Unlike Any Other (Unexpected #1)

by Claudia Burgoa

  Running a hand through his hair, he let out one of those big breaths that told me he was frustrated and didn’t know how to deal with it.

  “Chris, there’s no pressure.” I took a few cautious steps forward. “It’s a shitload to find yourself in a situation of this magnitude. So you grew up and you get to know yourself better, including that you’re bisexual.”

  “I’ve never been in love—or attracted to a man,” his words muffled as he covered his mouth. The words he’s sharing seemed to weigh heavily on his mind. “Suddenly I have a double whammy. I still like women, but I have feelings for you, too. My career wouldn’t suffer as much as yours. You love what you do, Gabe.”

  The acceptance overwhelmed me, but I remained in place instead of moving to where he stood and kissing him senseless.

  “Then there’s the family you’ve always talked about wanting.”

  He came, but the conversation we were having felt… insignificant.

  “Why did you come?” I shoved my hands inside my pockets and stared at him waiting for an answer that never came. “To tell me why we shouldn’t be together? You already did that.”

  He shook his head as his gaze slowly dropped to his feet.

  “I came to figure us out.” His head straightened and so did his shoulders. “Not because of me, but because you hurt. I can’t stand the thought of you hurting and me being the cause of it. I don’t do relationships, Gabe, but for you I’ll try.”

  “Babe,” was the only word I could breathe out as his words played one of those happy tunes on my heartstrings.

  “So how are we doing this?” Chris arched an eyebrow and lifted it several times. “I’m a virgin. Am I bottoming for you or…?”

  “There won’t be sex,” I crossed my arms. The easy smile disappeared from his eyes but a glint of a smiled appeared on mine. “Ever.”

  “No fucking?” His green eyes twinkled and opened wide. Damn, playful Chris was getting me hard. “But I love sex; I live for sex… don’t take away my sex. Plus don’t forget, I can take you places no man has ever taken you.”

  I laughed hard; he used that line too often with women.

  “I might let you take me there, babe.”

  Instead of words, Christian pulled me to him and crushed his mouth to mine, his teeth tugging my lower lip. It was a rough kiss. His fingers dug at my midriff and I kissed him back with everything I had. I had missed him. I loved him.

  “First we need to figure our relationship out,” I panted as we finally stopped, my words subdued against his mouth. “Then we’ll fuck each other until the next millennium.”

  “I like how you think, college boy.” He kissed me on the neck and nibbled his way to my ear.

  2015

  “Not now, Gabriel,” Chris barks between shallow breaths. “Don’t ask, suggest, or try to fix us now. I have to head downstairs and see for myself that my child is in one piece and try to assess the damage.”

  His eyes harden and he points at me.

  “I fucking told you something was wrong with Ainse that night, damn it.” He raises his voice. “I swore that I’d kill him if he dared to touch her. I didn’t want him close to her. I warned him. He’s worse than me thirty years ago; he’s my band mates and… how long, Gabe?”

  Chris takes a step back when I try to approach him. He’s too worked up to face Ainse, and I have to calm him down.

  “Years,” I scratch my head. “She was sixteen when it started but nothing serious happened until later… don’t push her, please.”

  “Damn it,” his threatening voice is low—silent but deadly. “When we had them I swore to protect them, protect her from everything, and I’ve failed her too many times. We failed her.”

  He paces around the room a couple of times and stops right in front of me.

  “My show,” he lifts his chin. “Don’t dare to try to take over.”

  “Don’t do anything stupid then,” I warn him. “You know what happens when you lose your temper.”

  “I haven’t in years,” he reminds me. “I’d never lose my mind with my baby or in front of her.”

  “No, but you would with the thug, and hiding a body is hard these days.”

  He ignores my joke and crosses his arms.

  “Arthur is around, I’ll give him a heads up too, so he’ll stick around until Porter leaves the place,” Chris’s breathing relaxes. “If I choose to buy her that darn pony she always wanted, you stay quiet and sign the fucking check. Get it? Same goes with Porter. Don’t act until I say so and only if I say so. Again, this is my show. I want to know what happened before we do anything.”

