Chapter Twenty-Four
~ Caleb ~
I woke to the kind of dark that meant pre-dawn, the kind where the eastern ridge hadn’t yet decided it was morning and the house was still holding its breath.
Sterling’s arm lay heavy across my waist, his face turned toward me in sleep with an openness he never allowed himself awake.
Mitch was curved around Sterling’s back, one hand flung over both of us like a man keeping inventory, and the weight of them—the specific warmth and solidity of two grown men who had decided I was worth staying for—pressed into the mattress beneath us in a way that felt permanent.
The babies had been quiet for hours. A reprieve I’d learned not to trust. They’d been pressing against my ribs all week, turning and rolling with the enthusiasm of two people who had run out of room and hadn’t gotten the memo.
My belly had grown past the point where I could see my feet.
Past the point where getting socks on was a solo operation.
Socks now required two men. Mitch handled the left foot with running commentary—“The human foot is a marvel, truly, a triumph of engineering and also this sock is inside out”—while Sterling worked the right foot in silence, his big hands impossibly gentle, turning the sock the right way without being asked and sliding it over my ankle with the focused precision of a man who had done this nine thousand times and would do it nine thousand more.
Mitch talked.
Sterling worked.
I sat on the edge of the bed and felt loved in two completely different languages.
The last few weeks had been like that. Sterling making his perimeter checks, coming back to the kitchen table with a fresh mug of coffee positioned to see both the front door and me simultaneously, which was not subtle and was entirely Sterling.
Mitch timing everything I did—how long it took me to get from the couch to the kitchen (nineteen seconds, down from twenty-two the week before, which he announced like it was breaking news), how many times I got up to pee at night (four, which was “completely normal and also hilarious, I’m keeping a chart”), how many deep breaths I took during a contraction practice (twelve, which Mitch insisted was Olympic-level and Sterling said was “adequate,” which from Sterling was approximately equivalent to anyone else writing poetry).
I’d been waking at three in the morning just to confirm they were still there.
Not checking. Not touching. Just opening my eyes in the dark and listening for the steady rhythm of Sterling’s breathing—slow, even, the controlled inhale of a man who had learned to sleep through gunfire—and the heavier, looser sound of Mitch beside him, one arm inevitably thrown across Sterling’s chest like he was afraid the man might evaporate in the night.
They were always there. Every time. I’d count to ten, feel my heart settle, and go back to sleep.
I lay there for exactly four minutes being completely, embarrassingly happy.
The kind of happy that lived behind your sternum and made your face do things you couldn’t control.
Four minutes of warm yellow walls and east-facing windows and two men who loved me sleeping on either side, and then my body made a decision without consulting me.
The first contraction hit like something with a grudge. Not subtle. Not fluttery. A hard, specific band of pressure that wrapped around my lower back and squeezed with the focused determination of a person who had a schedule and was not negotiating.
“Okay,” I said. Quietly.
The pressure held.
“Okay,” I said, louder.
Sterling was upright before I finished the sentence. Full alert, eyes clear, one hand reaching for my wrist to check my pulse, which was not what you did in this situation and was so on-brand for Sterling Callahan that I almost laughed through the contraction.
Mitch sat up, blinked once. “Is it the—”
“Yes,” I said.
“Holy shit,” Mitch said, then immediately bent toward my stomach. “Sorry. Sorry. That was not appropriate. You’re very small and you don’t know words yet. Your uncle Mitch is working on his vocabulary.”
Sterling’s hand was still on my wrist. His pulse was faster than mine, which was medically concerning given that I was the one in labor.
“I need my boots,” I said. “Mitch. Boot.”
“I have my boot,” Mitch said, already halfway out of bed.
“You have one boot.”
“That’s a start.”
Sterling stood in the middle of the bedroom holding his phone like it was something that might detonate. “Jasper,” he said out loud, to no one. Then he did nothing with the phone.
“Someone call Jasper,” I said.
Sterling called Jasper. His voice was flat, controlled, the voice he used when the situation was critical and he needed everyone to understand that he was not, in fact, panicking.
“It’s time,” he said into the phone. Then, after a pause: “Yes. Now. The house. Yes.” He set the phone down. Looked at it. Picked it up again.
Mitch found the boot. It had been on the bed. He had been sitting on it.
