Chapter 41
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Andrea
I was on the floor of the animal wing with Buddy because getting down there at thirty-two weeks was an ordeal that involved a controlled descent, a prayer, and the acceptance that getting back up would require outside assistance.
But Buddy had been glued to my side all day, whining if I left the room, pressing against my legs, and I figured he deserved some floor time.
I scratched behind his ears and talked to him about Finneas’s latest argument with the nursery furniture delivery company, which had sent the wrong dresser twice. “He called them and used the King voice. On a furniture company. The poor customer service woman probably quit on the spot.”
Buddy put his chin on my knee.
“He’s going to be an insane father. You know that, right? Alex is going to be the most overprotected child in Georgia.”
I shifted my weight to push myself up and a pain lanced through my abdomen so sharp I gasped and grabbed the edge of the window seat. My whole body locked. Buddy whined and pressed his nose against my side.
It passed. I sat still, breathing through it, my hand on my belly. Braxton Hicks. I’d had them before, the practice contractions the doctor warned about. Brief. Irregular. Nothing.
I waited a minute, caught my breath, and started pushing myself up again.
The second one hit harder. A tight band of pressure across my belly that made me double over. I grabbed Buddy’s collar because he was the only solid thing within reach and the pain was different. Sharper. Lower. It didn’t pass in a few seconds. It held, squeezing, and I couldn’t breathe through it.
No. No no no. It was too soon. Thirty-two weeks was too soon. Over a month early. Alex wasn’t ready. His lungs might not be fully developed yet. Full term was nine months and I wasn’t there yet and this couldn’t be happening.
“Okay,” I said, and my voice came out thin and high. “Okay. This is fine. This is Braxton Hicks. This is practice.”
The third one started before the second fully stopped and the panic hit me like ice water. Fuck. This wasn’t practice. Practice contractions didn’t come back to back. Practice contractions didn’t make you see white.
My phone was on the window seat. I reached for it with shaking hands and almost dropped it twice before I got Finneas’s number up. He picked up on the first ring.
“Something’s wrong.” I heard my own voice and it sounded terrified and I couldn’t fix it. “I’m in the animal wing. I’m having contractions and they’re coming fast and it’s too early, Finneas. It’s too early.”
“I’m coming. Don’t move. I’m coming right now.”
I heard him drop something. The scrape of a chair. Running footsteps through the phone and then he hung up.
I sat on the floor with my hand on my belly and my back against the window seat and tried to breathe the way the doctor taught me, in through my nose, out through my mouth, slow.
My brain wouldn’t slow down. Thirty-two weeks.
Premature. NICU. Underdeveloped lungs. All the worst-case scenarios I’d read about at three in the morning when I couldn’t sleep were playing on a loop behind my eyes.
“You stay in there,” I whispered to my belly. “You hear me? You are not coming yet. You’re not ready and neither am I.”
He was there in under two minutes. I knew because I was counting seconds between contractions and he came through the door at a hundred and fourteen. Running, actually running, and when he saw me on the floor his face went white.
“Don’t panic,” I said.
“I’m not panicking.”
“You look like you’re panicking.”
“I’m fine.” He crouched beside me, his hands firm on my belly, on my back, even though his face said the opposite of fine. I held onto that, the sureness of his hands, because mine wouldn’t stop shaking. “How far apart?”
“Two minutes. Maybe less. They started a few minutes ago.”
“It’s too soon.” His voice was controlled but I could hear the edge underneath. “Thirty-two weeks is too soon.”
“I know.”
“Can you walk?”
“I think so.”
He helped me up. I leaned into him and we got three steps before the next one hit and I gripped his arm so hard I heard him inhale through his teeth. He didn’t move, didn’t flinch, just planted his feet and held me upright while the contraction squeezed through me like a fist.
“We’re going to the hospital,” he said when it passed.
“It might be Braxton Hicks.”
“It might not. We’re going.”
“Finneas...”
“Andrea, it’s too early for him to come. We’re going to the goddamn hospital right now.”
I didn’t argue because the next contraction was already building and my legs were shaking and when he picked me up I let him.
I buried my face in his neck and held on while he carried me down the hall, out the front door.
His heartbeat was hammering through his chest against my cheek and his arms were locked under me like iron and I was so scared I couldn’t think about anything except the baby, please let the baby be okay, please.
He drove too fast. I told him to slow down. He didn’t.
“Slow down, Finneas.”
“No.”
“You’re going to get pulled over.”
“Then they can follow us to the hospital.”
“It’s probably nothing. It’s probably just strong Braxton Hicks.”
“Then the hospital will tell us that and we’ll go home.” His knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “But if it’s not nothing, if he’s trying to come at thirty-two weeks...”
He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t need to. I was already there, already in the worst-case scenario, imagining Alex in a NICU incubator with tubes and monitors and his tiny chest struggling to breathe. I pressed both hands against my belly like I could hold him in by force.
He ran a yellow light. I would have fought him about it but another contraction crested, my teeth clenched, eyes squeezed shut against the pressure, one hand on the door handle, the other crushing his arm. When it passed I was panting and there were tears on my cheeks that I didn’t remember crying.
“We’re almost there,” he said, and his voice cracked on the last word. “Two minutes.”
“He can’t come yet. He’s not ready.”
“He’s not coming. He’s not.”
Neither of us believed that. We were both just saying it because the alternative was too terrifying to sit with in a car going twenty over the speed limit.
He carried me in. I told him I could walk.
He ignored me. A nurse directed us to a room where he set me on the bed like I was made of glass.
I opened my mouth to tell him I wasn’t fragile but another contraction hit, my hand crushing his, knuckles aching, and the only thought in my head was please, please, it’s too early, he’s not done, give him more time.
The doctor came, examined me, hooked up the monitors.
