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She gives me a watery smile. “I miss him so much.”
I nod. “Me too.”
She sucks in a breath, squeezing her eyes together and making that deep, growling noise again. “That’s it,” I say encouragingly. “Nearly there.” I glance down to where the midwife is looking and gasp in amazement. The baby’s head is almost out. “You’re doing amazing.”
“Get back up here,” she hisses, grabbing my hand and yanking me away from that end. I smirk, apologising.
By the time Cain Junior arrives, I’m in awe of Meghan. She gave birth like a boss. I’ve never thought about birth and the process. You see pregnant women all the time and then they just appear with a baby in their arms. I never considered the amount of pain or stress it takes to bring it into the world, but now I’ve seen it with my own eyes, I’ll never forget it.
* * *
Meghan has to stay in hospital overnight, so I head back to the club. It’s strange without her because we’ve literally spent every second together, even though she never spoke to me, but with everyone either avoiding us or ignoring us, it was easier to form an alliance.
Mum is with the twins. She looks up when I approach. “How is she?” Her voice is low, like she doesn’t want anyone to hear her.
“She’s good. Cain Junior is healthy and feeding well. She should be home tomorrow.”
“Cain Junior?” she repeats.
“Yeah. She said it the second she held him.”
“Did you stay for the birth?” she asks. I nod, not sure how she’ll feel, but she smiles, nodding.. “Good.”
“Yah know, when she gets home, she’ll need you and Dad to support her.” Mum glances past me to where Dad is sitting at the bar. “It’s Cain’s baby, and he isn’t here. You need to help her. I got her out of bed and washed, you need to help her look after her kids.”
“It’s not that easy,” she mutters.
“It is. You just help her. She can’t do it alone. She’s grieving and heartbroken.”
“And so she should be,” comes Dad’s voice as he approaches. He stands behind the couch where Mum sits and rubs her shoulders. “It isn’t our job to bring her kids up.”
“They’re Cain’s kids too.”
“So she says,” he mutters.
“Are you serious?” I hiss angrily.
Mum stands. “Let’s take this away from the twins.”
I follow them into the kitchen, close the door, and glare at Dad. “Those kids are Cain’s. All three of them. Meghan is part of the family, and she needs you.”
“She ruined this family,” growls Dad.
“We did,” I say, nodding. “We fucked up and we wrecked everything, and we have to live with what we did forever. I think about it every single fucking day and that’s the least I deserve, but Meghan, she doesn’t deserve your hate. I pursued her. I talked her around. It was my fault. I’ve been on self-destruct for as long as I can remember, and if I could change anything, it would be that I was the one hit that night, not him. But I can’t change it. And I can’t run from it anymore.”
“Do you know how many times I’ve wished it was you?” Dad asks, and Mum gasps, covering her mouth in shock. “Thanks to you, his kids will grow up without him. They went from having a great dad and a fun uncle to losing both.” He almost chokes on a sob, and I feel his pain hit my chest. He’s never cried, not in front of me anyway. “And then I get angry at myself for wishing my only son dead. And I don’t know what’s worse,” he takes a breath to hide the sob, “having you alive and hating you or having you gone from our lives completely, but either way, we lose. We lost Cain, and then we lost you.”
Mum places a hand on his shoulder, her own tears flowing freely. “I’m trying to look at you how I used to, but it’s fucking hard, Mac. What you did was so selfish and reckless that I can’t get my head around it. All the women in this place and you chose her. Cain worshipped her. She was his world.”
“I know,” I mutter.
“Did he do something?” I shake my head. “Was it jealousy?” I shrug. “That’s not enough!” he suddenly yells, slamming his hands on the table. “Help me understand it, so I don’t feel like it was completely senseless.”
I lower into a chair and put my head in my hands. “It wasn’t about him. Not really. I was unhappy with Ruby. And so fucking depressed I hated myself, which made me hate her. And then Meg came into our lives and she was like a breath of fresh air. It wasn’t the first time I’d met her. I’d seen her out and about in town, and we even chatted a few times, but she wasn’t available then. When Cain brought her home, something inside me clicked. I guess I thought maybe it was meant to be. But then she got pregnant with the twins.”
Dad and Mum join me at the table. “She struggled, and Cain was always out on runs, desperate to escape baby duty. I helped out, we got close. It wasn’t intentional then, it was coincidental. Old feelings came back, and I convinced myself it was okay because I was unhappy. If I’d have known that it would lead to months of sneaking around, I would never have gone there. I thought I needed a night to get her out of my system. Turns out, I couldn’t let her go.”
Mum wipes her eyes on a tissue. “Did you love her?”
