30. Chloe
30
CHLOE
“ I told you I don’t know what I’m doing!” Nina wailed.
I wasn’t alarmed by her hysterical status. I recalled freaking the hell out when my water broke, mostly because Caleb was late. He didn’t want to be born until after my due date. Like any other expecting mother, I put so much emphasis on that day, like it would be the big day. When it came and passed, my sense of urgency oddly faded.
The night my water broke, I was crazy. Nervous. Anxious. Worried about doing it alone. Not to mention, going to a freaking vet clinic after hours wasn’t the most comforting idea. As my friends and the doula put it, Thank God I didn’t need to have a C-section.
“No one does,” I confided in her. “With every baby that’s born, we’re all clueless.”
Tessa rushed up. The same with Dante and Romeo. They ran toward us, concerned.
“But it’s happening. The baby is coming,” Nina told me. “It’s seriously happening. Right now!”
She’d stood to put her water glass in the sink and as soon as she was upright, her water broke. I didn’t recall it being that much liquid, but I supposed the perspective made a difference.
I nodded. “I think it’s fair to say?—”
She cringed, curling over as she rode out another contraction. Her hand slapped onto my arm and she didn’t let go.
“Okay.” I winced through her tight grip. “Yeah, these contractions are coming faster.”
“Where the hell is Danicia?” Romeo asked.
Dante was at Nina’s other side, helping her breathe through the contraction. She gripped his arm too as Tessa ran out of the room, announcing she was grabbing Nina’s packed hospital bag to bring.
“Danicia’s on vacation,” Franco said as he ran inside with Caleb.
Caleb dragged his wide-eyed stare at the puddle on the floor to Nina growling at the pain. “Mom. She made you bleed.”
I looked down, pausing in stroking Nina’s hair back from her face. Blood seeped out a bit from beneath her nails. She clutched my forearm so hard that her nails cut into my skin.
“It’s okay.” I shrugged. “It happens.” But oh, my God. Ow , that hurts.
Dante frowned, trying to talk to her calmly and coach her to breathe through the contraction. When he attempted to move her hand from holding my arm to his, she shook her head.
“No.” She shook her head faster. “I want Chloe here. She’s helping me.”
“Okay. Okay.” Dante glanced at me as Franco continued to talk on the phone behind us, arranging transportation to the hospital. “She’s here.”
I really was. Next to her for support through her baby coming early. One among this closeknit group who welcomed me in their home. And maybe, pending Franco’s conversation with Caleb outside, maybe as an actual relative as a Constella Mafia wife soon.
It hit me then. This wasn’t a fickle, temporary stay here. This wasn’t a vacation or an excuse for protecting me and Caleb.
I was here to stay , and I regretted that it’d taken me so long to get here, to learn all that I had and toughen up on my own out there to know that I belonged where my heart was, with Franco.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I told her.
“Come with me. Please. Please come with me to the hospital.”
I nodded as Dante tried to rub her back and comfort her while Franco spoke with the guards and drivers.
“I will. I’m right here.”
“Just breathe?—”
“I am breathing,” she snapped at Dante. As soon as she shouted, she pouted. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to yell, but it’s not helping. You’re not helping. I think you got the breathing things all messed up and I’m scared and panicking, and you’re just not helping right now.”
He stopped trying to shift her hand from my arm to his. “Okay. That’s fine. Yell at me all you want. I won’t leave your side.”
Both of them were suffering heightened senses of alarm.
“I’ve got your bag,” Tessa said as she ran back into the room.
“But where is Danicia?” Romeo asked again.
It was all commotion, everyone seeming to rush and talk over each other at once. I focused on calming Nina down while we got ready to leave.
“Vacation,” Dante replied.
“She thought she could fly to see her niece’s graduation with plenty of time before the baby would come.” Nina stood, clutching my arm.
“We’ll call her,” Dante said. “The doctors at the hospital already know her and have been in contact with her throughout your appointments and everything.”
Nina nodded, but she still seemed so damn scared. “Please, Chloe. Stay with me.”
