Chapter 17
T he carriage let us off like it knew when to bow out. The lobby of the hotel swallowed us in gold and hush. Atticus’s palm touched the small of my back for one beat. Not a guide. A brand.
Upstairs, the suite looked the same and not at all. The city had slipped its bright dress off and put on ink. The bridge traced a necklace across the black. The windows waited like a dare we both remembered too well.
He set his keys down. I toed off my shoes. We didn’t rush. That felt like the newest game—how slowly could we cross the last inches.
“Come here,” he said.
I did. The words lived inside me now. My body answered before my brain could run interference. He took my chin between his fingers and tipped my face up. He didn’t kiss me. Of course, he didn’t. He let his mouth hover a breath away like heat was enough.
“You held your line with your brother,” he said. “Proud of you.”
It should have embarrassed me. It didn’t. It landed like a hand at the base of my skull, warm and steadying. I felt taller. I hated that I needed his words to make me tall. No. I didn’t hate it. I only hated that I admitted it.
“I almost died of embarrassment," I said. “And then I almost laughed.”
“Good instincts,” he said.
He slid the tip of his nose along my cheekbone. The smallest friction. Every nerve lit. His other hand settled at my hip, not quite pulling me in. We stood there at the edge, like teenagers on a dock, counting down to the jump even though the water was already around our ankles.
“Kiss me,” I said, and heard the truth in it. Not a power play. A plea.
He gave me the softest kiss imaginable. Not a test. A hello. A single press that told me he could turn me inside out later because he refused to rush now. I chased it when he lifted his head, and he let me steal one more before he pulled back, amused and hungry.
“Hands on the glass,” he said.
I made an eager noise. I turned. Walked toward the window like gravity pulled me by the wrist. I set my palms where they remembered to go. The glass was cool and thrilling. It recognized me.
He came up behind me and gathered the fall of my golden hair. He lifted it off my neck and breathed there. I vibrated like I’d swallowed electricity.
“Take the dress off,” he said.
I reached back. He moved my hand aside. “Let me.”
I stood still while he found the hidden clasp and slid it free. The silk loosened and sighed down my body until I stepped out of it. He didn’t rush to touch the skin he’d uncovered. He let the air have me for a second. I melted and straightened at the same time.
His hand came around to my stomach, flat and sure.
He drew me back into him. The thick line of his arousal pressed where I wanted it most. I made a small, helpless sound, and his grip tightened a fraction.
The city became a mirror. My mouth was open.
His eyes were half-lidded and intent. We were beautiful and indecent and doomed.
He slid his palm lower.
Slow. Cruel. Perfect.
My phone rang.
We both froze. It sounded like a bird trapped in a vent. I stared at the reflection of my abandoned dress and then down at the coffee table where I’d left my device faceup like a dare.
“Don’t,” he said. Not sharp. Pleading.
I looked at the screen, anyway. MARIA. Thirty-nine weeks. First baby. The one who made cookies for her neighbors when her nesting got weird and who texted me photos of her cat sitting on a half-packed hospital bag.
My gut flipped. Then tightened into something like duty and affection and adrenaline all braided together. I tore free of his hand like I’d been plugged in. I grabbed the phone.
“Hey, Mama.” I made my voice steady and warm. “Talk to me.”
Her breath came in around the words. “They’re four minutes apart. Maybe three. I lost track. I’m shaking.”
You’re safe , I should have said. You’re strong. It’s okay to be scared . The phrases stacked up and fought to be first.
“You’re doing it,” I said. “You’re okay. Can you talk while I count one with you?”
She breathed through another, and I counted quiet and soothing, the way I had in kitchens and tubs and strangers’ living rooms at two in the morning. Atticus stood a foot away and watched me shed the woman he’d undressed and step into the one with a tote bag and a plan.
“Okay,” I said when her exhale broke into a laugh-cry. “They’re close enough now. Meet me at Palmetto Birth Center. I’ll be there in twenty.”
“Twenty?” Panic spiked.
“I’m close,” I lied. “I’m in the car right now.” I wasn’t. I would be.
She gave a small breath that sounded like trust and fear holding hands. “Okay.”
“Call me if anything changes. Text me when you park.” I hung up and closed my eyes for a beat, swore once under my breath, and turned.
Atticus looked at me like a man who had found a live wire and respected it. Hunger had not left his face. Something else lived alongside it now.
Understanding. Annoyance. A new kind of focus.
“Let someone else take it,” he said. Not a threat. A suggestion he already knew I would refuse.
