Chapter 75
The water of the bathtub had turned pink while he’d been gone. I’d lost my mind to the pain, and my world had focused down to my fingers around the water faucet, which had more or less melded together. A great cleaver split apart my legs, digging in deeper to get them farther apart.
Somehow, without my notice, the granny cop had also shed her coat and gloves, rolled up her sleeves, and settled herself at the side of the tub.
“Hey, girlie, I know you’re scared, but you’re going to be just fine. Try to relax, it will help the pain. Can you breathe? There’s a girl, nice and deep. You’re going to be just fine. You, boy, get your rich ass up front where she can see you. She’s yours, ain’t she?”
Reuben appeared behind the faucet in a moment, his hands wrapping around mine, so we were both gripping it.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. I’m here.”
I felt my mouth twitch. “You think you call me…” I meant to finish with ‘you think you can call me that when you did this to me,’ but had the breath to say so stolen by a contraction.
“Now, I’m going to check you down there to see how dilated you are and if there’s any baby to be found, just to let you know what’s going on, okay?” said the little old lady, soft and gentle to me as she hadn’t been to anyone else so far.
I nodded. Only then did I feel her hands dip into the water and feel around where the sword pierced me.
“Now, the ambulance is still on its way,” she said as she flicked water off her hand. “But that opening’s pretty big.”
“I thought labor wasn’t supposed to move this quickly,” said Reuben, rather desperately.
“There are those who go through especially quick labors, or those who mistake the beginning stages of labor of just more of the same miserable false labor that plagues the last month. Either or, you best prepare yourself for a delivery. The ambulance crew can make sure everything is alright when they come back.”
Reuben reluctantly nodded, then reached down to grab me under my armpits.
I gasped as the shift in position jostled my sword-stabbed hips.
“What are you doing!? Put her back down!”
Reuben all but dropped me.
“But, the baby—”
“Water births are a legitimate thing. It won’t drown. How stupid are you? Did you do any research?”
“Yes, but—”
“But nothing. Go find some scissors and a clamp and get one of the idiots boiling water.”
Thus, inevitably, I, Alaina Scharf, gave birth to my first-born son in a tub, delivered by a jaded cop with the body of my ex laying on the front porch and apparently other dead people littered around my yard.
And, just as it always had, my strong body pulled through—not that I felt like it had once I was done with a wailing pink squished baby on my chest and a multi-billionaire James Bond guy looking one second away from passing out.
Only then did the ambulance crew arrive, flooding the bathroom with my naked baby and self with their hands and eyes everywhere.
Not a single second did Reuben leave my side, from the bathroom to the hospital and eventually back again to his home where a little bassinet I’d carefully prepared waited. And even then it was just to use the bathroom. Then he came back, fell face first on the bed next to me, and promptly passed out.
The house had been cleaned and repaired to the point no one would have guessed a shootout and break-in had occurred. Nor had I heard anything about the police pressing charges against Reuben for shooting Joshua.
I wondered when I’d start feeling something about his death. I had once loved that man, after all.
‘He’s in the mafia!!’
I frowned to myself. Then reached over to set my hand in the oily, messy hair of Reuben beside me. At the same time, I reached my other hand to the bassinet where my little dark-haired son slept, beautiful and perfect. I listened to them breathe in tandem with one another, one big, one in little snuffs. Daddy and baby were together.
I remembered the uneasy feeling I’d felt when Reuben had so easily handed me a gun and read my history on my fingers. I remembered how I’d never seen a single rabid fan girl, even though the death threats were still reported, and the signs still seen. I remembered the poison, the peculiar look of the host of the ball, how Reuben hired security, and how he so easily took down Joshua without so much as grazing me when I’d been held right against him.
I let my hand soak in the warmth of my boys on either side.
“Well,” I whispered to myself. “At least he’s not perfect.”
And deciding to leave the mysteries to tomorrow’s me, or at least the me who hadn’t just freshly birthed a bay and watched a man die, I closed my eyes and let the breathing and warmth of my little family soothe me into a much-deserved sleep.
The End