Forever Promised (51 page)

Everything was inward.

Her body was contracting, the baby was putting up a fuss, she suddenly had to take a poop like no woman in history—it was all happening
inside her body.

The trip to Kaiser was interminable—it was a good thing she was all inside her head when it was happening. She wasn’t all there for admissions, although she
did
focus when the doctor shoved a hand up her cooter.

“Miss Coats?” the doctor asked, shucking off his gloves.

She glared at him. He smelled like cigarettes and too much coffee, and she resented the hell out of being pulled away from… well,
everybody
at this point. “What?”

“You’re dilated to eight and a half centimeters. What made you finally decide to come in?”

“My boyfriend picked me up off the couch and shoved me in the car.”

“Smart man. He’ll make a good father.”

“This isn’t his kid,” she said. “It’s my brother’s husband’s baby.”

The doctor blinked like he was trying to put that together in a puzzle, and she was assaulted by another contraction. “
Holy mother of fuck!
”

“And it’s time to get you to labor and delivery!” And wasn’t he just too fucking chipper about that! Probably still trying to figure out whose baby it was.

“Deacon!” she snapped when they had her in the wheelchair. Someone was pushing her toward another room.

“I’m here, Shorty,” Deacon said behind the wheelchair. “Wouldn’t pass up seeing this show again, right?”

“You gotta tell Drew how it works,” she said, suddenly tearful. Yeah, they’d talked about this and laid out duties and everything, but Deacon had
been
there for it. Deacon had
held
her first baby. Deacon could teach Drew everything he needed to know.

“I’ll tell him how it works,” Deacon said.

“You gotta tell him it’s fast, okay?”

“Like I didn’t know
that
!” Drew muttered, and she looked next to her, and there he was.

“You’re gonna hold my hand, right, Drew? You’re not going to care that it’s not yours, right? You didn’t care with Parry. You’re not gonna care, right?”

They were helping her onto a gurney now, and she
hated
this part.

“Right on my back. Could you smack them, Deacon? Right on my fucking back!”

“I’m rolling her to her side,” Deacon said in a tone that brooked no argument. The doctor tried to give him one, but Deacon ignored the man and reached over to grab both her hands, his own hands crossed for leverage.

“Drew, get behind her and pull the bottom toward you and push on the top. Everyone ready? One, two, three, and….”

“Oh, thank God, thank God, thank God,” Benny mumbled. The contractions were still there, one on top of the other, but she could breathe again, and Drew was here with her, and he wasn’t leaving, and Deacon was here, and she was so damned grateful.

The gush of water between her legs was a surprise, even though the doctor had been fiddling down there with something small and sharp. And suddenly, oh God, there it was, the whole world crashing down on her cervix!

“
Drew!
Drew, it fucking hurts! Kill one of those motherfuckers for me, would you?”

Crick’s laughter just pissed her off more. “Oh my
God
, Benny, could you be any fucking louder?”

“Miss Coats, you need to be ready to push, okay?”

Benny waved at the nurse. “Go away! Go away! They’ll help me—they’ve done it before!” She remembered—she’d been so proud of both of them when they were EMTs. And she trusted them right now, trusted her guys, trusted Drew, when she didn’t trust random people in white, didn’t trust anyone with this baby but them—

“Oh,
fuck!
”

“Benny, for fuck’s sake, stop swearing and push!”

“Crick, you”—grunt, groan, bear down—“stupid motherfucker, if you think this is easy,
you
do it!”

“If anything came out of my ass besides crap, I would! It doesn’t! Now stop yelling at me and push!”

Oh God, there was an image.

“I’ll never—” Pant, pant, pant. “—sleep again!”

“The hell you won’t—you’re sleeping for a week after this, Bernice.”

“
Augh!
Sure! You just come in and violate my body and pump my boobs while that happens!” Because seriously, dignity? When all these men were watching her be naked, fat, and pushing something out her privates?

Deacon’s low laugh told her she wasn’t the only one thinking that way.

“I wouldn’t pass up on that invite if I were you,” he chuckled. “Don’t think Crick or me are qualified. Now, Bernice, stop yelling at us and push!”

“Deacon—”

“Stop it! Shut up and bear down and squish this little fucker out!”

“
Deacon!
”

Oh God. It was like being ripped in half. She knew it. She remembered it. It felt the same way this time, she’d just blocked it out. Ripped in half, ripped in half…
squoosh!

And then there was a roaring in her ear, her own panting breaths, and that faint, precious sound that was never as loud as it seemed like it should be.

T
HE
baby nurse grabbed the baby as soon as the cord was cut, and Drew and Crick hovered over Benny, telling her she’d done a good job, telling her they were pulling the afterbirth now. Deacon watched the pediatric nurse and listened to the blessed, blessed sound. He watched the pink little arms and pink little legs flail around, and reveled in that precious, mad-as-hell, scared-to-death, someone-fucking-explain-this-to-me
sound
!

Boy, was that kid pissed off.

Crick didn’t deal with pissed off well. “Jesus, kid, would you give it a fucking break!”

There was a sudden hiccup, and a puzzled silence from the direction of the baby.

Deacon met Crick’s eyes over the gurney and grinned. Oh my God, fatherhood sat well on him.

“Quiet now,” Crick muttered. He leaned forward and kissed Benny’s sweaty forehead. “It’s okay,” he said softly. “You did good. Our little fish is swimming, okay? No worries. Deacon!” Crick called, his voice as bright and shiny as the baby’s.

“What?”

“The damned thing’s born—what’d we have?”

Deacon laughed a little. Benny was still gripping Drew and Crick’s hands while her bottom half was being tugged on and pushed at and wiped down, so Deacon didn’t bother to ask her, even though she knew.

