We are about to share our trauma and joy. There is a lot of pain in trauma because that’s the nature of abuse. Do not hide from it or ignore it. We became better people and healed from almost all of our wounds because we had the opportunity to face these challenges together. Find joy and embrace those around you! Besides everything that happened in our past, being parents is the greatest gift we ever received from each other.
–Ara
Epigraph
“Space doesn’t care where you started. It only cares how hard you fight to get there.”
Table of Contents
Preface
Prologue
Introduction
ARA
(1) Experimentation, Roleplay, and Release
(2) Genesis: How We Learned to Worship
(3) The Breeding Gospels
(4) Conception:The First Positive Test
(5) Then the Bleeding Started
(6) My Second Attempt at Pregnancy
(7) The Quiet War
(8) The Night We Broke
(9) Abruption, Hemorrhage, Emergency Delivery, and I Died
(10) Aaron is Strong
(11) 79 Days of Hell
(12) Homecoming
ALINA
(13) February 14, 2013 – The Real Exorcism
(14) Alina Gives Her Soul to Ara
(15) Coffee Shop and Why “I Need This”
(16) The Moment I Found Out I Was Pregnant
CARLOS
(17) Overwhelming Odds
(18) February 14, 2013 (Carlos’s Pledge)
(19) The Confession I Will Never Read Aloud, and Then Do
(20) Hope
(21) Aaron
(22) Arabello
(23) Paloma
(24) Calliope
(25) Callista
(26) Adalyn
(27)Evelyn
(28) Funny Story 1: The Popcorn Avalanche
(29) Funny Story 2: Arabello and the “Real” Pirate
(30) Funny Story 3: The Twins' Great Escape (Diaper Edition
(31) Hope and Aaron's Big Adventure (Unsupervised at 11)
(32) Ara and Alina Alone in the Park
(33) Ara and Carlos Caught by Security: A Stolen Moment in Hollywood Studios
(34) Alina and Carlos Alone in the Park: An Evening at Animal Kingdom
(35) The Unexpected Reunion: Shadows of the Past at Disney World
(36) Tricks of the Trade
(37) Closing out the bill
(38) Twins, But Not by Blood
(39) The Asthma Attack (age 9)
(40) The Voice
(41) A Love That Transcends Space, Time, and the Heavens
(42) Soul Deed (Hope reads Momma’s)
(43) The Soul Deed Under the Pillow
(44) Soul Deed (Hope to Aaron)
(45) Christmas Dinner Revelation 2015
(46) Q&A on the backyard porch
Preface
Author’s Note and Content Warning
Some of the following dialog is raw and brutal. It contains: graphic consensual power exchange, breeding / impregnation kink, daddy / little girl dynamic, sexual relationships between adult siblings, polyamory, sex work, premature deliveries, medical trauma, and religious trauma.
Nothing in these pages glorifies, romanticizes, or eroticizes the abuse of minors. The graphic sexual content that follows is exclusively between adults. Any reader who conflates the two is misreading both the book and the lived reality of trauma survivors.
This is a memoir of survival and personal growth. Ara’s and Alina’s recollections of childhood sexual abuse and exploitation are included not for titillation, but because they are a true recreation of how they became the women and the mothers they are today. Removing them or changing the content would erase the very wounds that this family spent a decade healing from.
If these descriptions are triggering for you, don’t read this book!
Prologue
The Night the Fantasy Died
3:07am: This is life leaving me in a rush. I look down and the white sheets are pools of blood. The blood is so dark it looks black in the moonlight. The smell, recognizable. I screamed loudly, a scream I didn’t know a human throat could produce. Alina bolts upright beside me, mouth open in a matching scream that never quite forms. Carlos flies off the bed ripping the comforter away. The saturated fabric hits the floor. Carlos lifts me and blood pours over his forearms, down his chest, onto the floor. Alina runs barefoot behind us leaving perfect red footprints all the way to the garage. I try to speak but nothing comes out.
The last thing I hear before the world fades to black is Carlos’s voice, “Stay with me baby! Stay with Daddy!”
Alina is in the back with me, her hands pressing towels between my legs, whispering prayers her father taught her. She's rocking back and forth as she watches me fade in and out of consciousness.
I hear these words, “No!” “Lord!” and “Faster!” but most of the rest of it is incomprehensible.
Strangers rip me from Carlos's and Alina's arms in the ER. Someone shouts, “Abruption,” and cold shears cut away my clothes. The oxygen mask hisses…
The last words I hear before it's dark are: “Baby,” “Alina,” and “I’m sorry.” My last thoughts about Carlos were, “I never used a safeword.”
Introduction
Ours: A Story of Trauma and Joy (through the eyes of Ara, Alina, and Carlos) is a powerful, multi-perspective memoir told through the alternating voices of three deeply scarred and wounded souls who find each other in the darkest corners of desire that transforms personal trauma into a story of profound redemption and build an extraordinary family against impossible odds.
Ara, 24 years old. Orphaned young and shaped by childhood exploitation. Carrying scars that taught her love is transactional, takes the greatest risk of all.
Alina, 19 years old. The disowned pastor’s daughter, rebelling against religious repression and a childhood of shame, seeking worship instead of judgment.
Carlos, 43 years old. A grieving man seeking to regain control of his life, haunted by a horrific tragedy that cannot escape his past.
Ours, initially chronicles how three the three initially meet in an online space and forge an unconventional polyamorous relationship built on dominance, surrender, and an intense breeding kink.
Then, the raw and explicit intimacy evolves into a deliberate family-building project. The narrative explores the early years' passion and role-play, the devastating miscarriage and jealousy wars that nearly destroy them, and the miraculous births of their children, especially that of Hope (with her premature fight for life) and Aaron (destined to be Hope’s guardian), the “twins but not by blood” whose cosmic bond becomes the family’s heartbeat.
The heart of the story revolves around transformation: jealousy giving way to choice, possession to daily commitment, pain to healing. Eight children become living proof that cycles can be broken. Hope's starbound dreams, Aaron's quiet guardianship, Paloma's joyful resilience, and the younger ones' unscarred freedom to have a childhood their parents never did.
Later chapters expand into a decade of Disney adventures, soul deeds, Hope's Mars mission, and discoveries. The family comes together to document their journey discovering deeply unresolved loss, fear, and anger to form new commitments and transformations.
Thematically, Ours is about radical healing, showing that love born in trauma can outgrow its origins when chosen without possession. It confronts abuse, grooming echoes, religious shame, and grief head-on, never sanitizing the explicit sexuality or suffering, yet earning its hope through honest reckoning.
Stylistically, alternating first-person voices create intimate, overlapping truths. Childhood perspectives and glimpses of the future add wonder and legacy.
Ultimately, Ours is proof that family isn't blood, it's the people who reach through darkness and refuse to let go. A devastating and uplifting testament to resilience, chosen love, and light that outlives stars.
ARA
• Unyielding strength from survival, yet remains soft
• Fierce, restrained protectiveness
• Calm, natural authority
• Deep empathy; reads unspoken pain
• Creates rituals for safety and meaning
• Absolute loyalty
• Sharp, dry wit; warm laughter
• Intense, intentional mothering
• Radical accountability
• Coexisting ferocity and gentleness
• Transmutes wounds into light for others
(1) Genesis: How We Learned to Worship
Carlos bought a house in Northeast Portland because the master bedroom was twenty-four feet long, had fourteen-foot ceilings, and walls thick enough that the neighbors would never call the cops no matter how loud we screamed or how loudly I cried. It was a safe place, it would be the place that the three of us needed. It sheltered us from the elements with just eight inches of cold cinderblock. The house needed a lot of work. As old walls came down inside the house, so did walls inside us from the places we left behind.
I’m Ara, 24. Orphaned at 15 when my mother overdosed in a Vegas motel. No one ever came looking for her and I don't think anyone ever knew I existed. I should have been found dead in a motel just like her. That evening, I gave some guy a hand job to buy me a bus ticket to Seattle. I never made it all the way there. I walked away at a stop somewhere in Portland.
I learned to come for strangers on camera before I ever came with someone who knew my real name. It was really easy. No one knew how old I was and nobody cared. They liked me because I looked young. I'd finger myself 5 to 10 times a day on camera to survive. I was fucking myself since I was 12 anyway.
My childhood was a series of motel rooms. All dirty, smoke-stained, and smelling of wet jizz still on the carpet. I remember my mother bringing home men who looked at me way too long. I was 13 the first time my mother let one of them finger me. She told me this is the way we survive. She used her body as a shield, then as a weapon, then as currency. Then she used me. It was inevitable that I would be just like her. I thought about it all the time. I never walked the streets but I knew where the money was and how to get it.
By 16, I could make myself squirt on command for tips. The first time Carlos watched me do it in person, he told me, “I will always worship this.”
Alina is 19. She is the youngest daughter of the Assemblies of God pastor in Wilsonville.
She was officially disowned six months after her 19th birthday when she emailed her father a video of Carlos coming on her tongue with the caption, “This is the only holy spirit I’ll ever need.”
Her childhood was sermons and suppression, body hidden under long skirts, and desire labeled as the devil's whisper. She rebelled hard and fast. She found us in the same dark corners of the internet, drawn to the freedom we offered and the chance to be worshipped instead of judged.
Alina is a goddess! She glows and is always smiling. We worship her. She knows her body, inside and out and will show you where and how to touch her if she's not getting wet or getting off! She is so dedicated to the game, Carlos calls her “The Grandmaster,” but was it good improvisation or was it experience? She is strong, a powerhouse of confidence and compassion. I don't know where she got that experience from. If someone told me that she sold her soul to the devil, I'd believe it if I already didn't own it.
She rarely, if ever, talked about her mother. She has four older sisters. I've never met any of them. Her oldest sister is 15 years her senior and they were close. They talked and texted in the past, but she doesn’t talk to her now. As the youngest, I think she learned all her bad habits from her and that scares the hell out of us. Her sister would have been an adult and out of the house by the time Alina was old enough to start experimenting with her sexuality. Carlos and I wonder about Alina's sister and if she groomed her, but we’re uncomfortable confronting Alina about it. We’re afraid that if it is true, her sister has more power over her than we do.
Once, when she was riding Carlos, she shut her eyes tightly, pulled a pillow up to her chest and wrapped her arms around it as tight as a boa constrictor. Then, she bit the corner of the pillow like she was nursing on it. Copious amounts of saliva came out her mouth. I saw her pushing and straining. I swear, Alina silently said, “Becca!” as she was coming. That's her oldest sister's name.
Carlos is 43. He's a retired banker who walked away from everything at 35. After selling his house in Nevada, he traveled for several years before moving to Oregon. He was a business professional.
He set fire to every bridge he ever crossed. They say to not burn bridges, but Carlos said, “Fuck bridges.”
He had a miserable childhood and was on his own by 16. Starting in college, he found power in dominance and came into control of everything he touched. He tells me there was a unique confidence that evolved and he used it to seduce women.
Carlos is charming and brutally honest with everyone else, but not himself. He's not the kind of person who tells you that they'll do anything for you, but he's that person who will help you bury the body. He keeps a dirty shovel in the bed of his truck with other farm style implements. I get the impression that they’ve been used before.
Carlos has had a lot of experience with women but by 35, he says women (plus or minus 10 years) were a waste of time and basically walked away from them. Out of nowhere he met a 30 year old woman in Portland that liked to be hit. I'm not talking about laughable “spankings,” but a full-force slap across her back and thighs. She loved to be choked and slapped across the face. She never bruised, so he said. When she started hitting him, a fire lit inside him that couldn't be put out.
When I put my hands on him, a deep, delicious sound comes from deep in his chest. I swear, he also produces this musky, pheromone-like scent when I hit him. He’s like wild animals in mating season fighting for dominance. Males smell females in heat. Males fight for the chance to mate. The females are scrupulously picky with whom they chose. They pick the Alpha that they know will perpetuate their line. That's Carlos. He doesn't just tell you what he wants, but you become his only focus. He takes it – he takes you. When he puts hands on me, my arms and legs get weak and I'm soaking wet in seconds. He is insatiable!
That woman changed him. It wasn't just a kink or fantasy to him but hitting awoke a sleeping beast. He used to get into fights in his teens and early 20's. From 25 to 35, he was the suit and tie guy. Totally testosterone driven. But when he finally got to the Pacific Northwest, nothing. He was cold as a slab of marble. Then, she found him. She thought she would change him. He walked away from her a few weeks later.
Women think they know what they want. Women definitely don't know what men want. Women are fucking stupid. Women are pawns with holes (between their legs and in their heads) looking for the wrong man to fill them up. I've learned that when a man fills you up with shit, you are shit. It takes a really long time to get those shit stains out, too. Letting go of expectations has made a big difference in my life. It was the worst, best decision I've ever made.
Alina, Carlos, and I found ourselves in private Discords where the safe word was “mercy” and it was never used. We were looking in the last, wrong place one would ever search to find life partners, probably on purpose. If we never found what we were looking for it was easy to blame the world for everything that was wrong with it. The conversations started innocently enough, then turned explicit, then became a lifeline.
I met Alina in person a few months later, and both of us met Carlos a few months after that. The chemistry was immediate, explosive, and irreversible. Alina and I were close, but we didn't cross the point of no return. We weren't looking for partners at that time, although looking back, if we had tried without guidance and structure, I would have surely ruined it like I ruined everything else I touched. I guess I needed a girlfriend to off-gas with and that worked for Alina as well.
Once Carlos came along, our relationship grew exponentially. She dresses provocatively and always turns heads. It doesn't matter how old they were, man or woman, there is an electric field that surrounded her. No one could ever get close enough though. I guess I wasn't afraid of a little electricity and I was feeling somewhat grounded by then. We both knew something was missing. While Alina had plenty of time to start a family (physically), I felt like an old, wet, musty, towel that one would find under the sink that's been under there for years. I was defensive. If someone smiled at me, I'd look at them and yell, “You got a fucking problem?” Everyone wanted a piece of me. Did I have a tattoo across my forehead that read, “loser” or “use me?”
I kept a .38 Special in my backpack and told myself I'd use it if anyone ever tried to hurt me. I don't really know what that meant as I hurt myself all the time. I almost used it on myself. I used to treat myself worse than anyone ever could have.
We all met at a 24-hour coffee shop late one night. Carlos said he had an offer we'd probably refuse, but it sounded intriguing enough. The vibe from him was always appropriate even when we were talking shit online. Alina and I knew what he looked like and who he was, for the most part. I always went hard over bad boys and look where that's gotten me. Again, there was a brutal honesty that you could trust about him and that was incredibly appealing.
Alina and I talked about him several times without any preconceived notions or expectations. Did I know what a guy 19 and 24 years older expected from us, or with us? I thought I did. Why would I expect anything else? Through our online conversations, one thing was exceptionally clear. All of us had a fundamental hate for what life was like. Life was hard and those that didn't work hard, had little. Those that never had to work hard for their wealth, knew nothing about the real world and were unrelatable. Regardless, there really wasn't much that would surprise us.
We arrived first, grabbed a table in the back and Carlos arrived a few minutes later. Fuck! I mean wow! As he walked to the back of the coffee shop, this man seemed to part the sea of people as he got close, they just moved aside. He wasn't the proverbial bull in the china shop, he just made a path and took it. When someone was oblivious to another trying to get by, there was an assertive hand on their shoulder and they just moved. It was totally like a Jedi mind-trick. Assertive and confident. There was also a hint of charm and congeniality that was hard to ignore. He was considerate. Consideration of others is a very powerful force. Alina and I were used so much that we came to believe that being used came first. Carlos cared what we wanted.
Alina didn't wait. Once she saw him, she ran up to meet him and wrapped her arms around him. It was adorable. I couldn't help smiling. I'm not sure what kind of guys she was into, but I think the biggest turn on for her was that he was older than her father. She grabbed his hand and walked the rest of the way slightly in front of him, pulling him faster and faster to finally get there. She was hanging on his right when she got there with the hugest shit, eating grin I've ever seen. Her teeth showed through her smile like the beacon on a lighthouse. I reached out my hand and of course, then he did, too, although he was surprised. Nice, firm, just a shake or two. The first thing I thought was, “I'm such a dork.” This man already knew so much about me. Six months might have easily been 6 years. It was embarrassing. I immediately knew that everything was about to change. I just won the lottery. Everybody has heard about lottery winners that lose it all, spent all their winnings. Was I going to splurge or invest wisely? I had to choose.
Carlos came right out with it. He looked both of us square in the face and said:
“We've talked and we know a lot about each other, but I want you to stop doing what everyone else has been doing. Stop listening to people that give you bad advice, stop listening to people that put their interests first, and definitely think about your future.”
“Look at me. I put everyone else first and what do I have to show for it? Money? Nice things? Those will come and go. Everyone will die one day and no one is going to take any of it with them. People seem to not want to stop making bad decisions. Decisions are not 50/50. They think of choice as correct and incorrect, good or bad, left or right, and yes or no. I say, make the correct decision; be a good person; turn right; and say yes!”
“I'm done running, chasing, and making excuses. I want a family. I want children. I want special people in my life that put me first, and when they do, I will provide everything they need forever and I will put them first.”
“I want both of you to come live with me. I want both of you to be the mothers of my children. Not one of you, both of you! You will do everything I tell you as will I for you. I will provide everything you need and you will be everything I need. You will never want and neither will I.”
“It will be a lot of work but we will put ourselves first. I want you two to be the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning and I want you to fall asleep in my arms. We will fuck every day and make love every night. We will create and dream of beautiful things and our home will be full of children. So, when you make this choice, it will be forever.”
“Everything is on the table, right here, right now. Ask me anything. The moment you come home with me, you are mine and I am yours. All the things that bother you, all your doubts and uncertainties, leave them right here on this table. All your past trauma, leave it here.”
Alina pulled her chair out and turned it around so it was right in front of me. She pulled it in close. She leaned over, put a hand on each of my cheeks and quietly said, “I NEED THIS!”
Carlos sat there watching us intently. Alina staring into my eyes. They penetrated me deeply. Was she searching for something? Was she trying to emphasize how important this was for her? It wasn't like trying to decide if we were going to order the chicken or the fish. This was the rest of my life, our lives.
Who the fuck is this girl? Who is Carlos?
I lean over Alina’s shoulder and ask Carlos, “Who just drops everything and moves in with a bunch of strangers?”
Carlos replies, “A lot of people do. 225,000 new recruits drop everything and enlist in the US Armed Forces every year, collectively. 570,000 kids go away to college for the first time each year, as well.”
I tilt my head back over, centered into Alina's eyes, she's still holding my cheeks with her hands, the corners of my lips slowly start to curl upwards. She firms up on her hands laying on my cheeks, brings her lips within millimeters of mine and says again, very quietly, and as she says it her lips reverberate.
“Ara… I… Need… This…” saying it one word at a time.
I bring my right hand up to the side of her head and with my fingers lightly brush her long hair over her left ear, resting her ear in the palm of my hand.
“You are going to either be the love of my life or the death of me. At least there is one good option there. I need you.”
Alina pecked me on the lips super fast and before I knew what was going on, instantly stood up, stretched out an open hand for me and one for Carlos.
“Let's go home Daddy.”
That was the most amazing thing I've ever heard. Alina never stopped surprising me.
Unlike the predators and degenerates that violated little girls and boys, we were going to put being “Mommy” and “Daddy” first. Accountability, responsibility, outcome and family always came first. I've heard it so many times from women, especially single mothers, that their children come first. Carlos was quick to point out the hypocrisy of those kinds of statements, especially coming from the outrageous numbers of single mothers, children raised by the state, children in foster care, and children raised by teachers with their own ideologies, philosophies, and agendas. And then there’s the violence we are all too familiar with. We spent weeks going over boundaries and expectations. We went shopping! When I look back, the first thing that comes to mind now is, that was easy! I’ve walked away from so many good things and good men. I had to stop doing this.
Carlos took on the role of father, protector, provider, friend, and lover immediately. He always knew what we wanted, we had access to everything we needed, and he cared for us. He truly cared. It wasn't long before he was madly in love with us as well – equally. He was always there, but he expected a tremendous investment from us in return. There was no time for excuses.
It came easier for Alina, but it was frustrating sometimes and often difficult for me. Sometimes it felt like the game was a waste of time, but it wasn't long before I realized that the game made everything worthwhile. I had a few setbacks, but Carlos and Alina knew what had to be done. The language they used, their tone, the subtle inflections and body language, all had long-term outcomes that benefited the family. Carlos was not perfect, but it was easy to see why he had so much. A part of him was lonely, tired, and frustrated but those were the excuses that allowed others to fail. The women that didn't understand long term results, lost out on the best thing that could have ever happened to them. I'm so happy they did.
The children made our lives complete. My past was just the wrong turn on my way there. Regardless of whose vagina they came out of, those precious babies saved us all. It was a treacherous journey at times, but adversity made all of us stronger.
A couple weeks went by and then one day, Carlos called us to the living room.
“Girls, take your clothes off.”
We were already sleeping in the same bed, kissing passionately, body rubs, and a little biting. I even caught Alina masturbating a couple times, and then, out of nowhere, once the little things were addressed and set in motion, it was on!
There had been a lot on our plates with getting Alina and I moved in, shopping, and sending our old lives out to pasture just took time. It was part of Carlos’s plan. We never felt rushed but ironically, Alina moved in with just a backpack. It was hilarious, it really was. We really didn't think of sex that much, besides Carlos’s attempt at sexual innuendo-like humor, but we knew what we were there for. The truth is, we wanted it. I needed it. I was surprised just how fast everything started happening. While sex wasn't regimented or was put on a to-do list (yet), it was obvious that the best way to get it on, was to throw expectations out the window. Carlos always left a window cracked open for me.
Alina had shorts and a t-shirt on, no bra or panties and was naked immediately. Clothes on the floor. She was fucking ready! Literally.
She had a fantastically curvy and firm body. Everything stood up on its own. I wish I was like that back then. It was hard to remember after the punishment I endured to that point. Alina put her hands on her hips and shook that perfectly tight ass up and down. No fat, no cellulite, no stretch marks. Prime real estate and no tattoos!
She ran over to Carlos who was still clothed, sitting on the large leather wingback chair in the middle of the room, jumped on top of him, a knee on each side of his legs and she went to town. They were making out like two pornstars and there I was, thinking, “What just happened?” Both of them were surely thinking, “You snooze, you lose.”
I finally got my clothes off and walked over and it was like I was trying to cut-in at a dance. Alina positioned her body to be purposely in the way. She was everywhere on him as he was on her. Alina already had a hand down his pants gripping onto that rock-hard cock and his pants came off only a second or two later.
Once the pants were off, she dropped to her knees and put that huge cock into her mouth and started slobbering all over it. Her hand went up and down his shaft and she moaned like a maniac. I really wasn't sure if we were going to take turns, or if it was supposed to be both of us, but Alina did not care.
A second later she climbed back up onto his lap and he positioned himself to slide inside her. Then he went right in.
She screamed, “Yes!” and he fucked her until he came inside her.
I stood right next to the chair watching them, and I have to say that I was in slight disbelief because I couldn't get in on any of that.
“What’s wrong with me?”
Carlos came really quickly, twenty minutes, tops. Alina just sat there, looking at him, letting that load find its way deep inside her. She kept her eyes transfixed to his, looking him over, memorizing everything about his eyes, nose, eyebrows, lips, ears, and teeth. She touched every single part of his face several times, running her fingers over everywhere her eyes told her to go. Once she was done, she stood up and walked to the bathroom. Not even looking my way. That strut was just like a Paris runway model.
I sat on the floor right in front of Carlos. He put a leg on each side of me and I rested my head on one of his thighs. Carlos stroked my hair and said, “Well, thanks for showing up at least.” I then bit his leg.
Alina came out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her head like a genie, and nothing else, came up to where I was, grabbed my hand and said, “Come on baby,” and brought me to the bedroom.
Alina said, “Not you old man,” and swung the door behind her, but it didn’t close all the way. Alina told me that she had at least an extra hour of energy left in her. That was the first time with Carlos and she wanted more. I'm also really glad it turned out that Alina and I both like women. She wanted a piece, a very large piece of me. I would give it to her!
Alina took the lead and was everywhere on me. She ate me out, sat on my face, caressed my body, and fingered me like it was an Olympic sport. I was squirting within minutes. Alina freaked out. She loved it! She was all over it. Her eyes were huge, wide open. I can tell she had never seen squirting before. Squirting is really easy for me and I was going to definitely show her how to do it. It lets me get off quickly.
In the past, it was my way of ending a cam session but in real life I could do it all night long. I dated a couple girls but I was never in love with them. I remember that they seemed to want me to pleasure them, see them get off, and I wasn't even an afterthought. Alina totally changed my mind on women. I knew I was going to fall in love with her, really fast, really hard! I did.
