous.” Rose raised an eyebrow and Asher actually blushed. “He fathered scores of children. His main title, although he has many of them, is God of the sky and thunder...” Any of this hitting a nerve or ringing a bell?” Dexter asked him.
He still looked like he was blushing slightly. That much, they all knew was extremely out of character, but when he began to speak again, it started to make sense. “When I was fresh out of foster care and trying to figure out what to do with my life, I was also broke and working any odd job I could find. I did some strange things, whatever it took to survive as long as it was legal. One of those things was selling my sperm.”
“As in to a sperm bank?” Ryder said.
“Yes, but also to private enterprise.”
“What do you mean, private enterprise?” Rose asked.
Asher didn't have time to answer before Ryder did. “Companies like mine,” Ryder said. “I use surgery and medications in a lot of cases, to try and help my patients conceive a child when they are determined to have one of their own. Occasionally, due to a man's low sperm count or lack of motility...some other more technical issues, the only thing the woman needs to become pregnant is viable sperm. A lot of these patients choose artificial insemination. We keep sperm on hand from clients who have been thoroughly vetted.”
“Vetted?” Beau asked.
“My patients are not your average citizens. These are uber wealthy people who want a child that will be blessed with looks and intelligence...and sometimes, you might be surprised at how specific they get. We vet our sperm donors, do a thorough background check instead of a simple name, we offer our patients a bio so to speak.”
“So how many kids could Asher here possibly have fathered?” Dexter asked.
Ryder looked at Asher and said, “Depending on the virulence of his sperm...hundreds.”
“What's the name of your firm?” Asher asked Ryder.
“Griffin female reproductive health and endocrinology.”
“Shit,” Asher said. Apparently, he had donated there.
“Wow,” Beau said. “This is almost like an experiment in six degrees of separation too. I mean, imagine the two of you being connected in any way. Weird, huh?”
Neither Ryder nor Asher answered that question. Instead, Asher looked at Rose and said, “So, do you think that was the truth that I needed to discover about myself? I mean, what am I supposed to do with that?”
Rose smiled at him and said, “I sense a lot of sadness when you talk about your childhood. Not having any blood ties really bothered you, maybe even made you feel alone?”
Asher nodded slowly and it looked like some kind of truth was just beginning to dawn on him. “Feeling disconnected has always held me back,” he said. “I've been wildly successful with my business, but never in my love life, or any of my relationships. Everything has always felt like...it was temporary. I just never felt like I was connected to anything permanent. Maybe...” his voice trailed off and Rose said,
“Maybe knowing that your DNA is out there and it won't die with you, is the part of yourself that you've been missing.”
Asher nodded again. “Maybe so.” For a man that didn't believe any of this the day before, he suddenly seemed to be coming around.
“Okay, me,” Beau said, looking at Dexter. Beau's heart and enthusiasm never failed to make Rose smile.
“Well, of course we know Poseidon's connection to the sea, and all bodies of water. But did you all know that he was considered to be one of the greediest and most vengeful Gods? He had the nastiest temper.”
“That's not Beau then,” Rose said defensively. Beau gave her a grateful look, but she wasn't finished. “He's one of the kindest, most empathetic people I've ever met. And he's a peacemaker. He doesn't have a nasty temper at all. He has a very calming effect on most of us, right?” The other men all nodded. Beau was quiet for a while and said,
“I really don't see myself as having a bad temper, or being greedy. But sometimes we have a skewed perception of ourselves. So maybe I'm wrong.”
“You're not wrong,” Rose said, surprised at how defensive she felt about a man she'd only known for 48 hours. Their connection was nothing ordinary, for sure. None of them.
“Well, there's more,” Dexter said. “Zeus was Poseidon's brother. They were both sired by Cronus. Cronus had a nasty habit of eating his young. Zeus was not eaten by Cronus however and in some stories he is the one that saved Poseidon from sure death at the mouth of his father. In other stories it was his mother who saved him. She hid him...”
“She took him away,” Asher said.
“Well, she hid him and gave Cronus a colt to devour instead,” Dexter said.
Asher was staring at Beau. “Did you know your father?”
Beau shook his head, slowly. “My mother said he wasn't a good man. He was abusive and she had to take me and run away before he hurt us, the way he had his late wife. But she told me that I never had to worry that he would find me, because by the time she told me the story, he was dead. He ended up taking a stray bullet on a hunting trip.”
“Where was your mother from?”
Beau's eyes widened when he realized what Asher was getting at. “New York. But you don't think...?”
