It was a very weird relationship, and one that worked for us because she also ended up going into business together with us. We now owned about eight rental houses between the two of us. Since, apparently, the business of our tiny town wasn’t ever going to die down. Just last month, we’d broken ground on four duplexes at the same time Callum and I had broken ground on our new home.
“Ready to wife me officially, sunshine?” I teased.
He curled his arm around my hips, then bodily turned me so that we were facing the preacher.
The old biker’s eyes were sparkling.
He looked like Santa Claus.
Jesus.
“Has anyone ever told you that you look like Santa Claus?” I blurted.
Callum’s strangled breathing had me tensing.
Maybe I shouldn’t have asked that.
Santa Biker laughed, though. “A time or two, darlin’. A time or two.”
Five minutes later, I became Mrs. Callum Crow.
Ten minutes after that, he had me against the side of a building, and planted his first child into me.
• • •
“Push!” someone ordered.
That someone was my husband.
I was jolted so hard back into reality that I gasped.
“Sunshine,” I whispered. “If you don’t shut the fuck up right now, I’ll gladly crawl off this piss-poor excuse for a bed with only my arms and kill you with my unfeeling legs.”
There was a moment of silence and then Callum chuckled quietly. “Push, baby.”
I was pushing.
That was the problem.
I’d been pushing for four hours, and nothing was happening. The baby was still in my vagina, where he or she shouldn’t be.
“I’m trying,” I cried. “I’m trying. I’m giving it everything I’ve got.”
And I was.
I had almost zero energy left.
There was just nothing left to give at this point.
My head fell limply to the side, and my eyes closed of their own volition.
I could hear whispering—my doctors and nurses—thinking they were being quiet.
But they weren’t.
I heard what they said, and so did Callum.
“…not going to make it. Hope that cesarean will do it,” the doctor murmured. “Hope for the best.”
I swallowed hard.
There was a reason we hadn’t done a cesarean.
I’d developed very high blood pressure during my pregnancy. So high that they’d induced me and told me in no uncertain terms that I was not, under any circumstances, to consider a C-section unless it was an absolute last resort.
“No!” Callum barked, having been privy to said conversation. “She’s gonna fuckin’ push this kid out!”
A bolt of energy shot through me and down to my spine.
I cried out and pushed hard, feeling like I gave it the rest of everything that I had.
They’d turned my epidural down an hour ago in hopes that it would help me push.
Now, I could literally feel everything from the tops of my thighs up.
It was the worst pain I’d ever experienced in my life, bar none.
I collapsed, realizing that this was the end.
I wasn’t going to make it.
Callum must’ve seen me give up, too.
Because he cursed and left my bedside.
He crawled up behind me, displacing all of my pillows, and all but cocooned me in his body.
I leaned back against the hard chest that I loved so much and inhaled deeply.
“Another one,” he urged. “This time, I want you to push as hard as you can, baby. Leave it all in that one push.”
Tears started to stream down my cheeks.
I swallowed hard and pushed.
I pushed, and pushed, and pushed until I was seconds away from passing out.
Then sweet oblivion.
I floated for a while, my head all full of white noise.
Where was I?
What was going on?
Was I okay?
“…you’re my very best friend in the whole wide world.”
I finally opened my eyes to see the chaos of before had died down.
There was a doctor between my legs, doing something I’d rather not know about at that moment in time, and the man of my dreams was still behind me.
Oh, and I was holding a very content little baby in my arms, covered in nasty goo, looking at me with his or her daddy’s eyes.
“What a woman,” he whispered into my ear, causing me to turn my face up into his. “God, you amaze me. I can’t believe that a woman has to go through that kind of pain. But, God, baby. I’m so glad that you did. Look at what we made.”
Seconds after that beautiful statement, I once again opened my eyes to see my baby on my chest.
Callum’s big hand was covering the baby, holding that tiny little body to my bare breasts.
I looked down into the biggest blue eyes I’d ever seen and started to sniffle.
“Boy or a girl, Mama?” Callum asked.
I had no idea.
I’d been so focused on pushing that I didn’t even remember getting him out, let alone having the baby placed practically in my arms.
“Boy,” I whispered.
“I agree,” Callum laughed. “No girl of mine would look at you like that. She’d only have eyes for me.”