Chapter 43 Too Soon
Chapter forty-three
Too Soon
Lena
The locked room at the Iron Talons clubhouse smells like leather and motor oil trying to mask decades of cigarette smoke—a perfume of poor decisions that feels fitting for my thirty-third week of pregnancy.
My body has become a prison and Santiago the warden, every movement monitored, every step forbidden by Dr. Morrison's orders.
"This is where you're nesting?" Izzy surveys the space with the expression she reserves for particularly questionable life choices. "In a biker clubhouse? With a lock that looks like it came from a middle school locker?"
"It's temporary." I'm folding the same onesie for the third time, my hands needing the motion even if my brain knows it's pointless. The fabric is soft, innocent—everything this situation isn't.
"Mija, you're arranging baby clothes in a room that probably hosted orgies." She helps me sit on the bed, her nurse's hands automatically checking my ankles for swelling. "This is not temporary. This is surrender."
"It's survival." The words scrape my throat like broken promises. "Santiago needs—"
"Santiago needs a mother who hasn't lost herself to dick that comes with felony charges."
The truth of it sits in my chest like swallowed glass.
Through the thin walls, I can hear Zane giving orders, his voice carrying that particular authority that makes my vagina file protest letters while simultaneously composing sonnets.
My body is a traitor to my better judgment—a biological imperative wrapped in stretch marks and swollen joints.
"Just don't lose yourself," Izzy says, arranging my medications with the precision of someone who's seen too many women disappear into dangerous men. "These pills keep Santiago inside. But what's keeping you intact?"
Before I can answer—not that I have an answer—the silence stretches like a held breath.
My phone buzzes with a text I don't recognize, another unknown number that could be anyone.
Could be Miguel, still not talking to me.
Could be the clinic calling about permits.
Could be another threat. I let it go unanswered.
The next three days blur into a routine of forced stillness.
Bed rest sounds restful until you're living it—then it becomes a special kind of torture designed for people who define themselves by their usefulness.
I can't work. Can't walk more than ten steps.
Can't even shower without someone hovering outside the door like I'm on suicide watch.
My body has become a ticking time bomb, every twinge potentially the start of labor. This morning brought fresh blood—not much, just spotting—but enough to send Zane into a panic that resulted in an emergency trip to the hospital.
"Thirty-three weeks and two days," Dr. Morrison says, her hands cold on my belly as she examines me. "Better than last week, but still not ideal."
"How much longer can I hold him?" The question feels like begging.
"Every day counts. But your cervix is softening. He's dropped lower. Your body is preparing whether we want it to or not."
Back at the clubhouse, I'm marooned on the bed while Zane paces. He's been sleeping on the floor beside my locked door—not inside, because boundaries matter even when they're tissue-paper thin—but close enough that I hear him startle awake every time I shift positions.
"Stop hovering," I tell him. "You're making me nervous, and stress triggers contractions."
"Can't help it." He runs his hands through his hair, a gesture I'm learning means he's fighting the urge to break something. "You almost went into labor. Again."
"And I didn't. Again." I try to shift positions, but my body has become an uncooperative mass of aches and fluid retention. "I need to last four more weeks minimum."
"You need to last until he's ready."
"He's your son—he was born ready to fight."
The joke falls flat because we both know it's not really a joke. Santiago is already fighting, already stubborn, already too much like both of us for his own good.
That evening, Ghost stops by—not to check on me, but to make his presence known. He fills the doorway like a threat wearing a leather cut, his eyes taking in my swollen form with the kind of calculation that makes my skin crawl.
"President's baby mama," he says, like it's a title and an insult. "Making yourself comfortable in our house."
"Making myself available for my child's father." I meet his gaze, refusing to be intimidated even while horizontal. "Problem with that?"
"The problem is what you've turned him into." Ghost steps into the room uninvited. "Weak. Distracted. Compromised."
"Get out." Zane's voice comes from behind Ghost, deadly quiet.
Ghost turns slowly, theatrically. "Just having a conversation with your—what is she exactly? Not your old lady. Not your whore. Something in between?"
The violence that follows is quick and decisive. Zane's fist connects with Ghost's jaw, sending him stumbling back. But Ghost recovers fast, tackling Zane into the hallway. I can hear the impact of bodies against walls, the crash of something breaking.
"Stop!" I try to get up, but my body won't cooperate, Santiago choosing this moment to practice kickboxing against my cervix. "Both of you, stop!"
