Well Suited (Red Lipstick Coalition #4)(83)

Sparrow’s face was pinched with worry. “I think she’s in labor.”

Katherine shot her a look. “I am not in labor. I am not supposed to go into labor for three weeks. Three full weeks.”

“These things happen,” her mom assured her, placing a small hand on her back.

“Not to me they don’t—ah!” She doubled over, hanging on to my arm.

“We’re going to the hospital,” I commanded.

Katherine’s expression was petulant. “No, we are not. I am not having this baby yet. I am not in labor. It’s just stress. I need a glass of water and to lie down. That’s all.” She dragged in a breath deep enough that her nostrils almost stuck together.

“Kate—”

“I am not in labor!” she shrieked, edging hysteria without warning. “I haven’t even lost my mucus plug! I have a list, Theo. I have a list and it’s not checked off and I’m supposed to have three whole weeks. It’s not happening now. It’s not!”

I pulled her into my arms, deciding the first thing I needed to do was calm her down. “Okay. It’s not happening now.”

“Thank you,” she said miserably against my chest.

A man I’d never seen before appeared next to Sparrow with a glass of water in his hand and a ponytail that would have made Tommy Chong green with envy.

“For Katie,” he said with a lazy smile. His glasses were tinted, but I was eighty-nine percent certain he was high. “I’m Dave. Niceta meetcha.”

I took his hand with numb detachment and pumped it once.

The bedlam swirled around us—people and sirens and my injured mother, Katherine’s mother, and her father, who’d come without warning. And in my arms was my Kate, crying and groaning and most likely about to have our baby.

There was nothing to do but get shit done.

I scooped Katherine up and carried her to the couch. Gave her a glass of water. Pulled a paramedic aside and asked her to check Katherine out.

When the EMT and I made it back to the couch, Katherine’s face was pink as she tried to sit, a task made difficult by her stretched-out abdominal muscles.

“Lie down, Kate,” I soothed, smoothing her hair.

“I…” Her face opened up like a storm shutter. “Oh no.”

I frowned. Katherine shifted. Sparrow lit up.

“Katie,” she said, “I think your water just broke.”

The look Katherine and I shared was heavy with a thousand words in the span of a heartbeat.

And I held her hands and glanced at the paramedic.

“I think we’re gonna need another ambulance.”





30





Plato Says





Katherine “If your mom tries to light that sage one more time, I will have her permanently removed from the building,” the nurse said, eyeing my mother, who held her hands up in surrender.

“It would help. I’m just saying.”

The nurse rolled her eyes.

Commotion bustled around us as the nurses and a midwife broke down my hospital bed, converting it for delivery. I was a tangle of tubes and wires—from the IV in my arm and the epidural in my spine to the nodes stuck to my belly, monitoring my contractions, which had reached levels that my epidural could no longer mask.

Another one came, a wave of heat that slipped over my belly, tightening it against my will. I hunched forward, feeling the urge to bear down.

Push, my body said.

“Ah, ah, ah,” the nurse warned. “Hang on, Katherine—your doctor is on her way. She’s here. Just hold on a few minutes.”

Theo shot her a look. He had a hold of my hand, the leverage so solid and sure that it was almost enough to make me less afraid.

Almost.

It took everything I had to resist the urge, waiting impatiently through the contraction until it was gone. My mother was chanting something in a language that sounded Native American, shaking what looked like a maraca with turquoise and feathers dangling from the handle.

I gave Theo a look.

“Sparrow, could you get some more ice chips?” he asked.

“Sure, let me just finish this spell.”

“We could really use it now.”

She was close to pouting. “All right, but if I leave now, who knows what will happen,” she warned.

“We’ll take our chances,” he said with a smirk as she left the room, shaking her head with the little pitcher and her maraca in her hands.

I sighed, leaning back in the bed with a weary thump. “Thank you.”

He smoothed my hair from my face. “What do you need? What can I do?”

“I don’t even know. My head hurts.”

His big hand moved to my neck. “Here, let me.”

His thumb pressed into the tight muscles where my neck and shoulder joined. A noisy groan slipped out of me.

He pulled my hair out of its bun, which was hours old and probably looked like a rat’s nest. Another groan as his fingers slipped into my hair and massaged my scalp. I nearly wept at the pleasure.

Then another contraction came, and I nearly wept at that.

I curled forward, clamping his hand, putting my weight on it, which he bore without even moving. My chin pressed to my clavicle, and my eyes slammed shut. And the moment stretched out, the pain putting everything in the universe in a warp. Time didn’t exist in that space.