The Devil Gets His Due (The Devils #4)(85)

Graham



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I’m crying by the time I’m done reading. Poor Graham, holding all this in and blaming himself. He’s such a worrier. I can picture it: a crying baby, a burned arm, the chaos of it all. How it must have made him panic. When he was eight. Barely past being a baby himself.

I get it now. I just wish I could stop crying long enough to tell him this.

“Shit,” I whisper then jump up from the couch. “Oh, shit.”

“Look,” he says, and I vaguely process how disappointed he sounds. “I don’t expect anything. I know I dropped a lot on you at once, and if you’ve moved on with someone else, I’m not going to—”

“Graham, it’s not that,” I say, barely audible as I stare in shock at the large stain where I was just sitting. “I think my water just broke.”





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46





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GRAHAM





I wanted to be with her for this, but I also accepted weeks ago that I might not be, so I already had a contingency plan in place.

I call Paul’s cell. He will drop everything to get her safely to the hospital, and I don’t trust this to some Uber with two other passengers and a driver who can’t follow directions.

He has her in his car within three minutes. Mark comes along, too, just in case they need help.

They make it to the hospital in record time, but it takes me far longer. Traffic is snarled, and I’ve now got texts from Mark, Paul, and Jacobson—keeping tabs from his post at the building until his replacement gets in at nine—asking me where the hell I am.

I arrive at Labor and Delivery, frazzled and worried sick. Yes, I want to be there when our daughter is born, but mostly…I just want to see my wife again. The past two weeks have felt like a lifetime. Mark and Paul both leap from their seats and join me at the front desk. An Indian doctor standing there turns when he hears me ask for her. “You’re the father?” he asks with a small, quizzical smile. “That’s good. That’s very good. I’m Dr. Patel. I was just up here checking on her.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“This isn’t my area, but I’m sure one of the nurses can take you back and get you some scrubs. Rachel?”

A nurse pops up from a chair, and I nod to Paul and Mark. They nod back, worried and hopeful at once.

She waits while I change into scrubs, then walks me down the hall to Keeley. “She’s not quite thirty-seven weeks,” I tell the nurse just before we enter. “How big a deal is that?”

She shakes her head and gestures to the room, which is full of laughing hospital staff. “As you can see from these idiots, who are violating the rules and should not be here, it’s not a big deal at all.”

I shove my way through, expecting to find Keeley cracking jokes and holding court, but her gaze is strained when it meets mine…and relieved, deeply relieved.

She needed me here, and she needed me while we were apart. God, I hate the way this has all unfolded. I hate that the past two weeks ever happened at all.

“Hey,” she says, her voice quieter than I expected, her face less joyful. Keeley, who loves drama and celebration more than anyone I know, is pale and tense.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

Her eyes close and she shakes her head. “I’m about to have another contraction, and they’re really bad. I thought women were kind of overdramatizing things, but…they weren’t.”

Only Keeley would think centuries of women were exaggerating the pain of childbirth.

She squeezes my hand, her eyes fall shut, and her mouth moves as if she’s silently counting.

“You’ve got this, bestie!” shouts a woman in scrubs. Someone else cheers. I think I’m going to fucking kill all of them.

Her breath explodes when the contraction finally ends and her grip eases. She looks exhausted as her gaze meets mine.

“Do you actually want all these people in here?”

“Well,” she says, “no, but they just want to celebrate and—”

I stand. “Everyone? I’m this kid’s father. Nice to meet you. Now get the fuck out unless you’re assigned to this room.”

People glare at me and glance at each other, undoubtedly thinking “what did Keeley ever see in this asshole?” I don’t blame them. It’s a question I’ve asked myself many times.

But they leave, and once the room is empty, aside from a lone nurse currently taking Keeley’s vitals, her sigh is pure relief.

“They’re all going to hate you,” she says. Her eyes fall closed. It seems early in the process for her to be this tired.

“Like I give a shit,” I begin.

“You need to give a shit,” she says with a too-small smile. “We can’t piss them off in case we ever decide to have another one.”

My heart stops. I didn’t write that letter hoping to change her mind about us, but that she wants me here and is talking about a future us has me hoping for it anyway. “You mean…together? We’d stay together?”

“God, Graham, you haven’t already changed your mind, right? I mean, you only sent that email last night.”