Page 102 of Property of the Bikers

“I watch everything,” he says.

I pour myself a coffee and go back to work.

Chapter Forty-Two

MIRA

Pain pulls me out of sleep.

I lie still for a second, eyes open in the dark, waiting. My body has been doing strange things for weeks. Braxton Hicks, pressure, the baby repositioning at three in the morning like she owns the place, which she does.

But this is different.

I know it the way you know things that live in the body before the mind gets involved. This isn’t a practice run. This isn’t something I’ve felt before.

I reach for my phone.

Two fourteen AM.

Another one hits before I’ve finished looking at the screen.

I sit up slowly, one hand on the mattress, and I breathe through it the way Doc taught me, the real breathing, not the performed version I used in the hospital weeks ago. When it passes I open my contacts and call Cade.

He picks up on the first ring.

“It’s real,” I say. “This time it’s real.”

A pause. Not a long one.

“I’ll get the others,” he says.

Four minutes later, all three of them are at my door.

Cade is in his jacket, expression already settled into the focused calm he brings to everything that matters. Jax is still pulling a shirt over his head, hair pushed back, green eyes awake and alert in a way that has nothing to do with the hour. Reeve with his phone open to the contraction timing app he built six weeks ago and never mentioned to anyone until he pulled it up during the rehearsal, like it was obvious.

Another contraction moves through me. I breathe, and they wait, and when it passes, I pick up my bag. “Okay,” I say. “Let’s go.”

The hospital is different this time.

Same building. Same east wing. Same private floor. But walking through the entrance at three in the morning with Cade’s hand at my back and Jax holding the door and Reeve already on the phone with Doc is nothing like the last time I walked through these doors.

Last time I was performing.

This time I’m just here.

Doc meets us on the floor at three forty-five. He checks me without ceremony, reads the numbers, and looks at me over his glasses. “This is it,” he says.

“I know,” I say.

“Good. Then let’s do this properly.”

Maya arrives at four, pulling on her jacket, hair loose, completely awake in the way Maya is always completely awake when something requires it. She sits beside me, takes my hand, and doesn’t say anything because she knows what needs saying and what doesn’t, and right now, nothing does.

The four of them fill the room.

Cade is in the chair on my left. He takes my hand when the contractions come and holds it without speaking, his grip steady and certain, the same certainty he brings to everything. He doesn’t tell me it’s going to be okay. He doesn’t tell me I’m doing well. He just holds my hand and stays there, which is more than enough.

Jax is on my right. He talks between contractions, low and easy, the way he’s always talked, the voice that fills space without demanding anything from the person listening.