  I nod; he releases his arms and leans to where I stand, kissing my cheek.

  “About us… you fucked everything up, Gabe.”

  I flinch and stare at him as he heads down the stairs.

  1990

  “This one was a gymnast for twelve years,” Christian pointed at another profile. “She’s in grad school.”

  Last Christmas my sister said four words, In vitro and surrogate as Christian and I stared at her children like puppies waiting for a treat. Claire, my niece, had us tied in knots wanting a little girl like her.

  “She makes me want to have a little girl.” Chris believed Claire could do no wrong and was the smartest girl on the planet. “A boy too. Your nephews are amazing. I wish we could have children.”

  After my sister’s suggestion, we started researching hospitals, egg banks… everything to make it possible. We had been in an official relationship for no longer than a year, but it felt as if we had been together for years. The next obvious step was family.

  “Do we care about their height?” Christian continued his search.

  “I don’t think it matters much,” I read donor number 14,274—dark-blonde hair, and blue eyes. Graduated from college. Then I pushed the profile I just read toward him. “This one could be it.”

  “What if only one egg sticks?” Chris suddenly asked.

  “We could do it again if you want, babe.” I kissed him lightly.

  “Yes,” his brows knitted and his lips twisted. “I don’t want our child to grow up alone.”

  “What if the four of them stick?” I asked.

  We were searching for a donor willing to give four eggs to a same-sex couple. The doctors in Switzerland told us that after implanting the embryos, how many stuck would be a gamble. Sometimes out of all the embryos only one stuck and others, none. They’d inseminate two of the eggs with my sperm and the other two with Christian’s. We hoped that one or two would stick.

  “That’ll be wicked,” Christian’s eyebrow arched as his eyes crinkled. “I’d have a band… four? That’s harder to hide, babe.”

  Only a few knew about our relationship—our bodyguards, my family, and a few close friends of ours, including Tara. Not even my agent knew about Chris. Of course, he was happy to hook me up with any model for an event as I told him I didn’t want anything serious. I let the world believe that I fucked them and tossed them immediately.

  Chris and I were bisexual but monogamous. We commented on beautiful women and handsome men but our exclusivity remained intact. Not once did I touch the women I went out with.

  As planned, I moved in with him at his Seattle apartment, but now that we planned to have children, we had bought several acres of land in Washington State, close to the Oregon border. The construction company broke ground a month ago. We’d build our permanent home there. A house similar to the one in Santa Barbara with a manmade lake, two pools, a studio for Chris, and enough rooms so our family from Albany could visit.

  “Together we can deal with anything, even four rowdy children.” I squeezed his hand. “No one will know about them. The hospital in Switzerland has no fucking idea who we are. Annie, our surrogate didn’t mind if she had one or four babies. Once we come back home, they’ll be in a comp
ound surrounded by everything they need. Nothing will touch them. I swear.”

  I read several times the profile of donor 11,834. Height 5’5” weight 136, brown hair, green eyes, registered nurse working through graduate school, bilingual. Irish descendant. Self-motivated, kind, honest.

  “Your birth certificate says that your mother was Irish, right?” Chris gave me that slight shrug.

  I pushed the paper toward him.

  “I like her,” he kissed my lips. “That’s our babies’ mama?”

  “Are you sure?”

  I asked one more time. Once, he didn’t want a family—children. Now we were creating our own.

  “Yes, I want to have your babies—our babies,” he placed a hand on top of my thigh and slid it toward my groin. “You really changed my fucking world, Gabe.”

  He rubbed my cock.

  “Now let’s go and pretend we are making babies.” Chris unbuckled my belt, and I pushed him gently away.

  The sooner I sent in our request, the sooner we could start the process. It was going to take between six months to a year, even though we paid them extra to expedite our paperwork.

