Chapter 24 #2
I watch her face as she thinks about that, and her hand trickles along my stubbled jaw. “No. I mean, as long as you’re not doing it for evil or to unnecessarily hurt people.”
“I don’t. Unless someone tries to fuck with someone important to me.”
She smiles and rubs her nose against mine. “I love your protective side. It makes me feel safe. Like I know that no matter what, you’d never let anyone hurt me.”
“I won’t,” I promise her, my lips grazing hers. Knowing I’ll do whatever it takes to keep that promise and never break it.
“What in the Long Island Sound are we doing out here?” Georgia shrieks as icy wind along with an unpleasant pelting of snow and ice barrages us.
“We have a dog.”
“Can’t she poop inside?”
I laugh watching Georgia jump up and down, hopping from one foot to the next as if the snow-covered earth she’s standing on is made of hot coals, and she’s afraid of burning her feet through her knee-high snow boots.
She’s wearing about ten layers, including the biggest, puffiest coat I’ve ever seen.
Her hat covers practically her entire head, and she has cashmere gloves under her snow mittens.
She’s goddamn adorable.
“You didn’t have to come out for this.”
“I thought it would be fun to play in the snow.”
I grin. “And now?”
“Now it’s not as fun as I thought it’d be.”
We’re standing on my large deck, which already has about a foot of powder on it, with more to come.
It’s supposed to stop sometime tomorrow, and the power hasn’t so much as flickered once.
It’s honestly not that bad. Just another storm, but Georgia isn’t buying that from me.
Alice, meanwhile, is loving it. She’s prancing all around, jumping and diving in and out of the snowbanks.
“How are we ever going to get out of here?”
“What?” I laugh with a bemused chuckle.
“You live in the woods in an unpaved area. It’s not like Mr. Snowplow Man can come through.”
“Mr. Snowplow Man?” I might die a little at that.
“You know what I mean.”
“I have a truck with a plow on the front of it. I’ve never had a problem getting out before and I’ve lived through some big storms.” Just then my phone rings, interrupting us.
I pull it out of my pocket, squinting against the ice and snow as it almost instantly covers my screen.
Swiping my finger along the screen, a spike of urgency crawls over me as I answer. “Brooklynn?”
Georgia immediately stops jumping and stares at me, her brows furrowed.
“Oh, thank the elves you picked up.”
“What’s going on?”
“So, funny, not so funny story. My water broke about two hours ago. No big deal as I’m just hitting thirty-seven weeks, except the road to the hospital is closed because there is a major accident there, and no ambulance is available to come to get me because they’re all at the accident.
Apparently, it’s really bad. Like a thirty-car pile-up with a lot of injuries. ”
Fuck.
She starts panting into the phone. “I tried calling Georgia, but she didn’t pick up.”
“We’re outside letting Alice do her thing. Hold on.” I move my phone away from my ear and set it on speaker so Georgia can hear. “Brooklynn’s in labor,” I tell Georgia. “Her water broke.”
Her eyes pop open wider than dinner plates. “Brooklynn, what was the fluid like? Was it clear or bloody, or did it have some green stuff in it?”
“Um, first of all, ew. Second of all, it was clear.”
Georgia rolls her eyes but breathes out a sigh of relief. “Good. How far apart are your contractions?”
“They were like fifteen minutes apart when this all started, but now they’re closer to three minutes.”
Georgia grabs my arm in alarm. “Why aren’t you going to the hospital?”
“There’s a massive accident,” I tell her. “The road there is blocked, and all EMS crews are stuck on the scene. Welcome to Maine.”
“Welcome to Maine?!” Georgia screeches incredulously. “Nu-uh. We’re on our way. Lenox just informed me he has a plow. We’re coming now. Whatever you do, do not push until I get there.”
“Right.” Brooklynn pants. “No pushing.”
“Good. We’ll be there soon.” Georgia hits the end button on my phone and then runs into the house, skidding on the hardwood floors in her wet boots and nearly wiping out, only to save herself at the last second and race for the stairs.
What the absolute fuck? Is she actually planning to deliver Brooklynn’s baby?
“Lenox, let’s go!” she yells from somewhere inside.
I guess she is.