“This is why we can’t have nice things,” I said.
“This is why we have each other,” Mitch replied, already pulling the boot on. “Teamwork. Synergy. One of us sits on things and the other one finds them. It’s a system.”
Sterling was still holding the phone. Something had happened to his face—something I would tell everyone about for the rest of my life, the detail that would outlive all his other stories, the one that would get told at birthdays and anniversaries and probably his funeral if I outlived him, which at this rate seemed likely.
Sterling Callahan, survivor of Tbilisi and Caracas and a treason investigation and three armed contractors on a Montana road, looked at my face and went completely, visibly blank.
Not calm. Blank. The blank of a man whose operational framework had just encountered a situation it had no category for.
He picked up his phone. Set it down. Picked it up again. “I called Jasper already,” he said. “I said that already. Did I say that?”
“You said it,” I confirmed.
“Good.” He picked up the phone.
“Put it down, Sterling.”
He put it down. Picked it up.
“You’re going to call Jasper again,” I said.
“That’s not necessary,” Sterling said, holding the phone exactly like a man about to call Jasper again.
“I didn’t say you should call him. I said you were going to.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re holding the phone.”
“It’s for something else.”
“What something else?”
Sterling set the phone on the nightstand with the deliberateness of a man defusing something. Then he picked it up.
Mitch, one boot on and one boot off, announced from the doorway: “He’s going to call Jasper a third time.”
“I am not,” Sterling said, thumb hovering over the screen.
“You absolutely are.”
“I have it under control.”
“The phone is in your hand.”
“It’s a precautionary measure.”
I breathed through a contraction and watched both of them and felt an enormous, helpless wave of love wash over me that was almost indistinguishable from amusement.
The kind of love that made your chest hurt in the good way, the way that said you had built something worth keeping and the people in it were exactly as ridiculous as you’d hoped.
Jasper arrived fifteen minutes later with his bag and Decker behind him. Jasper took one look at me, one look at Sterling and Mitch, and said with perfect neutrality: “You two. Sit down or go outside.”
Mitch sat immediately. Folded himself into the armchair by the window with the quickness of a man who recognized authority when he heard it.
Sterling stood by the head of the bed. Arms crossed. Jaw set. Doing his best impression of a man who was not, in fact, terrified, which was approximately as convincing as Mitch’s impression of a man who could be quiet for more than thirty seconds.
Jasper, without looking at Sterling, said: “Sterling, your hands.”
Sterling looked at his hands. They weren’t entirely steady. He put them in his pockets.
“That’s not better,” Jasper said.
Sterling crossed his arms again.
Mitch reported from his chair: “He’s been like this since the first phone call.”
“I have not been like anything,” Sterling protested.
“You called Jasper twice.”
“That was a precaution.”
“Precautions are typically singular,” Mitch said. “The second one is panic.”
“I don’t panic.”
“The phone-down-phone-up cycle suggests otherwise.”
I said, from the bed: “Both of you stop talking.”
They both stopped. Immediately. Complete silence. The kind of silence that suggested I had just discovered a superpower I hadn’t known I possessed, and I filed it away for future use because some authority was worth keeping.
Jasper looked at me. “How far apart?”
“Six minutes,” I said.
“Good.” He set his bag on the dresser. “We have time.”
Sterling’s jaw worked. I could see him calculating—six minutes, distance to the clinic, variables, contingencies—and I watched the muscle in his cheek jump once, hard, before he settled back against the wall with the stillness of a man who had decided that standing perfectly still was the next best thing to being useful.
Decker leaned in the doorway, arms crossed, watching Jasper with the quiet focus of a man who had done this before and knew his role.
He nodded once at Sterling—the kind of nod that said I see you and this is normal and you’re going to be fine even if you don’t believe it—and Sterling nodded back, which from Sterling was approximately equivalent to anyone else writing a love letter.
Another contraction hit. I breathed through it the way Jasper had taught me, slow and deliberate, and Mitch’s hand found mine across the bedspread without looking, warm and certain.
On my other side, Sterling’s presence was a solid weight against the headboard, not touching yet, just there, just steady, and the coordination of it—three people in a room finding the rhythm without discussion—made my chest do that thing again, the warm one, the one that felt like coming home.
“Okay,” Jasper said. “Let’s get to work.”