  “Twenty-eight weeks is too soon,” Christian paced around the sterile waiting room. I remained close to the door where they had kicked us out earlier.

  Annie, our surrogate mother, had gone into labor earlier. We were having breakfast, and she was telling us about the back pains she had during the night. Suddenly, out of the blue, she screamed that her water broke.

  “They said triplets never go full term,” I reminded Chris. They had to be fine. “Annie was scheduled for a C-section in four weeks, babe.”

  It went fast. As we arrived at the hospital, they wheeled her inside the operating room. They handed us scrubs to put on from head to toe and when we entered the room, they were already numbing her.

  It didn’t take long for the doctor to get the first baby out, Ainsley our little girl. So small at two pounds and five ounces. Then Matthew James made his big entrance weighing three pounds and five ounces, and finally Jacob Christian at three pounds and nine ounces.

  Ainsley was too tiny, they said she couldn’t breathe on her own and there was a possibility she wouldn’t survive. My heart shrunk, as I wanted that tiny baby who could barely fit into my hand to take my life in exchange for hers.

  “She’ll be okay,” I reassured Christian, who stopped in front of me and hugged me tight.

  “Of course she will, she’s a Decker.” He said as I rested my forehead on his and closed my eyes.

  We didn’t know if she was mine or his, what mattered was that we wanted her to survive. She’d be Colhurst-Decker. The legal surname Chris and I adopted as we decided to take the step of creating a family.

  The babies’ private room had been on standby since the babies finished their second trimester of gestation. The hospital made sure they equipped it with incubators, a bed for us, and every machine they needed. Also, we had hired a group of nurses who could care for them around the clock for when we got home.

  We had plenty of time. Chris and I had planned to be away from America for an entire year. Our main priority was our babies.

  Matthew James, Jacob Christian, and Ainsley Janine. Most of them family names. Ainsley was Christian’s middle name and Janine was my mother’s name. James my father’s name and my middle name. Matthew and Jacob were the two names we picked because we liked them.

  “Soon we’ll head home, babe.” I rubbed his back. “And we’ll keep them safe forever. Nothing will touch them, I promise.”

  “None of those books we read on parenting prepared us for this situation,” he explained. “How long until we can see them?”

  “Soon,” I hoped.

  We waited for another hour, and then the nurses took us back to their room. They had placed them inside the same incubator. All of them had plastic tubes taped on their tiny nostrils. They wore a small cap on their heads and diapers that reminded me of my niece’s doll clothing. The smallest one with the pink hat in the middle, flanked by her two brothers.

  “The three of them are doing well,” Dr. Arner said as she scribbled in their charts. “We just need to keep them long enough for them to fully develop. Your baby girl might take longer, but the prognosis they gave you was wrong; she’ll survive and will keep up with those boys.”

  “We made them,” Christian leaned on my side as we stared at them. My heart swelled at the sight of three amazing children with my partner.

  “I love you, babe,” we said at the same time.

  “Thank you, for these. Now I have a family, a trio of beautiful babies,” Chris grinned. “They’ll all learn to play the guitar, piano… Everything I know, they’ll be musical geniuses.”

  “Our little trio.”

  “I’ll be ‘El Padre’.” Chris bent closer to the incubator. “You three will call me Papi and believe I’m the cool one of your parents. I’ll protect you from the world, and also teach you how to love your messy Dad.” Chris lowered his voice. “He’s an amazing man, I promise; even when he doesn’t know how to speak Spanish.”

  “May I remind you that you don’t speak Spanish either.” I hug his waist and kiss his shoulder. “Stop pretending.”

  “I’ll go back to school and have a degree in Spanish.” He glared at me. “Then you won’t be able to stop me from speaking my favorite language.”

  I laughed at him. It didn’t matter what they called us or what language we spoke. I had a family—the love of my life and three children who I loved so much, I’d give my life for them.

