Claire snapped her mouth shut and gave me a tremulous smile. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. It’ll go really fast, Lee.”
I burst into tears just as the next contraction hit me.
* * *
Jude
Two hours later
If I could’ve given every penny I’d ever earned, traded every accolade, every award, every trophy in the entire world to trade places with Lia, I would’ve done it in a heartbeat.
My hands were all but crushed in her bruising grip as my other hand held the back of her thigh.
And my heart, it was a mangled, horrible useless heap behind my ribs from what I’d watched her go through the last handful of hours. How any woman ever did this more than once proved why they were the superior sex in every definable category.
Don’t be a sissy, she’d made me promise. And so far, I hadn’t broken that promise.
“Come on, Lia,” the doctor said, face set in concentration. “Give me another push.”
“I can’t,” she sobbed. Her hair was soaked, her face exhausted.
Claire made small soothing noises, moving another washcloth over her sister’s sweaty forehead.
“Come on, love,” I told her. “You’re so close.”
“I’ve heard that for the past two hours,” she groaned.
“Here we go,” the doctor said. The two nurses busied themselves with … something, but as I’d promised not to look at anything that would make me faint, I couldn’t tell what it was.
Lia gritted her teeth and emitted another soul-shriveling sound of pain and agony and exhaustion, and I shit you not, I could feel the bones in my hand as they were crushed into dust.
“One more, Lia, you’re doing amazing,” one of the nurses said, positioning herself just next to the doctor. “I can see a head of dark hair.”
Lia sobbed. “He has hair?”
I pressed my forehead to hers. “One more, my love. One more.”
And with an effort that had me holding my breath, and Claire emitting an audible gasp when she looked down, Lia gave one more glorious push, and the room filled with the most incredible sound I’d ever heard in my life.
A baby crying.
“You did it,” I told her, eyes and heart and soul overflowing. Lia sobbed openly, and I kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her mouth.
“It’s a boy,” the nurse said with a wide grin. “Congratulations, Mom and Dad.”
In the next moment, we were all crying because they laid him on Lia’s chest as she wept.
With shaking hands, the nurse told me how to cut the umbilical cord.
Everything around me felt like it was moving slower somehow, like my heart now existed in these three separate segments. One behind my ribs, one in Lia, and one in this marvelous, wriggling, wailing thing that was lying in Lia’s embrace with a shock of dark hair and button nose.
Claire took pictures as I curled my arm around Lia and kissed the top of his head.
“He’s perfect,” she said, tears coursing down her face.
“He is.” I kissed her cheek. “And you were so bloody incredible, Lia.”
The nurse smiled at us. “If you want to help me clean him up and weigh him, Dad, they’ll handle Momma.”
Lia looked up at me, her chin wobbling. “Take care of him, okay?”
Her thumb was on my face then, wiping away another tear.
“Always,” I promised.
* * *
Lia
Twenty minutes later
“This is so weird,” I whispered. My finger followed the line of his nose and the perfect bow of his lips.
“Right?” Paige asked. “Like they’re all slimy and covered in this crazy shit from inside you, and boom, just like that, you’d just die for them.”
I met her knowing eyes and grinned. “Basically.”
Jude smiled at me from where he stood next to my brother.
“Ready to hold him, Logan?” Paige asked, rocking the baby gently. The little man was sound asleep because hey, it was quite the exhausting event to be born.
My brother nodded. “As long as Momma doesn’t need him back.”
I laid my head back on the pillow and smiled at him. “Go ahead.”
My sisters all crowded in the room, snapping pictures over Paige’s shoulder.
Isabel quietly wiped at a tear she didn’t think we saw. Molly winked, then pointed at herself,
“
Favorite,
” she mouthed.
But we all watched raptly as Logan first kissed Paige on the top of the head, then clenched his jaw as his wife stood and carefully transferred the baby into my brother’s huge arms.
Basically, I was just going to cry my way through the entire day. No way around it. I sniffed loudly before I realized that every single other person in the room, save for Jude, was doing the same thing.
Logan stared down at my son and let out a shaky breath. When he looked up at me, his eyes were bright with unshed tears. “You did real good, kid.”
Jude set a hand on Logan’s shoulder before he approached the bed.
“You did,” he said quietly, wiping my face carefully. “A bloody warrior.”
I smiled up at him. “Should we tell them the name?”
Jude kissed me softly. “Go ahead.”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.