“I went looking for my parents when I turned eighteen. My mother died when I was four in a horrible accident. She fell down the stairs. My father was the one that turned me over to social services. He said that he couldn't care for me. I found out that the police thought he pushed her, but weren't able to prove it. I went looking for him. I wanted to confront him face to face.”
Rose gasped. “Asher, you didn't...you weren't the one that shot him, were you?”
Asher laughed wryly and said, “No, but for a long time I did wish it was me. I hated that man. I saw him being dead when I got there as another betrayal.” He looked back at Beau and said, “Did she ever tell you his name?”
Beau's brown eyes were still wide as he said, “It was Xavier Bronson.” The others didn't have to ask Asher what his father's name was. He was as white as a sheet and even with his dark skin, so was Beau, as the two newly found brothers stared across the fire pit at each other.
“Son of a bitch,” Ryder said. “I really didn't want to believe any of this, but this is all too much to be a coincidence.”
“Yeah, for sure,” Dexter said. “I guess I'm next, since Rose hasn't met hers yet. “Besides the knowledge, she was the patron of protectiveness. She was the daughter of Zeus and the sister of Aphrodite...” Dexter looked at Rose. “This might be a stretch, but do you know anything about your biological parents?”
Rose shook her head. “No, just that they put me in a blanket and a basket and left me on the sidewalk in New York, outside of...” Before she finished Dexter said,
“A bookstore, in Manhattan.”
“Yes.” Rose wasn't surprised, she'd told him that. At least she'd told him most of it. “Dexter, how did you know it was in Manhattan?”
“I didn't,” he said, “It was an educated guess.”
“Educated how?”
“Well, you know how I remember everything I read?” She nodded and he said, “When I was twelve, I found this journal in our attic. My mother caught me reading it and she freaked out. I lied to her and told her I hadn't read much of it. But, the truth was that I read a lot of it. It belonged to a woman named Faith. She wrote about being beautiful and how hard her life had been because of her beauty. People wanted to use her and the men in her life treated her horribly. She had even thought of taking her own life. She wrote a lot about missing someone. She never said who it was that she missed, only that this person was a part of her and she could never be whole again because she had lost that part. It made me sad, even at 12 years old. I couldn't forget her so I kept asking my mother who she was and Mom didn't really want to tell me. But, when I was on the trail of something, I was relentless. She finally admitted to me that Faith was her best friend from high school. She said when they were seniors in high school, Faith got pregnant. The man that impregnated her didn't want anything to do with her or the baby, but Faith couldn't bring herself to have an abortion. She wanted to keep the baby. Her parents wouldn't hear of it. They were afraid of what everyone would think. They thought she'd have a reputation as being “loose,” or whatever. She flat refused the abortion though and the day the baby was born, Faith took her and she ran away. She lived in the Bronx with her parents. She made it as far as Manhattan before she somehow convinced herself that she wouldn't ever be able to care for that baby. She wrote three pages about how heartbroken she was, Rose. She loved her baby. She loved you. But she was alone and afraid and she didn't believe she could give you a good life. So she found an old basket in a dumpster and she left you where she thought someone nice would find you. She thought that people who lived in Manhattan and went to book stores would have to be good people, intelligent, at least. So that's where she left you.”
“And what happened to her? Where's my biological mother now, do you know?”
Dexter looked sad. “Mom said that she killed herself a few years later, that's why my mom had her journal and some other stuff of hers.”
Chapter 12
Rose felt like she was in shock and her heart physically ached. While they all discussed what they had discovered, the men got back to work, erecting the shelter before the sun went down on their second night on the island. Rose tried to help, but they could all tell that what she'd discovered about her mother, her biological mother, was hard for her to process. She had spent her life resenting her biological parents, being angry with them for abandoning her. She'd never even tried to look for them...her mother would have already been dead if she had, but didn't the woman deserve that much at least? The more she thought about it, the sicker she felt and she didn't even realize that she had tears running down her face until she felt Dexter slide an arm around her waist and say,
“Come on Rose, let's go for a walk.” Rose was on auto-pilot. Dexter led her almost like she was a robot, down to the lagoon. Once they were there, the two of them sat down and Dexter said, “I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have told you that. Here, of all places. It's just one more thing to weigh on your mind.”
“No Dexter, it's not your fault. This island was about the truth, and that's my truth. It's not your fault, and it's not mine either. It just makes me so sad to think about her, all alone. It must have been horrible for her.”
“I'm sure it was. But think of it this way, Rose. She may not have loved herself, but she did love you, very much.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Mom said that the father, I'm sorry, your father, offered her the money to have an abortion, but she refused to take it. She gave you life. That's the ultimate gift, right? And once she did that, as much as she wanted to keep you...she didn't. She gave you up, so that you could have a better life, and you did.”