  2015

  Mason and I sit in the theater room while watching some action movie I’m ignoring, eating snacks—carrots and celery along with some frozen fruit. While Mase sits on the couch, I rest my head on one of the arm rests and prop my legs on top of his thighs. A habit we all acquired from Chris.

  My beloved Papi, I wonder if he’ll come to visit Dad.

  Like MJ, Chris isn’t a morning person—a father like son old cliché. I have to wait and call him after ten if I want him coherent. He hasn’t always been that way, it happened suddenly when we turned thirteen. Dad said that Chris retook a few of his old habits. Like waking up late and cussing. He restrained himself mostly when I was around—because I’m a lady.

  “At what time are we having a real breakfast?” Mason asks, bored like me.

  We came back from the beach and saw Nikki rummaging around the house. I wanted to avoid her and Porter. Now we’re stuck in the basement with rabbit food, as Mason called it.

  “Later?” I shove a piece of fruit inside his mouth and go back to my original position.

  This is boring. I’m missing Breezy, but I left her in my parents’ room, and going up there will imply facing the houseguests—Porter and Nikki.

  “Hey, if I ask you to use those ninja skills for a mission,” Mason lifts both eyebrows and crosses his arms, “can you go and rescue Breezy from the tower? My hands need to play some music, please,” singing the last word.

  “Why is he here?” Mason asks releasing his arms and scratching his ear.

  I push myself up to a sitting position and stare at the green-grayish eyes behind those thick square glasses.

  Clark Kent black glasses.

  “I like that geek look. You cover that alter-ego personality to the T.” I lightly touch the frame.

  Mase runs a hand through his thick dark hair as his gaze rests on me.

  “Now, who are we talking about when you say ‘he’?” Yes, I’m playing dumb. So far, I have been able to avoid talking about the subject—Porter.

  “Kendrick.” His gruff tone makes me narrow my eyes. “You know I can’t stand him. I had hoped by the time I arrived, he’d be gone.”

  “Mase, believe me, I’m the first one who wants him voted out of the Colthurst home,” I scrunch my nose. “For that to happen though,
I would have to give an entire explanation of why and what happened.”

  He continues to stare at me.

  “Let me repeat. I. Am. Not. There. I can’t go back there. I can’t be that depressed, pathetic woman.”

  “You need to or you’ll never move on.”

  His words are too objective for the subject.

  Yes, closure, moving on, open my heart again. All that bunch of bologna is true. If I open up just a little—things, or better yet—people like Ryker wouldn’t happen to me.

  I can now be known as ‘the other woman.’ I didn’t want someone to love, only to kiss and not tell, to have the benefits of a relationship without the hazard. The fact that I remained at arm’s length from Ryker made me oblivious to the signs that screamed he was otherwise preoccupied.

  He mentioned his obnoxious roommate… the tight schedule when we could meet and where. I didn’t see the truth because I refused to comb through any facts. That is until I wanted some place to stay for Thanksgiving.

  “Why don’t you have a permanent place?” Thinking about home and belonging, it occurs to me that Mason is a wander-luster.

  “Questions again?” he replies. “Why should I?”

  “Because it’s nice to have a place to call home,” I respond.

  “You’re such a girl.” It feels as if he’s about to change the subject.

  “Oh, no!” I cover my mouth with the tips of my fingers. “I’m a girl?”

  I pull the neck of my shirt and eye my chest from left to right.

  “Yep, definitely girl parts.”

  His eyes narrow in contempt, unamused.

  “Have you had a serious girl?” He doesn’t answer and remains stoic. “A girlfriend or something? You have a woman in every port. No, your alter-ego has a wife and a child.”

  Mason releases the serious pose and laughs. I spin my legs around to rest my head on his thighs as I wait for him to give me some kind of silly story or try to avoid an explanation.

  “There’s no other life.” He presses pause and his attention is all mine now. “In the name of full disclosure, because that’s how I want things to be between us. I had a girlfriend. Meghan. Fiancée.”