When we were done, I went out to check on Carlos and he was asleep on the chair. So, I put a blanket over him and Alina and I went back to the bedroom to go to sleep. Alina was up a few hours later masturbating like a fiend until she came. She definitely wanted me up so she was really noisy and after she came, she pointed to her cunt and said, “eat me!”
“Who the fuck is this girl? What have I gotten myself into?”
She was so intense with me when we first moved in. I really think she wanted me to be comfortable and I was.
The next morning, Alina and I were pleasantly surprised with freshly made pancakes. Everyone chatted about things that we’re going to do today.
Out of the blue Alina said, “Daddy put a baby in me last night.”
The only thing I could think of was, “good for you,” as my jaw dropped and mouth just hung open. That was hot! I'm glad she had fun.
The next night, Carlos set up some candles around the bathtub and invited me in. I'm not sure how he knew, but I think I needed a romantic evening with him and it was perfect. Alina stayed in the front room and watched TV. I think she was in on the surprise. It was just Carlos and I afterwards. He did everything right! He faced me the entire time so we could always see each other's eyes. That made a really big difference for me as I was feeling a little used. He was wonderful.
A few days later, Carlos showed me how to put hands on him – his neck, pull his hair, and hit him. I could totally see how relaxed it made him feel. I loved that he was receptive to it because in the past it was always guys who thought that women wanted to be hit – that I wanted it. Carlos talked about the process, how our play would evolve, and why we don't use “safewords.”
I now believe, if one doesn't know when they're hurting the other, there's no pleasure in it and you really don't know them yet. I get it. If the other wants more or less, they should tell you. Trust is better, especially when you give them all of it! Hitting is totally different from belts.
I knew belts intimately. Our play with pain would transform during the next few months. I truly anticipated it and relished it.
(2) Experimentation, Role Play, and Release
Carlos sat in the leather wingback in the living room, shirt unbuttoned, cock thick and flushed against his thigh right under his boxers.
“Line up girls,” was exactly what we needed to hear.
We dropped to our knees on the floor without hesitation. I wore pigtails tied with pink ribbon and a pleated skirt so short the curve of my ass showed when I crawled. Alina wore white knee socks and a choker that spelled DADDYS in rhinestones. She wore plain white panties. I'm not even sure why she wears panties at all. And where in the world did she find that choker? Carlos got up and walked around us slowly, trailing a thick leather belt across our shoulders, down our spines, and between our legs where we were already soaked.
He chose Alina first. He offered his hand, she stood up and escorted her to the couch. There, he bent her over the arm closest to me, flipped up her skirt, took down her panties, and brought the belt down in a soft yet deliberate stroke that painted a perfect red welt across both cheeks. An unmuffled scream, tear, and muffled crying followed. It seemed like she was really hurt. Were those crocodile tears or real ones? My heart started beating faster, adrenaline started coursing through my veins, and I was truly scared. Was he going to hurt me?
He sat down on the couch next to her and said, “Did you deserve that? She was gasping like children do when they cry, “I… I… I…” was all that came out with sniffles, tears and gasps of breath between each, “I.” The redness on her ass showed but I think that was part of the game and she wasn't hurt.
He put his hand on her head and said, “If I don't punish you, you won't learn from your mistakes.”
“Yes Daddy.”
Carlos finished up with, “Good girl. Now go play.”
Alina got up and skipped out of the room knowing exactly where to go and what to do. Then, Carlos turned and looked at me. My eyes and lips pursed at him. We talked about this kind of play weeks ago, but I thought it was going to be as adults and just talking plainly and coyfully. This seemed childish and a total waste of time. I thought to myself, was Alina good at this or was it because she really was still a child?
Carlos stared me down, cutting me into pieces with those eyes. I said to myself, “I don't get it.” I said out loud, “What!” not as a question, it was exclamatory.
Carlos finished with, “Go, play with your sister.”
I stood up and started walking to the bedroom. I turned my head back quickly to look at him and his head was leaning down towards the floor. He looked disappointed. I knew that I fucked up!
I joined Alina in the bedroom. She was on the floor with crayons and a coloring book, filling in the black and white line drawings on the page with multitudes of colors from the extra large box laying on the floor. Her head tilted side to side. It really was like she was a little girl in her own imaginary world.
She looked up at me and said, “Daddy is so proud of me!”
I yelled some grizzly grunty noise at Alina, and with deliberation and contemplation, she put the crayon down, looked up at me and sternly said, “Sit down!” Each word enunciated sharply. Each word crisply rolled off her tongue. I was on that floor faster than a new student on his first day of Judo. That same kind of long stare with pursed eyes and lips came from her and she stared at me without muttering a word. I tried to hold the stare as long as I could. I reached for some deep, dark anger or resentment that I was privileged to have experienced and used as a weapon for so many years. But just like with Carlos, the only thing that came out was, “What!”
Alina held up a crayon and asked if I wanted to color. “What are we doing Alina?” Alina kept staring at me until her eyes got glassy. She looked up at me.
“Reclaiming my childhood.”
Alina stood up, opened the door and ran out, tears forming and I heard her say, “Daddy.” I couldn't hold it in anymore and started to cry. My face dropped to my hands. I cried for what seemed like an eternity.
When I finally ran out of tears, I thought about what Alina said, “reclaiming my childhood.”
Was it so obvious? Could I not see what this beautiful young woman in front of me had to go through? Because of that man out there, she gets to be a little girl again. Everything Carlos said at the coffee shop was so clear now. I understood what he was sacrificing for us.
When Alina said to me, “I need this,” what she really needed was a second chance. I never got second chances. Most of the time, I never got first chances and now I've fucked it up. I don't deserve this. I didn't know what to do, so I went to the guest bedroom. I must make this right.
I wait until there is nothing but moonlight and a low hum from the refrigerator. Then, I begin. I strip my clothes off in the dark. The guest room that still smells faintly of fresh paint and abandonment. Everything comes off slowly and deliberately.
The silk camisole I sleep in hits the floor. I pick it up and fold it with the same precision I use for Carlos’s shirts. Naked, I kneel on the floor at the foot of the bed, knees wide, back straight, palms up on my thighs.
The first part is my silence. I stay there until my calves burn and my lower back screams, until the throbbing in my legs becomes a second heartbeat. I count my breaths. Slow and merciless, out loud but in a whisper so soft only I can hear the words. I say:
“Thank you Daddy.” “I'm sorry Alina. Please forgive me.”
“Thank you Daddy.” “I'm sorry Alina. Please forgive me."
I repeat this like a mantra, but it is my prayer. Again and again…
When my legs finally give out, I crawl to the small wooden box I keep hidden beneath the bed. Inside, things from another life and small promises I try to keep. I take out a pair of old leather belts, cracked and soft from years of sweat and punishment. I removed a single picture Carlos doesn’t know I stole with the three of us pictured on that first night. I push the box aside for now. I lay the photograph on the floor in front of me like an altar. I buckle the smaller belt around my neck, tight enough that every swallow reminds me who I belong to. I fold the other belt in half and prepare to use it against my thighs. I have to make sure that I don't make a sound. Each strike will be a confession and an atonement. After four or five strikes, I lower myself in an act of contrition until my forehead touches the picture laying on the floor in front of me.
I feel the plastic of it against my skin and tell my mind to describe it in detail. The memory has to be in the forefront of my recollections. I will never dig up an old photograph again to help me remember a special moment in time. The three of us look so happy in that picture and that's what I'm trying to burn onto my retinas.
Over and over, striking my thighs until they start shaking. Then, lowering my forehead to the floor and touching the picture. Trying to remember everything framed inside that small piece of plastic. At some point I fall asleep on the floor with the taste of shame still in my mouth and a belt still around my neck. I'm looking for certainty that I won't make a fool of myself again. This is the penance I chose. I woke up several hours later. I take the belt off my neck, pick up the second belt off the floor and pull the box over to put everything away. The box is in front of me as I put the belts inside. I'm about to slide it back under the bed when a shot of adrenaline shoots through my veins.
“Fuck no!” “Where is it?” Fuck me!” “Where’s the picture?”
I search frantically and find it several feet away. Feeling like I just dodged a bullet, I pulled the box over and put it inside. I pushed the box under the bed and walked out to the living room to curl up on the couch.
I hope nobody knew I was missing. I could say I fell asleep on the couch or something if anyone asked. As I turn the last corner Alina and Carlos are curled up on the couch. Alina is in Carlos’s arms. Both are asleep. I was shocked and froze right there. In the twilight, a whisper reached my ears.
It was Alina. She whispered, “Come here. I want to tell you something.”
I hesitantly and slowly tiptoed over. She cupped her hands together around her mouth like she wanted to tell me something, secretively and didn't want Carlos to hear or wake up. I leaned in. She put a hand gently on each cheek and pulled me closer to her lips just like she did previously. Our lips touched and her tongue moved forward, touching my lips and causing them to part. My mouth opened slightly and she inhaled forcefully. She inhaled so deeply that I could feel my breath leave my mouth and partially pull air from my lungs. Alina’s lips part from mine. Her voice, in the softest tone, right in front of my open mouth, says this to me:
“Ara. Listen to me. Carlos and I never wanted an apology. We wanted your surrender. When you hurt yourself, you steal the pain that was ours to give. You stole the pleasure that was Carlos’s to take from you.”
“You are trying to pay a debt that never existed because the only thing you ever owed us was the truth. The truth is, you are already mine. So, stop begging me to forgive you. I’m not your judge, sweetheart. I’m the one who broke you on purpose.”
“I love every crack I put in you. The hurt you carry isn’t guilt. It’s love you haven’t let yourself feel yet. You thought love had to be earned with pain and blood. Not with us! Let it go. Let me have your pain and your hurt! There is nothing left to fix.”
“Nothing you could ever break I didn’t already claim. You are not forgiven! You are kept. Now breathe with me. Come home.”
Then, she kisses me, slowly and deeply. My knees shake then give out completely. I love this woman!
The morning finally arrives. It was a beautiful morning. Carlos makes breakfast. He sips his black coffee and looks at Alina.
He says, “This afternoon, I want Ara tied to the bed. Put her feet on the floor, bend her over at the waist, tie each hand to the bedpost at the front of the bed frame. I will breed her until she can't take any more.”
Alina nodded, knowing her cunt would be missing his cock. He took his coffee in hand, stood up, walked up to Alina, kissed her on her forehead and said, “Thank you baby.”
The afternoon didn't come fast enough, Alina brought me to the bedroom. She told me to stand at the foot of the bed.
“Turn around. Don't look at me.” I complied.
She raised my shirt over my head and laid it on the corner of the bed.
She undid the bra’s hooks one at a time and then said, “This has got to go.”
She dropped the bra straps down my shoulders and my breasts freed themselves from their cups and she laid it on top of my shirt. She then got right up against me, reached around and unfasted the large brass button on my jeans. She found the zipper and lowered it slowly. Placing a thumb into the waist of my jeans, she pulled a little from each side as they worked their way down to the floor. Her hands stayed with the jeans. Alina touched my right leg and I lifted it so she could pull that side off. She touched my left leg and I did the same.
She stood, gave the jeans a shake, and folded them in half and put them under my bra. My panties were the only thing left. Again, wrapping her arms around me, brought herself tightly up against my back and a finger from each hand found their way to the bridges created by my hip bones and belly. A finger went into those spaces and she pressed the rest of her hands down against my belly. Her lips met the back of my neck and goosebumps formed everywhere immediately. She worked the panties down but she remained as close to me as possible. When they were far enough down that they would fall the rest of the way on their own, she just let them go. Her arms slid up my belly and cupped each breast firmly and an instant warmth filled between my legs. Wetness covered the inside of my thighs. Alina released my breasts with every finger crossing over my sensitive and erect nipples. She squatted to get my panties from the floor. She touched my left ankle and I lifted my foot up and out of them instinctively. She touched my right ankle and I lifted my right foot up and out. She grabbed them, scrunched them up in one of her hands and as she stood shoved them in her pants pocket. Everything in my mind told me to turn around and beg her to fuck me but I wasn't there for that.
I leaned over onto the bed. Alina took several long red velvet sashes out of the nightstand. She tied the sash firmly to my left wrist and then wrapped it around the left front bed post loosely. She tied the sash firmly to my right wrist and then wrapped it around the right front bed post loosely. It gave the appearance of being restrained to the bed. I could grab hold and wrap more of the sashes length around my wrists to tighten myself down as much as I wished. I turned my face away from Alina. Carlos walked in a few moments later and asked Alina if I'm ready to be bred.
Alina said, “No. She's not ready Daddy.”
Suddenly, Alina pulled on both sashes wrapped around the front bed posts. Each of the sashes were now painfully taught and I was truly restrained. She tied them together so I could not get out on my own.
“Now Daddy.” “Put a baby in her.”
Oh my god! I was so fucking wet.
Alina said, “There Daddy.”
Put it in there. Alina's finger went right to my soaking wet hole and she slid her finger right in.
“Yes Daddy. She is ready.”
Carlos said to Alina, “Move aside sweetheart.”
A moment later I felt that massive cock slide into me. He went all the way in.
“Breed her Daddy,” Alina muttered.
Carlos slowly and methodically thrust his cock in and out of my wet cunt. With every thrust, I tightened my vaginal walls. The head of his cock rubbed against every nerve ending inside of me. I have never felt anything so glorious before. The roleplay forced images of what I thought was going to happen into surprises. Being surprised while you are being fucked produced intensely powerful orgasms. This went on and on and on. Faster. Slower. Deeper. The tip. Then deeper again.
Alina asked, “Is it time yet? Give her the baby now Daddy!”
His rhythm increased and with each thrust, his legs slapped against my ass, his balls slapped my pussy lips, and then he came. Carlos remained inside me. When he pulled out, a huge flood of juices followed his cock.
“Thank you for breeding me Daddy,” I moaned.
Alina kissed my cheek and untied me. I climbed into bed and Alina joined me, climbing under the sheets. Alina nested into my arms so I could make her my little spoon.
“Daddy?” I said. “I love you!”
Carlos walked into the bathroom to clean up. Before we nodded off, Alina told me she sucked on the finger she put inside me for minutes while she watched Daddy fuck me. Alina carried those panties around for a week. When it was time to do laundry, I found them in another pair of pants.
“Alina! Have you been carrying around my panties for a week?” She replied, “Yes, and I need a new pair.”
Alina turned back around, ran back to the laundry room and said, “Now, please.”
Suffice it to say, I just dropped all the laundry and complied.
(3) The Breeding Gospels
Carlos loved watching Alina and I together. He loved the way our bodies fit like two jigsaw puzzle pieces next to each other in the bigger picture. We knew each other's secrets. She would become my best friend. Alina's back story made her submission sweeter; she had been taught that sex was shameful, and now she embraced it. My orphan status made me crave the family we were building, each orgasm making the desire one step closer. The neglect Carlos suffered as a child made him a master of control. He gave us what we needed even when we didn't know how to ask. I came to learn later, he convinced us of what we needed even when it wasn't.
That afternoon, Alina and I went shopping for lingerie. We were holding hands in the store, giggling like schoolgirls and the sales lady pretended not to notice the chokers around our necks. We came home and modeled everything for Carlos, twirling in lace that barely covered anything. He fucked us on the living room couch before dinner, coming in Alina first because,
“Pregnant girls get priority.”
Alina wasn't pregnant but she wanted it. Alina would come to love being pregnant with Carlos’s children. I think part of me would fight the idea because it would mean I would have to give up control of my body. With Carlos, it was easy. I liked that he assumed the role of the man in my life that told me what I needed. Letting someone else do the work took a weight off my back that I was terrible at managing.
The dynamics were fluid. Sometimes he dominated us both; sometimes he let us dominate each other while he watched; sometimes we all melted into a tangle of limbs and mouths where roles dissolved. However, the breeding kink was constant. Every fuck ended with him inside one of us, whispering about bellies and babies forever. We were starting to understand why forever had teeth. Why would forever be a predator that stalked us? Why does it thin out the herd so effectively in some areas and passes by others?
Every time he came inside Alina, she looked at and touched her belly, then said to him, “Baby!” At first, it was a quick quip, it came off her tongue loud and fast. But later, it was a possessive statement that quietly emphasized the magic that was occurring inside her. It was soft and warm. She glowed when she said it. Carlos would melt in her arms right on cue. I think he eventually became susceptible to the whisper. “Baby.”
But alas, Carlos gave her everything on a silver platter and she gave him children. If they could just have sex, get pregnant, deliver the baby, and start over, both would be content. They could spend an entire day staring at each other and find something new.
He wanted us marked from the inside. He kept ovulation tests in the nightstand like rosaries. When the stick showed peak, he chose. Some nights he took us separately. He’d bend us over anything and on everything, wherever we were at that time. The dresser, the floor, a chair, outside, in a changing room, in the car, in the rain; it was all our playground. We'd sometimes fucked until someone's legs gave out.
Often, Carlos had hands over our mouths to muffle the screams when we were not at home, but most of the time, “Gonna put a baby inside you. Gonna keep you barefoot and pregnant and dripping for Daddy,” was yelled out at home like a battle cry. It just didn't get old.
One night, perhaps Carlos was off his game, I just think he was tired. He was swimming in Alina's eyes, got up and pulled her hand to bring her to the bedroom and she said to him in a very serious sounding voice, “What are you doing?” I looked at her from across the room, I was fixing dinner in the kitchen, and he was quietly gesturing with the fingers of his left hand shaping them into a circle and a finger on his right hand going in and out of the circle. You know, the universal hand sign teenage boys use for “fucking.” She then said, “That's so juvenile,” and just stayed there looking at him. However, a moment later he realized his error and said, “I want to put a baby in you!” and she sprung right into his arms. I laughed so hard I was sure I was going to piss myself. Alina could always make that shit up on the fly. It was always funny and she kept everyone laughing and in character.
Watching Carlos deciding on whose womb got the honor that night was serious business. We followed calendars and tests for the best odds of conceiving, but Carlos knew that if we turned into floor mats, the dynamics of what we built would change.
After delivery, Carlos always handed us the babies in the hospital. It was our tradition. It was the most sentimental part of the delivery for me. Alina is the love of our lives! When it came to Alina being pregnant though, those two had a cosmic connection. They created something new and the universe quaked. A black hole couldn't separate them when it came to babies. I was content with two children especially since Alina and Carlos had six! No kidding! No joke! No exaggeration! She was pregnant and delivered a baby on average every 16 months. The last came when she was only 28. Ultimately it meant we have eight children, she just did all the work. After Hope and Aaron, there were never any complications. We also never had any more bouts of jealousy. Hope turned out to be our guardian angel!
I am an island. I don't have anyone to tell. Even if I did, if anyone knew about my past, who would take me seriously? It took months of positive reinforcement from Alina to believe that I could do this and that I wouldn't get thrown to the curb if I made a mistake. I'm actually not worried about Carlos anymore. I asked Carlos once what would happen if I can't have children? I've done some very bad things to my body as have others, and I feel really bad that I wasn't more upfront about this at the coffee shop. Sane people might have wanted me to get a fertility test, a physical, or something, but Carlos never brought it up. I stewed over this for a week. It ate me up inside until I asked him. Carlos told me he would be very disappointed and the insecure bitch I am, took it personally. I told Alina a couple days later and, as the amazing person she is, dragged me in front of him.
“Ask him again!,” she said loudly.
I did, and the answer was the same, “I would be disappointed.”
I started tearing up and Alina looked at Carlos and said, “BECAUSE…” in one of those drawn out sarcastic tones, and Carlos gave me the rest of it for which I didn’t bother to ask for clarification.
Again, he told me that he would take care of us no matter what, but he needed us to get to that point where we were 100% secure in the decisions we made. If there ever was a time that we needed anything, it would be provided. Anything the family needs, it will be provided. All three of us will make decisions about the children together, not Carlos and Alina, not Carlos and Ara, but THE FAMILY – ALL OF US, TOGETHER. Even though there would be one voice that would make executive decisions, our voices weighed heavily on Carlos’s heart, but he wasn't going to tell us what to do. If we didn’t ask, talk, reply, expect, or even demand, that was our responsibility, 100%.
Then these words came out of his mouth:
“I would be disappointed, BECAUSE I would not be able to share the birth of our son or daughter with you. To see your face when I get to put that baby in your arms for the first time and tell you how amazing you are! BECAUSE I would not be able to see how you look at me and tell me how amazing I am! BECAUSE I would not be able to show the world that you are not a collection of the things you did in the past, but the mother that will teach our children how to love the world as much as I love you! Lastly, the most important thing, because I wouldn't be here without you! I am alive because of you!”
Alina slapped me in the back of the head and said, “Mensa!”
This was the last day that I cared what anyone except Carlos and Alina thought.
“I wouldn't be here without you! I am alive because of you!” sounded like one of those romantic things we say to each other, but those very words would echo back to haunt Carlos one day!
Writing this manuscript with Alina and Carlos isn't about trying to sell an X-Rated book, but I hope that one day our children can read it – our adult children. One of the most important lessons that Carlos taught me was that I don't have to explain myself to people, especially in this regard. No, I do not want children reading this material. However, as adults, our kids reading this and knowing how much we love each other and how much we had to go through in order to make this family successful is definitely worth it. That includes all the sexy, provocative and uncomfortable parts of it. Life is like that. You can't just expect that everything will be like a Harlequin Romance novel or romantically sanitized.
My writing style and the way I remember the events are also different from Alina's and Carlos’s. While there may overlap in some areas and experiences we had, you will get a different perspective of who we are. The dates or length of time the events took are off a little as well. I know there will be people out there that don't care for the language or the graphic nature, but that's who I am and that's the way I want you to see me. I hope you learn something about yourself in the meantime.
Carlos loved watching us clean up after playtime, love-making, or an outright fucking marathon. In the beginning, we fucked a lot, and we also smelled a lot. Carlos and Alina actually loved being ripe, dirty, and smelly because it was like a trophy for them. I'm sure athletes don't spend any time thinking about being “fresh as a spring day” and sometimes those two could have given plumbers a run for their money.
This actually gave Carlos and I, then Alina and I, “tub time.” It was a great place to relax, clean up (of course), but to catch up. We were home a lot, but once the kids were big enough, our schedules changed to accommodate them. The sex in the tub was amazing as well. Freshly cleaned parts are always great, and when we were done, the clean up was right there. Carlos and Alina usually ended up in the shower. Watching water glide off her body was hypnotic. She is very distracting. There also was quiet time in the tub. I particularly enjoyed this because it helped me feel connected and grounded. Just having someone there to be there was very cathartic. I never had that growing up.
Alina would do that thing monkeys do; pick bugs out of each other's hair and eat them. I always hoped we didn't have bugs, but having Alina scour my body for creepy-crawlers connected us and of course, she taught the kids how to find them and gobble them up. Bath time was really special.
It sounds like we were fucking all day long, but we were really building the closeness Carlos fostered. It occupied a large part of our days and nights. The fun stuff that helps the time pass. Carlos kept a calendar on the fridge with pink circles around our fertile days and a single line written in black marker across the entire month:
BREEDING SEASON. NO PANTIES. NO MERCY.
One night during breeding season, the sticks showed peak for both of us on the same day. Carlos smiled like the devil had handed him the keys to hell. He tied each of us to our own bedpost and spent considerable time edging us with his tongue, fingers, and a vibrator on low. When we finally begged, we got fucked. Alina usually went first and she loved it hard and fast. I'd regularly hear Carlos say to her, “Your body is made for making babies.” He pulled out often to last longer which drove us insane. We never cared if he lasted or not, but it was usually to tease us. He'd pull out of Alina and then come to me still slick, shiny, and hard and put the tip of his cock over to my engorged lips. He rubbed the bottom side of his cock on my clit and then brought the tip of his cock right to that small impression that would allow him to find his way deep inside me.
At that very moment, Alina yelled loudly, “No! “ and then he'd stop and go back to her. She'd end up yelling “no” a lot which became problematic as it turned from fun to eventually possessiveness. I think at first she did it to keep up with the roleplay, but screaming “no” all the time can change how you're feeling. When I tried saying, “no,” she took it personally. Not that it was only her line, but Alina did not like being told “no.”
Carlos would whisper to me, “Your strength and spirit make you the perfect vessel for new life. Watching that life grow inside you is God's gift only for me!” I knew it was my line. Alina was never allowed to use it.
Privately, I told Carlos, “I burned down my walls for you. I've let you into a place that no one has ever been allowed before!”
I made him promise that he would never tell Alina. That was 12 years ago, now… We slept that night with his come inside both of us, hands linked across his chest, dreaming of bellies and babies and a family forged in fire, but the dream started to sour when Alina's positive test came, and mine didn't.
(4) Conception:The First Positive Test
Six weeks later the house smelled like sex and sage and a touch of fear. Alina found out first. She came out of the master bathroom holding the little white stick like it was a loaded gun, two pink lines screaming louder than all the safewords we ignored. Her face was unreadable for two whole seconds, then it cracked open, half terror, half triumph. She walked straight to Carlos where he sat on the edge of the bed lacing his shoes, dropped to her knees between his thighs, and pressed the test into his palm.