“It doesn’t work like that,” I said. “Not the way I have things set up.”
“You have backups,” he said.
“For day shifts,” I said. “For scheduled inductions. Not for tonight. Not for her.” I bent to the garment bag and yanked out the simple flats I’d shoved in there, just in case.
He didn’t sigh. He didn’t argue again. He disappeared into the other room, came back with the jeans and tee I’d left folded over a chair, and held them out like this was a ritual instead of a scramble.
I pulled the denim on fast, cotton clinging as I shoved my arms through it, wincing at how the ponytail I scraped together was going to destroy the salon blowout he’d paid for. Dollars down the drain, hours undone in minutes. Still worth it.
His hand settled warm at the back of my neck for one beat, and I remembered who I’d be coming back to.
“Go,” he said.
At the door he caught my wrist. I looked up, braced for a battle I would have to win.
“Actually, I’m coming with you,” he said.
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.” His face didn’t change. “I’m not letting you go alone. I’ll wait.”
Something in my chest did a strange stutter. I was touched. I nodded, sharp so I wouldn’t cry.
We moved. The elevator ate seconds. The lobby looked at us and pretended not to. The car shot through the night like we’d prayed and received a small favor.
I texted Maria’s partner. Headed to Palmetto Birth now. Do you need anything brought?
He texted back three words that always melt me: Just you, please.
Atticus didn’t talk on the drive. He watched the road the way the driver did, quiet and intent. His hand found my knee and rested there like it had at the bench by the fountain. Not a claim in front of anyone this time. A quiet promise that he could be weight without pressure.
Palmetto Birth shone gentle at the end of a live oak tunnel—white clapboard, soft porch lights, planters stuffed with rosemary and geraniums. Not a hospital. Not a house. Something in-between that had made a lot of women feel brave and safe in that order.
We stepped in and the air shifted—lavender and coffee over scrubbed tile, the hush that always lives in places where someone is about to be born.
A receptionist glanced up, ready with her professional smile, then did a double take when she clocked Atticus: dark shirt, clean lines, the kind of intense that doesn’t belong on a birth-center brochure. Her eyes flicked to me like, You brought … someone?
“Hey, it’s Simone,” I said quickly, palms up. “I’m here for Maria Gonzales. He’s just—” I broke off, because there wasn’t a word that didn’t feel like a confession. “He’s waiting in the lobby.”
Atticus set his hand at the small of my back—not a push, just a claim—then withdrew like he’d signed something. “I’ll be right here,” he told the receptionist, calm as a locked door. To me, quieter: “Text me if you so much as change rooms.”
The receptionist’s brows went up a millimeter at the tone, then she nodded, finding her footing again. “Of course. Family’s welcome to wait out here. Coffee’s fresh. Restroom’s down the hall.”
“I’m not family,” he said, pleasant in a way that somehow read as territorial. “I’m waiting for Simone.”
“I got that,” she said, a little wry now.
I touched his wrist, a quick grounding. “Lobby,” I repeated.
“Lobby,” he echoed. His gaze tracked me until I rounded the corner. Only then did I hear the soft scrape of a chair as he finally sat—forward on the edge, palms on his knees like he meant to outwait the night.
“They’re in Suite D,” a nurse said as I stepped into the hallway. “Tub’s filling.”
“Thank you,” I said, already shrugging off my bag. “She’s nervous. I flagged it in the chart.”
“She’s sweet as pie,” she replied. “We like sweet.”
Maria met me at the door to Suite D, hair braided, eyes wide, hands clenched around her partner’s fingers. “You came,” she said, as if we hadn’t spent six months making a plan that meant I would always come.
“Of course,” I said. “You’re doing this.”
The midwife lifted a hand in greeting over the running tub. We traded a look and a few quick words that contained years of trust. The room breathed with dim lamps and salt lamps and the hum of water.
Time did its thing. It stretched and folded.
Hours fell into the tub and came out clean.
I did what I always did—counted and murmured and rubbed and pressed.
I fed Maria ice chips and old jokes. I reminded her she had a body that knew what to do even when her mind did not.
I told her partner the most useful thing new fathers hear in the middle of a contraction: you’re doing great because you’re here .
Between waves, I thought of Atticus on a lobby chair with bad magazines. I pictured him still and watchful, that weightless patience he carried like an art. I felt the filament between us hold. Not stretch. Hold.
At some point, the receptionist stopped me in the hall to hand me a paper cup. “For your man,” she said.
