EPILOGUE
ZETH
Sweat beads on Sloane’s brow, glistening. The Camaro’s engine screams as I run a red light and swing the car through a left hand turn. Sloane yelps, holding onto the dashboard for dear life. “If you don’t calm down, you’re going to crash,” she says, a hitch in her voice. “I don’t want to give birth to this baby in the back of an ambulance, okay? I don’t want them to have to cut him out of me because I’m dead, and I don’t want for our child to have to go live in foster care because you’re dead, too. So slow down.”
Nope. Not fucking happening. How do I explain to her that I can’t humanly obey her command right now? There’s absolutely no way I can ease off the gas pedal. The baby is coming, and she’s in pain. I’m going to get her to the hospital as quickly as I possibly can, and no one and nothing is going to stop me. “It’s two in the morning. There’s no one on the roads,” I say, grinding my teeth together. “And my driving skills are unparalleled, anyway. I don’t crash cars. I’m not going to kill us, I promise.”
Sloane blows out of her mouth hard, her lips forming the shape of an O. Her cheeks are flushed and red. Her hair is tied back into a messy ponytail. She groans, her head tipping back against the headrest as she screws her eyes closed. “This sucks,” she moans. “And I haven’t shaved. I haven’t shaved anything. You weren’t supposed to show up for another week,” she complains, jabbing a finger at her belly.
“I don’t think the baby cares if you haven’t shaved your pussy,” I say. My eyes remain glued to the road, but I can feel the horrified look she’s sending my way. I can feel it burning into the side of my face like a red-hot poker.
“The baby won’t care,” she says. “But you forget, I’m going to know the person who delivers him. And not in a, we’ve-had-a-bunch-of-appointments-where-you’ve-told-me-what-to-expect-in-this-process, kind of way. But in a, we-graduated-in-the-same-class-and-we-go-for-beers-after-work-sometimes kind of way. It makes things a little different. Hilary’s still on vacation. I didn’t know Hilary. She’s brand new. Now, I’m going to get Ramesh, or Gayle, or…” She falls silent.
I know what she’s just realized, and my hands tighten on the wheel.
“You know it can’t be helped if…”
“If Oliver Massey is going to be the one delivering my son? Yeah. I know.” I don’t like it. Of course I don’t. But shit. He’s a qualified doctor, and he has experience delivering babies. I trust him not to fuck up the birth just to spite me. And the plus side of him being obviously in love with Sloane is that he’s definitely not going to put her in any danger. “If his gaze so much as lingers between your legs once the baby’s out, I’m going to punch him in his goddamn mouth, though, you realize,” I say.
Sloane laughs softly. “I realize. Oh, shit. Shit. Shitshitshitshit.” She doubles over, holding her belly, gritting her teeth. I fucking hate this. I hate that I can’t take the pain away. I hate that I’m partially responsible for the pain she’s in. Okay, I’m fully responsible for the pain she’s in. If I hadn’t come inside her… Then again, if she hadn’t forgotten taking antibiotics would render her birth control ineffective…
That’s all academic now. We’re here and we’re having a baby, and I couldn’t be fucking happier about it. I just wish she wasn’t suffering so badly. “Are you sure you can’t just have a C-section?” I ask, taking another corner at breakneck speeds.
“You can’t just…decide to have a…C-section,” she pants. “Well, you can, but we don’t…encourage it. Owwwwwww. It’s better to do it…naturally.”
“Fuck naturally. Naturally is sucking, you said so yourself.”
“Just shut up and drive, Zeth Mayfair, before I try and strangle you.”
I drive, my jaw set, refusing to blink. I’ll never admit this out loud, but I’m fucking scared. Things go wrong childbirth all the time. Women still die. I read about it online. It’s uncommon, but it happens.
Another mile closer to the hospital. Another.
“You’ve gone quiet,” Sloane says softly.
I wring the steering wheel with both hands, exhaling in a huff down my nose. “I’m fine. You’re fine. Everything’s going to be fine.”