“I’m pregnant Daddy.”
She looked up at him with reverence and stared deeply into his eyes. I could see him lose himself in hers. A freight train could have gone through the middle of the house, horn at full blast, and those two would be oblivious. Alina was truly overwhelmed with the ability for her body to take the best parts of Carlos's then take the best parts of her, blend it all together and create a brand new, distinctive, beautiful new life.
The word “Daddy” now sounded ancient, biblical, and inevitable.
“Carlos is going to be a father,” I said.
“I'm going to be a father.”
“I'm going to be a father.”
Carlos said it again and again. He stared at the plastic window like it might change its mind. Then he closed his fist around it, pulled her up and kissed her so hard and fast that her lip hit his front tooth and split her lip. When he let go we were all breathing like we’d run a mile. I felt it in my stomach first, a cold twist of envy, then a hotter rush of want. I crawled across the bed to now join Carlos and Alina sitting on the bed against the headboard and I laid my head on Alina’s still, flat belly as if I could already hear something growing inside her. Carlos’s hand settled on the back of my neck, possessively, grounding me.
“Both of you,” he said, voice rough, “I love both of you so much!”
Next week Alina threw up in the kitchen sink while trying to make eggs. Carlos held her hair back with one hand and rubbed her back with the other, murmuring.
“Good girl, let it out, Daddy’s got you.”
I stood there clutching a cup of coffee I couldn’t drink, watching them, feeling the ache between my legs and the deeper ache behind my ribs in the middle of my chest. My heart physically hurts. Two weeks later I peed on my own stick while they waited outside the door. Negative. I came out trying to smile like everything was fine, but Carlos saw right through it. That night we made love. It was slow and cruel.
I said out loud, “I’m jealous. I’m broken. Please fix me.”
He held me while still inside of me and said, “I am so happy that I can be here with you, right here, and I'll stay here until Alina pukes on us!,” Carlos reiterated sarcastically. It was enough to get me to chuckle and wipe some of the tears away. “Well, she'll probably throw up on you since you complain so much,” got a big push and a grumpy lip from me, but no laugh.
Then, I bit his arm. I know it was all in fun, but a part of me was terrified that she'd keep getting pregnant and I wouldn't or couldn't. We started tracking my cycle like it was a war plan. Apps, ovulation strips, basal thermometers. Carlos scheduled our lives around the little smiley face stickers on the calendar. On peak days he kept us home, phones off.
Alina was still sick all the time. At first, I was covertly happy she was, and then I changed my mind because I knew I'd be praying to the porcelain god soon, too. I didn't want to be mocked for being insensitive. Alina’s body changed fast. Her breasts got heavy and sore, nipples darkened. She’d stood in front of the mirror turning sideways, hands cradling the tiniest curve.
Carlos would come up behind her, slide his hands over hers, and whisper, “Look what we made.”
I’d watch from the doorway feeling like an intruder in my own house until one of them opened an arm and pulled me in. We still played, but the pregnancy did soften us a bit. Carlos was adamant that sex continued because he heard others having babies say that libido declined as some men thought women were too delicate to have sex when they were pregnant. I'm sure some even lost their attraction to their partners, but Carlos was crystal clear, NO BODY SHAMING!
I’d be on my knees beside him, waiting for whatever scraps of attention he tossed my way. Some nights the jealousy clawed so hard inside me that I couldn’t breathe. I’d lock myself in the guest bathroom and stare into the mirror and cry until my throat was raw. There really wasn't any reason for me to be so hard on myself. Carlos always found me. He never asked what was wrong, he already knew. I couldn't wait to be pregnant.
“You’re not empty,” he’d snarl. “You’re mine. That’s enough.”
But it wasn’t. Not yet. But it didn't take. Not that month. Not the next. Then, two months and three days later, a test turned positive! I screamed. I actually screamed. Carlos came running barefoot down the hall expecting half the house to be blown away. Alina right behind him clutching her little bump like she could protect it from whatever made me sound that way. I just held up the stick, hands shaking, tears already falling. Two pink lines. Carlos took it from me like it was delicate and fragile. I looked at him. He looked at me. I looked at Alina. Then he laughed: this wild, broken, beautiful sound, and pulled us both into him so hard I felt our future finally arrive.
“Both,” he said into my hair. “Both of you. Swollen. Round. Mine.”
Alina kissed me through both our tears, tasting salt and relief. Later, in the dark, Carlos lay between us, arms around our bodies, with one palm on each belly, feeling for differences that weren’t there yet. His voice was soft, almost afraid.
“Two babies,” he whispered. “Two mothers. One family.”
The first couple weeks were amazing. Everyone could see something different in my eyes. I carried myself differently and I loved the attention. Many would say, “You look so radiant, Ara. What's new? What is it?” And when I told them I was pregnant, everyone congratulated us. I can't believe how this pregnancy made me feel. I'm finally in the spotlight.
I had to tell Alina how terrible I was to her. I just didn't know how much of a bitch I must have been. Anyone getting that much attention would feel like they're on top of the world as well. I remember how nauseous she got and how I was tempted to mock her but now I'm glad I didn't.
Three weeks arrived so quickly and the morning sickness came shortly thereafter. It was really bad. I hated my body. Why don't men get this, I thought? They totally deserved to, but Carlos was there for me. One thing that kept me from losing my mind was how much physical attention I got. I needed a lot of attention but in the baddest way. I had to be fucked. I was so horny. Carlos loved his women pregnant also. It was an aphrodisiac to him. It's said pregnancy releases pheromones to keep their mates near. I wish I could smell it or feel that drive. Orgasms when you’re pregnant are glorious. I thought Alina was just looking for attention when she came, but no, she was on fire! I was on fire. We did it. Our family had been built.
We didn’t know yet that blood doesn’t make a family. Ownership does. Carlos decided a long time ago that he would own us completely: body, womb, soul, future. The next week, Alina's morning sickness got worse. She spent mornings hugging the toilet, and I held her hair, rubbed her back, feeding her saltine crackers and club soda, when she could keep them down. Carlos loved her swollen breasts! He'd suck them gently, milk her early colostrum onto his tongue, then fuck her. It was very erotic. Then, Alina would comfort me with my morning sickness. I felt so sorry for Carlos. Two pregnant women. Emotions on roller coasters. Both vomiting all the time, and he still fucked us!
The poly dynamics shifted. Alina became the queen, her pregnancy a crown. Alina's belly rounded, and the knife in my chest twisted deeper. I just threw up all the time. I tried to hide it. I smiled wider, sucked him harder, spread my legs faster. I wore the sluttiest lingerie I owned (crotchless panties, tights with the ass ripped out, a collar that said BREED ME in rhinestones) and begged louder than ever. But every time he finished inside me now, he’d kiss my forehead like a consolation prize and then go find Alina to rub cocoa butter on her stretch marks. Alina tried to bridge the gap. She’d crawl into bed after Carlos fell asleep, press her warm little belly against my back, and whisper,
“Ara, he loves you, too. I hated that word. “Too” It made it sound like Alina got the love and I got leftovers or second-hand love.
This process was so hard for me. My emotions were up and down all the time – erratic. Why would anyone like being pregnant? But, I could hear the relief in her voice, the secret glow of being chosen first. One night she fell asleep with Carlos’s hand cupped protectively over her stomach and I just didn't show. That was the night I started sleeping in the guest room if I could get away with it without anybody noticing. Carlos noticed on the second night. He didn’t ask why. He just showed up barefoot in the doorway wearing nothing but boxers, the streetlight cutting shadows across his chest. He didn’t speak. He simply crossed the room, tossed the covers to the side of me, helped me onto my side, and spooned me tightly into him.
“You don’t get to run,” he growled against my skin. “This cunt and belly are mine whether it’s showing or not. You are the mother of my child. You are perfect.”
But it was hard to hear because I compared my body to Alina's. I know that wasn’t fair, but in my head, we were adversaries. I had to beat her, be better than her, and maybe be first at least once. It seems like every memory ends in tears, but I'm only recalling the most trying and exhausting memories. I never received positive affirmations growing up. I felt like I was in the way and a burden. This isn't something that switches off at the end of the day or runs out of fuel. My body was even fighting all the great things happening to it.
The next morning he made Alina pancakes shaped like hearts and let her lick the batter off his fingers while I stared at my plain oatmeal. I could barely keep plain oatmeal down. Cold, wet cement might have been easier to stay down. The calendar on the fridge became a shrine. One of Alina’s first ultrasound prints was taped dead center, a grainy gray smudge that already looked like it belonged to him. He’d stand in front of it drinking coffee, thumb brushing over the image like he was memorizing it. I watched from the doorway one morning and felt something inside me curdle. For a week, it felt like an imbalance.
(5) Then the Bleeding Started
The bleeding came in the quiet hours, slow at first, a dark bloom between my thighs. I reached for Carlos. I knew before I even woke him. I knew the way you know when the world tilts and nothing will ever be right again. All women know what is happening when it happens to them. Alina found me in the bathroom, sitting on the tile floor, blood staining my legs like accusations. She dropped to her knees beside me, hands shaking. She knew.
She took a warm wet washcloth and wiped my thighs, whispering “I'm so sorry.”
Like a prayer that had already been denied, the flow was light and painful. Carlos stood in the doorway, still half asleep, then not at all. He didn’t speak. He just lifted me, carried me to the bed, and laid me down gently. Carlos stayed up the rest of the evening until dawn rolled around. We went to the doctor in the morning. The doctor confirmed it. Eight weeks. Gone. Just like that. But no tears came this time. I guess I had reached my limit. I just wanted to go home and take a shower.
Alina didn’t look at me for two days. She moved through the house like a ghost. I had lost a part of her as well. Carlos didn’t cry in front of us.
Once we were asleep, he sat on the back porch with a bottle of some liquor. Every night, a new bottle went into the fire pit, shattered glass everywhere. The broken pieces reflect broken images of a man who’d promised his women the world and delivered them grief instead. I found him at dawn, eyes red, knuckles bleeding from where he’d been punching the brick wall until he gave up.
He looked at me and with a raw voice said, “I can’t fix this Ara.” I sat in front of him, pressed my forehead to his chest then looked up at him. “You’re not God, Carlos. Sometimes things just break.” I had become a thing.
Alina held a personal grudge against God for a very long time. She would go ten rounds with him for what he did to me. She also never thanked him for all of the other children that blessed our home. It was a hard line that she never took back. The loss of that baby hurt her deeply.
The following week, we didn't touch each other. We moved around like strangers playing musical chairs around a gravestone. At the end of the week, I finally had the courage to go to the nursery. I sat in the rocking chair and held a tiny onesie to my chest, rocking myself and the imaginary baby I held in it. Carlos came to the door and asked if he could come in. He could see the forcefield that surrounded me. I lowered the forcefield and he entered. He sat at my feet and looked up at me.
My eyes were hollow, my heart was empty.
“I hate you,” I whispered.
“I know,” said Carlos.
“I hate that I still love you.”
“I know that as well,” he murmured.
I reached down, threaded my fingers through his hair, pulled him forward until his cheek rested on my empty and barren belly. He didn’t say anything. I didn't say anything. I put the forcefield back up that contained both of us.
Alina is curled on the window seat in the master bedroom, knees to chest, staring at nothing in the darkness. I approached her. Alina speaks.
“I thought I lost both of you. I wanted to be there but wasn't sure what to do. I felt like I couldn't get in. So I waited. You still didn't let me in. I hated myself for waiting. So I walked away. I hated myself for walking away. I hated you both for making me choose who to comfort first. All I wanted was to burn the whole house down so none of us had to feel this anymore. I don’t want forgiveness, Ara. I want you to punish me if you need to. Scream. Hit me. Leave. Anything, but this silence is louder than any fight we ever had.”
I start to respond and she tells me to “Sit down!”
“I turned into my fucking father to protect myself, Ara. I miss you. Both of you. I miss us so much it feels like I’m drowning in my own fucking vomit. I hate that I still want you to touch me even when I can’t stand looking at you. Tell me how to fix this. Tell me to fuck off. Don’t make me keep living in this house like I'm already dead.”
Without saying a word, I reached out my hand hoping she'll take it and she does. We sit in the dark together staring into the darkness and loneliness, but together.
(6) My Second Attempt at Pregnancy
“I will put a baby in you, Ara. If I have to fuck you every hour of every day until your insides are bruised, I will. You are not less. You are not second. You are mine, and I am not done with you.”
The next cycle, he proved it. He cleared his schedule for 30 straight days. No work. No phone. Groceries delivered. He kept me naked, kept me wet, kept me bent over every surface in the house. He woke me up with his cock already inside me. He fucked me while I brushed my teeth. On day nine I started crying during sex (not from pain, from hope so sharp it felt like dying). On day thirteen the test turned positive before the timer even went off.
I walked into the kitchen holding it like a white flag. Carlos was making coffee. Alina was eating strawberries naked at the table, belly properly round now.
Two lines. Carlos dropped his coffee cup. It shattered across the tile like applause. He crossed the room in three strides, picked me up, and kissed me so hard I tasted blood again as if that tooth was back to taunt me.. Alina started laughing and crying at the same time, strawberry juice running down her chin.
“Both,” Carlos said against my mouth, voice shaking. “Both of my girls. Both of my babies.”
“Thank you for not giving up on me.”
Later, we taped my ultrasound photo right next to Alina’s on the fridge calendar. Two little beans, side by side.
Underneath, in fresh black marker, Carlos wrote a new line:
BREEDING SEASON SUCCESSFUL. NEXT GOAL: KEEP THEM SAFE.
We thought the hard part was over. We were wrong again. Because now there were two futures growing inside us, and only one man who believed he owned them both. Ownership, like love, has claws. I started masturbating alone, fingering myself to memories of when it was just me and him, before she became the golden one.
The poly dynamics cracked. We still fucked as three, but the touches were territorial, the orgasms competitive. One night Carlos had us both on our knees, sucking his cock in turns while he decided who got his cum. He chose Alina. Always Alina now. Carlos came right on that belly. I let it sit then rubbed it in. I stared at her belly and how big it had gotten. I kissed her belly. It tasted like salt and defeat.
The breeding kink turned on me. I used to be so happy for Alina when he came inside her. The greatest part of him became a part of her. I wanted that as well. Even just a little. If any come spilled when we were fucking, it got wiped up because we made a mess. It was the fruit of conception and I wanted it all. With Alina, love making was never over. It had to be paused while other events happened or when there were other things to do. I felt that once the orgasms came, we were done. That's all you get Ara, I thought. Why did I look at it this way? He still filled me, still whispered about babies, but now it felt like charity. Alina started touching her belly during sex, making sure we both saw it when he came inside her. I started faking orgasms, just to end the scene faster. The house that desire built started to feel like a prison.
The rot spread quietly at first, like mold behind wallpaper. It lived in the way Alina now angled her body when Carlos walked into a room (shoulders back, belly forward, a silent billboard that read FIRST). It lived in the way Carlos’s hand automatically found the top of her bump before it ever reached for me. It lived in the half-second pause before he kissed me, like he had to remind himself I was still carrying his child too.
I was fourteen weeks when the morning sickness finally eased. Alina was thirty-two weeks, waddling, radiant, impossible to look away from. The OB had started calling her “the veteran” and me “the rookie,” and every time she laughed at the joke I wanted to claw the ultrasound gel off my own stomach. Carlos bought a fetal doppler on Amazon. The first night it arrived he chased the galloping heartbeat around Alina’s belly for twenty minutes, laughing like a kid when he found it, pressing the wand into her skin while she smiled down at him with something soft and terrifying in her eyes. When he turned to me he found mine in fifteen seconds flat, but the magic had already been spent. He kissed my stomach once, dutifully, then went back to tracing circles on hers. That night I dreamed I gave birth to nothing but air. I woke up gasping, hands clutched between my legs like I could hold the baby in by force.
Alina started having cravings at 3am. Carlos would walk barefoot to the kitchen, make her peanut butter and pickle sandwiches, feed them to her bite by bite while she sat on the counter with her legs wrapped around his waist. I’d stand in the doorway pretending I needed water, watching the easy intimacy of it, the way she now took without asking and he gave without hesitation.
One night the craving was ice cream. He drove an hour to the 24-hour grocery store in nothing but sweatpants and came back an hour later with three pints (two for her, one for me). I ate mine in the dark living room while they laughed in the kitchen, her feet in his lap, chocolate smeared on both their mouths. I started hiding the doppler. First, in my underwear drawer. Then in the guest room closet. Then, when he tore the house apart looking for it, I buried it in the backyard under the lemon tree like a guilty dog with a bone. He found it anyway. Of course he did. He didn’t yell. He just looked at me for a long time, eyes flat, and said,
“You don’t get to take that from her.”
I built the breeding bench to heighten role play and dominance. It was soft leather, had supports in the center, and extensions that jetted out from the sides. If they wanted, it allowed the sub to be shackled. It was the perfect height to bend the girls over and fuck them from behind, kneeling or standing.
Carlos took me to the playroom, bent me over the breeding bench I used to love, and slapped his hand against my ass. I was sobbing apologies into the leather. When he finally slid inside me it felt like punishment more than love. He came fast, pulled out, and left me there dripping and shaking. He slept on the couch that night.
Alina found me in the morning curled on the playroom floor, a strawberry colored area still hot across my ass. She didn’t say anything. Just helped me to the shower, washed the dried tears and come off my thighs with the same hands that used to stroke my hair. We didn’t speak. We didn’t have to. I saw it in her face: the guilt, the triumph, the terror that maybe she was becoming her father after all (judging, excluding, claiming the only correct path to God).
That afternoon Carlos made us kneel in the living room. He stood over us, fully dressed while we were naked, bellies on display like offerings. “I love you both,” he said, voice calm, but terrifying.
“This jealousy ends now. You are both mine. These babies are both mine. There is no first. There is no second. There is only us.”
Then he asked Alina to kiss me (not the sexy performative kind we used to do for him). A real kiss. Slow, messy, tasting each other’s fear. When we pulled apart we were both covered in tears. He fucked us together that night for the first time in weeks. Slow, almost careful. Alina on her side, me spooning behind her, his cock sliding between us, into her, into me, back and forth until the lines blurred and we weren’t sure whose moans were whose. When he came, he pulled out and painted both our bellies, rubbing it into our skin like he was trying to glue us back together with semen and love and will.
Afterward he held us both, one arm under Alina’s neck, one over my hip, palms resting on each bump.
“Feel that?” he whispered. “Two heartbeats. One family. Stop trying to divide what I already own.”
We fell asleep like that. But bodies remember. Two days later I found Alina in the nursery (the room we hadn’t even finished painting yet) standing in front of the two identical cribs, touching the one on the left like it was already claimed. I backed out before she saw me. That night I dreamt of babies again. This time I gave birth to a baby with Carlos’s eyes and Alina’s smile. When I reached out to pick up the baby, Alina took it before I could hold it in my arms and walked away. I woke up dry heaving. The rot had a name now and it was growing faster than either of us.
(7) The Quiet War
Jealousy is patient, methodical, and cruel. Alina started wearing Carlos’s college hoodies, hem stretched tight across breasts that regularly leaked when she was angry or aroused (often both). PRINCETON stamped across where life was growing inside her. I wore the old uniforms again: pleated skirts so short the lower curve of my ass showed when I walked, knee socks, pigtails so tight my scalp ached for hours.
We weaponized sex. She would ride him reverse cowgirl on the living room rug at 2pm while I pretended to read, making sure I saw every inch of his cock disappearing into her swollen, pregnant cunt, her hands cradling her belly like a trophy. I would crawl under his desk while he worked and suck him until he came down my throat just to remind him whose mouth he had trained to take him balls-deep without gagging.
We stopped kissing each other. We stopped saying thank you after he filled us. We started keeping score in stretch marks and decibels and the exact number of times he whispered “good girl” to each of us. One night he fucked me against the kitchen counter, belly pressed to the cold granite, while Alina stood three feet away timing her contractions on an app and refusing to look at us. After he finished inside me, she walked past without a word and locked herself in the guest bathroom. I heard her through the door, just breathing. The poly dynamics became a battlefield.
Carlos tried to balance us, fucking us in turns, coming in me one night, her the next. But Alina's pregnancy gave her an edge. Her body changed so much, her breasts heavy with milk, her cunt always wet from hormones. He couldn't resist. He'd eat her out for a really long time, licking her swollen clit until she squirted, then fuck her gently, whispering about how perfect she was but leaving off, “for carrying his baby.” I watched, fingering myself, coming alone while they came together. The breeding kink turned toxic. He still fucked me with fervor, still whispered about babies, but the calendar on the fridge now had notes in Alina's handwriting: “Kick at 3pm.” “Craving pickles.” Mine remained blank. The knife in my chest became a sword.
The house stopped smelling like sex and started smelling like war. It was in the air: impossible to ignore. We moved around each other like rival cats in a cage too small for two litters. Every footstep was measured, every glance loaded. The hardwood floors that once echoed with our moans now creaked with accusations. Alina was provocatively pregnant, a round swollen belly, and she orbited like a planet around Carlos. She moved slowly, deliberately, always leading with the belly.
Now, she had taken to wearing his white dress shirts, buttons straining, hem barely covering the tops of her thighs. Milk stained the fabric in faint crescents. When she walked past me the scent of it (sweet, warm, and victorious) made my jaw clench hard. She would wear the shirts until the stains were so thick, they couldn’t be cleaned.
She was saying but not saying, “This is mine. I will ruin it before letting you try it. I own him!”
I was several months by then and still looked like I’d swallowed a softball instead of carrying a child. My body refused to announce itself the way hers did. I hated it for that. I hated her for noticing. She did. Regularly.
Carlos tried. God, he tried. He scheduled us like a desperate air traffic controller: Monday, Wednesday, Friday: Ara gets bred on the breeding bench, ankles locked high, mirror angled so she can watch herself take every inch. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday: Alina gets worshipped on silk sheets, slow and devotional, his mouth on her nipples until milk runs down his chin. Sunday: “family day,” all three of us in the big bed, him in the middle, trying to fuck the war out of us or just keep us from killing each other. It never worked.
We learned to come on cue and cry in the shower afterward. The cribs in the nursery also became a battlefield. Alina arranged hers first: mobile of tiny moons, a cashmere blanket monogrammed with the initials she chose, but that the family hadn’t. She folded and refolded the onesies, smoothing them with the flat of her hand like she was ironing ownership into the cotton. I’d sneak in early mornings and sit between them, one hand on each empty mattress, trying to convince myself there was still room for both of us.
Carlos found out anyway. He stood in the doorway one night, arms crossed, watching me rock an invisible baby in the dark.
“You think separate cribs will make them love you more?” His voice was quiet. “That's really dangerous, sweetheart.”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. He crossed the room, lifted me out of the rocking chair like I didn't weigh anything, and carried me to our bed where Alina pretended to sleep. He laid me down facing her. Covered me with a blanket and said,
“Get some rest baby.” I couldn’t sleep next to her!
As he walked out of the room, Carlos said, “They’ll sleep in the same fucking crib if I say so. Stop drawing borders on my children.” Alina’s shoulders shook. She didn’t make a sound. The next morning both cribs were pushed together in the center of the room, side by side, no space between them. A single blanket draped across both mattresses. Message received. But bodies keep score even when mouths stay shut.
Alina started having Braxton Hicks at night. Carlos would wake instantly, hand splayed over her belly, murmuring low and soothing while she breathed through it. I’d lie on my side of the bed pretending to sleep, counting the seconds between his “good girl” and the silence that followed when he remembered I was there too. I started faking contractions just to feel his hand on me the same way. The first time I did it, he flew out of bed, eyes wild, already reaching for the hospital bag. When I admitted it was nothing, he looked at me for a long, horrible moment. Then he kissed my forehead (soft, pitying) and went back to sleep. I never did that again. The pity tasted worse than being ignored.
Sex became a currency we hoarded. Alina would wait until I left the room and then sink to her knees, mouth open, begging with her eyes. Carlos never turned her down. I’d come back to find her swallowing him, milk dripping from her nipples onto his thighs, his fingers tangled in her hair like devotion. I retaliated by ambushing him in the shower, pressing my belly to the tile, spreading myself open and whispering, “Please Daddy, I’m ovulating,” even though I wasn’t. He’d fuck me hard and fast, come with a groan that sounded like surrender, then wash me off like he was washing away any evidence. He knew what he was doing. I knew, too.
One night he snapped. We were in the living room: Alina on the couch rubbing cocoa butter into her belly, me on the floor painting my toenails blood-red. The tension was a living thing, coiled and hissing. Carlos walked in, took one look at us, and lost it. His voice was raw and exhausted. He screamed.
“Enough!
PLEASE STOP IT!
