Beautiful Maria fell in love with a stranger

I am a Cancer.

According to the zodiac we are one of the most emotional, sensitive and loving signs. Overemotional. Also one of the most moody but I don't think I'm that bad. We are governed by the moon and as such are very intuitive and instinctual, going with our hearts and guts more then anything.

I feel like these magazine and newspapaer aricles are written about me but my brother thought it was vacuencia but I still believe in it. I think it can tell you a lot about a person. It's like my second religion.

I wish I had read mine before the wedding. I wish I had asked him what he was.

His eyes flick under his lids, his breathing grows heavy and I move closer, placing my hand on his arm. As I do he bolts awake, sucking in a sharp breath as his eyes stop and focus on me.

"Gabriel?"

"Sorry, bad dream..." He straightens up from his sleeping position, wincing. He wasn't used to sleeping in the car yet and although it's annoying I like it because we're close. I make sure that my twin is still asleep and move across to Gabriel, placing myself against his side and his eyes travel down for a moment. My body burns.

"How's your lip?" It looks like it was closing up but it still seems red and painful to me. I move my hand up to his face and very gently place my thumb over the cut. He hisses softly and I want to kiss him badly.

My thumb move away and he tongues the cut with a small shrug, "it's better now just don't put any more of that stinging stuff on it, I thought I was gonna pass out last night." He smirks as I purse my lips playfully, rolling my eyes. Gran bebé. He lays his hand against my shoulder and starts playing with my hair.

"Pajone." I flatten my hair down with my hands.

"Huh?" He frowns. I like to speak words he doesn't understand, he looks cute when he's confused.

"It's a mess. I swear I never used to look like this." I turn in my seat as he watches and reach for my backpack. The hand that had been in my hair now flattens against my back and travels slowly down. When he reaches the waist of my shorts he stops and my fingers curl hard around the handle of my hairbrush. The brush almost springs from my fingers when his palm curves around my backside. "¡Cuidado!...my brother will do more then split your lip if he sees you doing that Gabriel." I turn sharply and he removes his hand. I sit away from him, bringing the brush up to my hair and he watches me intensely.

I grin at him but my belly turns over and over and over.

The weather is much cooler now. The breeze is wet because it comes off the big lake here. It's a beautiful place, Gabriel calls it "sylvan." (I have a notebook full of new English words I learn. Along with a dictionary but I lost that with my home.)

I dress in green and deep purple, from a thrift store. I have to re-posses myself now from others cast offs. But I found some nice things so it's all good. My new clothes are folded neatly on top of the toilet seat as I take a shower. I could spend hours in this humid sprinkler, especially after the dry and dirty time I had to endure before. After we passed the border I feel that I can calm down now, take things a bit more slowly.

My sense of time is very different to Gabriel's.

"Segundito, segundito." He repeats my words scornfully as he leans off the car, his arms uncrossing. He had appeared at the bathroom window and tapped on it. My heart had threatened to beat it's way out of my chest as I wrapped a towel around myself. He makes me feel like this all the time and it's only getting more intense. He had wanted to take me out somewhere, without Alejandro, and I had to meet him by the car.

"I'm sorry! I didn't notice the time..." I trail off with a laugh and his expression becomes more mulish.

"I'm a horologist, time is my business." He says, not a little smug.

"Well I run on Dominican time so you better get used to it." I wink at him playfully, sliding my hands around his waist. This makes him smile and relax, finally, and pull me into his arms.

A little boy is lost in the supermarket me and Gabriel are walking in, looking for food. He must have been about three.

I coo, wanting to swoop down on him but Gabriel got there first. It was surprising, to say the least. That little boy had stopped crying and his arms had clung around Gabriel's neck like he was sinking. He had smiled and talked softly, cleaning the tears away from his red face with gentle fingers. As we went looking for the store manager Gabriel had stayed with him until his tearful mother had appeared. He's good with children, it's very natural and loving. He had been slightly embarrassed when we were left alone, saying that it was nothing.

I don't know if I can ever be like that again with children, not after the wedding.