******
“It’s been four fucking hours. How long does this usually take?” Mason asks, fidgeting in his seat.
Kaya, sitting next to him, elbows him, her eyes doubling in size. “You wanna go shit out a watermelon and see how long it takes you?”
“It’s not like that,” Mason retorts. “Women’s bodies are primed for childbirth. The cervix dilates, the vagina expands like elastic, and—”
“Fuck, please stop. Please.” Michael puts down the apple he was about to take a bite out of, eyeing it balefully before tossing it into the trash can beside his seat.
Mason smirks. I watch them chatter between themselves, but I can’t distance myself from the nerves that have taken over my body. I didn’t know it was going to be like this. I had no fucking idea. It’s a fucking miracle couples ever have more than one child, if they have to living through this nightmare each and every time.
Luckily, Oliver wasn’t the doctor on call when we arrived at the hospital. Ramesh, one of Sloane’s friends, wheeled her into the delivery room, telling me not to worry, to relax, to go grab a coffee, and I felt like slamming my fist repeatedly into is face. Relax. Ha! Fucking sadist.
Michael passes out, and then so does Mason, until it’s only me and Kaya left holding our vigil. At around seven in the morning, Pippa comes rushing into the waiting room, panic all over her face. She beelines straight for me, patting down her un-brushed hair. “I’m sorry, my battery died in the night. I didn’t get your message until half an hour ago.”
I look her up and down, trying not to smile. “You’re still wearing your pyjamas,” I tell her gruffly. If you’d have told me a year ago I’d be happy to see Pippa Newan standing in front of me while I was waiting for Sloane to give birth, I would have fucking laughed my ass off. But over the past six months, she’s been there for Sloane. Unquestionably. She’s been understanding, and while she may not have approved of every single one of our life choices, she’s kept a civil tongue in her head. More than that, she’s made an effort to get to know me. I’m never going to be her best fucking friend, but that doesn’t matter, because Sloane is. And if Pippa is important to the woman I love, then she’s important to me, too.
Pippa looks down at herself, her brow wrinkling. “Yeah, well, I kind of dashed out of the house before I had time to change.” She slumps down into the seat beside me. “I can’t believe this is actually happening,” she says. “I can’t believe the two of you are going to be parents.”
I’ve been mirroring that exact sentiment since we arrived at St. Peter’s and everything got very, very real. The idea of this…this new person I’m about to meet…I can’t wrap my head around it. I’m going to be someone’s father. It’s just too damn surreal.
“Are you glad you waited? To find out?” Pippa asks quietly.
“We just didn’t need to,” I answer. “We’ve known from the beginning that we were going to have a boy.”
“So sure of yourselves,” Pippa muses. “It’d serve you right if you end up being wrong. I bet you haven’t even thought of a name for a girl, have you?”
“Nope.” There is every chance we’re wrong, of course. Doctors have told expectant parents they’re having a boy or a girl and been wrong before, so our guesswork could easily be false. But I don’t know. I’m certain of it, down in my bones. So is Sloane.
My knee begins to bounce. Pippa places her hand on my thigh, stilling me. “Talk. Say something. Take your mind off it,” she says.
I have so few words inside of me, saved up for other people. I can talk to Sloane about anything, but outside of our two-person unit I can’t fucking bear holding long, elaborate conversations. Not even with Michael. I’m just not…capable. Pippa’s right, though. Right now I need the distraction. If I don’t take my mind off what’s going on through those double doors right now, I’m going to end up fucking charging through them to find out what the fuck is going on, and Sloane was insistent. She refused to let me step foot into the delivery room. Said her I’d never look at her pussy the same way again if I saw a living human being pushed out of it. Not gonna lie. I didn’t argue with her.
So I take a deep breath and I say the first thing that comes into my head. “I used to come here. Before.”
“Before?”
“Before Sloane and I were together. But…after…the first time we met. I needed to see her. To see if she was okay. And…I wanted to see her.”
Pippa sits heavily back into her chair. “Oh.”