“I’m right here.”
“I’ll hang back with Caleb,” Franco offered.
“No.” Nina shook her head as Dante and I tried to get her toward the door. She waddled, hissing with the contractions that kept coming. “No. I don’t want Chloe separated from her baby.”
“I’m okay with my dad,” Caleb piped up.
“No. She’s been so scared for so long and so—” She cried out in pain again, but once she caught her breath, walking slower, she shook her head. “No. I don’t want you to worry about where Caleb is,” she told me.
I looked at Franco, then Tessa and Romeo. Raising my brows, I cleared my throat. “Rule number one. What the pregnant woman giving birth wants, she gets. Am I right?”
“Let’s go,” Dante ordered. “All of you.”
“Yeah. Sure. Right, right.” Franco ushered us all to go with Nina. Guards and soldiers came in through the front door, alarmed but alert and ready to act.
“Let’s go. Let’s go.” Franco handled getting us out and into a car. Romeo and Tessa helped get things settled and saw to everyone in the cars and security arranged. While Romeo was on the phone sending guards to the hospital, Tessa and Caleb got into a car. Franco spoke with the men here, dictating a security formation for the trip.
More than once, he glanced at me. He didn’t look concerned for me, but Nina.
“There we go. In the back,” I coached her.
“The seats?—”
“Fuck the seats, Nina,” Dante growled. “We’ll buy a new damn car.”
She panted through another contraction and I frowned. “Time these,” I told him. “They’ll want to know how close the contractions are coming.”
He nodded, grabbing his phone to jot it down.
“And go,” I told the driver.
“Go!” Nina echoed as soon as the door was closed.
“Go before I have this baby in the car—ah!”
I winced, wondering whether she could be right. Typically, first babies took a while. First-time moms could be in labor for many hours, even days. She seemed to want to break that rule, rushing straight into labor.
“It’s too early. It’s too early,” she chanted between contractions. “I’m only thirty-seven weeks and one day.”
I nodded. “That’s doable, Nina. That’s not bad. They schedule C-sections at thirty-nine weeks on the dot, and that’s just a couple of weeks away.”
“Oh, God!” She sobbed between heaving breaths. “What if that happens? What if I have to have a C-section on top of this?”
I shook my head. “Then you have a C-section. It’s not that bad. However you bring this baby into the world, it is what it is.”
“But I’m so scared.”
“No, you’re not,” I soothed. “You’re strong. You’ve got this. You’re just unaware and nervous about the unknown.”
She nodded.
“But you’re so doing this. You’ve got this. And you have nothing to fear.”
She tightened her hand on my arm through the next contraction.
“Those weren’t…” She gasped as the wave passed. “Those weren’t Braxton-Hicks.”
I laughed weakly. “No, they weren’t. And now you know.”
“Now I know? What, like I’ll do this again and know for the next time. No. Nooo. No. Hell no. I’m never having sex again. Ever, ever again.”
Dante furrowed his brow, trying to calm her and rub her back as she curled onto me.
“I doubt that.”
“No.” She shook her head against me. “Never. Not if having a baby feels like a bowling ball is slamming through my hips. I will never have sex again for the rest of my life.”
I winced and shot Dante a look over her head. “She doesn’t mean that,” I mouthed.
He rolled his eyes, staying focused on her.
“Oh, my God. Chloe, I am making you bleed.” She sat up a bit but was stopped with another contraction.
“It’s fine. It’s nothing.”
“It is not fine. You just accepted the idea of moving and staying with us, with Franco, and now I’m scaring you away, mutilating your arm and oh?—”
I gritted my teeth through the ferocity of her grip on me. Her arm shook with the strain of her toughing out the contraction.
“I just can’t let go. You’ve done this. You know how this goes. I really want you to help me through this.”
“Whatever you want, Nina. I’m here to help.”
It was a mad rush to get to the hospital, but we got there in record time. No baby was born in the backseat, but with how quickly she strained to tough out the contractions, I wasn’t sure if they’d get her to a room.