“My …?” I started, then let it be. “Thank you.”
He was exactly where I expected when I stepped into the waiting room—one ankle on a knee, fingers loose, attention turned down the hall toward the mothers. Not on his phone. Ears tuned for my footsteps. He stood when he saw me.
“How is she?” he asked.
“Strong,” I said. “Getting close.” I held out the coffee. “Here.”
“I can get my own,” he said, but he took it. His fingers brushed mine and a private circuit closed. “How are you?”
“Good.” I made a face. “Sweaty.”
He looked at my mouth with the same focus he had earlier and then lifted the corner of the paper cup toward me like a toast. “You’re luminous.”
“You’re biased,” I said.
“I’m accurate,” he said.
I wanted to sit on his lap in a birth center waiting room and make a memory I would both treasure and regret. I settled for the chair next to his and a lean that let our shoulders touch. The quiet between us felt like the first half of a song.
He spoke first. “You looked like a priest when you walked down that hall. In a good way.”
I huffed out a laugh. “I’ll add that to my business card.”
“You give pieces of yourself away,” he said. “And somehow you don’t come back smaller.”
“That’s the trick,” I said. “You learn not to give away the pieces you need to live.”
He looked at the coffee like it might contain an answer. “Who taught you that?”
“Women in rooms like this,” I said. “Old ladies at church. My mother, when she wasn’t making everything into a parable.”
“And today?” he asked.
“You,” I said, then shook my head, surprised by my own honesty. “You told me to eat. You told me to breathe. You told me to say yes out loud.”
His jaw eased. He stared straight ahead. “Useful man, after all.”
“Debatable,” I said, but my mouth softened.
A nurse walked through with a tray of warm towels that smelled like heaven. Atticus’s eyes followed her and then returned to me. “How long?”
“Could be twenty minutes. Could be two hours. Babies are rude.”
“I’ll be here,” he said.
I stood. “I know.”
He caught my hand before I could turn. Not hard. Just a hold. “After,” he said, and the word was both question and plan.
“After I wash my hands and drink a gallon of water and text Stephen,” I said. “Yes. After.”
His thumb dragged across my knuckles. A small burn. “Go.”
I did. The rest of the labor folded into a series of yeses that felt like home.
Maria roared once, shocked herself, then laughed that tear-wet laugh women do when they realize they are more animal and more holy than they were told.
The baby came pink and indignant and perfect.
The room softened. We cried a little, because we always do.
I tucked blankets, took a photo with a phone someone shoved at me, cleaned up the ring of peppermint oil a clumsy hand had spilled. I whispered to a new father that he had done his job by existing and not fainting. I kissed Maria’s forehead and told her the truth: you were magnificent.
When I stepped back into the waiting room, Atticus was still there, same posture, same patience. The clock said it had been an hour and change. The air felt different because I was different.
He stood when he saw my face. “How is she?”
“Perfect.” My voice went thick. “They’re all perfect.”
He nodded once, and something in him softened at the edges. He didn’t ask for details that weren’t his. He didn’t make jokes. He just reached for my bag without looking and put the strap over his own shoulder like that had always been his job.
“Home,” he said, and I didn’t correct the word.
We walked past the receptionist, who mouthed congratulations like I had birthed the baby myself. We walked into the night. The air pressed a hand to our cheeks like a mother.
In the car, I leaned my head back and let my eyes close. The hum of the tires turned into the rhythm of a contraction in reverse, unwinding. Atticus’s fingers laced with mine on the seat between us. The join looked simple and felt enormous.
“You chose them,” he said. “And you chose me. Both can be true.”
“That’s how I want it,” I said.
“You’ll sleep when I tell you to,” he said.
“Bossy.”
“Accurate,” he said again.
Upstairs, the suite waited with its dark glass and vast water and the dress puddled where I’d dropped it. We stood there and listened to the city breathe.
He stepped behind me. His heat met my back. His mouth found the place below my ear that made me forget geography. The sexual roar that had been forced into a stall came back. I turned in his hands and kissed him, not soft this time. Not a hello. A thank-you with teeth in it. A promise.
He took it. He made a small sound I felt in his throat. He pressed me into the window like he’d been waiting to set the world back on its rails. I hooked my fingers into his shirt at the collar and pulled.
My phone stayed mercifully silent. The bridge shone like a truth.
“Now,” he said, voice rough, forehead to mine. “Where were we?”
“Exactly where you left me,” I said, breathless and sure. “Wanting more.”
“Good,” he said.
We went to find it.