I watched the lines on the screen tracking the contractions, the peaks and valleys, while Alex’s heartbeat filled the room through the speaker, a fast rhythmic whooshing that sounded like a tiny drum.
My whole body was rigid, waiting for the doctor to say something terrible.
Another contraction tightened across my belly while we waited and I gripped the bed rail and breathed through it.
“Braxton Hicks,” the doctor said after twenty minutes. “Strong ones, but not labor. No dilation. The baby’s vitals are perfect.”
I closed my eyes. The relief hit me so hard a sob came out of my mouth, half laugh, half cry. Not labor. Alex was staying.
“They might continue for a while,” the doctor said. “But they’re not dangerous. Try to rest.”
She left. Another contraction rolled through, duller now that I knew it wasn’t the real thing, but still enough to make me clench my jaw. “Shit,” I muttered, breathing through it. “Even the fake ones hurt like hell.”
Finneas was in the chair beside my bed. He was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, his hands pressed flat against his face. His shoulders were rigid. He wasn’t looking at me.
“Hey,” I said.
He didn’t move.
“Finneas. Hey. I’m okay. The baby’s okay.”
He dropped his hands. His eyes were red.
His jaw was locked so tight the muscle was jumping and his hands were shaking in his lap.
I stared at them because I’d never seen that before.
Finneas’s hands didn’t shake. They gripped armrests, crushed pens, held me upright when I couldn’t stand.
They carried me through hallways and drove through yellow lights and pressed against my belly every night like a promise.
They were shaking now.
“I thought...” he started, and his voice cracked and he stopped.
My chest split open. He’d held it together.
Every second of it, from the moment he came through that door and saw me on the floor, through carrying me, driving, walking into the hospital, standing beside the bed while the doctor examined me.
He held it all together because I needed him to, and now the doctor had said we were safe and he was falling apart in a plastic chair.
“I know,” I said softly.
“If something had happened to you. If something happened to him...”
“Nothing happened. We’re here. We’re fine.”
He reached for my hand. I gave it to him. He held it with both of his and pressed it against his forehead and I could feel him trembling through his palms. The aftershock of the fear he’d been swallowing since my phone call, coming out now in waves through his hands.
I watched him. This man who ran a kingdom, who commanded Alphas, who stood in front of councils and gave orders that shaped hundreds of lives. Undone in a hospital chair because the idea of losing me, of losing our son, broke something in him that pack politics couldn’t touch.
This was who he was. Not the King, not the CEO. This.
“I forgive you,” I said.
His head came up. Red eyes, wrecked face.
“All of it. Everything. I’m done.”
“Andrea...”
“Shut up and let me finish.” I took a breath.
“I’ve known for a while. I think I’ve known since Whitebrook, maybe since you told me the truth on those porch steps.
I understood why you did it. Your mother was dying, or you thought she was, and you made a terrible choice under impossible pressure.
You should have told me. You should have let me help.
But I understood the why, even when I hated the how. ”
My voice was shaking. I didn’t care.
“And I’ve been watching you for months. Every morning you showed up. Every time you didn’t push when I said no. Every time you chose patience over pride. I kept waiting for you to slip, to do something that proved I was right to keep my guard up, and you never did. You just kept being there.”
His hands tightened around mine.
“I believe you when you say you won’t do it again.
I believe you because the man who sat in a car on my grandmother’s lawn for twelve hours is not the same man who walked past my desk with Lorraine on his arm.
You’re not him anymore. I’ve known that for a while too. I was just too scared to say it.”
I listened to Alex’s heartbeat through the monitor speaker, strong and even.
“I sat in this bed for twenty minutes thinking our son was coming too early. Thinking about him being born into the middle of all this bullshit between us, all the walls I built, the hurt I was holding onto like some kind of trophy. And I decided I didn’t want that for him.
I want him born into a world where his parents are okay.
Where we’re not circling each other pretending we’re something less than what we are. ”
I looked back at him. “I love you. I’ve been in love with you for a while and I was too stubborn to say it. So there it is.”
He stood up from the chair, leaned over the bed, put his forehead against mine. I could feel him breathing, shaky, his hand on the side of my face, his thumb tracing my cheekbone. His eyes were closed, lashes wet.
“I love you,” he said, rough, barely there. “So much it scares the hell out of me.”
“Yeah well. Join the club.”
He laughed, broken, wet, and I pulled him closer by the back of his neck and kissed him.
In the hospital room with monitors beeping, our son’s heartbeat whooshing through the speaker, his tears against my cheeks.
He kissed me back carefully, his hand cradling my face, and I felt the last wall come down.
Not a crash. Just a quiet settling, like something that had been leaning finally deciding to lie flat.
A nurse poked her head in, saw us, and quietly backed out. I snorted against his mouth.
“We have an audience.”
“Don’t care.”
He sat back down but didn’t let go of my hand. I lay in the hospital bed with the monitors humming and the contractions still rolling through every few minutes, duller now but present.
“So,” I said. “Anything you want to tell me?”
He took a beat before he answered. “There are things happening with the pack.”
“I know.”
He looked at me.
“You’ve been tense for weeks, Finneas. You check your phone and then put it face down. You had six missed calls the other night that you thought I didn’t notice.” I squeezed his hand. “You’re doing it again. The thing where you carry shit alone because you think you’re protecting me.”
“Andrea...”
“That’s how we got here in the first place. That’s how we ended up broken. You decided to handle your mother alone and it blew up in both our faces. I just told you I love you. Don’t make me regret it by pulling the same crap.”
He looked down at our hands. “You’re right.”
“I know I’m right. So tell me. Tonight. All of it.”
“I will.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
I squeezed his hand. He squeezed back. Alex’s heartbeat filled the room, fast and strong. I closed my eyes and let the sound hold me.