Chapter 23 Dom
The bag has been packed for three weeks.
It sits by the front door of the penthouse, a black duffel bag with a change of clothes for Theo, a change of clothes for the baby, diapers, a blanket, toiletries, and a list of phone numbers printed on a card in case either of our phones dies. Viktor suggested the printed card. I didn't argue.
I check the bag every morning. I checked it twice today.
Theo is thirty-eight weeks. The obstetrician said any time now and she said it the way doctors say things, calm and measured, as if "any time now" is a neutral piece of information and not a phrase that has turned me into a man who can't sleep.
I have run a casino empire. I have sat across a table from Luca Castellano and kept my voice level.
I have watched my father walk into my building uninvited and dismantle my authority and I have absorbed it without flinching.
I have fired dozens of people in a single night, negotiated with a rival crime family, and coordinated the extraction of my pregnant omega from a concrete cell in a farmhouse sixty miles from the city.
None of this has prepared me for the fact that a baby is going to come out of Theo's body and I am supposed to be present for it.
Theo finds this amusing. He doesn't say so.
He doesn't need to. I can see it in the way he watches me check the bag, the way his mouth twitches when I ask the obstetrician the same question for the third time, the way he goes quiet and still when I put my hand on the bump and count the kicks because the book says you should count the kicks.
I have read four books. Theo has read none. He says the baby hasn't read them either so it seems like wasted effort.
It's a Tuesday morning in late June when it starts.
I'm in the kitchen making coffee. Theo is on the sofa with his laptop, working on the consulting proposal he's been putting together for the new security system.
He hasn't worked for me since the rescue.
He works for himself now, freelance, and the first client he pitched was me.
I paid his invoice without negotiating, which Viktor said was a terrible business decision. I don't care.
Theo shifts on the sofa. I hear the laptop close.
"Novikov."
He still calls me that. Not always. In bed, when his guard is down, it's Dom. In the kitchen, in front of Viktor, it's Novikov. I've stopped minding. The name in his mouth has changed. It used to be a wall. Now it's something else. A habit he keeps because it's his and he's not giving it up.
"What."
"My water just broke."
The mug in my hand keeps moving toward my mouth. My brain hears the words. My body hasn't caught up. I take a sip of coffee. I set the mug down.
"When you say just—"
"I mean just. As in right now. As in the sofa is wet."
I look at the sofa. The sofa is wet.
"Okay," I say.
"Okay," he says.
We look at each other across the kitchen counter. The clock on the wall ticks. The coffee machine gurgles. The city hums outside the windows.
I go to the bag. I pick it up. I put it down. I pick it up again.
"Shoes," Theo says. "I need shoes. And a towel for the car."
Shoes. Towel. Right. I can do that. I get a towel from the bathroom. I bring Theo his shoes. He's standing now, one hand on the arm of the sofa, and there's a dark patch on the cushion and his sweatpants are damp and he's looking at me with an expression that I can't read at first because it's new.
He's calm. He's completely calm. The man who counted days on a concrete wall and talked to our baby in a cell and walked barefoot across a dark field at fifteen weeks pregnant is standing in our living room with amniotic fluid soaking through his clothes and he is calm.
I am not calm.
"Breathe," Theo says.
"You’re the one who’s supposed to be concentrating on breathing."
"I’m fine. Besides we have time. First babies take a while. Wasn’t that in all the books you read?"
I call Viktor. My fingers miss the contact twice before I hit it.
"Viktor. It's happening."
A pause. One second. "Car's downstairs. I'll drive."
"Thank you."
I hang up. Theo has put on his shoes. He's standing by the door with his coat over his arm and the laptop bag over his shoulder and I stare at the laptop bag.
"You're not bringing the laptop."
"I might be waiting a long time. I'll get bored."
"Theo."
"Fine." He drops the laptop bag. "But if I'm in labour for days and I have nothing to do, I'm blaming you."
I take his coat. I hold it open for him and he turns and slides his arms in and the bump presses against the fabric and I can see the shape of it, round and low, and the baby inside it is about to become a person in a room and I am going to be there when it happens.
My hands are shaking. I notice this the way you notice a fact about someone else. My hands are shaking and they haven't shaken since I was fourteen years old and my father put a gun on the desk in front of me and told me to pick it up.
"Hey." Theo's hand is on my wrist. His fingers are warm. He turns my hand over and looks at the tremor and then he looks up at me. "It's going to be fine."
"I know."
"You don't know. You're terrified. I can smell it on you."
He can. The scent betrays everything. I've spent my whole life controlling what I project to the world and this omega can read me like a deck of cards.
I take his face in my hands. His jaw is sharp under my palms. His eyes are brown and gold and steady.
"Yes," I say. "I'm terrified."
"I think we’ve been through worse. Let's go have a baby."
Viktor drives. I sit in the back with Theo. The bag is at my feet. The towel is on the seat. Theo's hand is on the bump and my hand is on his hand and Viktor takes every corner like he's driving a hearse, slow and smooth, and the city moves past the windows in the morning light.
The first contraction comes on the bridge. Theo's grip tightens on my hand. His breathing changes. A sharp inhale, held, then a slow exhale through his mouth. His jaw clenches. The muscles in his neck stand out.
It lasts forty seconds. I know because I count.
"That was the first one," I say.
"Thank you, Novikov. I hadn't noticed."
"We should time them."
