Page 245 of Twins for Three Bad Boys

Another pain hits, sharper this time, and I gasp.

That decides it.

Wayne reaches us first, eyes already on my face, then my hands, then lower, assessing in that terrifyingly competent way of his when it matters. “What’s happened?”

Millie answers for me because, apparently, I’ve forgotten how to speak. “She thinks her water broke.”

Wayne goes very still. “Okay.”

His calmness should rub off on me.

It doesn’t.

Rex arrives next, skidding to a stop beside us. “What do you mean thinks?”

Fletcher is right behind him, one look at me enough to strip the color from his face.

“I don’t know,” I say. Then I laugh, because what else is there to do? “I’ve never done this before.”

“No shit,” Rex mutters, then immediately, “Sorry. Sorry. Not helpful.”

Wayne’s hands settle on my shoulders. “June. Look at me.”

I obey.

“We’re going to the hospital.”

I nod too fast. “Okay.”

“You can sit?” Fletcher asks.

I blink at him. “I think so.”

“Good,” he says. “Great. That’s good.”

He sounds like he’s talking himself through a bomb defusal.

Millie is already grabbing my bag from under the table. “I’m packing up the stall later. Do not even think about arguing.”

“I wasn’t going to,” I say weakly.

“Good.”

Another contraction, because that’s what this must be, right? It has to be—it grips low and mean, and suddenly standing feels like a terrible idea.

Wayne catches it before I can hide it. “Now.”

That’s all he says.

Then I’m moving.

Or rather, being moved.

Rex takes one side of me. Fletcher, the other. Wayne clears a path through the crowd with the kind of focused intensity that makes strangers step back without needing to be asked once let alone twice.

Everything turns strange after that.

Too bright. Too loud. Too fast.