Chapter 21
Twenty-One
Even though Kane was sure Mabel was going to surprise us all by coming before her due date, there was no havoc or drama, no water breaking in the middle of a restaurant, no baby born in the car on the way to the hospital.
No, on the night of my induction, there was a dinner at home, one I made even though Mom and Maisie fought me on it.
“It’s the last thing I’ll be able to take my time cooking,” I argued to them.
And Kane, usually—infuriatingly—on their side with most things pertaining to my ‘care,’ sided with me.
“You got this, Chef,” he said, kissing my neck.
He was doing that more lately. Easy affection, affectionate tones. He wasn’t punishing me anymore. Although he hadn’t truly punished me since that first night. Maybe I was punishing myself.
Whatever it was, we were still tiptoeing around each other in a way. Relearning each other. I wasn’t Avery Hart, chef, anymore. And for the time, it seemed Kane was no longer Kane ‘The Devil’ Rhodes either.
Through some miracle of fate, no one here had taken photos of him, posted anything. The media hadn’t found him yet, and I knew they were looking because there were articles online.
I shouldn’t have read them. I hadn’t in the past, knowing they were toxic. Yet now, for whatever reason, in the rare moments I wasn’t with Kane or my mother or Maisie, I was scrolling through the articles.
Kane Rhodes out of prison, conviction overturned… But where is he now?
Mixed reception on Rhodes’s release from prison. Did he deserve to get out?
DuBois, currently under investigation for sexual violence charges, has ‘no comment’ on Rhodes’s release.
Has Avery Hart, the Ice Queen, managed to put Kane’s fire out? Where has he gone?
The respite wasn’t permanent. Some determined reporter would find him. Someone would leak his location. Or he’d go back for an event, a game, the freaking Olympics for all I knew. Kane was a thrill seeker to his core, so he couldn’t stay in Jupiter indefinitely.
That reality hung in my head too. My career, as I knew it, was over. There weren't any twelve-hour days at a restaurant. No more commanding a kitchen … or my life, for that matter.
And I didn’t know how I felt about that. I knew I already loved Mabel more than anything, that I wouldn’t change my situation for the world, but the unknown future ahead of me made my throat uncomfortably tight.
“My only request is that I be sous chef,” Kane murmured, bringing me out of my thoughts and into the present.
The present being a kitchen in Maine, with my mother and sister sipping wine at the breakfast bar, the ocean air blowing in, Kane Rhodes next to me, a baby kicking in my belly and a midnight admission to have the aforementioned baby.
“Sous chef?” I craned my neck to examine him.
He nodded. “You tell me what to do—chop, fry, whatever. I got you. You work your magic.” His eyes glittered as something unspoken passed between us. He knew I needed this. We were both standing there, on the precipice of a completely new life. After tonight, nothing would be the same. So the simpleness of being in a kitchen, cooking with Kane, meant everything.
“I need onions diced.”
“Yes, Chef.” His eyes held mine for a long moment.
Then we cooked.
Our last meal as Kane and Avery.
The next one we had, we’d be Mom and Dad.
An insane idea.
Yet somehow perfect.
I hadn’t wanted the epidural.
Not because I was some kind of martyr. I trusted modern medicine and firmly believed that women shouldn’t have to suffer through labor when they’d already suffered through a pregnancy and would be suffering through the recovery and whatever other demands society had for them.
I believed every woman had the right to experience childbirth in their own way, with as little pain as possible.
But I’d also read up about the more prudent, realistic parts of labor. And I wanted it to be as quick and as efficient as it could be. Statistically, labor could last longer if an epidural was administered.
Also, I might’ve been arrogant about my threshold for pain.
I’d endured my fair share of it. My training ensured that my power of will was ironclad and that I never gave up. I set the expectation for myself that I wasn’t going to get an epidural, and I’d intended to stick with it.
Which was an absolutely stupid fucking idea.
I had heard about people who said inductions were dramatically more painful than natural labor. I’d taken this into account, but I’d also thought that pain was pain. I knew logically it couldn’t kill me, and I had my breathing exercises; I would focus on those, and I’d be fine.
And I was indisputably wrong.
I was in the tub. Initially, I hadn’t planned on using the birthing tub. But it was one of the ways to help reduce the pain without drugs. Something I found to be pure bullshit after floating around in there, still three centimeters dilated after hours. After what felt like years.
Three centimeters meant that I had more hours ahead of me. Of that pain. Pain that felt like my body was splitting in two. My contractions had been coming every minute for … God knew how long.