“Yeah. I know. I’m a creepy fucking stalker.”
Pippa looks down at her hands. Her right hand is scarred, her ring finger permanently bent at a crooked angle, but she has the use of it. She’s figured out how to write with her left. She’s quiet for a moment, then she says, “Do you believe in soul mates, Zeth?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Well…I do. And for a longest time, I was convinced there was someone out there for Sloane, who was her intellectual equal, who was good and right for her. And that person was not you.”
I grumble low in the back of my throat. “So you’re calling me stupid. And bad. And unworthy of her.” As much as I am able to, I’m teasing her. She knows this. Smiling a little, she reaches over and squeezes my hand lightly.
“I’m saying I thought that once upon a time. I know better now. I’m saying that no matter what I thought, you recognized that Sloane was the woman for you, a part of you that was missing, and Sloane recognized the same in you. And while you may not be anything quite so fantastical or spiritual as soul mates to one another, I believe that you fell in love with her that night in that hotel room. And she fell in love with you, too. Despite the circumstances, and despite the time and all the pain that followed after.” She takes a deep breath, looking around, watching the people walking up and down the corridor with an inexplicable sadness in her eyes. “So, no,” she says. “You coming here to watch her and check in on her…I don’t think that makes you a creepy fucking stalker. I think you were just…drawn to that the missing part of you. Don’t get me wrong, Zeth. You are a frightening individual to know. There are some things I will never see eye to eye with you on. But, you’re the counterweight to something very special. And…now that I’m not running in the opposite direction from you all the time, I can see how special you are, too.”
I can’t move. I sit for a long time, staring at the floor, replaying the words Pippa has just said to me. I’m not emotionally equipped to respond to her in a way that she’ll understand. I try. I really fucking try to come up with the right words, to put them in the right fucking order, but I just…can’t. In the end, I simply reach over and take her hand, the way she took mine a moment ago, and I squeeze her back.
Pippa’s faint smile tells me she understands. “You, Zeth Mayfair,” she says, “are more than welcome.”
******
By midday I’m really starting to freak the fuck out. No one is sleeping anymore. Everyone looks slightly worried, which is doing nothing to ease my fucking panic. Mason won’t stop checking on his thumbnails. Kaya denies that she’s counting the ceiling tiles overhead, over and over again, but she is. And Michael is prowling up and down the hallway like a goddamn caged lion. I’m frozen in my seat, staring at the clock on the wall, my heart lurching every time the second hand ticks further around its face. I feel like I’m about to burst out of my fucking skin.
Fuck it.
Enough.
Enough of this.
I stand up. I’m about to bolt through the doors, determined to go and find Sloane, when they swing open on their own and a short, curvy little nurse wearing a facemask and a paper gown over her scrubs emerges, gunning straight for me.
“You’re Zeth?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Can you please come with me?”
My knees almost buckle underneath me. I was about to force my way into the delivery room, but now this woman is asking me to go with her, her face so drawn and serious, I’m shitting myself. “Why? What’s happened?” I demand.
“No, no, nothing’s happened. I just need you to come with me, please. I’ll explain in a second.”
“She’s alive, though?” Michael asks. “She’s not dying or anything?”
The nurse just smiles politely. Not a no. She doesn’t say Sloane’s not dying. Holy shit. Holy fuck. Holy—
“Please, Mr. Mayfair. I promise, I’ll explain as we get you gowned up.”
I have to really concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other. I’m learning to walk all over again, because my legs refuse to function on their own. I follow behind the nurse, choking on the lump in my throat. Something’s wrong. I can fucking feel it. Something is horribly wrong.
In a small scrub room flanked by long troughs, the nurse hands me a paper gown and fastens it at the back. She makes me wash my hands, and then gives me gloves and a facemask, then she leads me through an imposing grey door, and we’re in the delivery room.