I love you both so much it’s fucking killing me. Figure out how to love each other again, or I swear to God I’ll make you.”
He slammed the door. We stayed there for a while, breathing the same repugnant air, not touching, not speaking. Just two pregnant women sitting in ruins of what we used to be. Somewhere in the dark, the babies kicked in perfect unison. The babies were telling us to stop making them the center of the battles.
(8) The Night We Broke
Carlos had had enough. He let us get away with a lot because he knew the hormones were manipulating us from the real foundation of love and trust we built. He dragged the leather wingback into the bedroom and sat fully dressed, arms crossed, voice calm and lethal.
“Three months since you touched each other without hate in your teeth. Ara, fix it. Alina, fix it. Both of you fix it or both of you pack your shit and get out of my house.”
We’ve never seen Carlos so angry and at the end of his rope. I didn’t understand what that meant because I didn't have any place to go. Neither of us did. I think the ultimatum wasn't to put us on the street, but to illustrate that this house is only for family.
He would have put us in apartments, paid for everything and after the children were born, filed for primary physical custody. His age, resources, and influence would make us look like unfit mothers and that was the rub. We weren't. It was his failure. But Carlos could only give 100% and with both of us fighting, 100% wasn't enough. We had to pick up the slack and we weren’t. We knew what we were responsible for but ignored our responsibilities.
We broke his heart, his dreams, and everything he built for us. Our natures re-emerged just like the scorpion on the back of the river otter. Sex, intimacy, and even Carlos’s ability to solve almost any problem stretched him to the breaking point. He was broken. What have we done? We didn't have the tools to fix such a complex problem.
We were limp and shaking. Carlos lifted us both into bed, tucked us in and crawled in between us. Against his heavy heart and beaten chest, he whispered,
“Where are my girls? I’ve lost them. Please help me find them? I will die without them.”
The next morning, the air felt different. Alina made coffee and I made breakfast. Alina's belly leading the way, she kissed Carlos good morning and then me for the first time in months. In 18 hours, our lives would be upside down. One will never know the extent of how bad it will be and how you’ll survive, and then you do!
(9) Abruption, Hemorrhage, Emergency Delivery, and I Died
This is mine and my baby's life leaving me in a rush. I look down and the white sheets are soaked with blood. Blood so dark it looks black in the moonlight, spreading fast, hot, then instantly cold. The smell hits like a fist: there is a cold familiar metallic taste, cold as raw meat, and terror. This wasn't spotting or a random light flow. I scream. A sound I didn’t know a human throat could produce. Alina bolts upright beside me, mouth open in a matching scream that never quite forms. Carlos is already moving, ripping the comforter away. The wet slap of saturated fabric hitting hardwood is obscene. He lifts me. Blood pours over his forearms, down his chest, onto the floor in thick, glossy ropes. It looks like melted rubies when it formed puddles on the floor under the hall light. Alina runs barefoot behind us leaving perfect red footprints all the way to the garage. I try to speak but nothing comes out. The last thing I hear before the world fades to black is Carlos’s voice, cracked open and feral,
“Stay with me little girl. Stay with Daddy. I can't lose you!”
The drive to the hospital is a blur of red street lights and the car horn begging people to get out of the way. I imagine, because Carlos is flooring it, hands white on the wheel, his face a mask of terror I've never seen before. Alina is in the back with me, her hands pressing towels and sheets between my legs, whispering prayers her father taught her that she swore she'd never use again. The blood soaks through anyway. She rocks back and forth as she watches me fade in and out of consciousness.
I can hear, “No. No!” and under her breath, “Take me. PLEASE DON'T DO THIS!”
Without question, I'm absolutely certain Alina is praying and offering herself in lieu of the dark place I feel myself being pulled to.
I was terrified!
Strangers rip me from Carlos’s arms. Wheels turning rattle loudly on the asphalt and concrete. Someone shouts “abruption, c-section, stat,” while cold scissors shear my clothes away. The oxygen mask hisses…
Last thoughts before the dark:
--Let our baby live
--Tell Alina I’m sorry
--Tell Carlos I never used a safeword
I wake in recovery, tubes everywhere, pain is a dull roar under morphine. Carlos is there, face gaunt, eyes red.
“THE BABY?” I gasp.
“Alive. NICU. Fighting.”
Alina is in the chair beside him, holding his hand, tears silent on her cheeks. We cry together, the three of us. Our fantasy died on those sheets, at least we feel like that. Everyone is alive.
The doctors explain: abruption, hemorrhage, we lost you for a moment, then emergency delivery. The baby is in an incubator, lungs underdeveloped, and heart struggling. She is premature. We name her Hope, because what else is there?
They were by my side and then I woke up the next day. Carlos and Alina were gone. They would never leave me. At least one would stay. The panic in my voice raises and I'm screaming for the nurse.
Nurse! Nurse! HELP. HELP! WHERE ARE MY HUSBAND AND WIFE?
It was so instinctual although those titles don't do justice for who and what they are to me.
I'm told, late last night, Alina went into labor. There were a few complications. The baby is four weeks early but there is nothing wrong with him.
(10) Aaron is Strong
He looks just like Carlos. He'll stay here with Alina, Myself, and Hope. Carlos has seen the babies and he wanted to let the girls hold the babies first. Alina and I will be in recovery for a few more days and then Alina and I will be sharing a room until we are discharged. The babies are down the hall. Carlos sleeps in a chair between our beds, one hand on each of us. We hold hands across the space, fingers laced, whispering apologies and accolades.
We did it!
(11) 79 Days of Hell
All of us take turns living in the NICU. I pump milk with a machine that sounds like a dying animal while watching my daughter fight through a plastic box. Alina sings Spanish hymns when the oscillators get too loud. Carlos sleeps upright, one hand always in the incubator. We celebrate one gram gained like winning the lottery. We learn every alarm by heart.
We learn the exact weight of Hope when she was born. (4lbs, 9oz). The days blend into nights, beeps blend into fears. We take turns holding them skin-to-skin, feeling their tiny hearts against our chests, willing them to stay. Alina and I lean on each other when Carlos breaks. Carlos holds us together when we shatter. We only make it a couple hours at a time and then Carlos has to pick up the pieces. We start over. We become a family in the process.
(12) Homecoming
They come home on oxygen, monitors, schedules written in blood and tears. The house smells of lavender detergent and the sharp plastic tang of tubing. Sex becomes a foreign country we no longer have visas for. We learn a new intimacy. Fingers count respirations. Chests rise and fall. Arms cradle babies. Sleep is impossible. The babies thrive, slowly. We heal, slowly. The scars on our bellies match, silvery lines that Carlos kisses when we finally let him touch us again. The first time we make love post hospital is gentle, no breeding talk, just “I love you,” whispered like prayers. The poly dynamics become sacred, three hearts beating for two tiny ones.
The babies got big, fast. The babies ate like they were packing on fat for a winter’s hibernation. Babies smell so deliciously yummy, too! I couldn't explain it. The next two years were full of glorious new experiences. Their smiles, the giggles, the messes, and the pooping and peeing and peeing and pooping, and diapers, and wipes and crawling and then first real words.
Hope said, “Daddy.” Aaron said, “Hope.” That made us so happy as we could see their bond, but “Momma” would come soon enough. Carlos became a totally different man. Everyone says children will change you, but I couldn't imagine what kind of man he'd become. Nothing came before the kids! Hope wanted to be with Daddy and Aaron wanted to be with Hope. Daddy, won, won. Roles slightly changed. Alina cooked more. We loved her Mexican inspired dishes. I ran errands and Carlos continued building and renovating the home. While I wasn't sure what was going to happen next, Alina dropped hints all the time. She wanted another baby. I could see it and if I could read her mind, it would be saying, “You and Carlos take care of the house and home, I'll make more babies! It worked.
I wore the white lace dress that was purchased for a father, daughter dance at church when I was fourteen. I never got to wear it because by thirteen I already knew what hands felt like under my skirt.
The dress was kept in the back of my closet like a relic of a girl who died before she ever got to live. Tonight I put it on for the first and last time. It still fits but it shouldn’t have. None of me should have fit into anything that pure anymore.
Ara stood with me in the house that one day would be full of children and our future. She held the contract like it was the Book of Revelation and a butcher knife at the same time.
I got on one knee. Not because she told me to but because my legs wouldn’t hold me up anymore but also because of what I was about to propose. I read every line out loud while my voice cracked like the teenager I never got to be.
“I surrender my soul, my body, my forever to Arabella Valenti. I beg her to keep me. I beg her to break me if she needs to. I beg her to never let me go.”
When I signed my name, the pen tore the paper. I was crying so hard the ink bled. Ara’s hand was shaking too, but she didn’t drop the page.
The notary (some tired woman in a blazer who probably just wanted to go home) asked in a flat official voice,
“What kind of document is this for my log?”
I looked up at her with mascara running down my face and come still drying on my thighs from what Ara and Carlos had done to me an hour earlier, and I said,
“It’s a soul deed. I just relinquished my soul to the love of my life. It is…”
The notary blinked once, cut me off with, “contract,” and wrote it in her book and stamped the page without another word. “I'll be going now,” she said.
That was the moment the last thread was cut from anything tying me my past, to anyone that had a claim to me. It was not when I sent my father the video of Carlos coming on my tongue. Not when he texted back Leviticus 18 and told me I was dead to him. Not when I deleted every hymn from my phone and screamed into the void where God used to live.
This. This piece of paper. This torn lace. This woman standing over me with wet eyes and steady hands. This was my real exorcism. I didn’t sell my soul to the devil. I sold it to the first person who ever looked at me like I was worth saving instead of damning. When Ara folded the contract, slipped it into the pocket over her heart, and whispered, “Mine,” I finally understood what salvation actually feels like. It felt like being owned by someone who will never let you fall. It felt like being on your knees and finally, finally being safe. I was never pure enough for that white dress. Tonight I was pure enough for Ara. That’s bigger than any church ever dared to promise me.
(14) Alina Gives Her Soul to Ara
This contract is binding in this world and in every world to come. No court may dissolve it. No god may overrule it. Only death may pause it, and even then, only until we find each other again.
SOUL SURRENDER AND PERPETUAL CUSTODIAL AGREEMENT
Date of Execution
February 14, 2013
Place of Execution
Portland, Oregon
PARTIES
Alina Serova
Grantor / Soul, Bearer
(hereinafter “the Soul”)
Arabella Valenti
Grantee / Custodian
(hereinafter “the Keeper”)
RECITALS
WHEREAS the Soul, of her own free and unshackled will, has determined that her soul is too wild, too bright, and too easily wounded to be left in her own keeping; and
WHEREAS the Keeper has proven, by blood and by fire yet unspilled, that she is willing and able to bear the weight of another’s eternal essence without crushing it; and
WHEREAS the Soul desires to be relieved of the solitary burden of her own immortality;
NOW, THEREFORE, in consideration of love fiercer than law and trust deeper than death, the Soul hereby irrevocably grants, conveys, and surrenders the entirety of her immortal soul to the Keeper upon the following terms:
ARTICLE I – TRANSFER OF TITLE
Complete and absolute ownership of the Soul known as Alina Serova is hereby transferred to Arabella Valenti, effective immediately upon signing.
This transfer is perpetual, non-transferable, non-assignable, and survives the death or dissolution of either party’s physical body.
No act of God, man, or devil shall revoke this grant.
ARTICLE II – DUTIES OF THE SOUL
The Soul covenants and agrees:
2.1 To remain soft enough to feel, even when it would be easier to harden.
2.2 To speak the truth, even when her voice shakes.
2.3 To burn brightly enough to light the Keeper’s darkness, but never so brightly as to consume her.
2.4 To forgive quickly, to ask for forgiveness quickly, and to never weaponize her own wounds.
2.5 To laugh, to cry, to come, and to pray with equal abandon.
2.6 To grow, but never away.
ARTICLE III – CONSEQUENCES OF NEGLECT
Should the Soul neglect the duties above, or should she attempt to reclaim custody without the Keeper’s written consent, the Soul acknowledges and accepts the following inevitable consequences (not as punishment imposed by the Keeper, but as the natural law of a soul left untended):
Hollowing: the slow erosion of joy until laughter tastes like ash
Dimming: the gradual fading of her light until even her own reflection becomes a stranger
Wandering: the eternal ache of searching for a home she voluntarily abandoned
Fracture: the splintering of self into pieces too sharp to hold
These are not threats. They are certainties, written in the same blood that will one day bind us all.
ARTICLE IV – DUTIES OF THE KEEPER
The Keeper accepts the following solemn obligations in perpetuity:
4.1 To carry this soul gently, fiercely, and without hesitation.
4.2 To polish it when it dulls, to warm it when it cools, to remind it of its own brilliance when it forgets.
4.3 To return it, upon request, only if return would not destroy it.
4.4 To love it harder on the days it is hardest to love.
ARTICLE V – NOTARIAL ACKNOWLEDGMENT
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the Soul has set her hand and surrendered her essence on this fourteenth day of February, in the year two thousand thirteen.
Signed Alina Serova
Alina Serova – Soul, Bearer
Signed Arabella Valenti
Arabella Valenti – Keeper and Sole Owner
NOTARY PUBLIC
State of Oregon
County of Multnomah
On this 14th day of February, 2013, before me personally appeared Alina Serova and Arabella Valenti, known to me to be the persons who executed the foregoing instrument and acknowledged the same freely and voluntarily for the uses and purposes therein stated.
[Notary Seal]
Signed Nancy Dozzenmatter
My commission expires: 12/31/2028
(15) Coffee Shop and Why “I Need This”
My father planned my life so far in advance that it was likely he had my children's name picked out. Everyone had this idea that I was the special one, a gift from God because I was born so long after my last sister, 11 years older than me. I have 4 older sisters, 11, 12, 14, and 15 years older than I am. I was only close to Rebecca, or Becca as I called her. She had already left the house and was away at college before I really got to know her. She came home for Christmas break when I was 5, 6, 7, and 8. My other sisters were in their own worlds because of the age gap and I was a novelty to the friends they brought over. As the oldest, Becca was everyone's surrogate mother and really raised us.
My mother was responsible for being the dutiful pastor's wife which she loved to do because it came with social perks. I think the reason she had children was out of obligation to the church. It definitely wasn't my father's idea. If I had to guess, he only touched my mother 5 times during their marriage. Why they decided to have me all those years later definitely never brought me any special joy. If I had to guess, they got into a fight about a sexless marriage and he pity fucked her. Nothing like being conceived out of pity to guide your future.
If I wasn't a dork I definitely was nerdy. I read a lot. I developed a particular curiosity for Greek and Roman literature, especially of overt sexuality and hedonism. I realized there was an exciting and sensual underbelly that I wanted to explore before I became a “bottle of red wine for lunch,” housewife with two kids and a minivan living in the suburbs. Becca took a year off after college before medical school and backpacked through Europe. She told me later it changed her perspective on a lot of things as she lost her virginity in Paris to a man a lot older than her. We lost touch until she was done with her residency and moved back to Wilsonville to work at a local hospital. I was 16 and she was single with no children. She never did get married and have children as she was always too busy with a career to make time for one.
I smoked pot with her the first time, had my first glass of wine with her, (subsequently got drunk, passed out, and had my first hangover, as well), and was introduced to older men and women when she had other “business professionals” over for soirées. I got hit on way too much for only being a teenager, but of course Becca and I never told them. She never treated me like a baby. She talked to me like I was already grown, like I already understood the jokes she made about boys who couldn’t find the clit with a map and a flashlight. I didn’t. But I laughed anyway because I wanted to be the kind of girl who got the joke.
She was so much fun to hang around. As for the untoward rumor that Becca had groomed me, that wasn't true. I did happen to spy on her with another woman and man one evening. I secretly watched as long as I could without getting caught. At 16, it was arousing and I was definitely interested.
One night, Becca left the door to her bedroom cracked open. I saw everything. Becca on her knees between a woman’s thighs while a man fucked her from behind. The woman’s hand was in Becca’s hair like a prayer. Becca’s eyes were closed like she was tasting God. I stood there so long my legs went numb. I didn’t touch myself. I was too afraid of what would happen if I did. But I felt it start (this low, humming want that lived under my skin from that night forward).
Becca asked me if she heard them in the adjacent room. She knows I did as the bedroom door was open and they were really loud. I had a lot of questions and Becca answered them. I think because she was a doctor, it seemed logical and solely informative, but it totally got me off! Later she found me in the hallway crying because I didn’t understand why watching her made me feel holy and damned at the same time. She didn’t ask what I saw. She just pulled me into her bedroom, sat me on the bed, and said,
“Bodies aren’t sins, Alina. They’re just doors. Some people lock theirs. Some people burn the house down trying to keep theirs shut. I’m teaching myself how to leave mine open.”
Then she kissed my forehead like a blessing and told me to go to bed. I masturbated for the first time that night thinking about her mouth on that woman and that man’s hands on Becca’s hips and the way surrender looked like power when she did it.
She never touched me. Not once. She was careful the way only people who know exactly where the line is can be careful. But she taught me what desire felt like before shame had a chance to. She taught me that wanting wasn’t the same as weakness. She taught me that pleasure could be prayer if you said it with the right kind of tongue. When I finally knelt for Ara and Carlos, when I let them take me apart piece by piece until I was nothing but light and need, I wasn’t starting from zero. I was finishing what Becca began. She gave me the map. Ara and Carlos gave me the country. Sometimes when I’m riding Carlos and the world narrows to just the place where we’re joined, I close my eyes and I’m 16 again on those stairs, watching my sister teach me that surrender can be the most powerful thing a woman ever does.
I didn’t want Becca in my home once the children came. I think it was a punitive action against her, but once the children arrived, I just didn't trust her. She never came over or was part of family dinners and the holidays. I outgrew the need for her.
While Becca never touched me, she’s in every orgasm I’ve ever had that felt like coming home. She’s the reason I knew how to say yes when Ara asked if I trusted her. She’s the reason I wasn’t afraid to sign my soul away. She’s the reason I understood, long before I had the words, that being owned by the right people can feel exactly like being set free. It is why Ara thinks I'm experienced. I pay attention.
Life got busy for Becca so we didn't hang around much anymore but we texted from time to time. We talked about everything, especially sex. I'd masturbate after wishing she would show me how those things were done, but I think her distance was discretion on her part. I was feeling despondent and alone when I started finding provocative chat rooms on deviant sexuality when I happened on Ara. I think it was easy for us to become close because we shared similar fucked up childhoods. There was a part of me that couldn't imagine living Becca's life, was petrified of living the life my father had planned, and if I just waited until things happened organically for me, I'd end up being alone and single all my life.
Then one day, Carlos joined our chat group. Carlos seemed to be courteous but I think reluctant to engage with me. I didn't know if I wasn't broken or damaged enough yet for his liking but one thing I could easily pick up on was that he was terribly lonely. He was a kindred spirit in that regard. Lost souls from the loneliest amongst us knew each other's language. We put on a good game, but we were broken.
Carlos was shattered. I wanted to heal him. Something compelled me to pick up the pieces and put each back together if only one at a time and even if it wasn't my calling.
The coffee shop was the point of no return for me. Moving in together wasn't that important or a big deal for me, but someone willing to put me first was divine intervention. I hated using liturgical or biblical language back then with all the recent events just behind me, but I didn't feel a calling at this very moment. When Carlos finished communicating what he wanted, I was dismayed that Ara second guessed herself. It was up to me to bring her back.
I wasn't sure where my sexuality with men or women would fall as my experience with both was limited, but everything aroused me and I wanted to try everything. It was all at my feet but I couldn't do this alone and so that's where, “I NEED THIS,” came from. The kiss, well, it was still innocent at that point. It's pointless to describe how I went from virgin to whore in two weeks, but it was Carlos.
The first time we laid in bed together, he wrapped an arm around me, went under my t-shirt and his hand right around my breast. He just did it. It felt so right while everything in my stomach was telling me it was wrong. Why would it be wrong? I had to get myself out of this pit and once Ara was asleep, I told Carlos to put his fingers inside me. Fingering myself held no ground to the way he made me feel. A few nights later was my first time with him. In the evening he called Ara and I out to the living room. I had no fear and was so ready! I thought for sure that Ara would have already slept with him, but only a blowjob to that point. I heard Carlos finger Ara a couple times as well. Not sure why it all emerged so slowly.
I gave my virginity to Carlos that night. He is the only man I've ever been with. Ara is the only woman I've ever been with. They are more than enough for me.
I knew Ara was in love with me within months. We hadn't yet kissed, but one night she held my hand and asked me if I trusted her. There really wasn't anything not to trust, but that wasn't the thing that I dwelt much on. If someone doesn't do anything to dissuade me of the trust that I would otherwise always grant them, I don't know why I wouldn't.
She told me that she doesn't sleep well. She's up all hours thinking about me. She says that she worries that my home life is not a safe place. Ara turned my hand around and interlocked her fingers with mine and looked at our hands in their embrace. She runs one of her fingers up and down the length of several of mine, across the back of my hand, her other hand rests on my cheek, moves along the length of my hair, down my arm, and settles on top of my thigh.
She says, “I want to kiss you,” and her eyes lock onto mine.
I guess I didn't say anything all the while my brain was saying yes, I couldn't move, I couldn't speak.
She says it again. “I want to kiss you.”
I'm frozen in this moment in time and don't know what to do. I kept on wondering why she wasn't kissing me.
“I'm ready Ara,” I keep thinking in my head.
Ara says, “It's okay,” and just as she is resigned to think this wasn't the right time, she doesn't love me back, or she doesn't like girls, I say, “What?” Lingering in my momentary fog, I then say, “No. Yes. Kiss me!” Ara kisses me passionately.
Lips and tongues and teeth with hands pulling hair. It was perfect and amazing and I was unbelievably wet. Ara didn't know how far to take it as we were comfortable being friends and we didn't want to lose that. But this was right! I was ready. I said to Ara, “I'm yours,” and she did things to me I didn't even know were possible. She was more of an aggressive personality until Carlos came into the picture. She was delicate and I think it was her way to make sure these first experiences remained memorable.
I know that her past was painful and I never wanted her to think I was using her or that she was just an inanimate object. Ara was the first person I ever told I was romantically in love with. I wasn't experienced in this process, but when I gave her my soul, I think she knew how much she meant to me. Contrary to everything that happened in our first year with Carlos, I never would have made it without you, Ara. I love you!
(16) The Moment I Found Out I Was Pregnant
Everything happened so fast. One day I was innocent. Days passed and then I was experienced. Give it another month and I give my virginity to the only man I'll ever sleep with and together we have six children and I am a mother to eight.
There definitely is a level of fantasy and creative writing that could lead some to think I was too young to make these decisions and too young to consent. Nothing could be further than the truth.
This is a story about the love created, developed, and shared between three people, and the beautiful children that were born from it. It worked for us.
Being pregnant is truly a “Gift from God.” I have no other words that truly describe how amazing carrying children are. When Carlos brought Aaron to me after delivery and said, “Alina, meet your son Aaron,” everything changed. Up to that point, we were really playing a game. I encourage every woman to put children before career, friends, money, and probably most of your family.
Feeling a new life growing inside of me brought Carlos and I together in a way that I couldn't imagine and never truly describe. Our first time together, when I crawled on top of him in the living room with Ara watching us is what stands out in the beginning. My only regret is that I would have had a cherry for him to take or that he would have impregnated me right then, our first time.
Our relationship isn't perfect, but after he came inside me, I discovered a new man in the lines on his face, the hair on his head, his eyebrows, his nose, teeth, ears, and especially his eyes. I learned so much from him and about myself sitting on top of him, filled with his sperm, and Ara saw it. She wrote about it. While I've abandoned my religious upbringing, the language I use still revolves heavily around it. Carlos, Ara, and I have chosen not to bring up our children in the church, but I am not against God being in our lives. When Ara lost her first pregnancy, I thought that my hedonism contributed to her loss, I felt so incredibly guilty. I truly believe that, “we are our brother's keeper.” I could never live with myself if I found out I caused her that pain.
When we almost lost Hope, I would have surely taken her place, even while carrying Aaron. We almost didn’t recover from the miscarriage.
Carlos truly knows how painful and intolerable losing a loved one is as he has a loss in his past which he's never come to terms with. It eats him alive a little every day. If Ara, Hope, Aaron, and I hadn't come into his life when we did, I know he wouldn't be with us today.
Carlos did give me a bit more attention than he should have, a lot more attention, but it took a long time for Ara to accept him. She seemed to be along for the ride because I wanted it. In a small part, I was new to love and Ara was the first person I fell in love with. She didn't have this kind of love growing up and Carlos's declaration was probably something she's heard before in one form or another. To that end, love was very transactional with her. I never asked her, or don't remember, who her first love was but I do know that it was the first time she fell in love with a woman. It did come out of nowhere, I surmise, and I can honestly say that she leaned on the encounter with Carlos failing as every man in her life walked away. Her mother dying definitely drove a nail into any semblance of a normal life ever happening.