“Nurse?” he asked, and the woman didn’t even bother to look over her shoulder.

“It’s a boy!” she sang, and Deacon grinned at Crick, tired, and happy, and only half-panicked on the inside.

“It’s a boy, Carrick.”

“Great!” Crick said, looking very relieved—and very pointedly
not
at his sister’s private parts. “
Those
parts I know something about!”

Deacon watched then as they bathed the baby, weighed the baby, put drops in his eyes, measured him. He squalled a lot, but not the whole time. There were a couple of moments when he seemed to say, “Well shit, this isn’t getting me anywhere,” and Deacon was glad. A little bit of Deacon, a little bit of Crick—that’s all he wanted.

The short, round, comfortably middle-aged nurse walked up to the three men looking very confused—and Deacon didn’t blame her. “Who wants to hold him first?”

“Too weak,” Benny mumbled, and since they were moving her to another bed now that she was all cleaned up, that wasn’t going to happen anyway.

It was Drew who poked him in the back. “Step up, Chief. I’m support team on this one. My job’s all done.”

Deacon bit his lip to hide his smile. “Yeah?” he asked no one in particular.

“Yeah,” the nurse murmured.

Deacon took him, supported his head, and tucked their little fish into the crook of his arm like a football. His entire body shuddered, and he felt time slow to a halt, right… right now… and he leaned forward and kissed his son’s head.

Time resumed, and he knew firsthand how fast it could go.

“Carrick?” he said, and the love of his life walked around the bed to be at his side.

“Oh my God,” Crick said. Then: “Jesus, Deacon, do these things
ever
look right when they come out? I mean, you’d think our own kid wouldn’t look like a skinned rabbit, but—”

Deacon hushed him with a kiss over their son’s tiny body. “Carrick James? Meet James Deacon Winters. He’s fucking beautiful, so shut up about it, okay?”

He looked at the baby again and gave up fighting the swelling chest and the burning eyes. Crick shut up and reached out a long artistic finger to stroke JD’s fat, pink little cheek.

“He’s gorgeous, Deacon. He looks just like us.”

Deacon looked up to thank Benny, to weep at her feet like the goddess she was, but she was being hefted to the other gurney, and it was time to give the baby back for more fun and baby games.

Drew followed her, and Deacon and Crick were left hugging in the room while the staff hustled around them, cleaning up the worst part of the best part of being human.

Deacon and Benny
:
Twain

B
ENNY
was
so
impressed with Deacon. He hadn’t told her about the Princess Plan at all!

Drew must have known—he
must
have, because he’d repacked her overnight bag with the basics: big girl underwear, toothbrush, and shampoo. At first she’d been indignant—she’d had an
entire gym bag
packed with stuff that only she wanted. But then Drew had produced a new iPod, via Deacon, loaded with some of her favorite television shows—via Drew—and told her that before she left the next day, she’d have everything she needed.

She looked at the iPod with shining eyes. “Ooooh…
pretty
!”

Drew laughed and grabbed her hand, twining their fingers together. “We’re going to take
very
good care of you, Bernice.”

She got a little wobbly then. “Everyone’s going to be taking care of the baby. Have you seen him?”

Drew’s smile into her eyes was tender. “He’s gorgeous. But he looks mostly like Deacon.”

She felt a moment of being completely herself. “Our babies will look mostly like you,” she told him, because, well, no shit!

Drew winked. “They might be a little paler,” he laughed, and she nodded, still grinning.

“Just a little.”

“Are you ready?” he asked then, and she was nonplussed. Hadn’t she done the thing? All she had left to do now was bleed and bitch.

“Ready for what?”

“Your admirers, baby. You think you did this alone?” And with that he went to the door and let in her first round of people. And that should have been her first clue.

Her first people were actually Jeff and Collin, and she should have been a little suspicious when they arrived with sausage McMuffins,
no
egg, and a new set of yoga pants and summer-weight hoodie for her to wear home. They also brought flowers, a teddy bear, and a video collection of
The Hangover
movies.

And her laptop on which to watch them.

Drew kissed her on the cheek then and told her he’d be back in the evening, and her day never stopped. The nurse came in with JD so they could hold the baby. She watched them, thinking about how this was the last time he’d get to room with her—but that she was lucky he did, since she was going to be Auntie Benny anyway. Jeff and Collin finished mooning over him and then told her how well she’d done—and although Jeff got a little misty and Collin’s arms tightened, the baby, the star of the show, was still
not
the star of
her
show.

She began to realize that
she
was.

She thought maybe that was just Jeff and Collin, because, well, they were awesome, but before they left, Jeff gave her one last gift.

A white cardigan, lace weight, as delicate as a butterfly’s wing and as finely crafted as a Fabergé egg.

“Jeffy,” Benny breathed, fingering the down-soft wool. “You must have been making this for—”

“Since we heard your grand plan,” Jeff said, patting her hand. “It’s for your wedding dress, sweets, which means you and me on the same diet so you can go strapless in the fall.”

Benny swallowed. Her grand plan. Marriage to the man she loved. Her own career as an accountant. Their children. Their home with the daughter they already loved. Something to look forward to when she didn’t have a crib or a nursery or a baby to call her own this time round.

“That’s awesome,” she said. “Stupid fucking hormones, ignore them.”

Jeff handed her a tissue, then wrapped the sweater up again and put it in a neat little pile with the teddy bear and the basket of movies. She cried on both of them as they hugged her to leave. She couldn’t help it.

Next was Patrick.

Deacon’s father’s old hired man was in his seventies. Since he moved out of The Pulpit, he’d been living with his sister and her husband, helping them with their animals, and generally enjoying the more relaxed pace of not getting stepped on, bitten, rolled on, or kicked, which happened on a horse ranch all the goddamned time.