It breaks my heart.

Alejandro will be fine without me. It's time to untie those ropes from around each other. That's what he tried to do before but I wouldn't let him. I was selfish. He'll be fine.

He'll be fine.

He fills me up.

I never would have imagined it before, about Gabriel, but now I see. That's why he never tried to kiss me and it wasn't really because of the threat my brother posed.

All of my life I've been a-waitin
tonight there'll be no hesitatin.

He likes to sing 60's music. I'll have to make him listen to some reggaton...

"What's Spanish for nerd?" Our legs are twined together, the bed sheets twisted into strange shapes until they moved to the floor in surrender. He looks at me expectantly, that gorgeous mouth curling up. I laugh.

"Pariguallo." He mouths it as I lean over him, my breasts pressed against his chest. I can feel him below me and I run my belly along him, making him hard.

"Maya..." He warns low, his hands gripping my hips. I draw my knees up, breath quick and my hair frames either side of him like curtains. He moves to fist my hair hard, so it gets tangled in his long fingers and pulls my head down to his. My teeth are bared. So are his.

"Rapar!" He probably didn't know what I meant but what we wanted didn't need no words. He rolls my under him, enters until he's deep inside and makes me come.

I clap when we finally see the lights of the City, making him jump. I kiss him passionately, would have done so much more but couldn't there.

I wonder if at any time he was sad about what he was about to do.

I should give up that notion.

We get married, we move into an apartment in New York together. He moves back into his timepiece shop and I have babies. He loves me.

Only one of these things is true.

He set fire to my heart but never intended to tend to it. He smoked out my soul and tour it in half.

There is a saying where I come from:

anima en pena: a suffering soul.

Bajo hechizo: jinxed.

Mala pata: bad luck.

These and more convey my state before I met him but I didn't want it to define me. No matter what I believed that things would get better. Meeting him just seemed fate. Everyone has a destiny, it's just that I realise now that some people have bad ones. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you pray you will be played and broken and used by life.

I don't want to speak any longer. I don't have the English. Traición de la confianza.

His betrayal was unimaginably painful as he left her.

Her name is Maya and I think she's here illegally. I only know a little Spanish, not as much as my brother but I can see it in her eyes she knows what I'm saying.

She fainted, working in a factory that packs fruit. They called for an ambulance and here I am.

"Sweetheart?" She looks up at me, her hair up in a scrunchie and her hands press around her middle. I smile at her but she doesn't return it. "My name is Peter. I'm just going to take your blood pressure ok?" She nods slowly and I push her sleeve up a listless arm. The blue cuff tightens around her skin as it's pumped full of air.

"Polillas..." She utters softly, looking at me. Her hand presses to her belly.

"Sorry?" I pull the cuff off and she lifts her hands before her, hooking her thumbs together and flaps her hands like wings.

"Butterflies?"

"Si." She hesitates before speaking, her eyes flicking away. We're seated in the ambulance, my partner at the wheel. I sit opposite her.

"Have you been feeling sick lately, tired?" She nods and then shakes her head with a sad smile, sucking her teeth and turns her face away. She knew. "Have you been to the doctor for a pregnancy test?" Again she shakes her head, not looking at me. "The fluttering feeling you have is called quickening, it's the fetus moving. It's meant to feel like butterflies." She sighs wearily and pulls the band from her hair, letting the masses she has down. She drags her fingers through it, creating funnels as she ties it back up again. The girl is incredibly sad, I can feel it. I reach across and take her hand and she looks back up, a bit startled. She squeezes my hand back and lets go with a weak smile.

Better then nothing. I watch her as she goes back into the factory, a leaden feeling in the pit of my stomach.

It's only later I find out polillas means moths, not butterflies.

The other half of me has gone away and I want it back.

How do you live with only half of yourself? You can't crack one egg and expect to have two whole ones. As a twin you think as two. I go down to the greengrocers and buy two apples, two packs of grapes. I buy two of the same book. Two of everything. My door number is 11 and I feel comforted by this.