I think Ara never expected to get pregnant. She had a very difficult pregnancy and Hope was born premature. By the time she reached one year old, every complication with the premature birth had been overcome. Carlos was affected traumatically by the miscarriage and the difficulties Ara went through. Hope is a miracle and she is perfect! She was technically born three days before Aaron but spent 79 days in the NICU before her discharge. I stayed with Ara in her room for the first 30 days even though Aaron stayed a week in Special Care although he never showed risks associated with premature delivery. I'd spend time with him all day and Carlos shuttled between the different rooms to be with everyone. Aaron's last two weeks there, they let Hope and Aaron lay together regularly (for bonding purposes) and everyone believes it made a huge difference. Aaron, Carlos and I went home during Hope's last 30 days and Ara was there 75% of the day, Carlos the last 25%. The first day home was amazing! We had a huge party and many of the NICU nurses came. They became a second family to us. Ara regularly goes back to hold babies and give parents a break. Three years later, Ara asked me how she would feel helping her have another child. We asked Carlos together. Paloma was born 10 months later with zero complications.
Sadly, Ara developed scar tissue during her pregnancy that prevented further pregnancies. It developed into a cancer scare that surgery luckily rectified. I offered to carry an embryo for her but it never panned out when Carlos and I got pregnant for the fourth time. Carlos and I agreed that Ara would cut the cord on the rest of the children and hand the babies to both myself and Carlos.
The miscarriage was overshadowed by our pregnancies and time healed many wounds, but if I hadn't been pregnant, I think everything would have fallen apart at that time or shortly thereafter. Ara losing her baby almost reinforced how disposable she had become. She hadn't even turned 25 yet. While I was in love with her, if I had not been pregnant, it's very likely Carlos would have left or even been forced out. I couldn't have handled Ara on my own. She probably would have become abusive. I'm not exactly sure where that thought came from, outside of her belt use and self, flagellation, but her past was dark and it frightened me. When she beat herself early on in our poly family formation, my strength to set her on the right path came from Carlos and the strength I felt in his arms.
She could have easily misconstrued that the miscarriage was caused by Carlos and I and her behaviors could have turned on a dime for the worse. We've talked about it in my two year gap between babies, and her growth away from that place. Carlos also stopped drinking after that binge. With his past, drinking could have fostered enough strength to severely hurt himself. Ara's transformation has been miraculous. Perhaps, the miscarriage was her “rock bottom” that she used as a catalyst to become a better, more responsible person.
Carlos won’t take this the wrong way, but he was way in way over his head! Carlos often tried to encapsulate his perceived wisdom into catchy phrases, black and white aphorisms, and good business sense. That did NOT prepare him for what he wanted or thought was going to happen. His breakdown and threats to throw us out could have backfired in his face. They almost did on at least two occasions. Ara would have put a bullet between his eyes if he raised a hand in violence against me. That was never him, thank the Lord.
Discipline play was always for pleasure. I told Carlos what Ara said, I had to, and he never apologized to either of us – he thought we were being selfish. He felt it was necessary because of how poorly Ara and I treated each other sometimes. I have to give him that one. If Ara would have taken me to leave him, I would have left with her. However, I don't know how long I would have stayed away. I do think, in the end, eight years later, all of us were forced to make decisions from the little experience we started the journey with. We had to rely on the trust we each promised the other in that coffee shop. Our formal declaration to give each other everything is often lost in failed relationships because of the unwillingness to forgive and the unwillingness to continue the journey together.
A Bonding Ceremony in Hawaii about a year after Hope and Aaron were born took place. It promised the three of us to each other as much as it could be without an official state licensed event. A few close friends joined us in appreciation of the commitment we pledged again to each other (without a coffee shop in the background). One of the newest yet closest couples was asked to formally be “God Parents” and accepted. I would tell Carlos and Ara that evening that I was pregnant, AGAIN…!!!
There is a regret that I've only shared with Ara, and that is not being able to share our children with my parents. The children would benefit from grandparents, but I just can't trust them. I'm not expecting that this decision is likely to change. Since the completion of this narrative and the birth of our last child, they are still not welcomed into our home.
CARLOS
• Steadfast, grounding presence
• Profound sense of duty
• Unwavering, action-oriented loyalty
• Deep, patient listening
• Emotional endurance from loss
•Immense patience in conflict
• Reliable, thoughtful gestures
• Protective yet freedom-honoring
• Gentle, understated humor
• Reassuring physical affection
• Encouraging, respectful fathering
• Radical accountability and growth
• Quiet power with tender care
(17) Overwhelming odds
The strength that women find deep inside themselves to overcome the beast is remarkable. Women are prone to defeat at every point in their lives until face to face and head to head, with the beast. Only when it is prepared to attack, only when they are alone, have no chance of survival, does an unknown strength manifest inside herself. Nothing will ever defeat THAT woman.
I was 44 years old, two new babies and one who still used oxygen some nights, two wives who won’t look at me without wanting to kill me some nights, and a heart that feels like it’s been run over by every promise I ever made to them. I looked up at them, my eyes red, voice shredded,
“I don’t know how to be in this house if I’m not the one holding it together. I don’t know how to breathe if you two don’t need me to fix you anymore. So tell me what’s left of me if I’m not the solution.”
I believed I could fix everything. That there is a solution to everything. That every problem has an answer given enough time to solve it.
The question I've never answered is, “Where does a man that believes he can solve every problem start?” What is his priority?
Ara reaches out first this time, fingers brushing my knee. Alina shifts over, making space between Ara and herself on the window seat. I crawl forward like a man who’s forgotten how to walk upright, lay my head on Ara’s thigh, reach blindly for her hand, and when she gives it to me, she squeezes so hard it hurts. The three of us stay like that. I'm curled up between their bodies, shaking with the kind of sobs that don’t make noise. I'm a man in countless pieces on the inside while forcing an appearance on the outside to resemble perfection and strength. I'm a man that has everything under control yet I can barely breathe. After a long pause, I whisper against Ara’s skin, my voice hoarse and terrified,
“I’m so fucking tired of being strong. Can I just be scared with you for once? Can that be enough?”
Ara and Alina pull me up into the cradle of their arms, my body folded into both of theirs like a child who finally gets to stop pretending. Ara kisses my temple. Alina kisses the tears off his jaw. For the first time since the night the blood started, I let myself be held instead of holding.
No fixes. No orders. No Daddy. Just one broken man and two damaged women sit there. Men have always carried the weight of the world on their shoulders and they accept the burden without asking, without being told it will happen, and there isn't any training or preparation that any man can ever do to be ready to face this adversary when it reveals itself. Sometimes, the strongest thing a man can do is admit he’s human, and the strongest thing a family can do is love him even more when he finally does.
I can't give my soul to Ara for safe keeping, but here is a letter I wrote to her. It is the brutal, beautiful truth. On a single sheet of paper the same night the girls signed their contract, I slipped mine under Ara’s pillow without ceremony.
(18) February 14, 2013 (Carlos’s Pledge)
“To the only two souls I was ever allowed to touch. I have no soul to put on paper. I lost the claim to one a long time before either of you were born. Everything that might have been a soul in me was already ash when I walked into that coffee shop and saw the two of you waiting.”
What was left (the hunger, the violence, the need to own and protect and burn the world down for something that felt like redemption) looked at you and said:
“Here. Take the hollow place. Fill it. Break it. Live inside it so I never have to be empty again. So, there is no contract from me tonight. Only this promise, carved into the only part of me still capable of bleeding. If either of you ever tries to take your soul back, you will have to rip it out through my chest first. I will stand in the doorway with my heart in my hands and dare you to walk past me. I will let you tear me open if that’s what it takes to keep you from leaving yourselves behind. I have nothing to sign away because I was already nothing when you found me. You made me real. You made me matter. You are the only proof I ever existed. So keep each other. Own each other. Love each other until it bruises. I will spend whatever life I have left being the wall, the cage, the altar, the witness, the weapon, whatever you need me to be, so that the contract you just signed tonight can never be broken. I have no soul to give you, but I have a body that will stand guard over both of yours until it rots. Use me. That’s all I ever wanted.”
(19) The Confession I Will Never Read Aloud, and Then I Do
I never wanted to be the hero of this story. I wanted to be the villain who wins. That’s the truth nobody in this house has ever said out loud. I built everything (the house, the rules, the calendars, the breeding bench, the soul contract) because I thought if I controlled the architecture of love tightly enough, no one could ever leave me again. I was wrong. People think I’m a rock. I am the one who carried Ara out when she was bleeding, who held Alina’s hair while she puked, who sat in the NICU for 79 nights with a hand in Hope's incubator. They’re not wrong, but rocks erode. Rocks crack. Rocks sometimes sink to the bottom of the ocean, never to be found.
I lost a child before I ever met either of you. I’ve never said her name out loud since the night the machines stopped beeping. Isabel. She was six months old. SIDS. I was twenty-six, still married to the woman who looked at me afterward like I had personally murdered our daughter because I was the one who put her down for that nap. I died that day. I walked away with the only possessions I owned being the clothes on my back and the shovel that lays in the bed of my pickup truck. I’ve been digging graves ever since (some literal, most not).
When I met Ara and Alina online, I recognized the smell of graves on them immediately. I thought, here are two women who already know how deep a hole can get. Maybe if we dig together, we’ll finally hit something solid to lay a foundation.
I lied at that coffee shop. Not with my words (every promise I made that night I have kept or would die trying), but with my certainty. I told them I could give them forever. I didn’t know forever was a living thing that bites. It sinks its teeth into you and demands flesh. I have lost pounds of flesh trying to fight it.
The first time I came inside Alina and she whispered, “Baby,” looking at her belly, I felt God laughing at me. Alina was so young. Coming inside her wasn't a checkmark of accomplishments or conquests – those didn’t walk away – they ran.
Alina stayed there, sitting on top of me, knowing, and hoping, that life would grow inside her. She believed in me so much that she gave me the one thing that a woman can only give once, will always remember to whom it was given, and like a prayer that is heard, God gave it to her to give to me.
I knew, right then, that I had just split my heart in half and handed each of them a piece too sharp to hold safely. I thought I could control which one bled. I was arrogant enough to believe I could own two women’s wombs and still deserve their souls.
The night Ara miscarried, I didn’t punch the brick wall because I was angry at God or fate, I punched it because I was angry at myself. I had spent a month fucking the fertility into them like it was a commandment I could enforce on biology itself. I had whispered “Mine” into their skin so many times I started to believe biology would obey me the way they did.
When her body rejected what I put there, it felt like the universe saying,
“You do not get to write the ending, Carlos. You never did.”
I drank for seven days straight after that. Not the performative one bottle on the porch grief Ara wrote about. I’m talking black-out, crawling, piss-yourself, drunk. I woke up once on the nursery floor with a tiny onesie clutched in my fist like I could bring the baby back if I just squeezed hard enough.
Alina found me. She didn’t say a word. She just laid down beside me, put her belly (still round with Aaron) against my spine, and held me while I shook.
I hated her for being pregnant when Ara wasn’t.
I loved her for being pregnant when Ara was.
I have never forgiven myself for either feeling.
The night I threatened to throw them out, I was telling the truth for the first time in years. I was done. I was going to put them in separate apartments, pay for everything, take the kids, and disappear. I even looked up custody lawyers at 4am. Then I walked into the bedroom and saw them curled together like frightened animals. Alina’s hand resting protectively over Ara’s empty belly, and I broke. I broke so completely that the only thing left was the part that still knew how to love them. Barely.
I never told them how many nights I sat outside Hope’s incubator convinced she would die because I caused it. My need to prove I could make life had almost taken one instead. The doctors said abruption is just bad luck. I don’t believe in luck. I believe in actions and consequences.
Here is the secret I thought I would take to my grave. I'm glad I didn't. There were moments (dark, venomous moments) when I wished Ara would just leave. Not because I didn’t love her enough, but because if she left, the scales would balance again. Alina’s body obeyed me. Ara’s didn’t. Every time Alina’s belly grew while Ara’s stayed flat, a voice in my head whispered, “See! This one is yours. That one never was.” I hated that voice. I fed it anyway.
I have apologized to Ara in every way I know how except with words. I have kissed the scar where they cut Hope out of her and tasted my own shame. I have let her hit me until my skin split because pain was the only language I had left that was honest. She didn’t know that when she slept in the guest bedroom, sometimes I would stand in the doorway and watch her sleep. Her eyes tightly shut and her body showing me signs of nightmares by sudden jerking motions and fear in her voice.
Alina thinks I saved them. Ara thinks I chose Alina. The truth is simpler and uglier. I needed them to save me, and I was willing to burn the world down to keep them doing it. I still don’t know if that makes me a monster or just a man who is finally telling the truth. The day Alina signed her soul over to Ara, I stood outside the bedroom door and listened to her cry. I didn’t go in. That moment wasn’t mine to witness. But I understood something standing there in the dark. I tried to own their bodies so I wouldn’t lose them the way I lost Isabel. Alina taught me the only ownership that matters is the kind you beg for on your knees.
We have eight children now. Eight heartbeats that are not replacements. They are proof. Proof that sometimes love looks like a man learning how to stop trying to control the ending and just hold the people who keep rewriting it with him. I still keep that shovel in the back of my truck, but these days it’s for planting trees the kids will climb one day, not for burying what I’m terrified of losing. If I die tomorrow, I ask my epitaph to read, “He was terrified every single day and loved them anyway.”
That’s the only perspective I have left to give. Carlos. Daddy. The man who thought he was building a kingdom and woke up one morning to discover he had simply been allowed inside someone else’s.
Roundtable 1
A dialog during the creation of the manuscript…
The dining room is quiet except for the incessant hum of that old refrigerator and the soft clink of one of the kid's plastic cups against their high chair tray in the next room. Everyone sits around the oak table that has seen eight births, countless spilled glasses of milk, and every major fight they’ve ever had. The manuscript pages are stacked neatly in front of Alina, held together by a thick black binder clip. She hasn’t looked up from the same paragraph for five full minutes.
Carlos is pretending to read something on his phone. Ara is tracing the rim of her untouched coffee with one finger, waiting. Alina finally speaks, voice low, almost conversational.
“So… page 212. You told Ara that if it hadn’t been for her (for us), you wouldn’t be alive today.”
She lifts her eyes. They’re glassy, bright, dangerous, and searching for an answer that she wasn't ready to hear hidden within the text in front of her.
“Something is different in these words. Everyone says they’d die without their partner, but I don’t like the way one thing leads to another here. What’s up with this?”
Alina looks over at Carlos and he is white. She looks at Ara. The same and starting to get misty eyed.
“What the fuck did you mean by that, Carlos?”
Carlos’s thumb freezes mid scroll. He sets the phone down on the table like it’s suddenly hot.
Ara starts to push her chair back and mutters, “Maybe I should…”
“Sit”
“The
“Fuck
“Down”
…comes out of Alina's mouth but she doesn’t raise her voice.
The words crack like a whip. Ara freezes barely out of her seat, then sinks back down. The silence stretches. 5 more minutes… 10 minutes. 15 minutes of it.
“I WILL SIT HERE ALL NIGHT!”
The only other sound is the soft tick of the wall clock and the occasional babble from the baby monitor. Carlos’s hands are flat on the table, knuckles white. His jaw works like he’s chewing glass.
Finally, so quietly they almost miss it, “If the babies and Ara had died… I would have killed myself.”
Alina’s chair scrapes backward so violently it almost tips. She’s on her feet before anyone can blink. “How dare you!” Her arm traveled so fast that Carlos and Ara missed it entirely.
The slap is open, palmed, vicious, loud enough that the sound bounces off the high ceiling. A starting pistol would not have had anything on that crack. Carlos’s head snaps to the side, a perfect red handprint blooming on his cheek.
The moment it lands on his face Alina also realizes what she has done. If one of the children had seen that, it would be inexcusable.
Ara flinches like she’s the one who got hit. Alina is shaking. Actually shaking. Tears are already streaking her face but her voice is pure fury.
“You have eight children asleep down the hall. Eight!”
“HOW FUCKING DARE YOU!”
Ara attempts to encourage a quieter tone as children are sleeping and a glance from Alina instantly stops any further dialog coming from her mouth.
“You sat in that NICU for 70 nights and 9 nights in Special Care telling us we were enough, telling us we had to keep breathing for them, and the whole goddamn time you had one foot out the door? Ready to check out the second it got hard?”
Carlos doesn’t touch his face. Doesn’t move, but is shaking. He is terrified. His eyes are fixed on the table like it’s the only thing holding him upright.
Alina slams both palms on the wood so hard the salt shaker jumps.
“Answer me! Look at me, you fucking coward!” Carlos is frozen.
He lifts his head incredibly slowly. The look on his face is worse than EVERYTHING. It’s emptiness. It is worse than having done it.
“I lost a daughter,” he says, voice shredded.
“Before you. Before any of this. Isabel.”
“Six months old. SIDS.”
“I put her down for a nap and she never woke up. I was twenty-six years old. My life ended that day. I lost my daughter and I lost my wife. I walked out of that hospital with nothing but the clothes on my back.”
Alina’s mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. No sound comes out. Ara’s voice is small.
“He never told you.”
Alina turns on Ara.
“You knew?”
Ara nods once.
“He told me the night Hope was born. When we thought… when we thought we were losing her. He begged me not to tell you. Said you were too young to carry it.”
Alina laughs, a broken, ugly sound.
“Too young?”
“I was nineteen when I moved in here. I was twenty when Aaron came out of my body while you two were covered in Ara’s blood. But I was too fucking young to know the man I gave six children to once stood over a crib and decided the world wasn’t worth staying in?”
Carlos’s voice cracks.
“I didn’t decide anything. I just… stopped wanting to be here – to be anywhere. The worst thing that could ever happen to a parent and I just laid it on your lap. Every day felt like borrowed time.”
Alina’s hands curl into fists.
“And when Ara almost bled out? When Hope was four pounds and dying? That’s when you decided borrowed time was up?”
“No.”
“If my babies and Ara had died that night, I…”
Alina makes a sound like she’s been gut-punched. Ara is crying intensely by now, tears sliding off her chin onto the table. Alina’s voice drops to something feral.
“Do you have any idea what that does to me?”
Alina rounds the table in two strides and grabs him by the shirt, hauling him up so hard the chair falls over backward.
“You don’t get to know. You don’t get to carry that alone like some tragic fucking hero. You had us. You had me.”
Carlos doesn’t fight her grip. His eyes are wet but steady. Alina shoves him away like he burns. He stumbles, catches himself on the counter. She’s sobbing now, furious, terrified sobs.
Her rage is a volcano!
“I have carried your children. I have let you own every inch of me. You couldn’t pick up the fucking phone and say ‘I need help’?”
Ara finally moves. She stands, walks around the table, and puts herself between them. Her voice is shaking but clear.
“He’s telling you now.”
Alina turns on her.
“Don’t you dare defend…”
“I’m not defending him. I’m telling you the truth.”
Ara’s eyes flick to Carlos, then back to Alina.
“He sat in the car and chose us instead. He’s been choosing us every single day since. Even when it tore him apart. Even when he didn’t think he deserved to.”
Alina looks at Carlos like she’s seeing a stranger.
“I thought I knew every piece of you. Every scar. Every nightmare. And you hid the worst one.”
Carlos’s voice is raw.
“I am ashamed. I thought if you knew how easily I broke, you’d stop letting me hold you together.”
Alina wipes her face with the heel of her hand, furious.
“You stupid, stupid man. We never needed you to hold us together. We needed you to let us hold you together when you fell apart. You worked 100+ hours a week for us. You built all of this with your bare hands.”
She takes one step toward him. She’s in his arms, fists clenched, pounding on his shirt, pounding on his chest.
Carlos wraps around her like he’s drowning and she’s the only solid thing left in the world. Ara moves in behind Alina, arms sliding around both of them, forehead pressed between Alina’s shoulder blades.
They stand there for a long time. Three people breathing the same air, holding the same grief. Alina’s voice is muffled against Carlos’s shirt, hoarse and wrecked.
“If you ever, ever… I will follow you through the gates of hell and… and drag you back by your hair. I will burn in hell for an eternity to get to you and drag us out of there!”
“Do you understand me?”
Carlos’s answer is a broken nod against her. Alina pulls back just far enough to look at him, eyes red, fierce, still furious, still terrified, still his.
“You are not allowed to leave us! Not ever. We own you too, remember?”
Carlos closes his eyes. In the darkness, he is alone. For the first time in over a decade, he is not in control – of anything…
“I remember.”
Ara reaches up, cups the back of his neck, pulls all three of their foreheads together.
“We all remember,” she whispers.
The kitchen clock keeps ticking. Somewhere down the hall, one of the kids laughs in their sleep. The world didn’t end tonight. But something did crack open and for the first time, all three of them are on the same side of the crack.
Later that evening when Alina was reading bedtime stories to the kids, Ara sat down next to Carlos on the couch.
“I am so sorry, Carlos. You didn't deserve that.”
“Yeah I did.”
“Alina spent years believing she was the one who healed you, that her youth, her devotion, her body, her babies were the thing that pulled you out of the dark. Finding out there was an entire graveyard inside you she never saw before, and that you almost added yourself to it if she lost me and the babies, that wasn't just a betrayal to her, it was theft. It steals the story she told herself about who she is in this family, ‘the savior, the light, the one who was enough.’ So yeah, she detonated. Because love that big turns into rage when it realizes it was never actually in control. The slap wasn’t just anger. It was terror wearing fury’s clothes.”
“Thank you for being there, for taking some of that for me.”
Carlos leans his head against Ara’s shoulder. He mumbles, “I don’t know what to do?”
Roundtable 2
Paloma becomes a woman
One day, your teenage daughter will call you because she needs you to pick her up from a party. The most important word she’ll ever say is, “No” and the second most important is “Daddy.” “Come get me.”
“Years after we stopped needing RoundTables to survive each other, we needed one to understand what we had actually built.”
–Ara
Paloma is fourteen, and tonight the world feels too big and too small at the same time.
When she first got to Jess’s house everything was loud music and red Solo cups and the electric thrill of being allowed to stay out past 10pm. She laughed in all the right places, took selfies, and let a boy named Dylan put his arm around her shoulders like it was no big deal.
Then the lights dimmed.
Then the couples started disappearing into bedrooms.
Then someone joked, “Paloma’s too scared to even kiss anybody,” and the laughter wasn’t mean, exactly, but it scraped the same spot inside her that always feels a little raw.
Suddenly she couldn’t breathe right.
Suddenly the hoodie that says DADDY’S GIRL felt like armor and a neon sign at the same time.
She stood in the hallway outside a closed bedroom door and heard moans she wasn’t ready to make.
She felt every eye in the living room waiting for her to prove she was cool, prove she was normal, prove she wasn’t the weird kid with three parents and seven siblings and a house full of rules no one else seemed to have.
In that moment all the stories she’s grown up with (the ones about bodies being doors, about desire being a prayer, about never feeling shame) collided with the terrifying, ancient fear that if she says “no” tonight she’ll be the baby forever, and if she says “yes” she’ll lose something she can’t name yet.
So she ran.
Not far. Just to the curb.
But far enough to feel the cold concrete under her jeans, the night air in her lungs, and the sudden blinding clarity that the only place in the world she wanted to be was home.
When she speed dialed, “Daddy,” the shame hit first:
I’m ruining everything.
They’re going to be a disappointment.
They’ll think I’m weak.
Then his voice came through the phone (calm, warm, already moving) and the shame melted into something else: relief so sharp, I felt like crying.
Daddy arrives in the truck. She keeps waiting for the lecture, the gentle, “so what happened, mija?” That thing that grown-ups always do.
It never comes.
Just the quiet hum of the engine and his hand on the back of her neck when they stop at a red light.
And that’s when the real wave hits.
Not embarrassment.
Not regret.
It's gratitude. So fierce it scares her.
Because she knows (knows in her bones) that in a way most fourteen years olds never get to know, she is allowed to leave.
That she is allowed to change her mind.
That she is allowed to need to be rescued without owing anyone an explanation.
She cries the ugly, hiccupping kind of tears into the sleeve of the hoodie that still smells like her Daddy's cologne and her mothers’ laundry detergent.
She cries because she’s not broken for wanting to wait.
She cries because she’s not weak for calling him.
She cries because for the first time in her life she understands, really understands, why her parents always told her the most powerful thing she owns is the word, “no.”
When they pull into the driveway and she sees Ara and Alina already on the porch, barefoot, arms open, eyes soft, she realizes something else:
She will never have to explain tonight to anyone who doesn’t already love every single version of her.
“Thank you for coming to get me, Daddy.”
“I didn’t realize, ‘no’ could feel this powerful.”
–Paloma
And that feeling (being fourteen and completely, for one trembling, perfect moment, completely safe) is bigger than any first kiss could ever be.
