Deploy, Part One (Rawlings #1)(85)
He leaned forward. “I’m not so sure it’ll be that big of a secret soon. I heard those things cry a lot and stuff.”
She almost laughed. “Not my point.”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“I don’t know if it’s in a handbook, but it’s our way. We deal the way we can. Mind our own business and help when we can.”
A weak grin touched her lips.
“You gonna give him another chance?”
She didn’t answer, only glancing away before she spoke. “I want him to know about this from me, only me. Since you speak Rawlings, will you make sure that’s known if someone else happens to notice?”
He nodded. “Yeah, well, it’s not like he’s talking to any of us anyhow. Might kick my ass when he figures out I’m here.”
“I won’t let him,” she swore before she patted his chest and made her way back to the exams she was cramming for.
Justice was back to her waiting game, back to sleeping with her phone clutched in her hand, always making sure it was charged, and panicking just a bit when she lost service. She checked her email every five seconds and the actual mailbox more than once a day. She searched everywhere the UPS man could have left a package each day. She watched the news more than she should, and read chat boards and social media from wives and girlfriends she knew had Marines in the same unit as Declan.
She gauged very little. No news was good news in most cases but now it was coming close, now she was feeling even more scared. This was real, the fog of her anger could not hide how real it was anymore.
“We got this,” she whispered to herself as she stood before the mirror in her bathroom following her nightly routine, taking a snap shot of the belly that was all but overtaking her at that point, and writing a text across the image. She walked to her bed and talked to her little Rawlings. “Show momma how strong you are,” she said, sitting just right.
On cue, as if it were a game, she not only felt her belly move, but saw it. She played the game for a few minutes, then spoke to the camera, her video diary that helped her cope, a technique that allowed her to face the emotions, and find strength.
That night her entry was short and sweet—she wasn’t feeling awesome. She thought sleep would help but the pains in her side, the ones she was sure were from the baby stretching, kept on, and on, so much so she thought a bath would help.
It didn’t. Right as she stood, a sharp pain, sharper than the others hit her. And then her water broke right there in the tub.
At first she was in shock, then somehow she found a calm and managed to get dressed between the pains. She turned the camera on her phone on, the sound on, and had it on a lariat around her neck, so she could stop it and turn it off when she needed too, then she walked down the hall.
Bell was staying with her ‘friend’ across town, and Dawson was working third shift. Boon was her only shot at getting a ride, and she wasn’t so sure he was there. He’d been enjoying the freedom from his daddy’s house a little too much at times.
Downstairs she pounded on his door. When he didn’t come, through another pain she scrambled to find the skeleton key then unlocked the door and pushed in.
He was sound a sleep, shirtless in jeans. She shook his shoulder and he shot up, almost knocking her in the head, but right as he did another pain hit her and clenched her nails in his shoulders as she screamed and cursed. “Your brother is a dead man,” she grunted.
“Holy f*ck!” he said, standing and holding her against him.
“Calm down, just drive. That’s all I need you to do.”
Boon cussed, in a panic as he took the bag from her shoulder, looked at her phone necklace like she was a fool, pulled his shirt on inside out then his boots.
He didn’t guide her out, he picked her up in a cradled position and walked double time out to his truck.
Justice had taken classes, a few, at school and did her best to breathe, but in all honesty right then all she wanted to do was claw out Declan Rawlings’ eyes and was thinking he was safer in whatever war zone he was in than at her side.
In the middle of the pains, she’d texted both Bell and Dawson, and just before she reached the hospital, she texted Chasen. Months before she decided it was the right thing to do, for him to be close when his first grandchild was born. It was something he’d missed with all his sons, but right then the reason she was calling him was so he could calm Boon down because the boy was freaking out enough to make you think it was his baby on the way.
The whole way there he kept his hand on her stomach as if he were trying to tell the baby to stay put.
Justice walked in the ER at 2:45 a.m. at 5:55 a.m., Declan James Nolan Rawlings cried out for the first time.
Justice’s panting cries were right alongside his. Bell and Dawson were with her. Dawson recorded what she could, took all the precious pictures of the weight, the first skin to skin, and Bell held Justice, wiped her brow, and told her how strong she was.
It was all a haze to Justice. She didn’t remember the pain the second she felt her son against her, and when she looked down at him and saw his thick dark hair, his father’s eyes, she gasped a smile. “We’re going make it, kid. You and me. One way or another...” she thought, knowing out of all the life changing moments she’d lived through, the hells she had walked through—this was the only one that mattered.