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Viddy snickered and bumped Rue with her hip.
I looked up to find Zach looking at me with an intensity that was startling.
“You want kids?” he asked.
I blinked. “Of course.”
“How many?” he wondered.
I licked my lips. “As many as you want to give me.”
CHAPTER 19
If you haven’t cried in a walk-in cooler, you really shouldn’t bad mouth a food-service worker.
-Crockett to a customer
CROCKETT
Seeing Zach dressed in apparel that he could use while dirt-biking was sexy.
Seeing Zach wearing that clothing while also holding a little tiny baby? That was debilitating.
The rest of the afternoon was spent riding dirt bikes in Cleo’s back yard while Rue, Ashe, and I spent the day drinking sweet tea, eating like utter shit, and cooing over said baby.
Only, about twenty minutes ago, that baby had been taken from my arms and Zach had picked him up.
“I wanted him to be delivered by Zach,” Ashe said quietly. “I’d always intended for him to. Even if it was a little weird. I just wanted the best. I wanted everything to go perfectly. And it didn’t. The birth was traumatic. I wish I could’ve gone right into that prison and delivered him right in the middle of Zach’s cell. If he ever leaves again, and I’m due, we’re following him.”
I blinked. “What happened?”
Ashe sighed.
“Well,” she started. “It all started out great. My water broke. I was two days early. I go to the hospital. Then the hospital shuts down because of a possible gas leak, so everyone has to go. At that point, I’m five centimeters, was seconds away from getting my epidural.”
I groaned. “No.”
She nodded, eyes serious. “So we get to the hospital in Longview. Get checked in, I’m still a five. My doctor can’t go to that hospital because he’s not able to practice there because he refused to get his flu shot last year. So they find me a new doctor. Only, this one doesn’t, for some reason, like Ford. Like, at all. Something happened with a family member and Ford, and he refuses to help me. He said it was against his religion or something. So okay, we wait for another doctor. Only, my Chevy isn’t one to wait when he’s supposed to.”
“Like his father,” Rue snorted. “You three were crazy little hellions.”
Ashe grinned. “That we were.” She shook her head. “Anyway, I go from a five to a ten in the ten minutes it takes for another doctor on staff to get there. I’m already pushing away by the time he walks in just in time to catch the baby.”
“Literally, all he did was catch him,” Viddy said. “One second it took him to slip on gloves. It was the craziest thing.”
“It was,” Ashe agreed. “And all was really well with Chevy. He was great. Me, not so much. The bleeding wouldn’t stop. My uterus wasn’t contracting, meaning that the bleeding couldn’t stop. I have what they call postpartum hemorrhage. My blood pressure tanks. I pass out. The room goes fuckin’ nuts according to Ford, and I wake up to a baby breastfeeding, my body feeling all light and floaty, and pumped full of so many drugs that it’s unreal.”
“But you’re okay now?” I asked, encompassing her body with a sweep of my hand. “Everything’s okay? You can have more?”
That was my worry. That they’d had to do something drastic.
She smiled softly. “I’m fine. Now. But then? No. So after they get my uterus to start doing its job, Chevy turns out to be jaundiced. So he spends four days in the nursery under the bili lights. Then, while that’s going on, I can’t even get up to see him because I have the headache from hell. What they call a spinal headache.”
I groaned. “You just didn’t catch any breaks, did you?”
“Nope,” she said. “So after that, I vowed that I wouldn’t have another kid until Zach was home to deliver it. I was convinced that it was all because he wasn’t there.”
I softened. “That’s sweet. But you know that all could’ve happened if Zach was there, right?”
She shrugged. “I know. But in my head…” She tapped her forehead with one finger. “It all makes sense. Yes?”
I grinned, my eyes trailing back to the man of the hour.
He was now standing next to Ford, and the two of them were looking down at the baby in Zach’s arms as if it was the answer to all of life’s prayers.
“So, when are you having babies with Zach?”
I grinned and turned back to the three women who were staring at me intently.
“I’d like to get to the marriage part, first.”
Rue’s eyes sparkled. “I have it on good authority that that’ll happen soon.” She paused. “I should’ve maybe not mentioned that. But, just sayin’, planning ahead would be a good idea.”
CHAPTER 20
I just want to say to anyone I may have offended yesterday, you can go fuck yourself today, too.