So she lets them fold her in.
She lets the three of them carry her inside like she weighs nothing.
She falls asleep on the couch surrounded by the sound of three heartbeats she’s known since before she was born.
And somewhere in the dark, fourteen years old and mascara, streaked, Paloma finally understands what her parents have been trying to teach her all along:
Home isn’t a place you can be tricked into leaving.
It’s the place that comes to get you when you need it.
She is loved exactly as she is tonight (scared, uncertain, and still whole).
And tomorrow, when she wakes up, she’ll still be whole.
That’s the miracle she gets to carry into every room from now on.
First born child to Ara, first born to the family, born premature at 4.6lbs, spent about 70 days in the NICU and then 9 days in Special Care after birth. She came home and then had 7 more visits to see the doctors over the next year every time Ara or Alina found anything that was worrisome.
Hope's interesting accomplishment came from a 3mm red, sticky, and irregular shaped form on her leg which turned out to be dried cranberry sauce that didn’t get washed off after our long flight and trip to Hawaii (and subsequent Thanksgiving dinner) the week of our Bonding Ceremony. Ara refused to touch it and insisted we visit QuickCare, “just to be safe.”
But, it gets better. It turns out that Hope started putting similar sticky colored foods on her body and then would pretend that it was a terrible “owwie” and need to have a bandage put on it.
When it was time to clean it off, she had this saying, “Don't touch that! You're not qualified.”
We have wondered if “The Cranberry Crusade” was planned in advance. Aaron never admits to have given her insight into this wisdom, but we are investigating his role in the matter.
(21) Aaron
First born child to Alina, second born to the family, four weeks early (3 days after Hope but considered full term) weighed 6.3lbs at birth. Aaron and Hope were basically raised as twins and regularly showed twin personality traits.
Aaron's interesting accomplishment came at around 4 years old told us he had a dream about Hope's birth. He said he was born early to be with her because she needed his help. As a consolation prize, Aaron was an incredibly quiet and accepting baby with almost no crying and fussiness. Interestingly, he has an ability to pretend to be able to predict the future. We are almost certain that it comes from television show catchphrases and iconic lines that Carlos frequently says. Aaron happens to hear them, then uses them at very opportunistic moments. Partner that with his innate ability to be really mellow, and it appears he's serious. To the unobservant, he seems genuine. He will make a great actor or magician.
(22) Arabello
Second born child to Alina, third born to the family. Named after Ara to honor her for everything she's done for the family. Alina told Ara and Carlos she was pregnant at the end of the Bonding Ceremony as part of her vows, not yet knowing if it was a boy or girl.
An interesting note about this pregnancy, Alina was obsessed with pickled food. She also triumphantly embraced the gift of gas. Not minor flatulence that could occur naturally during pregnancy, but the whole orchestra. Favorite foods included: Pepperoncini, dill pickles, pickled Mexican hot carrots, pickled eggs, and pickled watermelon.
Arabello's interesting accomplishment came from his gift of gas. He loves those same “craved” foods Alina did when she was pregnant. Another of Carlos's catchphrases, “I farted,” seems to have been passed down to his son. Every meal seems to include frequent toots which starts a barrage of everyone joining in.
(23) Paloma
Second born child to Ara, fourth born to the family. Asked Alina for her blessings to have another child with Carlos. Not out of need, but from a little anxiety coming from the miscarriage, then Hope's birth, complications, and hospital stay. The doctors said that the previous abruption increased Ara's chance of a second one. Dramatically higher starting at age 30. Because of the scar tissue and cancer scare, Ara decided not to have more children. Paloma’s birth was normal without complications.
Paloma is the Spanish word for dove. Palomita is the Spanish word for “little dove” and also is used as the word for popcorn. Paloma’s interesting accomplishment comes from her ability to turn obstacles into accomplishments and make friends. For the first five years of elementary school, Paloma brought large bags of popcorn to school for every child in her class on the first day of school.
She came up with the idea on her own. She didn't have any teasing about her name prior to school, but decided not to let anyone get the upper hand. She introduces herself on the first day of school, hands a bag to everyone (even returning students), shakes everyone's hand and asks every student their name as it's handed to them. By the 2nd grade, everyone knew her and knew about the popcorn. She was very popular. She took 6th grade off of the tradition because she was no longer “a kid,” and the school's policy on food allergies became a thing.
(24) Calliope
Third born child to Alina, fifth born to the family. Calliope would be the first born that her brothers and sisters would understand that they had a sibling. Before age two, children rarely understand the concept of “sibling” or understand abstract family roles. Calliope is the quintessential middle child as is Callista.
Calliope's interesting accomplishment came from being a “cat whisperer.” We didn't have pets up to this point, but one day a cat arrived at the house. Calliope insisted that it was her cat. We thought it was a great time to introduce pets, pet care, and pet responsibility seeing as our lost cat returned home after being away for so long.
The children met and were able to confirm that it was Calliope's lost cat, so we welcomed it back home. After the traditional veterinary protocols, “Trumpet” joined our encampment. In an interesting set of events, Callista's cat returned home six weeks after Calliope's cat returned. It turns out his pilgrimage to Bend, Oregon for the seasonal jazz festival was cut short so “Trombone” made his way back home to reacquaint with long-lost family. Interestingly the two cats got along instantly without the need for acclimatization.
(25) Callista
Fourth born child to Alina, sixth born to the family. Calista was born at home. Everyone was there. Alina's pregnancies were exemplary and without contraindications so a home birth was not deemed at any greater risk than a hospital birth. We hired a midwife that was also a retired registered nurse and she was totally incorporated into the family for the last 30 days or so. The children loved watching and participating. It was a little more work to prepare since the hospital has everything immediately available, but it was doable.
In our modern hellscape of misinformation and doctors claiming that everything causes death, we listened to them cautiously but proceeded. As it turned out, the next birth(s) would be at the hospital so not passing this opportunity was fortuitous. While Aaron did not foresee a home birth with his gift, he did say, “I would love to cut the umbilical cord, Momma,” and with some help from Daddy, he did a great job!
Callista's interesting accomplishment came from being the first child in our family to start swimming lessons as an infant. It seemed appropriate as she was born in one. She loved the water. Daddy taught her to scuba dive at eight years old so by the time the next trip to Hawaii arrived, she would be ready for the adventure. Adalyn and Evelyn were still too young to start diving but were great swimmers and snorkelers by the time that trip approached.
(26) Adalyn
Fifth born child to Alina, seventh born to the family. Identical monozygotic twin sister to Evelyn. Weighed 5.9lbs at birth and delivered at 39 weeks. Twins are often born early (not necessarily premature). Since Alina had four previous deliveries, the pregnancy and delivery was expected to be uneventful. Alina insisted that she wanted them to arrive without inducing labor.
She discovered twins at an 11 week ultrasound. By that time, we had the same tech after Arabello so she remembered everyone, especially with such a large family. Knowing this would be child number five for Alina and number seven for the family, she was really surprised to find that it was actually going to be child 5 & 6 for Alina and 7 & 8 born to the family, respectively. Before she said anything though, she got permission from the head nurse to bring the rest of the family into the room knowing our special family dynamics.
Ara was in the waiting area with all of the kids. The tech went to get them. Everyone was a little confused. Everyone always went to ALL family related doctor's visits and the tech knew this but everyone else not being seen usually waited in the lobby area. Having 10 people in that very small room at once was going to be challenging.
The kids marched inline with Ara at the back of the line. Aaron, being the wisest of all of us, said, “They're going to tell us it's twins,” and the tech looked at him in dismay. “Yeah… it is,” and picked up the wand to put it back on Alina's belly and pointed it out. Aaron then said, “I saw them in my dream. Two girls.” If there was a vinyl record playing at that moment, that sound of a needle scratching across the surface would have surely been heard. The tech told us she couldn't see the sex of the babies yet, so she didn't know, but ultimately, Aaron was correct.
(27)Evelyn
Sixth born child to Alina, eight born to the family. Born 23 minutes after Adalyn. Identical monozygotic twin sister to Adalyn. Weighed 5.4lbs at birth and delivered at 39 weeks. Adalyn and Evelyn did everything together and shared an interesting accomplishment.
One Halloween, they decided to dress up as each other. They planned to never be in the same room when they showed us their costumes. Adalyn came out first and showed us. Then, she said, “Let me go get Evelyn.”
She ran out of the room and a minute later returned, “as her sister.” Everyone knew who it was and it might have fooled non-family members, but we could see right through their little scheme. We let Adalyn run back and forth pretending to change something and then have “Evelyn” come out to show us how she looked with change as well. After four or five trips, we thanked them for the show and Adalyn ran off. Everyone could hear the giggling in the other room.
The Magic Kingdom Miracle:Our Family's Disney Adventure
The twins, Adalyn and Evelyn, turned three in the spring of 2024, and that was the signal. For years, we'd promised the kids a big family trip to Disney World when the youngest were old enough to remember it. With eight children ranging from 11 (Hope and Aaron) down to the twins, it felt impossible. But Carlos, ever the planner, made it happen. Two weeks at the Polynesian Village Resort, park hopper passes, Fast Passes booked months in advance, and a rental van big enough for all ten of us plus strollers and diaper bags.
We flew out of Portland in early June, the kids buzzing with excitement. Hope and Aaron, our “big kids” at 11, were designated helpers, pushing strollers, holding hands with little ones. Paloma (8) had her popcorn tradition ready (she packed bags to share with new “friends”). Arabello (9) brought his sketchbook to draw every character. Calliope (7) and Callista (7) whispered about finding “real” princesses. The twins babbled nonstop about “Mickey! Mickey!”
Ara, Alina, and I exchanged looks on the plane, exhausted already, but thrilled. This was our family in full bloom: loud, chaotic, unbreakable.
(28) Funny Story 1: The Popcorn Avalanche
Paloma's tradition backfired spectacularly on day two in Magic Kingdom. She'd smuggled a huge bag of homemade popcorn to share. During the parade on Main Street, she opened it triumphantly... and a gust of wind hit. Popcorn exploded everywhere, like snow in Florida. Kernels rained on tourists, stuck in hair, landed in strollers. A group of teenagers cheered “It's snowing!” The twins screamed with delight and started throwing handfuls. Calliope and Callista joined in, turning it into a full popcorn fight.
Security came over, but the cast member just laughed and said, “Happiest avalanche on Earth!” Carlos ended up buying everyone ice cream as an apology. Paloma declared it her best distribution ever. From then on, the kids called wind “popcorn magic.”
(29) Funny Story 2: Arabello and the “Real” Pirate
Arabello, our quiet artist, became convinced Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean was a real pirate who'd time-traveled. During the ride, when Jack appeared, Arabello stood up in the boat yelling, “How did you get here from the 1700’s?” The boat rocked, water splashed, and the twins started crying. Ara grabbed him, whispering, “Sit down, captain!” But Arabello was adamant. Later, at the character meet, he asked Jack serious questions about treasure maps. The actor stayed in character perfectly, drawing him a “map” to hidden churros. Arabello treasured it the whole trip. We still have it laminated, his first “real” art collaboration.
(30) Funny Story 3: The Twins' Great Escape (Diaper Edition)
Adalyn and Evelyn discovered independence when they just turned three. During a character breakfast at Chef Mickey's, they wiggled out of high chairs while we were distracted with photos. Next thing we knew, they were toddling across the restaurant in sagging diapers, chasing balloons. Evelyn grabbed a server's tray leg, yelling “Up! Up!” Adalyn made it all the way to Goofy's table and climbed into his lap. Photos went viral on cast member socials: “Goofy adopts twins!” Alina chased them laughing/crying, Ara filmed it, and Carlos just shook his head: “They're definitely yours, Alina.” The twins got extra Mickey waffles as “honorary characters.”
(31) Hope and Aaron's Big Adventure (Unsupervised at 11)
It was Day 5 of the Disney World trip, the day Hope and Aaron had been begging for since we landed. They were 11 now, our “big kids,” the ones who'd survived NICU hell together and had been helping wrangle their six younger siblings ever since. They'd proven themselves responsible a thousand times over: changing diapers on road trips, calming twin tantrums, even watching the little ones while Ara, Alina, and I stole rare date moments.
So when they asked, eyes wide, voices careful for one afternoon “on their own” in Magic Kingdom, we caved.
Rules were ironclad:
– Stay together at all times
– Phone check-ins every hour via the walkie-talkie app
– No rides they hadn't done with us before
– Meet at Cinderella Castle at exactly 4pm
– Emergency? Find a cast member in a name tag
Ara was nervous, Ara, who'd stared down doctors and machines beeping death warnings for 79 days.
“They're only 11,” she whispered as we watched them disappear into the crowd on Main Street, Mickey ears already on, backpacks bouncing.
Alina squeezed her hand. “They're our miracles.
They'll be fine.”
I nodded, but my stomach twisted. These were the babies we'd almost lost. Letting go felt like tempting fate.
Hope and Aaron, meanwhile, felt like they'd been set free.
Their first stop: Space Mountain. Hope, our fearless fighter, the girl who'd beaten odds from day one, dragged Aaron straight to the line. He'd ridden it with me before, but never without a parent. “Come on, scaredy-cat,” she teased, using the nickname she'd had for him since he was scared of the vacuum cleaner at age 3. Aaron rolled his eyes but followed, heart pounding.
The wait was 45 minutes, perfect for big, kid talk. They people watched, rating Mickey ears (“Those light, up ones are cool, but the classic black are timeless”).
Hope confessed she was nervous about middle school next year. Aaron admitted he sometimes still checked on her at night, listening for her breathing like in the NICU days.
“You're my twin in everything but blood,” he said quietly.
Hope bumped his shoulder.
“Same.”
The ride launched. Darkness, stars, drops, Aaron screamed the whole way, hands gripping the bar like his life depended on it. Hope laughed wildly, hair flying. When they stumbled out, legs wobbly, Aaron was pale but grinning ear-to-ear.
“Again!” he gasped. Hope high, fived him: “That's my brother!”
Next: Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Faster lines, wilder drops. They rode in the front car, Aaron's choice this time. Screams turned to laughter. By Splash Mountain, they were soaked and triumphant, posing for a cast member’s photo journal with thumbs up and dripping clothes.
Between rides, freedom tasted sweet. They bought matching light-up swords (blue for Aaron, purple for Hope) and dueled in a quiet corner near Tomorrowland Terrace. Hope won, of course, she always did, but let Aaron “defeat” a pretend dragon to save face. They shared a giant turkey leg, grease on their chins, talking about dreams: Hope wanted to be an astronaut (“because space is quiet”), Aaron a chef (“because feeding people makes them happy”).
Then came the scare.
Parade crowds swelled for the afternoon Festival of Fantasy. Dragons, princesses, floats, thousands packing Main Street. Hope and Aaron, swords glowing, got swept into the surge near Tomorrowland transition. One minute they were together; the next, bodies pushed, hands slipped. Aaron turned, and Hope was gone.
Panic hit fast.
“Hope!” Aaron yelled, voice lost in music. He stood on tiptoes, nothing. Heart hammering (memories of hospital alarms flashing), he remembered Dad's rule:
Find a cast member.
He spotted one, a smiling woman in plaid vest near the PeopleMover. “My sister's lost, we're supposed to stay together!” Tears threatened, but he held them back. The cast member radioed immediately, describing Hope (brown hair in braids, purple sword, blue “Big Sister” shirt from the trip).
Meanwhile, Hope, a resourceful survivor, had the same idea. Pushed toward Casey's Corner, she found a man with a name tag.
“I'm lost from my brother Aaron, we have eight kids in our family, they're gonna be so worried!” Calm on the outside, shaking inside.
Within 15 minutes (felt like hours), cast members reunited them at the Baby Care Center near Crystal Palace, air conditioned, quiet, with ice cream vouchers as consolation. They crashed into each other, hugging fiercely.
“Never let go again,” Hope whispered. Aaron nodded, eyes wet.
We arrived breathless at 4:47pm. Ara near tears, Alina clutching my hand, me ready to tear the park apart. Seeing them safe, eating Mickey ice cream bars like nothing happened, we laughed through relief tears.
That night, back at the resort, Hope and Aaron retold the story with dramatic flair, turning terror into triumph. “We used the rules!” they boasted. The little ones listened wide, eyed. Paloma declared them “heroes.”
From then on, “find a cast member” became family code for any crisis.
And Hope and Aaron? Their bond grew even stronger, two kids who'd beaten darkness before, proving they could handle a little Disney chaos too.
It was the day they stopped being “the NICU babies” and became, fully, our big kids.
The adventure they'd never forget.
Hope's Astronaut Dreams: A Journey from NICU Fighter to Starbound Visionary
Hope came into the world fighting.
Born at just over 26 weeks, weighing 4 pounds 9 ounces, she spent 70 days in the NICU (+9 in Special Care), tiny lungs struggling, heart monitor alarms were her constant lullaby. Ara held her skin, to, skin for hours every day, whispering, “Stay with me, baby. The world needs your light.” Carlos stood guard like a sentinel. Alina sang soft Spanish hymns when the oscillators got too loud.
From the beginning, Hope was “quiet fire.” She didn’t cry much, she observed. Big dark eyes taking in the sterile lights, the masked faces, the beeps and whispers of a world trying to keep her alive. The nurses called her “the watcher.” When she finally came home on oxygen, she’d stare at the night sky through the window as if it was calling her name.
By age 4, Hope discovered space.
It started with a children’s book about the moon Ara read during bedtime. Hope pointed at the glowing orb on the page and asked, “Is that another world?” When Ara said yes, something clicked. From then on, every clear night she’d drag her little blanket to the backyard, lie on her back, and stare up. “I’m going to visit them,” she’d declare. “All of them.”
The family leaned in.
Carlos built her a cardboard rocket ship in the garage, complete with control panels made from old keyboard buttons. Alina sewed a tiny astronaut suit from an old white bedsheet, stitching a family crest (an intertwined A-A-C with eight stars for the kids) on the chest. Aaron, her “twin in everything but blood,” became mission control, counting down launches from the porch steps.
School reinforced it.
In second grade, Hope won the science fair with a model of the International Space Station made from recyclables. She explained orbits and microgravity to the judges with the calm confidence of someone who’d already survived zero chances.
The local news did a segment: “Premature Miracle Aims for the Stars.”
But it wasn’t all smooth.
At 9, Hope had a major asthma scare, triggered by wildfire smoke. Back in the hospital, oxygen mask on, she panicked. Not about dying, she’d beaten worse odds, but about never getting to space. “What if my lungs aren’t strong enough?” she whispered to Ara through tears.
Ara held her tight. “Your lungs carried you through 79 days of hell. They’ll carry you to the moon if that’s where you want to go.”
That night, Carlos pulled strings (old banking connections) and arranged a video call with a real astronaut, a woman who’d walked in space.
She told Hope: “Space doesn’t care where you started. It only cares how hard you fight to get there.”
Hope listened, wide, eyed, clutching her stuffed rocket ship. When the call ended, she looked at her parents and said, “I’m going.”
Now at 11 (during the Disney trip), Hope’s dream is fully formed.
She wants to be a mission specialist, maybe on Artemis, maybe Mars. She studies constellations on apps, builds model rockets with Arabello, and has a notebook filled with sketches: lunar bases, Mars habitats, even a design for a greenhouse that could grow popcorn (Paloma’s influence).
The fear lingers, though.
Sometimes at night she still checks her breathing and touches the faint scar from her NICU central line. But fear became fuel.
She told Aaron during their unsupervised Disney adventure, while floating in line for Space Mountain:
“This is practice. Darkness, speed, not knowing what’s next, but trusting you’ll come out the other side.”
Aaron squeezed her hand. “Like always.”
Hope’s astronaut dreams aren’t fantasy.
They’re promises.
The girl who learned to breathe against impossible odds decided the stars were close enough to touch.
And one day, whether it’s NASA, SpaceX, or whatever comes next, the world will watch a woman named Hope step into the void.
Because she’s been fighting gravity her whole life.
And she’s winning.
(32) Ara and Alina Alone in the Park
It was the sixth night of the trip, and the little ones were finally asleep early, worn out from a full day of Animal Kingdom safaris and dinosaur screams.
Carlos volunteered for bedtime duty without hesitation: baths, stories, tucking in eight exhausted kids while humming old lullabies in Spanish.
He kissed both Ara and Alina on the forehead and whispered, “Go. Be wives tonight. I’ve got this.”
They didn’t need to be told twice.
Ara and Alina slipped out of the Polynesian resort room hand in hand, dressed simply, Ara in a soft sundress the color of sunset, Alina in flowing linen that caught the warm Florida breeze. No strollers, no diaper bags, no sippy cups. Just them, two women who had once been broken girls, now walking into the golden hour like they owned the world.
They took the monorail to Epcot, quiet on the ride, fingers laced, heads resting together. The park at dusk felt different, less chaotic, more intimate. The World Showcase lagoon glowed under strings of lights, music drifting from each pavilion like invitations.
They started slow: margaritas in Mexico, sitting close on a stone bench by the pyramid, watching the water ripple. Alina traced lazy circles on Ara’s knee. “Remember when we couldn’t even imagine a night like this?” she murmured. Ara smiled, eyes soft. “I remember thinking one quiet dinner alone would be a miracle. Now look at us, two weeks in Disney with eight kids asleep in a hotel room, and we’re stealing an evening just for us.”
They wandered into Norway, laughing at the ridiculousness of buying matching Viking horns “for the twins.” In China, they stood under paper lanterns, foreheads touching, breathing each other in. In Germany, they shared a pretzel, feeding each other bites like newlyweds, giggling when mustard ended up on Alina’s nose.
But the real magic happened in Italy.
The sun had set, and the pavilion was bathed in warm amber light. The fountain bubbled softly, and in the distance, the first notes of the evening’s soundtrack began, strings and piano weaving through the air. Ara pulled Alina into the small garden courtyard behind the pavilion, away from the main path, where ivy climbed stone walls and the scent of jasmine hung sweet and heavy.
They stood there for a long moment, wrapped in each other’s arms, swaying gently to music only they could feel.
Alina spoke first, voice low and steady. “Fifty years from now… I want this. I want us walking somewhere beautiful, your hand in mine, gray hair or no hair, wrinkles and all. I want to look at you and still feel my heart do that stupid flip it did the first time you kissed me in that bedroom.”
Ara’s eyes filled, but she smiled through it. “Fifty years. We’ll be in our eighties. The kids will be grown, Hope launching rockets, Paloma running some popcorn empire, the twins probably causing diplomatic incidents somewhere. And we’ll still be holding hands, arguing over who gets the last bite of dessert, falling asleep tangled up with Carlos in the middle like always.”
Alina rested her head on Ara’s shoulder. “I used to think forever was impossible. My father’s church taught me love was conditional, fragile, something you could lose if you stepped wrong. But you… you taught me forever is a choice we make every single day. And I’m choosing it. For the next fifty years. For however many we get after that.”
Ara pulled back just enough to cup Alina’s face, thumbs brushing over cheekbones she knew by heart. “I was an island before you. No one to tell, no one to hold. You gave me a continent. You gave me a family. You gave me a reason to believe I could be more than my past. Fifty years isn’t long enough to thank you for that. But it’s a start.”
They kissed then, slow, deep, unhurried. The kind of kiss that had nothing to prove and everything to celebrate. No urgency, just the quiet certainty of two souls who had survived fire together and come out shining.
Fireworks began over the lagoon, Illuminations’ successor, colors blooming across the sky. They turned to watch, still wrapped around each other, reflections dancing in the water. Alina whispered against Ara’s neck, “Look what we made. Not just the kids. Us. This life. This love.”
Ara tightened her arms. “And we’re not done yet.”
They stayed until the last firework faded, until the music softened and the crowds thinned. Then they walked back to the monorail hand in hand, hearts full, already dreaming of the next fifty years, one quiet, perfect evening at a time.
Back at the resort, Carlos was asleep on the couch, one twin on his chest, Paloma curled against his side. Ara and Alina stood in the doorway watching him, then looked at each other and smiled the same soft, knowing smile.
Home wasn’t a place.
It was them.
Always them.
(33) Ara and Carlos Caught by Security: A Stolen Moment in Hollywood Studios
It was late on the ninth night of the trip. The kids were finally down, twins asleep in their cribs at the resort, the older ones sprawled across pull-out beds and couches after a long day of light sabers and Star Wars rides.
Alina had volunteered for monitor duty, waving Ara and Carlos off with a knowing smile and a whispered, “Go be bad. You’ve earned it.”
Hollywood Studios was nearly empty after the Fantasmic! show, the streets glowing under retro lamps, the air thick with summer humidity and the faint scent of popcorn. Ara and Carlos walked hand in hand, slower than usual, savoring the rare silence. No strollers. No “Mom, I’m thirsty.” Just them.