Kane was at my side, as he had been the entire time. Massaging my back, holding my hand, brushing hair from my face. He’d been steadfast, calm, tender. All of the things you’d want in a birth partner. Yet I barely paid any attention to him due to the pain. Even Kane ‘The Devil’ Rhodes couldn’t manage to anchor me in that sea of agony.
“I need the epidural,” I ground out to him from the tub.
There was a nurse kneeling beside me, her hands in the water, holding the two monitors on my stomach to ensure the baby was still okay. She was. Her heartbeat was steady. Apparently, she was as calm as could be while her mother was fighting for her life.
Kane’s eyes were clear on mine, though I saw the edge of worry there.
We’d talked about this.
“ If I say I need the epidural, you need to tell me no,” I’d said while rubbing oil onto my stomach.
“Me, tell you no? Absolutely fucking not.” Kane didn’t even take a moment to consider his response, the words rushing past his lips as he swatted my hands away so he could rub in the oil for me. It was one of his favorite tasks. “If you’re in pain that you can’t handle and there’s a medicine available that will make that pain go away, I am in full support of a professional administering it.”
“I can handle it.” I pursed my lips. “Women have been handling it for millions of years. But knowing that it’s available in the back of my mind, I may falter.”
“Chef, you won’t falter.” He paused so he could look up at me. “And again, asking for medicine is not faltering or failure, just so you know.”
I let out a deep sigh. “Yes, whatever. But this is my request. That you remind me of my birth plan and that I can do it without the epidural.”
Kane’s brow furrowed. “I’ll remind you.”
“Someone get my woman a fucking epidural,” he said to the nurses without missing a beat.
“Okay, honey. You stand up, and we’ll get the anesthetist on the phone.” I hated the nurse for sitting there and not being in unbearable pain. I hated everyone. Even Kane. Especially Kane. He did that to me.
Even the simple act of standing seemed unfathomable. Breathing was an effort.
Yet I found the ability, with Kane’s help.
As soon as I stood, the pressure at my pelvis turned, morphing into something different than pain. Something much bigger.
“Something’s wrong,” I gasped.
Kane’s expression remained calm, but I saw his pupils dilate.
“I feel like I need to push.”
That was an understatement. It felt like my insides were about to all come tumbling out. The pressure... The pressure was unlike anything I’d ever felt.
Once I’d uttered those words, the nurses jumped into action.
Suddenly, I was out of the tub and on the bed, the nurse between my legs.
“Okay, she’s here,” she announced calmly.
“Here ?” I shrieked. “But I was only three centimeters dilated. I need the epidural.”
She glanced up at me with kind eyes. “You’re all the way ready now, and we’re past the point of an epidural.”
My eyes bugged out. “Past the point? That’s not real, that only happens in stupid romantic comedies.”
She smiled. “Well, it’s happening here and now. I’m just going to call your doctor.”
She put the phone to her ear as more nurses filtered in, the energy in the room changing from calm support to purposeful preparation.
For labor.
Of a baby.
That I had to push it out.
Without drugs.
“I can’t do this,” I panted.
“Yes, you can, honey.” The nurse looked at me with knowing eyes, with a belief in me that made no sense since she didn’t know me. “You can totally do this.”
“No I can’t.” I had thoughts of closing my legs, insisting on them cutting her out instead. They could do that, right? I could make them do that. I could threaten to sue them or something.
Why I was thinking about threatening to sue these lovely, supportive, hardworking women was a testament to how much agony I was in. I would do it in a heartbeat if it would make it stop.
A dry palm pushed the damp hair from my head before familiar lips pressed into the skin there. “You can do this, Chef,” Kane murmured against my forehead. “You can do this.”
His voice was firm, confident, full of certainty.
“You are powerful,” he whispered in my ear.
I didn’t feel powerful. Not even a little. I felt exhausted. The most exhausted I’d ever been in my life. My body felt as if it were so fragile it was made of cracked glass, ready to shatter at any moment. My hips burned, the bones grinding against each other, the pressure in my pelvis indescribable. My ass seemed like it was going to explode.
The nurses were moving around the room then, practiced, with a calm kind of urgency. One of them was on the phone with my doctor who was, apparently, stuck in traffic. More nurses came in.
They were getting ready for me to give birth .
Except I wasn’t. I couldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough.
“Chef, look at me,” Kane’s voice filtered through my foggy mind, and I veered my gaze to him. He was right beside me, hands clasped in mine. Firm. Hard. Tethering me to the earth. “You are a warrior. You can do this.”