I am a veteran of loss but I can not do it for him. I'm not capable to deal with it. There is something wrong with me, I'm in a waking nightmare. I want to cry until I kill everything but it's in such magnitude it's impossible for one person.

I've killed people in their hundreds. I've killed someones mother, father, husband, wife. Seven children. I feel like all these loses I've suffered before was just practice for this. But just when you think you have lost enough someone comes along to prove you wrong.

I hate him with what's left of my soul.

My little Polillas are growing bigger and they flutter so strongly now. The sickness has passed and I've stopped fainting but he still comes to see that I'm ok. Peter.

I think he's harmless and he's very sympathetic. He reminds me so much of Alejandro. I think my brother would have made a good doctor, like him.

I toss him an orange as he explains what's wrong with me. He thinks I have post traumatic stress disorder. I told him about the nightmares and the panic attacks. It's summer here now in New York but I'm working through most of it to support myself. It's a shitty job but I don't have many opportunities yet.

"You and your girlfriend should come over to mine. I will cook for you both. I promise it'll be really tasty." I still have that love, that hasn't left me.

"I dunno, I might be tempted to stay if it's that good." He teases and I roll my eyes. I had made it plain very early on that I wasn't interested in anything like that. Not ever with anyone. But he's a flirt. He looks down at his cell phone, texting Caitlin I guess. I've come to learn that he's from a very fifty-fifty family but he wanted to go his own way. I think that's commendable.

Earlier I thought that he was like my brother but he's really more like me. More then I had originally thought.

Alejandra and Macario.

They're not moths. They're not even butterflies. They're beautiful and totally mine.

I sing them lullabies. I tell them about my home. "Quisqueya. It means 'mother of the earth'. The seas are blue and the warmth is tropical." I tell them it again in Spanish because I want them to be bilingual like me. Or even better I want them to speak as many languages as possible.

They have pink cupid bow mouths and skin the color of milky caramel. Their hair is thick and dark, wavy already.

I'm so happy to have twins. I'm so unhappy I can't put it into words that he can't be here to hold them. But I know he's watching.

When she sees him with another she's filled with an insane grief and she casts her babes to the river.

I haven't told anyone about...I can't even say his name.

Sylar.

I hear that he is still free. I heard this from Peter and my world just got even smaller. Lets me know that my dark fate is still unfurling for me, setting out it's path that I walk.

Everyday I think I see him. Every night I wake from nightmares expecting my children to be gone or worse. When this happens I have to - god help me - remind myself of that time in the supermarket when he had calmed that little boy down. I can not think his evil would seep that deep. If there's one thing that man did right was helping me gain control of my ability. My babies would be dead now otherwise. Now I control it and almost everything else. Almost.

The news tell of a young woman found on a cold beach. She had been set on fire as the sun rose. He had found another and killed her.

I was lucky, in more ways then one, because I have not been left with nothing.

The father was grief-stricken when he learned of his dearly loved children

My daughter has her nose, my son has my eyebrows. They both have her dewy eyes before they turned sad. They're now four.

She's taken them to the beach and she throws them in the water with a laugh, watching them learning to swim and then swinging them around in the air when they come back. Now they're cuddled up to her on the sand, a story book in her lap.

I always watch them from afar and she has no idea. It kills me not to go to them, not being able to touch them or able to speak to them. I phone a couple of times just to hear their voices. I know they must be born around Christmas so I write out cards and buy them presents that I can't send. But I still keep them. I wonder what she tells them about me. Nothing? Their father is dead? Their father is a bad man? I think she hasn't even mentioned my name. I know where they live and one day I won't be able to stay away and that'll be the day I die. Maybe I should make it soon, I can't take much more of this. If it means I get to really see them, it would be worth it.

My mother always wanted grandchildren. I wish I could have taken them to see her. If things had been different...

They're leaving, she's rolling up the towels and packing away the food she had made them. I follow them until they get on a bus and they're lost to me again. I go back to the beach and see that she's left a magazine behind. It's curled back to the page she was reading. Horoscopes.

She's a Cancer. They're Capricorns but I couldn't tell you what I am.