The Devil Gets His Due (The Devils #4)(86)

I can’t speak for a moment. I lift her hand and press my face to its back. “No, I haven’t changed my mind,” I say. “I just thought…”

I don’t finish the sentence. I can’t.

“People aren’t quite as unforgiving as you seem to think,” she says. “And besides, we both know I can’t afford a Mariah Carey closet on my own.”

I squeeze her hand. “I’m so sorry, Keeley. I’m so fucking sorry.”

“I know,” she whispers.

Her eyes close, and I wait for them to open so she can tell me about all the things she wants in her new closet, or describe the outlandish Real Housewives mural she’d like to paint on our daughter’s wall.

It takes me a few seconds to realize she’s fallen asleep.

Keeley, in one of the most exciting moments of her life, has fallen asleep. It’s wrong. It’s wrong for her in particular, but aren’t women in labor, at the very least, supposed to be red-faced and hyper-alert, screaming obscenities at the guy who did this to them?

I look at the nurse on the other side of Keeley, who’s writing something in a chart. “Is this normal?”

She glances at me with a frown. “Her blood pressure is really high. We gave her something but it’s not helping. Dr. Seever is on the way.”

Keeley wakes with the next contraction, squeezing my hand through it, watching the second hand of the clock like it’s her only lifeline. She exhales in relief as it ends and her gaze turns to mine, followed by another weak smile.

“I’m glad,” she says.

“Glad?”

“I’m glad you had a story. Mark said you would. I had stories, too, but I think they were my mom’s stories.” Her eyes close. “I’d rather have my own.”

I look up at the nurse, on the cusp of demanding she find someone who’s available now, but I don’t need to.

She hits a button on the machine next to Keeley. “Get the attending,” she announces. “Her pressure’s up and I need more hands now.”

Within seconds, a woman I’ve never seen before walks in, with several others behind her. She looks at the monitor and after a hushed conversation with the nurse, she looks over her shoulder to a tech behind her.

“We’ve got to get this kid out,” she says. “Open an OR.”

Keeley’s eyes open slowly, as if by force, and she swallows.

“Keeley, I’m Dr. Asif,” the woman says. “The mag isn’t controlling your blood pressure, and the baby’s in danger. We need to do a section right away.”

The old Keeley would make a joke here, something about bikini season or her vagina. But she just nods. Everyone is moving, someone’s on the phone issuing urgent demands and things are being unclipped. The only person in the entire room who is still and settled…is Keeley.

No, not settled. Resigned. She reaches for my hand. “Graham,” she says quietly, “you’re going to be such a good dad, and she’s so lucky to have you—”

“Stop,” I demand. “You’re fine.”

“I’m sorry,” says the nurse. “We need to leave now.”

They push the bed from the room and Keeley grips my hand as I walk alongside her down the hall. “Listen to me, okay? I love you. I love this baby, and I don’t regret any of it. Convincing you to marry me is smartest thing I ever did.”

I open my mouth to tell her to stop talking like this. To tell her she’s going to be fine, and that the truth is that I was the one who wanted all of this, that I was the one who convinced her to go to Vegas. But we’ve reached a set of double doors and a nurse moves in front of me.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “They have to put her under, so you can’t come back with her.”

I look from her to Keeley. There is so much I need to say and there’s just no time. “I love you,” I whisper.

Tear well in her eyes, but her smile is quiet, and peaceful. “I know.”

The doors open and she’s gone. Someone leads me to the waiting room, and I go blindly, struck by the way we just said goodbye. It felt...final.

I call my mom, and Ben, and Keeley’s father, and within thirty minutes, they’re all here.

“I didn’t even know she was pregnant,” her father says, taking the seat across from mine.

“You’re lucky I called you at all, after the way you let your wife treat her,” I reply.

Harsh, perhaps, but true. And he fucking knows it. He simply nods, and then buries his face in his hands.

Gemma barks at Paul to move and takes the seat beside me. Her hand slips through mine.

“It all happened so fast,” I whisper. “There was so much I should have told her.”

She squeezes my hand. “I’m sure she knew.”

Staff from other parts of the hospital are trickling in now, huddled around the nurses’ desk, whispering, and I don’t know what it all means, but it doesn’t seem good.

Julie enters Labor and Delivery at a jog and nods to me as she heads to the nurses’ station. She converses with someone and then takes a phone call, her face increasingly grim before she walks in my direction. I jump to my feet and Gemma is right behind me, followed by Ben, Keeley’s dad, and the guys from the building. “They’re still in there,” she says, wiping her arm across her forehead. “The baby’s in the NICU. Nothing to worry about but she was breathing a little fast so they’re keeping an eye on her. But Keeley…” She swallows. “Graham, her blood pressure went too high during the delivery. She had a seizure.”