Sloane’s lying out on the table. Ramesh Patel’s sitting on a stool between her legs, and the only part of his face I can see—his eyes, his eyebrows, his forehead—tell a worrying story. He’s frowning, creases everywhere, concern lingering in his eyes. Sloane’s head is tilted away from me, the column of her neck exposed, so, so pale, her skin slick with sweat. Fuck. I can’t deal with this. She doesn’t move as I approach the table. Doesn’t move a muscle. I halt a few steps away from her, dread coiling deep inside me, wrapping around my very bones. Is this why they’ve called me in here? Is…is she fucking dead? The nurses hovering around the bed all look very stern. One of them takes me by the elbow, guiding me forward, forcing me to move.
“Don’t worry. She’s just sleeping,” Ramesh says. He stands up and stretches, arching his back, rocking from side to side before he sits down on the stool again. “It’s typical for first time labors to take a long time, but it becomes exhausting for the mother after a while. The baby’s fine, but Sloane’s waters have been broken for some time. It’d be better for us to move things along as quickly as we can now, so we can avoid putting the baby in any danger. We need you to help her, Zeth. Can you do that?”
I just stare at the fucker. Help her? She needs my help? “How?” My voice is little more than a croak in the back of my throat.
“Just be here. Support her. Encourage her. Get her to rally, if you can. You can start by waking her up.”
The nurse who came and got me wheels a stool to Sloane’s side. “Here,” she says. “Sit down. Hold her hand.”
The next thing I know, I’ve done it, my body obeying her without any command from me. Sloane’s hand feels cold in mine. Clammy and lifeless. For a second I think the fucker has lied to me, and that she is dead, but then she twitches, her fingers tightening ever so slightly around mine. With my other hand, I reach up and sweep her hair—plastered to her forehead with cold sweat—out of the way. I brush my hand over her hair repeatedly, watching her, relief surging through me every time her chest rises incrementally and falls. “Sloane? Sloane, baby, can you wake up?”
She groans, her head rocking a little as she tries to move.
“Come on, baby. Wake up for me.” I have never spoken to her this gently. I don’t think I’ve ever used this tense whisper to communicate with anyone before. Ever. I didn’t even know I was capable of sounding this way. Sloane manages to turn her head toward me, her eyelids fluttering. They open a crack, and then she’s watching me with those intense eyes of hers, though it looks like she’s seeing me through a heavy, penetrating fog.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” she whispers, her voice cracking the same way mine did a moment ago. Her throat is raw from screaming, though, not from emotion. I hold onto her hand, bringing it up to my mouth, placing my lips against the back of it and holding it there.
“I’m here to make you hurry the fuck up,” I tell her, my mouth moving against her skin. “They need the room back. Your St. Peter’s of Mercy discount card has been revoked. They’re charging us by the minute.”
Sloane smiles; it looks like it takes a hell of a lot of effort on her part. Her eyes go to Ramesh. “That true?” she asks weakly.
Ramesh laughs, the concern that was all over his face when I walked into the delivery room now banished, nowhere to be seen. “Not at all. You’re our golden child. You have all the time in the world. We just thought you might like to get this over before shift change. A lot of your colleagues are waiting to say hello to this baby before they go home.”
Sloane attempts to smile again, but then a shudder runs through her body, shaking her violently as she curves upward, strain marking her face. “Arrrrrgghhhhh!” Her grip tightens on my hand, her fingernails digging into my skin.
I’ve watched countless people scream in pain before, but this is different. The agony ripping at Sloane isn’t inflicted upon her externally. It’s coming from within her, from inside her very being, and it’s swallowing her whole. She falls back onto the bed, whimpering as the contraction ends, and I want to fucking die.
“Good job, Sloane,” Ramesh says in a soothing tone. “You’re doing so well. Brace yourself for the next one. They’re riding close on each other’s heels now.”
Sure enough, minutes later, another contraction tears through her. My knuckles pop as Sloane squeezes my hand, her face a rictus of pain and misery, sweat rolling down her cheeks. She slumps back again, panting, crying a little under her breath.
“Can’t you give her some more pain relief?” I demand.