He said it with such surety. Like it was an indisputable fact. Like he believed in me.
Everything inside me coiled as I felt my body ready for another contraction. It was like the ocean sucking the waves back in preparation for a tsunami. My breath came out of my lips in short bursts. “I am powerful,” I repeated like a mantra.
The contraction crashed over me.
The nurse was between my legs again. “Now we’ve got to push.”
She didn’t have to tell me twice; I would do anything to relieve the pressure. The pain, I’d thought I’d prepared for that—I really fucking hadn’t—but the pressure was completely unexpected. I felt like I was going to burst, like my pelvis was about to shatter.
“This is not natural!” I screamed. “Everyone in the birth classes said it was natural. Magical. This does not feel like nature. This is torture!” My sentences came out broken, fractured.
The nurses laughed. I wanted to punch them. “Nature has a way of torturing women, but you’ve got this.”
A handful more contractions ripped through me, and each time, I pushed. “Practice,” the nurse called it, but I wasn’t practicing, I was trying with all my might to get that baby out.
To no avail.
Luckily, though, the pause between contractions was longer than it had been since active labor started. I got a brief respite, sinking back onto the bed, feeling half normal. Kane would kiss my head, blow cool air in my face with a handheld fan.
Things moved impossibly fast yet excruciatingly slow at the same time. I was in my body, more than I ever had been, people in the room filtering in and out of focus with each contraction.
And then my doctor was there, rushing in, switching places with a nurse, changing out pieces of the bed, squeezing my leg, telling me I was doing great.
At some point, they got me a mirror for me to see what was going on down there, to help with the pushing. I hadn’t thought I’d want to see, but I needed it. I needed to. Kane did not.
“Stay by my head,” I demanded, my breath coming in shallow pants as I rode the blissful wave between contractions.
“No way in hell.” Kane leaned back toward me to kiss my head.
“I’m serious, Kane,” I said through gritted teeth. “You do not need to see all that.”
I was looking at the mirror out of pure necessity; even I did not want to see all of that. But I needed it in order to get this demon out of me.
Even in my throes of exhaustion, agony and general fucking madness, I understood I would never unsee myself fully dilated.
Kane, who was in no agony at all and nowhere near as exhausted—therefore having all of his mental faculties intact—would definitely not be able to unsee it. Though I didn’t have much time to argue with him, I knew my reprieve was short lived and could already feel the swell of another contraction approaching.
“I’m serious,” I gritted out.
Kane’s brow flattened as he fastened his hand tightly on my leg, holding it up and in place for me to push, as though he could feel the crest of my contraction too.
“I’m serious too, Chef,” he replied. “I’ll give you anything you ask for. But not this. I am seeing our daughter come into this world. I’m watching your body perform this fucking miracle, and that is that.”
I wanted to argue. I very much did. Especially about the whole ‘miracle’ part.
But I didn’t have the energy.
I looked from Kane to the small patch of hair that was my daughter’s head.
“Okay, this push, you’re going to get her out,” my doctor told me. “You’re going to push with all your might.”
“As opposed to the leisurely pushing I’ve been doing?” I asked sarcastically.
She only smiled.
A contraction built, and I felt my reserves of energy dwindle down to nothing. There was nothing left in me.
Except I had to.
So at the peak of my contraction, I went somewhere in my head. Outside of the room but still in it. And then I pushed.
With all my might.
And out came our daughter’s head. All of it.
My doctor cradled it, and I looked at her, half out of my body.
“That’s the hardest part, now let’s get the rest of her out.” She told me this so calmly, nonchalantly, as if she wasn’t holding half of my baby, who was hanging out of my vagina.
I pushed once more then felt immense relief.
Out she came.
Screaming.
Beautiful.
Then she was on my stomach, getting cleaned off, using her lungs.
I blinked down at her. This baby, this living, breathing, crying thing that was mine. Ours.
My hands found her skin.
It was warm, still wet with vernix, but it was perfect.
I looked up at Kane.
He was crying. Tears ran down his face as he gazed at our daughter in wonder. Then he looked at me with worship.
“I pushed her out,” I whispered. “Our baby.”
His whole face softened some more. “Yeah, Chef, you did. You did fuckin’ great.” He leaned in to kiss my head.
“You want to cut the cord, Dad?” a nurse asked.
“Nah, that’s grandma’s job,” Kane said, staring at our baby.