I slip my phone back into my pocket and give Alice the whistle that lets her know she needs to get her ass inside.
She comes skipping in, kicking snow and sending it flying behind her.
I wipe her down with the towel I keep here just as she enters the back door, but then I’m quickly closing and locking everything up and gathering my shit.
“Georgie?!”
“I’m changing and gathering up my stuff. Thank God my friend sent me this box.”
I don’t ask. I just grab my own first-aid kit and gather things like internet boosters and mainstream laptops because I don’t know what sort of videos or internet access we’ll require.
That’s how my brain works. Thankfully, Georgia doesn’t require a YouTube tutorial on delivering babies, and within minutes she’s flying down the stairs wearing scrubs with a large bag banging heavily against her side.
I snatch it from her and take her hand, leading her out to the garage and then down and around the corner toward the attached barn, where I keep things like a tractor, my motorcycles, and the large truck with the snowplow.
“How many vehicles do you own?”
“Several.”
“Several,” she mocks me in a deep voice. “Okay, Batman. We get it. You’re super fucking cool and sexy. How do you have so much money again? Something to do with your huge brain and stock markets, was it?”
I shake my head at her as I help her up into the truck, shutting the door behind her and racing around.
“So, the first rule of delivering babies is you do not talk about delivering babies,” she says as I start up the loud engine, pressing the button on the automatic garage door.
“What?” I murmur incredulously, my heart already hammering in my throat, and we’re not even there yet.
“You don’t. I mean, it’s almost bad luck. But I’m excited. I likely shouldn’t be, and I’m obviously nervous too since I’ve never delivered a baby outside of the hospital before and Brooklynn is on the earlier side of being full-term, but fuck do I miss this.
I throw her a side-eye as I back out into the snow, the large tires of this truck rolling over the deep bed of it, flattening it down. I close the bay door and spin the truck around, using the shifters to lower the plow and clear our way out so we can get to Brooklynn.
“If you love it and miss it that much, I will build you a clinic.”
Her breath hitches. “You will?”
I laugh, but it’s shaky. So are my hands. I’ve never been around a baby being delivered, and while I don’t love people outside of my people, Brooklynn is the second closest to them.
“Baby, I’ll build you a goddamn birthing center.”
“I have my own money, even if there is something wildly sexy about a man willing to do anything to make his woman happy. But I don’t know, you think?”
“I think.”
“Yeah,” she says dreamily. “Me too, actually. My clinic will be dope. We’ll do all the women’s health stuff.”
“With Georgia O’Keeffe images on your walls?”
She sputters out a laugh. “I never put that together until now. She painted flowers that look like vaginas, and I help vaginas bloom into flowers.”
“What?”
“Yeah, that didn’t come out as poetic as it sounded in my head. But she is my namesake, sorta, even if I’m named after my mother’s great-grandma Georgia.”
Waves of white flow on either side of the truck, like the parting of the Red Sea, as I plow through the path that leads us back to the road. “Georgia, I have no clue what you’re saying right now.”
“Samesies. I’m just amped. It’s adrenaline rambling. I wish my paperwork for my Maine license were already approved.”
She falls silent after that, a little tense as the truck digs through mountains of snow in the dark, scooting through trees in ways that make her breath hitch, but she doesn’t have to worry. I’ve done this drive so many times I could do it with my eyes closed.
Five minutes later, we hit the main road that hasn’t been plowed in at least the last few hours. I curse under my breath but push us along. Brookylnn and Max’s house is on the other side of town, and by the time we reach their house, I think Georgia is on the brink of her adrenaline rush .
The second the truck stops, she flies out and trudges up the front steps through the thick snowbanks that have settled there, then pounds on the door.
I grab her bag—the one she forgot in the truck in all her excitement—along with all my stuff and follow her up just as the door opens, and a harried Max greets us with the look of a man wandering through the desert only to spot an oasis when he sees Georgia.
I can’t imagine how scared and helpless he must feel with Brooklynn in labor and not being able to get her to the hospital.
I follow past her, clapping Max on the shoulder. “Thank you,” he says and I give him a nod because he doesn’t need to thank me.
Brooklynn is in their living room, her head down on the arm of the couch, her body crouched, her face twisted in visible pain. Shit. This is really happening.