“Nina, let her go.” Dante urged Nina to release my arm so I could let the nurses and emergency techs help get her out of the car.
“No.” She shook her head, not caring that she’d latched on to me as some sort of grounding presence. “I want Chloe to help me.”
“I’m right here,” I said as I crawled back out of the car, held back by her hand on my arm. “I’ll be right here, but we’ve got to get you out of the backseat and inside.”
“Hold my hand,” Dante offered, giving her his other hand.
She sobbed, holding on to me. “I want her to stay with me. You don’t understand. I don’t understand. I don’t have my mom, I don’t have a sister. No one. I want her with me because she gets it.”
I frowned. Half of her tirade sounded like nothing but hysterical nonsense. She wasn’t a needy, demanding woman. Not once since I met her had she acted like this. But if she was about to push that baby out, she had every right to act however she wanted to. Maybe she had underlying fears that needed to be addressed, abandonment or whatnot, but now wasn’t the time to analyze that.
“Okay, okay.” I nodded at Dante, talking to him and the staff trying to get her out of the car. “Dante, you open your door. You back up and get out, and we can get her out from that side of the car. I’ll crawl through.”
It seemed silly, but it worked. Dante guided her to angle to his door, and once he was out, the techs and nurses teamed up to assist her out of the car. I did just as I said I would, crawling out with her, tethered by her hand on my arm.
“Chloe, please. Can you stay with me?”
I nodded. “Absolutely. I’m here to help,” I repeated.
As she was transferred to the gurney, though, she had to release my arm.
“Holy shit,” an emergency tech said at the blood dripping down from the crescent shapes of her nails.
“Yeah.” I winced. Blood flowed through my arm now that she wasn’t holding it so tightly and awkwardly.
“We’ll get that wrapped up.” He nodded at me as they got Nina situated on the gurney.
Dante went with her, but with all the staff, Constella guards, and others being rushed into the emergency room, it was so chaotic that I felt dizzy for a second.
Franco and Caleb followed after Romeo and Tessa who rushed up from the side parking area.
I sighed at the sight of Caleb running toward me, no doubt excited but shocked by the turn of these events.
“Mom—”
Someone else cut in closer, intercepting him.
I locked my stare on Wes as he wrapped his arm around my son’s body.
Caleb fought and wriggled the lanky man who not only was acting insane, but looked it too. His eyes were bloodshot and wide open with a crazed look. He was gaunt and thin, with wild, unkempt hair sticking up. In wrinkled clothes and standing like he was limping, he looked unhinged.
“Let me go!” Caleb jammed his elbow into Wes’s stomach.
He grunted in pain, but he didn’t release my son. He tightened his arm around him and snuck a gun out from his pocket to press it against his side.
“No!” I shot my arm out to reach for them, to physically slap this asshole from my son.
Panic swept through me. I was already overwhelmed and on edge from this whole morning with Nina and the rush to get her here. But this? Now Wes had to show up and threaten my son?
Franco walked up confidently, his furious gaze on my ex.
No. Not my son.
Our son. Terror kept me in a vise, but I tried to steady my breaths with what was different about this time that my ex tried to get into my life and ruin it.
It was Franco’s turn to defend our son and keep him safe.
“Chloe.” Tessa found me, hugging me back.
Romeo strode past us, brushing against me as he reached under his jacket.
“Let them.” Tessa nodded, tugging me away. “You don’t want to watch. You don’t want to see this. Trust me.”
“But—” I swallowed hard, unable to just walk away.
“Trust me. They’ll handle this.” She looked around, noticing the guards flanking them.
I caught Franco’s gaze. He stared at me, not trying to hide the utter malice and darkness that he felt at the sight of another man holding our son, threatening him.
He gazed at me, as though searching for an answer.
I nodded, knowing he would be killing this man. All I could do was trust that he wouldn’t let Caleb witness the worst of it.
He nodded slightly in reply, turning back to Wes.
“Get your hands off my son,” he growled.