The nurse standing on the other side of the bed, monitoring the read outs on the silenced heart monitor connected to Sloane’s chest and stomach, shakes her head. “She refused any pain relief.”
It takes a beat for that to process. “What…the…fuck? She’s hasn’t had anything?”
“A lot of women prefer not to,” she continues. “The pain meds available to us are relatively safe for the unborn child, but there are always risks. They can suppress the baby’s ability to breathe properly once they’re out of the womb.”
My head spins. I didn’t even ask Sloane whether she was going to take the meds available to her. I just assumed…
“Quit talking about me…like I’m not…here,” Sloane pants, wincing in between words. “We’re doing this naturally. We have to. It’s too…late for any of that bullshit now anyway.”
I look around, wildly scanning the room, searching for a cabinet or some kind of drawer that’s clearly marked, ‘the good drugs,’ so I can end this madness now and dose her up myself. Sloane gives my hand a light squeeze. “Hey. It’s okay. I got this. I just…need…” She stops talking as another contraction rolls through her.
There aren’t many gaps for talking after that. The waves of pain come one after the other, bleeding into one another. Sloane seems to enter this doped state, her eyes unfocused, roving around the room as she strains and grinds her teeth together again and again.
Half an hour.
An hour.
I can’t take much more of this. Sloane falls asleep, her body giving out on her when the contractions cease, only to wake up screaming thirty or sixty seconds later.
“Do something,” I snarl at Ramesh. “This is fucking torture. She’s not going to make it if she has to do this much longer.”
The doctor ignores the threatening tone in my voice, his focus entirely trained on what’s happening between Sloane’s legs. “She’s not dying, Mr. Mayfair. She’s fighting. Give her a chance. Let her fight. Help her fight.”
And so I do. I do it the only way I know how. I provoke her.
“You’re making this way harder than it needs to be,” I whisper into her ear. “You’re letting our unborn baby kick your ass.” Her eyes widen, refocusing a little as she gives me a sideways glance.
“I’d like to see you…do this.” She sounds exhausted, but there’s a spike of defiance in her tone.
“I’d have gotten the job done hours ago. We’d already be home by now.”
“Fuck…you.”
“Seriously. I’m surprised I’m even having to say this, but I didn’t think you were this weak.” I hate the words coming out of my mouth. I hate the arrogant smile I’m sliding into place, and the bored expression I adopt after it.
“Fuck you,” Sloane hisses again. She suddenly seems more awake. “You can leave if you’re going to be an asshole.”
“I’m staying,” I tell her. “You can’t make me leave. Not unless you get on with it and have this baby. That’s when I’ll leave.”
She screams as another contraction hits; she pushes harder than she was a moment ago, her teeth bared, eyes screwed shut tight. She puts her whole body into it this time.
“What the hell was that? You didn’t even try.”
If looks could kill, I would be eviscerated by the hateful glare Sloane fixes on me. “Go, Zeth. Seriously. Leave.”
Slowly shaking my head, I look to the nurse standing by the heart rate monitor. “She’s trying to call this in, isn’t she? Has she never delivered a baby before? I thought she had. Must have been wrong, though. She doesn’t seem to know how this thing works.” The nurse looks horrified, like she wants to wrap her own hands around my throat and strangle me herself. She doesn’t agree with me, but she doesn’t need to. My carefully designed barbs have the desired effect. Sloane roars with effort the next time a contraction hits her. She screams, and she fights, refusing to allow her exhaustion to claim her. She keeps on pushing, keeps on railing against the pain.
“Pathetic,” I say.
“GET THE FUCK OUT!,” Sloane hollers, but her hand holds onto me like her life depends on it, her nails breaking the skin, drawing blood.
“There she is. There’s my angry girl,” I whisper. I kiss the back of her hand again, my jaw locked, my pulse thumping at my temples. I can see what this is costing her, and my heart feels like it’s swelling in my chest. She’s doing this for us. She’s doing this for our child. This is the reason I called her my angry girl in the first place. I was teasing her back then, but the truth of the matter is that she impressed me. She blew me away with her strength of character and her fire. She’s not just angry. She’s fierce. She’s determined. She’s strong. She’s brave as fuck. She is everything she needs to be in order to withstand being in love with a man like me, and I am eternally fucking grateful for that fact.