We’d already discussed that. Mom and Maisie were in the waiting room, and we’d instructed a nurse to go get Mom once the baby was born to surprise her with this. I knew she’d been fully expecting to be shut out of everything, as she had been all the other important moments of my adult life.
Mom rushed into the room, eyes shining and already wet with tears as she took in the scene.
For once, my mother was speechless as a nurse held out the scissors.
“Go on,” I smiled at her. It had been a revelation to me, how hard my mother had tried to connect with me. How hard I’d tried to push her out.
So it was important to me that I gave her this. Gave us this.
Her tears landed on the scissors as she cut the cord.
Then the doctors did their work.
“We’re just going to get her cleaned off and weigh her,” a nurse said as she plucked Mabel from my chest.
I nodded, even though it went against every instinct in my body to have my daughter taken from me, even if it was just a few feet across the room.
Kane followed the nurses, a hairbreadth away from them, not letting our daughter out of his sight.
My mother came to kiss my head.
“Thank you,” she whispered, tears in her eyes. “You did so wonderful, my baby.”
I let a single tear slip, watching Kane’s back.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “We did.”
The chaos of labor gave room to quiet. My doctor left after stitching me up and telling me she’d be back in the morning.
Stitches . Down there. It made sense since I’d felt the horrible ripping sensation as Mabel came out. Worth it, completely worth it.
A nurse got me up and helped me to the bathroom. I walked hunched over, totally in shock at how much pain I was in. I couldn’t straighten.
She helped me onto the toilet, and I didn’t have the energy to feel shame. She also showed me the process of putting a large pad in my disposable underwear, one that had a cooling feature, then she laid witch hazel pads on top of that to soothe.
When she helped me pull up the underwear, the relief was welcome.
Then I hobbled back to bed, one eye on Kane sitting in the rocking chair, his large finger tracing the nose of our tiny baby. They were in their own little world, his shirt off, pressing her skin to his.
Once I was settled, he immediately gave her up, settling her at my breast.
He helped me position her properly, like the lactation consultant who had been in earlier showed us. It felt unfamiliar. Strange. But also natural. I was awkward, afraid of holding her wrong, of breaking her.
Kane seemed more sure, more confident. Much more natural.
He gave her a kiss on the head then me one on the lips before he returned to his chair. Neither of us spoke, we just watched our baby drink then, eventually, fall asleep at my breast.
Carefully, oh so carefully, mindful of the tiny bundle and how any small movement made my pelvis light up with the fire of a thousand sons of bitches, I cradled her in the nook of my arm.
I left my breast exposed, too tired to cover it. One thing I lost that day was my modesty.
“You need to sleep.” Kane’s voice was soft and throaty and full of awe.
I glanced at him through half-lidded eyes, clutching the swaddled bundle in my arms. I looked down to her chubby cheeks, her closed eyes and the gentle flaring of her nostrils as she inhaled and exhaled.
“I don’t want to let her go.” My voice was hoarse from screaming during labor. I really thought I wouldn’t be the kind of woman who screamed. But then again, I had no fucking clue how tough giving birth unmedicated was. I would’ve roared like a dragon if I thought it would’ve given me relief.
Kane didn’t try to argue with me on that, but he again told me,, “Sleep.”
“I can’t sleep.” I tilted my head down to her. “I don’t want to drop her.”
“You won’t,” Kane replied firmly, sitting straighter in his chair.
“How can you know that?” I was sure I wouldn’t drop my baby, even in sleep, that there had to be some kind natural instinct to protect. But I also had been awake for over twenty-four hours and was more exhausted than I’d ever been in my life.
Kane pulled his chair even closer to the bed, though I hadn’t thought that was possible.
“Because I won’t let you,” he assured me. “If you drop her, I’ll catch her.”
His eyes weren’t bloodshot and there were no bags underneath them, even though he’d been awake for as long as I’d been. He was tired too. Granted, not as tired as I was on account of me being the one who went through childbirth.
But even still, he should’ve been fading. Kane wasn’t. Kane didn’t fade on me. His eyes were bright, determined, strong. His posture rigid.
He wouldn’t let me drop our baby. He would catch her.
Catch both of us.
“I love you,” I whispered. He reached out to caress my hand.
He might’ve said something, might’ve even said it back, but I didn’t stay awake long enough to hear it. I’d been hanging on by a thread, running on pure adrenaline, gripping on to consciousness by my fingernails. Kane’s words, his promise had been what I’d needed to let go, to trust that he was there, watching over us.