They rode Tower of Terror twice, Ara’s favorite, the drop still making her scream, laugh like the first time Carlos took her years ago. After the second ride, adrenaline buzzing, they wandered toward the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular area. The gates were closed, the show long over, but a side path marked “Cast Members Only” was dimly lit and quiet.
Carlos glanced at Ara, eyebrow raised. “Feel like being bad?”
Ara’s answer was a grin and a tug on his hand.
They slipped through the gate, past equipment crates and stacked props, into a shadowed alcove behind the stunt arena. The concrete wall was cool against Ara’s back as Carlos pressed her there, hands framing her face.
“I needed this,” he murmured, voice low and rough. “Just you. No chaos. No titles. Just my girl.”
Ara’s heart flipped, the same way it had the first night he called her that. “I’m always your girl. Even when I’m Mommy, or wife, or wrangling eight kids through security lines.”
He kissed her then, slow at first, then deeper, hungrier. Hands slid under shirts, tracing familiar scars and curves. Clothes loosened, buttons undone, zippers down, until skin met skin in the humid dark. Carlos lifted her easily; her legs wrapped around his waist, back against the wall. He entered her in one smooth thrust, both gasping at the perfect fit that never got old.
They moved together urgently but quietly, years of practice with kids in the house. Ara bit his shoulder to muffle moans; Carlos buried his face in her neck, whispering her name like a prayer.
Between thrusts, breath ragged, he pulled back just enough to meet her eyes.
“Ara… decades from now, I want this. I want to be sneaking off with you somewhere, still unable to keep my hands off you. Still looking at you like you’re the only woman in the world.”
Ara’s eyes filled, even as her body arched into him. “You’ll have it. Eighty years old, ninety years old, sneaking into some ‘employees only’ corner of a nursing home, still making me feel like the girl you claimed that first night.”
He laughed softly against her lips. “Eighty. Ninety. As long as I’m breathing, I’m choosing you. Every day. Every year. You’re my home, Ara. Always.”
She tightened around him, emotion and pleasure crashing together. “And you’re mine. The man who saw every broken piece and built something beautiful anyway.”
He kissed her through the climax, hers first, fierce and shuddering, then his, deep and claiming. They stayed locked together afterward, breathing hard, foreheads pressed, hearts racing in sync.
Eventually, reality crept back. Clothes straightened, shirts buttoned hastily, hair smoothed. They stepped out of the alcove giggling like teenagers, only to freeze under two bright flashlights.
Two security guards stood there, one middle, aged with a mustache, the other younger, trying not to grin.
“Evening, folks. This area’s restricted to cast members only.”
Ara’s face went crimson. Carlos cleared his throat, stepping slightly in front of her. “Our apologies, officers. Terrible sense of direction. We were… looking for a quieter exit.”
The older guard shone the light briefly on their rumpled clothes, the flush on their faces. He raised an eyebrow. “Happens more than you’d think. Just head back through the gate, quietly, and enjoy the rest of your night.”
The younger guard smirked. “Have a magical evening.”
They were escorted to the main path, Ara hiding her face in Carlos’s shoulder the whole way, both shaking with suppressed laughter.
Once out of earshot, Carlos pulled her close again.
“Worth it?”
Ara looked up at him, eyes shining. “Every second.”
Then, quieter, she added: “I love you. But I need to say something else.”
He waited.
“I love Alina with everything I am. She’s my soul. The one who taught me love could be soft and safe. The one who gave me permission to be whole. When I think about fifty years, I see her hand in mine too, gray hair, laughing at us for still sneaking off. She’s my forever in a way no one else could ever be.”
Carlos smiled, no jealousy, just understanding. “I know. And I love her for giving me you. For giving us all of this.”
They walked back to the resort in silence, hands linked, hearts full.
Later, in bed with Alina curled between them, Ara whispered into the dark: “Thank you for letting us steal that moment.”
Alina’s sleepy voice answered: “You’re both mine. Steal all the moments you need. Just come home to me.”
And they did.
Always.
(34) Alina and Carlos Alone in the Park: An Evening at Animal Kingdom
It was the seventh night of the trip, and the kids were finally down early, exhausted from a full day chasing characters and screaming on rides.
Ara had taken bedtime duty without hesitation, shooing Alina and Carlos out the door with a soft smile and a whispered, “Go. Be ‘you two’ for a while. I’ve got the fort.”
They didn’t argue.
Alina and Carlos took the bus to Animal Kingdom, arriving just as the sun dipped low, painting the sky in fiery oranges and purples. The park was quieter in the evening, Tree of Life glowing, animals settling, the air thick with earth and night, blooming flowers. They started with the Kilimanjaro Safaris at twilight, sitting close in the open vehicle, his arm around her shoulders.
The jeep rumbled over dirt paths, giraffes silhouetted against the sunset. Alina leaned into him, head on his chest.
“This feels like the first night,” she murmured.
“Just us. No monitors beeping. No middle, of, the, night feedings.”
Carlos kissed the top of her head. “You gave me those first nights. You gave me everything.”
They rode Expedition Everest twice, Alina screaming with delight on the drops, Carlos holding her tight, laughing when the yeti “attacked.” After, they walked the quieter trails, hand in hand, stopping often to watch flamingos or listen to distant drums.
The real moment came on the Discovery Island trails near the Tree of Life. The carvings glowed softly, animals etched in bark seeming to watch them. They found a secluded bench under a canopy of leaves, the park music faint and dreamy.
Alina curled into his side, legs draped over his lap. For a long while, they just sat, his fingers tracing patterns on her thigh, her head on his shoulder.
Finally, she spoke, voice soft. “I’ve been thinking about that night. The roundtable. When you said… if Ara and the babies had died, you would have…”
Carlos tensed, but didn’t pull away. “I know.”
“I slapped you because I was terrified,” she whispered.
“Not angry. Terrified. You’ve carried us all these years, held us when we broke, fixed what was unfixable. And to think you carried that darkness alone… that you might have left us…”
Her voice cracked.
“I couldn’t breathe that night. I still can’t sometimes, thinking about it.”
He turned to face her, cupping her cheek. “I was ashamed. Isabel… losing her broke something in me I thought was permanent. Then you and Ara walked in, and suddenly I had reasons to stay. Reasons bigger than the pain. But that night in the hospital, when Ara was bleeding out and Hope was fighting… it all came rushing back. The helplessness. The guilt. I thought, ‘If I lose them too, I won’t survive it.’”
Alina’s eyes filled. “You didn’t lose us. You saved us. And we saved you right back.”
He nodded, throat tight. “You did. Every day since.”
She took his hand, placed it over her heart. “Six babies, Carlos. Six times you put life inside me. Six times I felt you chose us all over again. Aaron first, strong from the start, like he knew I needed proof it could be easy. Then Arabello, Calliope, Callista… each one healing a little more of the girl who thought love was conditional. The twins, Adalyn and Evelyn, my chaotic miracles. I look at them and think, ‘How did I get this lucky?’”
Carlos’s voice was rough.
“You weren’t lucky. You were brave. You carried them through everything, sickness, jealousy, my darkness. You glowed through it all.”
Alina smiled through tears.
“I couldn’t have done it without Ara. She held me when I doubted I was enough. She reminded me every day that motherhood isn’t just the body, it’s the heart. She’s the reason I could give you six. She’s the reason I’m whole.”
He pulled her closer. “You both are. But you… Alina, you’re the gift I didn’t know I was searching for. Before you, I was cold. Closed. You walked in at nineteen with that fire, that faith in something better, and you thawed me. You gave me children who look like you, laugh like you, love like you. You gave me a life I never thought I deserved.”
She touched his face. “How are you… with Isabel?”
“Really?”
He exhaled slowly. “Better. Not gone, the ache never leaves. But softer now. Because of you. Because every time I hold one of our kids, I feel her in them somehow. Like she sent you to make sure I didn’t stay broken.”
Alina’s eyes shone. “I’ve been thinking… if we ever have one more, a daughter, I’d want to name her Isabella. Not to replace. To honor. To say, ‘Your first little girl is still part of this family. She always will be.’”
Carlos stilled, emotion crashing over him. Tears welled. “You’d do that?”
“For you. For her. For us.”
He pulled her into his lap, holding her like she was the most precious thing in the world, which she was. “I love you more than I know how to say. You didn’t just give me children. You gave me redemption.”
They kissed then, slow, deep, full of everything words couldn’t hold. The Tree of Life glowed behind them, roots carved deep, branches reaching high. Like them.
When they finally walked back to the bus, hands linked, the park felt quieter. Sacred.
Alina leaned into him.
“Thank you for choosing me. Every day.”
Carlos kissed her temple.
“Thank you for saving me. Every day.”
Back at the resort, Ara met them at the door with a knowing smile. No questions. Just open arms.
The three of them fell into bed later, tangled and content, two wives, one husband, eight miracles sleeping down the hall.
Forever wasn’t a promise anymore.
It was a life they were living, one stolen evening at a time.
(35) The Unexpected Reunion: Shadows of the Past at Disney World
Day 8 at the resort pool started like any other: chaos wrapped in sunscreen and laughter. The kids were a whirlwind, Hope and Aaron racing each other across the shallow end, Paloma organizing a popcorn, sharing game (she'd smuggled a fresh bag from the room), Arabello sketching the volcano slide from a lounge chair, Calliope and Callista “rescuing” floaties like mermaids on a mission, the twins splashing anyone in reach with gleeful shrieks. Ara and Carlos were on lifeguard duty, towels at the ready, passing out juice boxes and reapplying sunscreen like a well, oiled machine. Alina floated nearby on a giant unicorn raft, eyes half, closed in rare peace, letting the sun warm her face.
Then she saw them.
Two women approaching the pool gate, trailed by husbands and a gaggle of teens and preteens. Miriam, tall, still with the same sharp cheekbones that mirrored their father's, but her hair now streaked prematurely gray, lines of worry etched around her eyes. Ruth, shorter, softer around the edges from years and children, but the eyes unmistakable: the same hazel as Alina's, wide with surprise.
Alina's breath caught in her throat. The unicorn raft drifted lazily; she nearly tipped into the water. Twelve years. Twelve years since she'd seen them. Thirteen years since her father's final text: Leviticus 18 quoted in full, followed by, “You are dead to us.”
Miriam spotted her first. “Alina?” Her voice was tentative, almost disbelieving, like saying the name aloud might make the apparition vanish.
Alina paddled to the edge, climbing out slowly, water streaming off her. The hug was awkward, stiff arms, bodies not quite knowing how to fit after so long apart, the scent of chlorine mixing with old memories. Ruth joined seconds later, tears immediate and unashamed, pulling Alina into a fiercer embrace. “We thought… we thought you were gone forever.”
Introductions tumbled out in a rush, voices overlapping. Miriam's husband Mark, second marriage, tense jaw, polite but distant handshake. Ruth's husband David, nervous smile, eyes darting away too quickly. Their kids, five between them, ages 10 to 17, stared wide, eyed at our eight, whispering about the “huge family” and the twins' matching swimsuits.
We moved to shaded tables by the pool bar, ordering sodas and fries to give hands something to do. Ara and Carlos, reading the tension like pros, took all the kids without a word. “Ice cream field trip!” Carlos announced with exaggerated enthusiasm, herding the brood away with promises of Mickey bars and extra sprinkles. The cousins trailed curiously, Hope and Aaron already appointing themselves leaders. Ara shot Alina a quick, supportive smile before disappearing.
Alina stayed, heart pounding like it might crack a rib.
Conversation started surface, level, careful:
“You look good.”
“The kids are beautiful.”
“How long are you here?”
“Church still keeping Dad busy?”
Then the cracks appeared.
Miriam spoke first, voice dropping low so the nearby tables couldn't hear. She twisted her wedding ring, eyes on the table. “I… gave a baby up when I was 19. Unwed pregnancy. The church, Dad, said it was the only way to 'save' me. Closed adoption. They took her straight from delivery. I never even held her.” Tears spilled freely now, splashing onto the wooden table. “I didn’t name her. She'd be 20 now. Somewhere out there, living a life I’ll never know.”
Alina reached for her hand without thinking, an instinct from years of comforting her own children. Miriam clutched back like a lifeline. “I hated myself for years. Thought God was punishing me. Mark knows, he's the only one. His first marriage ended because… well, he cheated. Twice. We’re trying to make this one work, but it’s hard. The kids feel the tension.”
Mark nodded stiffly but said nothing, staring at his soda.
Ruth was quieter, twisting a napkin into shreds. David shifted uncomfortably beside her, clearing his throat like he wanted to change the subject. “And me…” Ruth started, then stopped. She glanced toward the ice cream group far away, then back at Alina, voice barely above a whisper. “Becca.”
Alina froze, stomach turning.
Ruth's eyes filled. “After you left… things got worse at home. Dad clamped down harder, like your 'sin' proved all his warnings right. I was 22, home from college one summer. Becca was 37, she'd delayed med school, finally starting. She came home stressed, angry at Dad, at everything. One night… everyone was asleep upstairs. We were in the basement, drinking wine she'd smuggled in, talking about boys, church rules, how trapped we felt, how we'd escape someday.”
She swallowed hard, napkin now in tatters.
“Becca looked at me differently that night. Said I'd grown up beautiful, that I didn't deserve Dad's cage. Touched my face, gentle at first. Then… she kissed me. Not sisterly. Deep, hungry. Her hands on my breasts, over my shirt, then sliding under, pinching, making me gasp. I froze. Part of me… responded. It felt good. Wrong, forbidden, but good, like someone finally seeing me as a woman, not a daughter to control.”
Alina's hand tightened on the table edge, but she stayed silent.
Ruth's voice cracked. “She whispered she'd always wanted me, since I was little, but waited until I was an adult. Said she could show me real love, away from Dad's rules. Pushed me back on the old couch down there. Hand sliding into my pants…
My body betrayed me; I arched into it. Then panic hit like ice water. Church guilt, fear, what if someone woke up? I pushed her away hard. 'Stop, Becca. This is wrong.'“
Tears streamed now. “She looked… hurt. Obsessed. Eyes wild. Begged me not to tell, said I was just scared, that we could keep it secret, run away together someday. That no one would love me like she did. She was infatuated, had been building it in her head for years, waiting. I threatened to tell Dad everything. She went pale, pleaded not to ruin her life, her future as a doctor. We never spoke of it again. She distanced herself cold, barely looked at me after. I married David six months later. Rebound. Escape. He… has his own problems. Harassment accusation at work last year, settled quietly, but it lingers.”
David stared at the ground, face red, silent.
Alina processed slowly, rage at Becca boiling fresh, grief for her sisters' hidden wounds, echoes of her own near, misses with those “lessons” and cracked doors. The watching. The grooming edges she'd fled.
“I'm sorry,” Alina said finally, voice thick. “For all of it. Becca crossed lines with me too, never physical, but the doors cracked open, the private talks, the watching. The way she made desire feel like a secret weapon against Dad's rules. I see it clearer now, how she twisted things. And you both… you suffered in that house after I left. I thought running saved me, but it left you behind.”
Miriam nodded, wiping tears. “We thought you were the lucky one, gone. Free. Dead to them, but alive somewhere.”
Alina laughed bitterly. “Free cost everything. But I found Ara and Carlos. They saved me. We have eight kids. Three parents, one family. It works. We healed.”
Shock, then slow acceptance. Questions careful. No judgment, too much shared pain.
Over two days in the hotel lounge (Ara and Carlos wrangling all cousins into epic games), stories poured out. Miriam's secret adoption grief. Ruth's shame over that night with Becca, the confusion, the guilt, the what, if’s. Their fractured marriages mirroring the hypocrisy they'd fled.
Alina listened more than spoke. When Ruth asked, voice small, “Do you think I'm… broken because I let her?”
Alina took her hand. “No. You were young, trapped, looking for love in a house that starved us of it. Becca took advantage. That’s on her.”
By the end, hugs real this time. Numbers exchanged. “Coffee when we’re home?” Miriam asked.
“Maybe,” Alina said. Not forgiveness yet. But a door cracked open.
Back in the room, Alina collapsed into Ara and Carlos’s arms, sobbing, for the sisters she’d lost, the pain they’d carried alone, the twisted legacy of Becca.
“You did good,” Ara whispered.
Carlos held them both. “Family isn’t just blood. Sometimes it’s the ones who choose to see you.”
The reunion wasn’t healing.
But it was a beginning.
And for Alina, that was enough, for now.
On the last day of the trip, Carlos gathered the kids up and started downstairs to check-out.
“Hope and Aaron, please hold the twin's hands.”
“Ara, will you do a walk-through for anything we might have forgotten or left inside.”
Ara started walking back in and Alina said, “One sec’ babe, I'll come with you.”
The door closed behind them. Ara and Alina looked around and didn't find anything and Ara said, “I guess that's it.”
Alina pulled her purse and said, “Not yet.” She opened up her purse and pulled out a $100 bill for the staff, threw it on the dresser, and Ara smiled.
Alina went back into her purse and pulled out a piece of paper with a couple of names and phone numbers written on it.
“What's that?”
“It's my sister's phone numbers. Miriam wrote them down and gave them to me before they left yesterday. I think she wants to keep in touch.”
Alina stared at the paper with Miriam's handwriting like it was a lost manuscript from a lost chapter of the Bible.
Ara replied with a gentle, “Oh?” The kind you know is a question but in the reply was a hidden worry alluding that Alina was going to try to reconnect.
Alina’s eyes stared at the paper, head tilting down towards it, and the seconds just ticked by… Ara staring at Alina. Alina staring at the paper. Alina lost in thought and the seconds kept ticking by. Then, she took in a full breath of air, her head tilting up finding Ara frozen there, looking back at her. Alina exhaled and said, “No!”
Alina tore it up and threw it in the trash can near the door.
Ara asked, “Why did you do that?”
Alina replied, “My childhood has been reclaimed.” Alina grabbed Ara's hand tightly, then a squeeze. Alina heard Ara exhale as well and they walked out of the room together. Hand in hand, truly leaving the past behind.
(36) Tricks of the trade
Alina had carried Becca in the back of her mind for years like a secret talisman.
When she was 16, alone in her bedroom after witnessing that basement scene, Becca on her knees, commanding and desired, she’d touch herself thinking about it. Not about the act itself, but about the power Becca seemed to wield. The way people wanted her. The way she made desire feel like control. In a house where female sexuality was sin and silence, Becca looked like freedom.
Alina told herself, “If I can be wanted like that, I’ll be unbreakable. I’ll be safe.”
She masturbated to the memory of Becca’s confidence, her body in command, the moans that sounded like victory.
In Alina’s young mind, it became fuel, “This is what strength looks like. This is how a woman becomes irresistible.”
It gave her the courage to rebel, to send that video to her father, to run.
It gave her the nerve to kneel for Ara and Carlos and say, “I need this.”
She thought Becca had accidentally handed her the blueprint for becoming a desirable, powerful woman.
But the reunion cracked that illusion wide open. Hearing Ruth describe the same night, Becca’s obsession, the waiting, the calculated touch, the pleading when rejected, Alina saw it for what it truly was: grooming. Not a gift of strength, but a predator testing boundaries, waiting for compliance. Becca hadn’t been teaching power. She’d been hunting for it.
The realization didn’t destroy Alina. It freed her.
When she tore up Miriam and Ruth’s numbers in that hotel room, it wasn’t just closing a door on toxic blood ties. It was finally laying down the false idol she’d carried all these years.
Becca hadn’t given her strength. Becca had tried to take it. The real strength, the kind that lasted, came later.
From Ara holding her the night she cried over her father’s text.
From Carlos choosing her every single day.
From carrying six children and still feeling desired.
From building a life where desire was mutual, consensual, celebrated.
That was power.
(37) Closing out the bill
When Alina and Ara walked into the lobby hand in hand, Carlos looked up from wrangling the twins’ stroller. His eyes found Alina’s immediately, reading her like he always could.
“Everything alright, baby?”
Alina smiled, small at first, then wide and genuine. “Please ask me again when we have some privacy. I have some great news.”
Carlos stepped close, hand sliding to the back of her neck, gentle, possessive, grounding. “I love you.”
Alina bit her lip, eyes shining, and leaned into his touch. “I love you more!”
In that moment, she felt it fully, “The childhood she thought she needed to reclaim from Becca had already been rebuilt, better, stronger, by the two people standing with her now.”
And the great news? She was finally and completely free of the shadow. The past was torn up and thrown away. The future was theirs.
(38) Twins, But Not by Blood
Hope Valenti and Aaron Serova arrived in the world just days apart in late 2013
Hope premature and fighting for every breath, Aaron strong and steady, as if he’d been sent on purpose. From the beginning, they were inseparable.
In the NICU, when Hope was still tethered to machines, Aaron’s incubator was moved next to hers. The nurses noticed it first: when Aaron cried, Hope’s heart rate steadied. When Hope struggled, Aaron’s tiny hand would reach through the ports as if trying to hold hers. Their parents saw it too.
Ara would whisper to Hope, “Your brother’s here. He’s waiting for you.”
Alina would stroke Aaron’s cheek and say, “You came early for her, didn’t you?” And Aaron, quiet even as a baby, seemed to know.
(39) The Asthma Attack (age 9)
It happened during a brutal wildfire summer when Hope was 9.
Smoke hung thick in the air for weeks. Hope’s mild asthma, usually manageable, flared into something terrifying. One evening after playing outside, she started wheezing, sharp, panicked gasps that turned to coughing, then to silence as she struggled for air.
Ara found her first, Hope on the porch steps, face pale, lips tinged blue.
Alina called 911 while Carlos scooped her up and ran for the car. Aaron was right behind them, face white but steady, grabbing Hope’s inhaler and nebulizer like he’d practiced it a thousand times.
At the hospital, it was bad.
Hope needed oxygen, steroids, continuous nebulizer treatments. They admitted her for two days, monitors beeping again, IVs dripping, the sterile smell dragging everyone back to the NICU years.
Aaron refused to leave.
He slept in the vinyl chair beside her bed, curled up like a guard dog.
When Hope finally drifted into exhausted sleep, Aaron held her hand through the bed rail and whispered, quiet enough that only she (and later the family) would hear:
“My father told me you’re the light I must never let burn out.”
Carlos overheard it the next morning while bringing coffee.
He froze in the doorway.
He’d never said those words.
Not once.
Later, when Hope was stable and the room was quiet, Carlos sat in a chair next to Aaron’s chair.
“How long have you known her?” he asked gently, meaning the deeper question.
Aaron didn’t hesitate.
“Always. Before I was here. The voice said she was coming too soon. That she’d be scared. That I had to keep her shining. So I came early too.”
Carlos’s eyes filled. He didn’t correct him.
He just pulled Aaron into a hug and said, “You are my hero, son. Thank you for being there for her.”
Years later, when Hope was 11 and filling out a school project titled “My Hero,” Ara found her at the kitchen table, writing in careful letters.
Ara sat beside her. “Tell me about your brother Aaron.”
Hope didn’t look up at first, just kept writing.
“He’s not my brother by blood,” she said, “but he’s my twin in every way that matters. When I couldn’t breathe as a baby, he was there, reaching for me through the plastic. When the world felt too big and scary, he made it small enough to hold. During the asthma attack, he never left. He held my hand the whole time, even when he was tired and scared too.”
She paused, pen hovering.
“He says, a voice told him I’m the light he has to protect. I think the voice was him. Deep down, he just knew. He always knows when I need him. Even if I go to Mars one day, he’ll be the voice in my earpiece saying, ‘You’ve got this. I’m right here.’”
Ara’s throat tightened. “And how do you feel about him?”
Hope smiled, small, fierce, full of wonder.
“I feel like I was born reaching for the stars… and he was born reaching back. We’re connected across everything, space, time, even heaven if that’s real. He’s my guardian. I’m his light and we’ll never let each other burn out.”
She went back to writing.
At the top of the page, in big letters:
My Hero: Aaron Serova, The Boy Who Came Early for Me
Their love isn’t ordinary sibling love.
It’s cosmic.
Eternal.
The kind that says: I heard you crying across the void. And I answered.
Hope and Aaron aren’t just twins by soul. They’re proof that some bonds are forged before birth, across heavens, time, and impossible odds.
And nothing, not distance, not darkness, not even one day leaving Earth, will ever dim it. They’re each other’s forever.
(40) The Voice
Aaron first spoke of “the voice” when he was four.
He and Hope were lying in the backyard, staring at glow-in-the-dark stars Carlos had stuck on the playhouse ceiling for them.
Out of nowhere, Aaron said, “I remember.”
Hope turned her head.
“Remember what?”
“The voice,” he said simply. “Before I was born. It told me you needed help. That you were coming too soon and you’d be scared. It said, ‘Go now. Be with your sister.’ So I did.”
Hope didn’t laugh or doubt him. She just reached for his hand.
From then on, it became family truth, not metaphor, not imagination, but something sacred they all carried.
Aaron never embellished it. He didn’t need to.