“Come on, Sloane. You’re doing it. You’re doing it. Two more big pushes,” Ramesh says. Sloane gives him what he wants. It doesn’t even take two more pushes, though; she manages it in one.
A look of shock travels over her face, and then a thin, reedy cry splits the air in two. A vice tightens around my chest, preventing me from breathing. That sound…
“Nice, healthy lungs,” Ramesh says, as he works between Sloane’s legs, and then…
And then…
God.
Sloane’s hand is shaking in mine. A frightened sob comes out of her as she looks from the bloodied, tiny little form Ramesh is holding up in his hands to me. So small. So fucking small. “Is he…?” she asks.
“He’s fine. Good color. No fluid on the lungs. His eyes are already open.”
I bolt of adrenalin fires through me, sending me reeling. His eyes are already open. His eyes… He’s real. He’s here. And we were fucking right: he’s a boy. The sound of my son’s urgent, terrified crying sounds out again, and I feel like I’m going to slide off my stool and sink to the fucking ground. Ramesh cuts the cord that still connects the baby to Sloane, and then he hands him to the nurse.
“Please,” Sloane whispers, holding out her arms. “I need to see him.”
The nurse doesn’t waste a second in handing him over. She places him on Sloane, gently tugging her gown down so that he’s lying on her bare chest, and the two of us just stare down at the tiny form we created together, neither of us knowing what to say. We’re both silent, awed and fucking terrified as we take him in.
Two eyes.
The tinniest, slightly upturned nose.
A perfect cupid’s bow, and full, flushed lips.
Dark, almost black wisps of hair marking the crown of his head.
His tiny hands flex, fingers clawing reflexively against Sloane’s skin.
He stops crying, his face suddenly serene, as if, after all of the panic and trauma and strain of being born, he finally realizes he is here and he is safe. With us. He is safe with us.
His eyes open, barely cracked against the bright lights, and a moment follows where I’m looking into my son’s eyes for the very first time.
I break down, and I fucking cry.
Sloane cups her hand against the back of his head, a deep and unfathomable love transforming her face, washing away her exhaustion as she looks into his eyes, too.
“Oh my god,” she whispers. “Oh my god, he’s perfect.” A tear slides down her face. “Thank god he looks like me,” she says.
I huff a single laugh, my voice cracking.
“Here.” She scoops him into her arms, and she lifts him. His arms jerk in the air, his little body trembling as Sloane holds him out to me.
“I can’t. I—” I’ve never felt fear like this before. It digs its claws in deep, raking them across my very soul.
“It’s okay,” Sloane says softly. “You’re not going to hurt him. You’re never going to hurt him. You’re his daddy.” She’s saying so much more with those words. She’s telling me that I’m worthy of the role. She’s reading my mind and seeing the paralysing doubt inside—the doubt that I’m good enough for this. The doubt that I’ll be a good influence in this little boy’s life.
“You’re his lion,” she whispers. “You’re his protector. His best friend. His father. You’re going to be his everything, just like you’re my everything. Take your son, Zeth.”
The doubt doesn’t vanish. It doesn’t disappear, but it does fade. I trust this woman more than I trust myself. If she has faith in me to be good, to do good, then I know I will. I’ll make damn sure of it. The only other option would be to let her down, and I swore a long fucking time ago I would never do that.
Now, I take the little boy into my arms, and I make him the same silent promise.
I will love you.
I will cherish you.
I will protect you.
Always.
“Do you have a name?” a nurse asks.
Sloane laughs lightly, her fingertips stroking down the side of my face. I look up at her, managing to tear my gaze away from the tiny boy before me, and the love and pure joy in her eyes is breathtaking. “Yes, we do,” she tells the nurse, still laughing. “His name is Colt.”