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EpilogueAlways get your wife a snack at the gas station. If you think to yourself ‘maybe she doesn’t want a snack,’ I’m telling you now that you’re wrong.
-Max to Slate
Max
“Is he here yet?” I asked as I flipped open one eye.
“Not yet,” my wife murmured as she practically bounced in her seat. “I can’t believe the baby is coming today. I almost asked to be in the delivery room, but I didn’t…”
“I want my mother!” an all too familiar voice practically bellowed. “You can’t hit a vein for shit!”
“Uh-oh,” Payton murmured, biting her lip as she tried not to laugh.
“Better go before she does something drastic like kill her nurse,” I pulled her in for a quick kiss. “Wake me up when he’s here.”
“She’ll be here soon,” I heard Slate, the man that had married my daughter a little over a year ago, say.
I looked up to find Slate standing in the doorway looking frazzled.
The only other time I’d seen him in this current state was the day that I’d handed him my daughter’s hand in marriage.
He’d looked like I’d just handed him the moon and the stars and told him to take care of them.
Which I had.
Harleigh was my baby, my everything, and the only little girl I’d ever had.
She was my tiny little baby who’d been smaller than the palm of my hand when she was born, and I’d given her away to a man that cared for her almost as much as I did.
But now, he didn’t look just frazzled, he looked terrified.
“Harleigh wants you in there to do her IV,” Slate murmured softly. “She’s losing her shit quickly and is freaking out. I think it’d be best for you to just stay.”
Payton was up and moving before he could finish talking.
I grinned at Slate who stayed rooted to the spot for a few long seconds as if he was gathering the courage to put on his brave face once again.
“Everything okay?” I asked softly.
Slate swallowed hard.
“The infection is hitting her hard,” he admitted. “I’m never doing this again. We’re stopping at one baby.”
I snorted. “Good luck with that. I said the same thing about Harleigh, and look at that one.”
Dax was sleeping, stretched out on six of the waiting room chairs, looking uncomfortable as hell but still able to sleep anywhere.
Slate looked that way and grinned. “I’m glad that he could make it.”
I grinned back. “We knew that it was coming.”
Harleigh had gotten the flu when she was thirty-one weeks pregnant. She’d then gone on to get bronchitis, strep, and then pneumonia. Which had then caused her to go into labor. From there, they hadn’t been able to stop it, which meant delivering the baby at thirty-two weeks, eight whole weeks early.
“Take care of my girls,” I said. “But you should probably get back in there. I don’t want two hot-headed women trying to keep it calm and collected.”
Slate snorted.
“Yeah,” he laughed. “I know what you mean.”
With that he left and didn’t look back.
I watched him go, saying a silent prayer that everything would be all right.
There was something seriously fucked up with my heart at that moment in time, and I had a feeling that it was fear.
Cold, hard, shaking in my boots fear.
***
Linc
“Is he here yet?” I asked as Conleigh and I parked our asses in the waiting room next to Max.
“No,” he grumbled. “Been in labor for going on eight hours now. Nothing is happening.”
I sighed and leaned back in my chair.
“Are they going to do a C-section since she’s eight weeks early?” Conleigh asked.
“Not that I know of,” Max admitted. “Though I haven’t gone in there and asked.”
“Why not?” Conleigh asked.
I wrapped my hand around her mouth and pulled her into my side. “Because not everybody is as nosey as you are.”
Conleigh licked my hand, her eyes sparkling.
“Nosey?” she chirped. “You were the nosey Nancy that had to come to the hospital even though you were told that someone would call you the moment that they had any news.”
I shrugged. “So I wanted to be here when he arrived. Sue me.”
My wife wrinkled her nose at me. “I’m fairly sure you’re more excited about Slate’s kid arriving than you were about your own.”
I rolled my eyes.
“I think it’s because Slate’s been freaking out ever since they labeled Harleigh as a high-risk pregnancy. He’s been treating her like spun glass, and Harleigh looks like she wants to strangle him every time he walks in the room and asks her if she needs anything.”
“Just admit it,” Max said. “You love him.”
I scoffed. “I do not.”
“You so do,” Conleigh disagreed. “You have this bromance going on with him and you know it.”
I kind of did.
Then again, ever since we’d gotten back from Disney World and kicking ass, I did have to admit that Slate had warmed up to the club, and us to him.