Whenever asked, he’d shrug and say, “I just knew she was my twin. Not in her Mommy’s belly, but in the important way.”
Hope would add, soft but fierce: “He kept me alive until I could do it myself.”
(41) A Love That Transcends Space, Time, and the Heavens
Their bond isn’t sibling love as most know it. It’s deeper, cosmic, eternal, the kind that feels written before either of them took a breath.
They finish each other’s sentences without thinking.
When Hope has an asthma flare, Aaron appears with her inhaler before she asks.
When Aaron doubts himself (quietly, always quietly), Hope is there with a steady look that says,
“You were born for me. You’re enough.”
At 11, during the Disney trip, they had their unsupervised afternoon in Magic Kingdom. When they got separated in the parade crowd, panic hit Aaron like a wave, flashing back to incubator walls and alarms. But Hope found a cast member, stayed calm, and trusted the plan they’d made together. When they reunited, they didn’t speak for a long minute, just held on, foreheads touching, breathing the same air.
Later that night, on the resort balcony, Hope whispered, “Even if I go to Mars one day… you’ll still be with me, right?”
Aaron didn’t hesitate. “Always. The voice said forever. Not just here.”
Hope’s astronaut dreams aren't an escape from him, they're an invitation. She sketches two seats on every rocket, labels one “Aaron, mission control on Earth, heart in space.”
He draws mission patches with their intertwined initials.
Their love isn’t bound by blood or bodies.
It’s the kind that spans hospital walls, parade crowds, continents, and one day, planets.
It’s the kind that says:
I came early for you.
I stayed for you.
I’ll follow you anywhere, even if I stay behind.
It’s the kind that transcends space, time, and the heavens. Because some twins aren’t made in a womb.
Some are made in the moment one soul hears another crying across the void, and answers. Hope and Aaron are those twins.
And their love? It’s the quiet proof that miracles don’t end in the NICU.
They just keep reaching.
(42) Soul Deed (Hope reads Momma’s)
Hope (age 11) sits cross-legged on her bed, knees pulled to her chest, staring at the yellowed piece of paper Ara has just placed in her hands.
The words are formal, old, fashioned, a little scary:
“I surrender my soul… perpetual custodial agreement… irrevocable…”
Notarized stamp. Alina’s signature in careful, looping cursive. Ara’s beneath it, steady and bold.
Hope’s dark eyes, those watcher eyes, move slowly across the page.
She’s quiet for a long time.
Then she looks up at Ara, voice small but steady.
“I knew Momma Alina loved you more than anything.
But… she gave you her “soul”? Before I was even here?”
Ara sits beside her, close enough that their shoulders touch.
“Yes, baby. She did. On Valentine’s Day, the year before you and Aaron were born. She was nineteen. I was twenty-four. We were still figuring out how to be us. But she knew, even then, that her heart belonged with me. And she wanted the world to know it too, in the only way she could think of that felt big enough.”
Hope traces Alina’s signature with one finger.
“So… her soul is yours forever?”
Ara nods, eyes soft. “And mine is hers. We belong to each other in a way no one can take away. Not time. Not distance. Not even death.”
Hope’s brow furrows, the same thoughtful crease she gets when she’s mapping constellations.
“But… I came out of you, Mommy. And Aaron came out of Momma Alina. And Daddy is both our Daddy. So we’re all mixed up together anyway, right?”
Ara smiles, tears threatening. “Exactly. Blood, soul, love, it’s all tangled. You and Aaron are twins but not by blood. Momma Alina and I are wives, but more than wives.
Daddy belongs to both of us, and we belong to him. And all eight of you belong to all three of us. No one gets left out.”
Hope looks back at the paper.
“So when Momma Alina gave you her soul… she was saying she’d never leave you. Even if things got hard.”
“Yes.”
Hope’s voice drops to a whisper.
“Like when I was in the hospital and Aaron wouldn’t leave my side?”
Ara’s throat tightens. “Exactly like that.”
Hope leans into Ara’s side, head on her shoulder.
“I think… I think souls are like stars. Some are born together. Some find each other across the dark. But once they’re connected, the light keeps traveling, even if one burns out first.”
Ara kisses the top of her head, tears falling now. “That’s beautiful, baby.”
Hope is quiet again, then asks, “Can I keep this for a little while? Just to look at it?”
Ara nods. “It’s yours to hold whenever you need to remember how loved you are. How loved we all are.”
Hope folds the paper carefully, tucks it under her pillow.
Then she wraps her arms around Ara’s waist and holds on, tight, like she’s anchoring both of them to the earth.
“Mommy?”
“Yes?”
“I’m glad Momma Alina gave you her soul.
Because now it’s big enough for all of us.”
Ara holds her daughter close, heart breaking open in the best way.
Outside, the stars begin to appear, one by one.
Inside, a little girl who once fought for breath now holds proof that love is bigger than fear.
And it’s enough.
It’s everything.
(43) The Soul Deed Under the Pillow
It was a quiet Wednesday evening in late summer. The younger kids were finally asleep after a long day of backyard chaos, and Hope (now 11) had disappeared into her room earlier than usual, saying she had “a project.”
Aaron (also 11) was in the garage with Carlos, helping tune up the bikes for an upcoming family ride.
The house felt soft, settled.
Alina went to check on Hope before bed, standard Momma routine. The door was cracked open, light off, but Hope wasn’t in her bed. Alina found her in Aaron’s room instead, kneeling by his pillow, carefully sliding a folded piece of paper underneath.
Hope froze when she saw Alina in the doorway.
Alina’s heart squeezed. “What are you doing, mija?”
Hope’s eyes were wide, a little teary, but determined. “It’s… it’s for Aaron. Don’t tell him yet.”
Alina nodded, no questions, and waited until Hope kissed her goodnight and padded back to her own room.
Then Alina lifted the pillow.
The paper was notebook lined, written in Hope’s careful, slanted handwriting, big letters at the top, smaller ones below. A crayon drawing of two figures holding hands under a sky full of stars decorated the corner.
(44) Soul Deed (Hope to Aaron)
From: Hope Valenti
To: Aaron Serova
Date: August 23, 2025
I, Hope Valenti, give my soul to Aaron Serova to protect forever.
You came early for me when I was too small and scared.
You held my hand when I couldn’t breathe.
You are my twin, not by blood, but by everything that matters.
I am the light.
You are the guardian.
So I give you my soul to keep safe.
Carry it when I’m far away (like on Mars).
Hold it when I’m scared.
Bring it back to me when I forget who I am.
No one can take it from you.
Not time.
Not space.
Not even heaven.
It’s yours to protect.
Like you’ve always protected me.
Love forever,
Hope
P.S. I drew us as astronauts. You’re mission control. I’m on the moon waving.
Alina’s hand trembled as she read it. Tears came fast, silent at first, then deep, body, shaking sobs she couldn’t hold back.
She folded the paper exactly as Hope had, slid it back under the pillow, and fled to the bedroom she shared with Ara and Carlos.
Ara was already in bed, reading. She looked up, and saw Alina’s face.
“What happened?” Ara whispered.
Alina couldn’t speak. She lifted her finger asking her to wait, went back to Aaron’s room to grab the letter and returned to Ara. She handed over the paper, collapsing onto the bed beside her.
Ara read it once.
Then again.
Tears started immediately.
When she reached the P.S., a broken sound escaped her, a laugh and a sob at once.
They held each other, crying intensely, grief for the weight these children carried without complaint, awe at the purity of their love, pride that hurt because it was so big.
“This is what we did,” Alina whispered through tears. “We gave them a love so safe they can write things like this.”
Ara nodded, face buried in Alina’s neck. “They’re better than us. They learned it when they were younger.”
After a long while, the sobs quieted to shaky breaths.
Alina wiped her face. “I'll put it back.”
Ara nodded. “Exactly where she left it.”
She crept into Aaron’s room. By then, Aaron had gone to bed and was asleep on his back, one arm flung out like he was reaching even in dreams.
Alina slid the paper carefully under the pillow again.
Ara kissed his forehead, whispering so softly only the night could hear, “Protect her light, sweet boy. Always.”
Back in their bedroom, they found Carlos just coming in from the garage.
They didn’t speak, just pulled him into the bed between them, arms wrapping tight.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, voice laced with worry.
Alina pressed her face to his chest. “Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s… perfect.”
Ara, tears fresh again, added, “We’ll show you tomorrow. Just hold us tonight.”
He did.
Outside, the stars Hope loved so much glittered like they knew a secret.
Inside, three parents held each other, humbled, heartbroken, and whole.
Because their children had learned the deepest truth early:
Some souls choose each other before they’re born.
And once they do, nothing, not distance, not darkness, not even time, can dim the light they guard for one another.
Hope’s soul deed wasn’t paper.
It was proof.
The love worked.
The cycle broke.
The light would never burn out.
Not as long as Aaron was watching.
Aaron Tells Momma Ara: I WILL Be Hope’s Protector
It happened on a quiet Saturday afternoon, the kind where the house felt full but peaceful.
The younger kids were napping or playing softly in the backyard. Hope was in her room, headphones on, watching a NASA livestream about the upcoming Artemis mission.
Aaron (12 now, tall for his age, quiet strength in his shoulders) found Ara in the kitchen, folding laundry at the table. She looked up and smiled, the soft, open smile she saved for moments when the kids came to her with something on their hearts.
“Momma Ara?” His voice was low, a little hesitant.
She set down a tiny twin onesie and turned fully toward him. “What is it, sweetheart?”
Aaron pulled the folded soul deed from his pocket, the paper Hope had written months ago. He’d kept it close ever since discovering it under his pillow. The edges were worn soft from how often he’d read it.
He placed it gently on the table between them.
“I need to tell you something.”
Ara’s eyes flicked to the paper, then back to his face. She knew what it was, she and Alina had found it first, cried over it, put it back. But she stayed quiet, letting him lead.
Aaron took a breath.
“Hope gave me her soul. To protect.”
Ara’s throat tightened, but she nodded. “I know, baby. We found it… and put it back for you.”
Aaron’s eyes filled, but his voice stayed steady.
“I didn’t know what to do at first. It felt… too big. Like something I wasn’t strong enough for.”
He looked down at his hands.
“But I thought about it every day. About the voice that told me to come early. About holding her hand in the hospital. About every time she couldn’t breathe and I stayed anyway.”
Tears spilled now, but he didn’t wipe them.
“I’m telling you now, Momma Ara… I accept it. I will be Hope’s protector. Not just when we’re kids. Forever. Even if she goes to Mars. Even if… even if something happens to you or Daddy or Momma Alina. I’ll carry her light. I’ll never let it burn out.”
Ara’s own tears came fast. She stood, walked around the table, and pulled him into her arms. He was almost as tall as her now, but he folded into her like he was still the little boy reaching through incubator walls.
She held him tight, rocking slightly, voice thick with everything she felt.
“You already have been, Aaron. From the moment you arrived. You’ve been her guardian since before you took your first breath.”
He clung harder.
“I just needed you to know. Out loud.”
Ara kissed the top of his head. “I know. And I’m so proud of you it hurts. The love you two have… it’s bigger than most people ever find.”
They stayed like that a long time, Ara holding her son, feeling the weight of the boy who’d grown into a guardian without ever being asked.
When they finally pulled apart, Aaron wiped his face with his sleeve.
“Will you tell Momma Alina too?”
Ara smiled through tears.
“We’ll tell her together. And Daddy. They need to hear it from you.”
That night, after dinner, Aaron stood in the living room, nervous but resolute, and repeated it to all three parents.
“I accept Hope’s soul deed. I will be her protector. Forever.”
Alina cried openly. Carlos pulled him into a fierce hug, voice rough: “You’ve been doing it since day one, son.”
Hope, who’d been listening from the hallway, stepped in then, eyes shining, and walked straight to Aaron.
They didn’t speak.
Just hugged, long, tight, wordless.
The family watched, hearts breaking open in the best way.
Because some promises aren’t made with words.
They’re made with souls.
And Aaron’s promise?
It was already kept.
Every single day.
The light was safe.
Forever.
Hope and Aaron Always Remained Close
Hope and Aaron never drift.
Even as teenagers, Hope deep in STEM programs, launching model rockets that actually reach the stratosphere, Aaron quietly mastering the kitchen and becoming the family’s unofficial chef, they orbit each other like twin stars.
When Hope gets her first asthma scare in years at 16 (during a high altitude training camp for a NASA youth program), Aaron drops everything. He drives through the night to reach her hospital room, slips in past visiting hours because, “I’m her brother,” and sits by her bed exactly like he did when they were little. No words at first, just his hand in hers, breathing synced until the monitors calm.
Hope goes to college on the East Coast, early acceptance to an aerospace program with ties to Johnson Space Center. Aaron stays closer to home, culinary school in Portland, building a life near the family. They text every day. Video calls every week. When Hope has her first panic attack about “actually doing this, actually leaving Earth,” Aaron is the one she calls at 3am. He talks her down for two hours, reminding her of the voice, of the incubator days, of the soul deed still tucked in his wallet like a passport.
At 22, Hope is selected for astronaut training.
The day the announcement comes, Aaron is the first person she calls.
She’s crying, happy, terrified tears.
He’s crying too.
When she finally launches, years later, on an Artemis mission to the lunar south pole, Aaron is in mission control. Not as an astronaut (he never wanted the spotlight), but as a culinary specialist for the ground crew, making sure the teams are fed and steady.
From orbit, Hope’s first personal message isn’t to her moms or Carlos.
It’s to Aaron:
“Guardian, the light is shining bright up here.
Thanks for keeping it safe this long.”
His reply, voice cracking over comms the whole world hears:
“Always on duty, twin.
Come home when you’re ready.
I’ve got you.”
They never stopped being twins, not by blood, but by something stronger.
Distance, time, even the vacuum of space, none of it dimmed the connection.
They remained close.
Always.
Because some bonds are forged before words, before breath, before stars.
And those bonds?
They outlast everything.
(45) Christmas Dinner Revelation 2015
The table glows under candlelight and strings of fairy lights, plates cleared after dessert. Alina's famous tiramisu and Ara's decadent chocolate torte devoured amid laughter and stories. The children, from the youngest curling sleepy in laps to Hope and Aaron at the head of the table like quiet guardians, exchange knowing glances.
The nods start.
Hope stands first, her voice steady with that Martian-bound wisdom, holding a thick envelope tied in red ribbon. "Momma Ara, Momma Alina... we've been planning this for months with Daddy. You both gave us a family where love isn't limited, where blood doesn't define home. But we wanted the world to know what our hearts already do."
Aaron rises beside her, placing his and Hope's matching envelopes before each mother. "You carried us through NICU storms, through every scraped knee and cosmic dream. Momma Ara, you've been my second mom since the day I breathed, nursing me when I couldn't, holding my soul with Hope's. Momma Alina, you've shielded us all with that fierce heart. We can't imagine life without either of you as our Mommas."
Ara and Alina give each other one of those looks... then they look at Carlos with those eyes saying, "What's going on here...?"
The twins, Adalyn and Evelyn, speak together, voices overlapping in their familiar harmony. "You loved us like we came from your own body."
Paloma, eyes shining, adds softly, "Momma Ara, you've been my mom in every way that matters."
The younger ones, Callista, Calliope, and Arabello chime in with crayon-drawn cards: "Forever My Momma" in glittering letters.
"Mommas, there are envelopes in front of you. Please open them now."
Hope goes around the table and says to all of her sisters and brothers, "Aaron, Paloma, Callista, Calliope, Arabello, Adalyn, and Evelyn, would you like Momma Ara and Momma Alina to become your legally recognized mothers in all things school, emergencies, and all matters of law?"
If you do, please stand one at a time and say, "Yes, I do."
Aaron: "Yes, I do."
Paloma: "Yes, I do."
Callista: "Yes, I do."
Calliope: "Yes, I do.”
Halfway through the confirmation Ara and Alina grab each other’s hand and start getting teary-eyed. Their breath quickens, each starts to shake.
Arabello: "Yes, I do."
Adalyn: "Yes, I do."
Evelyn: "Yes, I do."
Hope: "Yes, I do.”
“These documents are real. Filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court. Daddy found a lawyer who believes in families like ours. All we need... are your signatures on the final consents. Then it's done. You're both our legal moms, forever. Three parents, one unbreakable contract and ten unbreakable bonds."
Ara pushes the chair out from behind herself and runs over to Carlos, pushing his chair sideways so she can sit on his lap. Her arms wrap around him tightly. She pulls back, wipes tears away from each eye with each hand and says, "I love you!" and kisses him.
Silence falls on the room. Alina, the fierce guardian, flame now softened to liquid light, clutches her envelope like a sacred relic. She opens the envelope, hands shaking, and sees these words in bold, black print on the first page of the bundle:
IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE STATE OF OREGON
FOR THE COUNTY OF MULTNOMAH
Family Law Department, Portland
Petition for Adoption (Third-Parent Adoption
Without Termination of Existing Parental Rights)
Alina drops the paperwork on the table and now with tears flowing, she walks over to Ara still sitting on Carlos’s lap. Ara stands up and they both embrace forcefully. After a minute, Alina, choking through tears, voice raw with joy and release says to everyone, "My beautiful babies, I love you all so much. This is the best Christmas present ever."
Ara's, voice breaking, barely a whisper at first, "I... I never dared dream the world would see me as your real mother. I've love you all so completely, even the ones who didn't grow inside me. To have this... to be your legal mom... it's a priceless gift.
IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE STATE OF OREGON
FOR THE COUNTY OF MULTNOMAH
Family Law Department, Portland
Petition for Adoption (Third-Parent Adoption
Without Termination of Existing Parental Rights)
Petitioners
A. Arabella Valenti, residing in Portland, Oregon, and Carlos Aguilar, biological/legal father.
B. Alina Serova, residing in Portland, Oregon, and Carlos Aguilar, biological/legal father.
Children
Hope Valenti Aguilar, born 2013
Aaron Serova Aguilar, born 2013
Arabello Serova Aguilar, born 2015
Paloma Valenti Aguilar, born 2016
Calliope Serova Aguilar, born 2017
Callista Serova Aguilar, born 2019
Adalyn Serova Aguilar, born 2021
Evelyn Serova Aguilar, born 2021
1. Petitioners are adults residing in Multnomah County, Oregon for over six months.
2. A.The children currently have two legal parents: biological mother Arabella Valenti and biological/legal father Carlos Aguilar.
2. B.The children currently have two legal parents: biological mother Alina Serova and biological/legal father Carlos Aguilar.
3. A. Petitioner Arabella Valenti has functioned as a full psychological parent to the children since their births/infancy, providing daily care, nurturing, education, and emotional support equivalent to a biological parent.
3. B. Petitioner Alina Serova has functioned as a full psychological parent to the children since their births/infancy, providing daily care, nurturing, education, and emotional support equivalent to a biological parent.
4. All existing legal parents (Arabella Valenti, Alina Serova, and Carlos Aguilar) fully consent to this adoption.
5. A. This adoption will add Arabella Valenti as a third legal parent without terminating any existing parental rights, pursuant to Oregon's recognition of multi-parent families where it serves the best interests of the children (ORS Chapter 109; case law supporting independent adoptions with retained rights).
5. B. This adoption will add Alina Serova as a third legal parent without terminating any existing parental rights, pursuant to Oregon's recognition of multi-parent families where it serves the best interests of the children (ORS Chapter 109; case law supporting independent adoptions with retained rights).
6. A waived or limited home study confirms the family's stability and the children's well-being.
7. Granting this petition will provide the children legal security, inheritance rights, and formal recognition of the family structure in which they have thrived.
WHEREFORE, Petition Granted, Judgment of Adoption, naming Arabella Valenti and Alina Serova as Permanent Legal Guardians of the children listed below, are now known by:
Acknowledged, this 5th day of January, 2026 it is so ordered.
Signed Judge Joseph M. Allthatmatterz
Circuit Court of the State of Oregon
(46) Q&A on the backyard porch
“How could you stay together after all that jealousy and pain, especially with two women and one man?”
Alina: “Jealousy wasn’t the enemy. The idea that love could be owned was. For a long time we thought if we controlled each other tightly enough, no one could leave. But control is just fear wearing a crown. The day we stopped trying to possess each other and started choosing each other, every morning, every fight, every ordinary Tuesday, jealousy lost its power. It didn’t disappear. It just stopped mattering more than us.”
Ara: “Pain shared honestly becomes medicine. We learned to say the ugly things out loud: ‘I feel second.’ ‘I’m terrified you’ll choose her.’ ‘I hate that her body does what mine can’t.’ Saying it didn’t break us. Silence would have.”
Carlos: “Love isn’t a pie with limited slices. It’s a fire. Feed it the truth and it burns brighter for everyone. Feed it lies or possession and it consumes the house. We chose the truth. Every day. That’s how we stayed.”
“Weren’t you worried the kids would grow up confused or damaged?”
Carlos: “We were terrified. Every single day.”
Ara: “But we gave them what none of us ever had: parents who talked about feelings openly, who fought fair and repaired fast, who showed them desire could be celebrated, not shamed. We showed them love could be loud, messy, and still safe.”
Alina: “Look at them now. Hope charting courses to Mars because she learned early that her body, premature, fragile, could still carry her anywhere she dreamed. Paloma owning her name and turning potential teasing into tradition. Aaron quietly holds the family together the way he once held Hope’s hand in the NICU. The twins already know their bodies are theirs to command, not anyone else’s to control. They’re not confused. They’re free.”
“If you could go back and change one thing, would you?”
All three, in unison: “Not a single thing.”
Alina: “The pain was the tuition. What we learned was priceless. Every tear bought us a morning where one of the kids laughs without fear. Every scar bought us this porch, these coffee cups, this life.”
Ara: “I used to think love had to be earned with blood. We learned it’s given in the quiet choices, the hand reached across the bed after the apology that comes first, the staying when leaving would be easier.”
Carlos: “We didn’t find perfect love. We built it out of the broken pieces. And it’s stronger than anything untouched ever could be. The cracks are where the light gets in, and where it shines out.”
“Carlos, with the age gap, do you feel the children or your wives will one day say goodbye to you too soon? How do the ladies feel about this?
Carlos: “Every night before I sleep, I feel it, the quiet math of years. I was 43 when we started this. They were 24 and 19. I’ll be the first to go, statistically. The kids will lose their dad sooner than most. Ara and Alina will bury me while they’re still young enough to have decades left. It’s the one thing I can’t fix. I hate it. But hating it doesn’t change it. So I live like every day is borrowed time I get to spend with them. I hold them longer. I say I love you more. I make sure they know exactly who I am, so when I’m gone, I’m still in their bones.”
Alina: “It hurts to think about. Some nights I lie awake listening to him breathe and feel panic rise. But then I remember: he gave me a life I never thought possible. Six children who call me Momma. A love that survived fire. If I get thirty more years with him or fifty, I’ll take every second and be grateful. When the time comes, I’ll grieve hard, but I’ll still have Ara, the kids, the family we built. He won’t be gone. He’ll be in every laugh, every stubborn streak, every quiet act of protection our children do.”
Ara: The first three questions had passed smoothly, honest answers, voices overlapping like they always do when the three of them talk about the hard years.
Then the third question landed. When it came to Ara’s turn, something shifted. She’d been quiet, listening, fingers wrapped around her mug. When Alina finished, the silence stretched just long enough for everyone to feel it.
Ara stood up suddenly, chair scraping against the wood. Her eyes were already glassy.
“Excuse me,” she murmured, voice barely above a whisper, and walked off the porch without looking back. Steps quick at first, then slower as she reached the grass, shoulders starting to shake.
Alina didn’t hesitate. She set her coffee down and followed, catching Ara just past the old oak at the edge of the yard. Ara had stopped there, back to the house, arms wrapped around herself. When Alina reached her, she turned, Ara’s face crumpled, tears falling fast and silent. Alina pulled her in without a word, arms tight around her, letting Ara bury her face in her neck. They stood like that for a couple of minutes, Ara’s sobs muffled against Alina’s shoulder, Alina stroking her hair, whispering, “I’ve got you. Breathe with me. I’ve got you.”
Surviving means watching the people you love leave before you. And in that moment, under the oak, the weight of it crashed down, the terror of a future where she’s the one carrying all the memories alone. Alina held her until the shaking slowed, until Ara could breathe again. Then Alina walked back to the porch alone, eyes soft, and said gently to Carlos (who looked wrecked).
“She’ll be right back.”
A minute later, Ara returned, eyes red but steady. She sat down, reached for Carlos’s hand on one side, Alina’s on the other, squeezed tight, and finished the answer herself.
Carlos wrapped up with, “I plan to live forever,” and with that answer, Alina, Ara, and all the kids dogpiled on top of Dad, screaming, hollering, biting, tickling….
We held each other that night, tracing the scars of jealousy turning to wisdom, mortality turning to living fiercely. We knew the true heart of our redemption lay in the children sleeping down the hall.
