I can be spontaneous, but first I must carefully plan everything and imagine all that could go wrong.
At the sight of Lanie waiting for her, River sighed as she got off the train. She was exhausted, nauseous, starving, and still all kinds of crazy. “What are you doing here?”
“Are you kidding me?” Lanie asked. “You deserted me in a dive bar, sneaked onto a damn train when you’re sick as a dog, and you want to know what I’m doing here? Trying to look after your ungrateful ass, that’s what I’m doing here!”
River felt her eyes fill at that. “You think I’m ungrateful?”
Lanie tossed up her hands. “What else would you call making me climb out the bathroom window of that bar to follow your footsteps?”
River blinked. “You climbed out the bathroom window?”
Lanie dropped her arms and blinked. “You didn’t?”
“Hell, no. Do I look like I’d fit out that window? I could barely fit onto the train. I went out the back exit.”
Lanie stared at her for a beat and then let out a long breath. “Yeah. That would’ve been easier . . .” She sighed. “Why did you do it?”
“Because you deserve better than to be saddled with me,” River said.
“I’m not saddled with you. I chose to go on this trip, remember? But I can’t keep doing this, this see-saw thing we have going. I didn’t want to like you and then I did. And then you weren’t who you said you were and I didn’t like you again. And now . . .”
“You’re confused,” River said softly.
“Yeah, and honestly it was a lot easier to just hate you.”
“I get that,” River said. “I’d hate me too.”
“See?” Lanie asked. “But then you say stuff like that and I feel like Cruella de Vil kicking puppies.”
“Who?”
“Hell,” Lanie said with a grimace. “How is it that I’m only thirty and feel old?”
“Do I have to answer that?” River asked and then broke off with a startled groan as a pain ripped through her lower back.
“Maybe you should sit down,” Lanie said.
She’d been in damn pain all day, and it’d made her cranky as hell. River shook her head. “Just stop being nice to me.”
“Fine, then. Sit the fuck down before you fall down,” Lanie snapped. “See? That’s me being not nice, but bitchy as hell.”
River felt the tears coming and sniffled. “Well, you’re the nicest bitchy person I ever met,” she said soggily, swiping her nose on her sleeve.
“Just get in the damn car, River. Please.”
So River got in the car. Lanie had to help her. It was humiliating. Her body had become as cumbersome as navigating a wide load on a busy freeway, and she felt like she had an alien in her belly. But worse, far worse, was the silence between her and Lanie.
Lanie parked and turned off the engine. She turned to River in the dark interior of the car. “He didn’t deserve either of us,” she said quietly.
“No,” River agreed. “What are you going to do with his things?”
“I don’t want the box. It’s yours. That’s why I put it in the trunk.”
“If you give it to me, I’ll burn everything,” River said grimly, shifting her weight in the seat, trying to get comfortable. Which was impossible. “I’ll make a bonfire, toss his things in it, and then roast marshmallows over the remnants of his life. I’d go tap-dance on his grave if I didn’t weigh as much as a house.”
Lanie opened her door. “Come on.”
The night was warm and balmy. Lanie brought River through the winery and out the back door to the deck there. There was a fire pit and chairs. Beyond that was a hidden lake that River hadn’t ventured out to.
“Wait here,” Lanie said.
So River waited in the night, trying to ignore her unbearable back pain.
Lanie returned five minutes later and River went on pretending that she was fine, even managing a small smile through the pain.
Lanie squatted before the fire pit and began to build a fire. When it was roaring, she vanished again, returning with Kyle’s box.
River found a laugh on this shitty night, and together they tossed the contents of the box into the fire.
Lanie then pulled out the makings for s’mores—marshmallows, Nutella, and graham crackers—which she’d apparently confiscated from the winery. “With Nutella, ’cuz you can’t eat chocolate when you’re pregnant apparently, which, by the way, sucks golf balls.”
She was one hundred percent River’s hero. They still weren’t speaking much, but the silence was no longer seething with bad tempers.
Progress.
The next pain came so suddenly it stole River’s breath, and she bent over into herself. Vaguely she heard Lanie swear and run over, dropping to her knees at River’s side.
“What is it, River? A cramp? Are you going to be sick again?”
She literally couldn’t catch her breath enough to answer. The pain rolled over her, into her, through her, wrapping around her torso and squeezing like a vise. When it finally passed, she was shaken and sweating.
“Talk to me,” Lanie said tightly.
River realized they were holding hands and she was gripping Lanie’s hard enough to bruise. She forced herself to let go. “I’m fine.”
“Uh, you’re pretty far from fine.”
“I think . . . I think I might be having contractions.”
Lanie’s eyes widened. “For how long?”
“All day,” River admitted. “I think I’m in labor.”
“Now?”
“No, last week! Jesus,” she gasped, bending over to catch her breath. “Dr. Rodriguez and my birthing class didn’t tell me it was going to feel like I was being slowly murdered.”
Lanie leapt to her feet. “Okay. Okay, it’s going to be okay.” She turned in a circle and then stopped short. “You’re early, right?”
“Two weeks.”
“Maybe it’s false labor.”
River was gripped by another all-encompassing pain, and when she came out of it, Lanie looked upset.
“It’s my fault,” she said. “I shouldn’t have dragged you on the road trip. That was dumb. I should’ve left you here and—”
“I wanted to go.”
“But we fought. All that unhappiness made you go into labor.”