"Then time them."
I time them. The app on my phone has been installed for six weeks. I have practised using it. Theo knows I practised using it and has not commented on this, which is the closest thing to kindness he offers me on a regular basis.
The second contraction comes eight minutes later.
The third comes six minutes after that. By the time Viktor pulls into the hospital car park, they're five minutes apart and Theo's face between contractions has gone from calm to focused, the same expression he wears when he's deep in a count, when the numbers are running and the world outside them doesn't exist.
I get out. I open his door. I help him out of the car and he takes my arm, which he has never done voluntarily, and we walk through the sliding doors into the maternity ward.
The next four hours are the longest of my life.
The room is bright and clean and smells like antiseptic and there are machines that beep and a bed that adjusts and a nurse who calls me "Dad" and shows me where to stand.
I stand where she tells me to stand. I do what she tells me to do.
I have never in my adult life followed someone else's instructions without question and I follow every single one of hers because she knows what she's doing and I know nothing.
Theo is on the bed. His knees are up and his hand is in mine and the contractions are coming faster now, three minutes apart, then two, and each one pulls a sound out of him that I have never heard before and never want to hear again.
"You're doing well," the midwife says. "Almost there."
"Define almost," Theo says through his teeth.
"Two more pushes. Maybe three."
"Maybe three. That's very reassuring."
He squeezes my hand so hard that I lose feeling below the wrist. I don't mention it. I don't mention anything. I stand beside the bed and I hold his hand and I look at his face and I think, very clearly: This is the bravest person I have ever met.
Not because of the pain. Because of everything.
Because he walked into a Bureau office at eighteen and signed away his future for two hundred and twenty dollars.
Because he ran from a prime match and survived alone for eight years.
Because he sat in my security room with Viktor talking about ditches and kept his hands flat on the table.
Because he spent nine weeks in a concrete cell and came out of it still fighting.
Because he is lying in a hospital bed about to bring our child into the world and he is looking at me with an expression that says, quite clearly: If you pass out, I will mock you forever.
I don't pass out.
"One more," the midwife says. "Give me one more."
Theo bears down. His chin drops to his chest and every muscle in his body contracts and the sound he makes is raw and animal and extraordinary. His hand crushes mine.
Then there's a different sound.
Small. High. Furious.
The midwife lifts the baby and the world stops.
Not the way it stopped in the security room, when Theo's scent hit me and everything I knew rearranged itself. This is different. This is the world stopping because something new is in it.
"It's a girl," the midwife says.
She's small and red and screaming. Her fists are clenched and her eyes are screwed shut and her mouth is open and she is the loudest, angriest thing I have ever seen and I built her. We built her. Theo and I made this furious, perfect, screaming creature.
The midwife puts her on Theo's chest. Skin to skin.
The screaming quiets. Not stops, just quiets, settling from a wail into a series of hiccupping cries, and Theo's arms come up around her and his hands are shaking and his face is wet and he is looking down at her with an expression I have never seen on him before.
Wonder. That's what it is. Unguarded, unfiltered, complete.
"Hi," he says. His voice is wrecked. "Hi. Okay. You're here."
I can't speak. My throat has closed. My eyes are burning and my chest is full of something so large it doesn't fit and I am standing in a hospital room with tears running down my face and I don't care.
She weighs six pounds and eleven ounces.
She has dark hair, a lot of it, matted and damp against her skull.
Her fingers are impossibly small. Her nails are impossibly small.
Everything about her is impossibly small and she is gripping Theo's index finger with a strength that seems structurally unreasonable for someone who has been alive for four minutes.
I sit on the edge of the bed. Theo shifts to make room. The baby is between us, on Theo's chest, and I put my hand on her back. She's warm. Her ribcage rises and falls under my palm, fast, steady. The heartbeat is a flutter against my fingers.
"She's got your jaw," Theo says.
"Poor kid."
"Your hands too. Look at those fingers."
I look. She has long fingers. They're wrapped around Theo's and they're holding on with the focus of someone who has found the thing they want and has no intention of letting go.
"That she gets from both of us," I say.
Theo looks at me. His hair is damp with sweat and there are circles under his eyes and he's still in the hospital gown and he is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, after the creature on his chest.
"Marie," he says.
"What?"
"Her name. Marie, after my mother."
I look at the baby. At her dark hair and clenched fists and the furious determination with which she exists.
"Marie," I say. It sits right. It sounds like her. "Marie Novikov-Holland.”
"Marie Holland-Novikov."
"Holland-Novikov," I say against his skin.
"That was easy. You're losing your edge."
"I know exactly what I'm losing and what I'm getting. I've done the math."
The baby makes a sound. Not a cry. Something smaller. A sigh, maybe, or a yawn. She turns her head against Theo's chest and her mouth finds skin and she roots, instinctive, searching.
"She's hungry," Theo says.
His hand covers mine on the baby's back. His fingers lace through mine. The three of us sit on the hospital bed in the light from the window and outside the city is running the way it always runs, indifferent to the fact that everything inside this room has changed.
"Novikov," Theo says.
"What."
"Thank you for not passing out."
"You're welcome."
His mouth twitches. Almost a smile. The closest thing to one that Theo Holland-maybe-Novikov offers, and I have learned, over these months, that almost is enough. Almost is everything.
Marie’s grip tightens on his finger.
I put my hand over both of theirs and I hold on.
The End