Joker and Blade pull them apart, but the damage is done. Ghost spits blood, grinning like he won something. "See? Compromised. Can't even control himself in front of his pregnant bitch."
Zane lunges again, but Joker holds him back. "Church. Now. Both of you."
They disappear into their sacred space where women aren't allowed and violence is voted on like democracy with brass knuckles. I'm left sitting in bed, heart racing, Santiago rioting in response to my stress.
"Breathe," Izzy says, appearing from nowhere because she has a sixth sense for when I need her. "Deep breaths. We can't have labor starting because these pendejos can't keep their dicks in check."
But my body has other plans. The first contraction hits like a fist to my lower back, radiating around to my belly. Then another, eight minutes later. Then seven minutes. Then six.
"Hospital," Izzy says, already grabbing my bag. "Now."
"Get Zane—"
"Fuck Zane. He's busy playing alpha dog while you're trying not to deliver a premature baby."
But he must sense something because he appears just as Izzy's helping me to her car, his knuckles bloody, his face a map of fury and fear.
"What's wrong?"
"Contractions," Izzy answers for me. "Thanks to your little fight club demonstration."
He takes over without asking, lifting me like I weigh nothing, carrying me to his truck. "I'm sorry. Ghost—"
"Ghost is trying to destroy you, and you're letting him." Another contraction makes me gasp, gripping his arm hard enough to leave marks. "Five minutes apart now."
He drives like the devil is chasing us, which maybe he is. The devil named Ghost, the devil named poor choices, the devil named a love that might kill us both before it's done.
At the hospital, they pump me full of medications that make my heart race and my skin burn. Magnesium sulfate, terbutaline, nifedipine—a cocktail of medical intervention trying to convince my body to be patient.
"Please," I whisper to Santiago between contractions. "Four more weeks. Give me four more weeks."
But my son, stubborn like his father, reckless like his mother, has inherited our mutual inability to do what's best for us.
"Thirty-three weeks and three days," Morrison says after six hours of fighting. "We've stopped them for now, but Lena... next time we might not be able to."
"How long?"
"Could be days. Could be weeks. Your body is done being patient."
Zane sleeps in the chair beside my hospital bed, his hand wrapped around mine like if he holds tight enough, he can keep us both from falling apart.
His face is bruised from the fight with Ghost, his knuckles raw, and I wonder if this is what love looks like—two people destroying themselves trying to protect each other.
"Thirty-seven weeks," I tell him when he wakes. "That's the goal. Four more weeks."
"We'll make it."
"How can you be so sure?"
"Because you're the strongest person I know." He brings my hand to his lips, kissing each knuckle like a prayer. "And because Santiago is half you. He'll wait."
But we both know strength has nothing to do with it. Sometimes bodies betray you. Sometimes love isn't enough. Sometimes babies come when they want to come, ready or not.
That night, I dream of Santiago—not as a baby but as a boy, maybe five years old, with Zane's eyes and my stubbornness. He's standing between us, trying to hold our hands, but we're too far apart, the distance growing with each breath.
"Choose," he says in the dream.
"I choose you," I tell him. "Always you."
But when I wake, Zane is gone, and the monitors are beeping, and my body is contracting again, and I realize the choice might not be mine to make.
Dr. Morrison rushes in, checking monitors, checking me, checking everything except the one thing that matters—whether love is enough to keep a baby inside when everything else is falling apart.
"Thirty-seven weeks," she says, and for a moment I think I've time-traveled, but then she continues. "That's our minimum goal. If we can get you there, his lungs will be developed. His brain will be ready. He'll have a fighting chance without the NICU."
"Four weeks." It feels like a lifetime. Like a prayer. Like an impossible ask from a body that's already given everything.
"Four weeks," she confirms. "Complete bed rest. No stress. No excitement. No more fights in your vicinity."
I laugh, bitter and exhausted. "Have you met my life?"
"Then change it." Her voice is stern, doctorly. "For him. Whatever it takes."
Whatever it takes.
I look at my belly where Santiago has finally calmed, where my son waits in his watery world, dependent on my body's cooperation.
"Four weeks," I promise him. "I'll give you four more weeks if it kills me."
And given how things are going, it just might.
Thirty-three weeks down. Four to go until he's full-term. Four weeks of keeping my body from evicting its most important tenant.