“Or maybe the baby’s just ready,” River managed.
Lanie nodded, clearly hoping that was it. “We need to get you to the hospital.” She gasped again, like it’d just occurred to her. “Oh my God, you’re going to have a baby!”
Strange as it was, the more panicked Lanie looked—and she looked very, very panicked—the calmer River felt. “Not yet,” she said. “The pains need to be closer together. I—”
The next contraction hit unexpectedly, insidiously squeezing her from the inside out so that she couldn’t do anything but cry out. It felt like it took forever, but when she could breathe again, she sucked in air like she’d just run a mile. “How long was that?”
Lanie looked worse than River felt. Flushed and damp with sweat, eyes filled with fear. “Maybe a minute.”
“No problem,” River said with only the smallest of doubts. “And like ten minutes from the previous one, right?”
“Also only a minute,” Lanie said. “This isn’t false labor.” She jumped back up and pointed at River. “Don’t move. I’m going for help.”
Lanie ran off into the night and River lay back with a short little laugh. Don’t move. As if she could. She was stuck in this lounger until the cows came home—or someone came along that was strong enough to hoist her out. And they were going to need a crane.
Another pain began from deep inside and she placed her hands on her belly and tried to breathe through it the way she’d been taught in the classes Cora had brought her to. In the middle of it, the baby kicked hard and she managed a smile.
Today had been the day from hell all the way around, but tonight . . . “Tonight I’m going to meet you,” she whispered, cradling her belly. “And that’s going to make everything okay.”
MARK CAME OUT of a dead sleep when someone slipped into his room with all the subtlety of a bull in a china shop. “Someone better be dead.”
Lanie stepped in closer, stopping in front of his window where the moonlight slanted in, highlighting her in bold relief. With a low growl of sleepy pleasure, he wrapped his fingers around her wrist to reel her in.
“Good, you’re up,” she said in relief, moving toward him, practically falling on top of him, her silky hair brushing his face. Still half-asleep, he groaned at the feel of her body on his and went for it, rolling, tucking her beneath him.
“Yeah,” he said against her mouth. “I’m . . . up.” He punctuated this with a nudge of his hips.
She gave a half-hysterical laugh and pushed at his shoulders, waking him the rest of the way. “No, you don’t understand,” she said. “I need you.”
“I need you too.”
“River’s in labor.”
He stilled. “So . . . this isn’t a booty call?”
“No!” She pulled him out of bed and then stared at him. “You’re bare-ass naked.”
“Yeah. See anything you like?”
She threw a pair of jeans at him. “Hurry!” She tossed him a shirt, which hit him in the face. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”
“And you think I do?”
“You always do,” she said, and at the backward compliment that might not have been a compliment at all, he followed her running form out of the house and through the night.
River was in a lounge chair in front of the fire pit, clutching her belly, bent at the waist, gasping for air.
“Contraction,” Lanie said and dropped at River’s side. “I’ve brought Mark,” she murmured, stroking back the younger woman’s hair. “He knows what to do.”
Mark liked the easy confidence she had in him, but in this case it was overrated. He’d been overseas when his girls had been born. And the two times a woman had gone into labor on one of his shifts, Emergency Services personnel had gotten to the scene before him.
He knew his mom had been taking River to labor classes and he pulled out his cell phone to call her when he remembered. “My mom’s in San Francisco until tomorrow.”
River lifted her face, fear etched into her features. “She’s my labor coach.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “We’ll figure it out at the hospital.”
He picked River up, ignoring her protests that she was too heavy, and carried her to his truck, while Lanie ran ahead and opened the door for him. They got River buckled in through another long and what looked like painful contraction, and then the three of them were off into the night.
He tossed Lanie his phone. “Text my mom. Tell her what’s happening. First babies sometimes take a while; she might be able to get back in time. Text my sisters, let them know where we are and that they’re on twin duty, and that someone needs to go out to the fire pit with the hose to extinguish the fire. Then call the hospital and let them know we’re coming.”
Lanie handled all of that while at the same time holding onto River’s hand and talking her through each contraction that hit.
Mark drove, fascinated by this new Lanie. Whatever had happened on their road trip, whatever her personal feelings, she’d pushed through them enough to keep it together for River.
They arrived at the hospital and a nurse helped River into a wheelchair before turning to Mark and Lanie expectantly. “Who’s her coach?”
Mark looked at Lanie, who was looking right back at him.
“One of you needs to come back with us,” the nurse said impatiently. “To keep Mama here comfortable and calm.”
River’s gaze was glued to Lanie with fear and hope and expectation.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Lanie reminded her. “You’d be better off without me.”
“No!” River clutched Lanie’s hand tight enough that the skin went stark white.
Mark felt Lanie brace herself and nod. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, I’ll go with you.” She walked off at River’s side and just before she vanished behind the swinging double doors of the ER, she glanced back at him with a fearful expression.
He smiled with what he hoped was confidence. “I’ll be right here waiting for you,” he said, and he knew that he wasn’t talking about just tonight. Whether she got that or not, he had no idea. But she nodded and vanished.
He headed to the front desk, thinking about how she’d come through for River in spite of how she really felt about her. In fact, she’d come through for all the people he cared about one way or another: his mom, his girls, his sisters, hell, his entire family. He could bury his head in the sand all he wanted, it wouldn’t change the fact.
He wasn’t just falling in love with her, he actually already loved her, every single stubborn, frustrating, gorgeous inch.