Rose's tears turned into sobs then and Dexter opened his arms for her to meld into. He held her, making soft shushing noises and rocking her back and forth. Rose couldn't seem to stop crying. It was like everything crashed down on her all at once and she just couldn't take another thing. Some time passed before she was able to pull herself together and when she finally did she pulled back and looked at his face. His beautiful gray eyes held tears of their own and something about his compassion for her tugged at her heart. For the second time in two days she did something completely out of character. She leaned in and kissed his lips, softly. When she pulled back again, Dexter looked surprised and his cheeks were flushed.
“I'm sorry,” she said, feeling worse than she had before. What was wrong with her? She'd just had sex with Asher only hours before and here she was throwing herself at Dexter.
He put his hand on the side of her face and said, “Please don't be sorry. You've been through so much...”
“You all have,” she said. “I don't see you all throwing yourselves at me.”
Dexter laughed. “Oh Rose, you have no idea how badly we want to. Every man on this island, with maybe the exception of Hermes, if he can even be called a man, wants you. We would all take you in a second. The only thing stopping us from acting on our feelings is impulse control. You got stuck here with four gentlemen.”
Rose smiled and leaned her forehead into his. “Want to know a secret?”
Dexter nodded. “I don't feel “stuck” with any of you. I feel blessed to have four gorgeous gentlemen as company. There's something about every one of you that attracts me, something about every one of you that I'd like to explore. But impulse control is the only thing holding me back as well. Society looks at it differently when it's a man with a lot of women. When the roles are reversed and the woman is the one with more than one partner, she's painted as a pariah and all kinds of other terrible things.”
“Society isn't here, is it?” Rose jerked her head up at the voice. What it took her a few seconds to realize was that Dexter did too. He heard the voice and his eyes were on the same perfect Goddess that hers had settled on. Rose thought Athena was the most breathtaking and beautiful creature she'd ever seen, but this woman...she was so perfect that it was almost hard to look at her. Her skin was like sweet cream, her eyes were green but flecks of gold floated inside of them. Her eyelashes were an inch long at least. Her lips were dark red and there wasn't a speck of make-up on them...on her, anywhere. Her hair was light brown with white blonde highlights and it stretched down her back, almost to her feet. She wore a crown that sparkled so brightly it was almost blinding. The toga wrapped around her covered her private areas, but her cleavage was deep between the swells of perfectly shaped breasts, and her legs, long and shapely like the rest of her.
&
nbsp; “No,” Rose managed to say, “I guess it isn't. I assume you're the Goddess who is here for me? The one that came to help me discover my truth? Unfortunately, I've already figured it out.”
The Goddess smiled softly and said, “I'm not here to help you find out about your mother. That was Dexter's job and he did a fine one of it.” Dexter seemed almost completely intimidated by her. His face blushed a deeper shade of red when she spoke to him. “Rose, your biological mother hated herself. She thought that everything she did was wrong. She didn't think she was good enough for you. Have you noticed yet, how much you're like her?”
Rose frowned. “What are you talking about? I don't hate myself.”
“Not on the surface my love. But you deny yourself the things that you want and need in lieu of making sure everyone else is taken care of ahead of you. Your parents wanted you to wait until you were grown to be a model. How old were you when you decided that was what you wanted to be?” Rose shrugged and the Goddess said, “Rose?”
“Thirteen or fourteen, I guess. I was in a beauty contest in New Jersey and one of the prizes was a modeling contract. When Mom found out about that, she told me she didn't want me to do the contest. When I got upset, she started to cry and told me that they were so protective because they loved me so much. I felt like a bad daughter if I went through with it, so I didn't.”
“You postponed your dreams to ease their feelings.”
“That's what you do for people you love.”
“Like Trevor?”
“He's not a good example,” Rose said.
“Okay then, Brett?” Rose hadn't thought of Brett in a long time. He was her first love, years before Trevor. He was sweet and kind to her, but he didn't want her to be a model. He was jealous and insecure and he was sure that she'd meet so many other men that she wouldn't want him any longer. “Your career could have taken off much earlier, but you didn't want to do anything that would hurt Brett or make him uncomfortable, right? When you finally freed yourself from that binding relationship, you didn't walk away feeling good that you were finally taking care of yourself...you walked away filled with guilt and you carried that guilt for years, As a matter of fact, it was that same guilt that had you beaten down just enough to allow Trevor to bully you.”