Reeve (The Henchmen MC 11)

"Sure," I agreed, every inch of me taut as a bow.

"Congratulations, you're having a little girl."

And just like that, the tension left me, and I turned to find relief on Reeve's face as well.

A little girl.

A fresh start.

No bad memories.

Yeah, we could handle this.Reeve - 4 years, 8 months"You holding up?" Cy asked when Maria, Rey's midwife, shooed me out of the room for a minute, not giving me a reason, but insisting I leave.

Everything was fine.

Rey was handling all of this like a goddamn champ.

How, I didn't know.

I had made the horrible, traumatizing mistake one day of watching birthing videos online, trying to prepare myself for the inevitability of Rey's, wanting to be helpful, and not green in the face because I had no idea what to expect.

Yeah, that fucking shit was horrifying.

The women screamed and cursed and cried and nearly broke the arms of the beds.

Compared to that, Rey was as docile as a kitten.

This, to be fair, was mostly due to Maria who had very strict rules about the birthing experience. In fact, we had to write up something called a 'birth plan' a few months in advance.

For example, we weren't - and neither were the nurses or doctors - allowed to use the term 'contractions.' Instead, we had to say 'surges' because there was such a negative association with the term contractions.

Rey had chosen a playlist, and loaded it onto an iPod that would stream through the whole process. There was lavender spray for her pillow to keep her calm.

We had even needed to do something called the "ice cube game" leading up to her birth where we took turns holding an ice cube for sixty seconds, each time doing a different task - either talking to each other, walking around, or silently focusing. Apparently, this would tell Rey the best method for her coping with pain.

She was a silent focuser.

I was a walker.

Maria informed me that I would just have to suck it up and silently reflect with Rey as well.

Which, well, considering she was about to push a human out of her body, and I knew it was going to hurt like hell, I was willing to do whatever it took.

But as I waited in the little nook a few feet from her room, I was pacing.

"She's doing fine. I'm flipping out," I admitted, running a hand up the back of my neck.

"Sounds about right," Cy agreed. "Not easy for a man to watch his woman hurt, and not be able to do anything about it. Hate feeling helpless."

That about covered it.

Helpless.

"How is Wasp doing?" I asked, a smirk pulling at my lips because Maria had kicked her out of the delivery room because she had been trying to talk Rey into taking the shot already.

"Last time I talked to her, she was ranting about how barbaric childbirth is."

"Gonna be funny as fuck when she gets knocked up."

"Yeah," he agreed, smiling. "If she ever settles down long enough to start a family."

"Daddy, you can come back now," Maria called, voice sing-song. "We are almost there," she added as Cy clamped me on the shoulder as I passed.

"Hey babe," I said, coming in, finding Rey a bit more tired-looking than when I had left, her hair damp around her face, her hands holding onto the rails of the bed.

"Surges are getting harder," she told me as I moved to the side of the bed, taking her hand.

"I hear it is almost over," I told her, leaning down to kiss her head. "And then we will get to hold her."

Then, just a half an hour later, with some cursing on Rey's part when she decided to go off-script on the birthing plan, there she was, pink and tiny, with an impressive set of lungs.

When she was put into my arms for the first time, I didn't feel it. The terror. I had been expecting it. It was my new best friend all these months.

But it wasn't there.

All I felt was wonder.

We had made this tiny human.

All because I decided to take a chance, to put the past in the past where it belonged.

And I knew right then and there that I would be able to do it again.

For Andi.Rey - 20 yearsNiro was in love with Andi.

There was no denying it anymore, no calling it a close friendship, calling him her champion because she was so much smaller and sweeter and non-confrontational than her peers, and he felt the need to stand up for her because he was big, strong, confident, and good with his hands.

Of course he was; he was Pagan's son.

I think we - me and Kennedy especially - had seen it coming for a long time. The men were apt to call it good manners, to claim that Niro was simply raised right, and took care of the girls around him. There was truth in that, certainly. Of course there was. These Henchmen kids were raised right. A month couldn't go by when you didn't hear that Fallon wasn't in the face of someone who was getting too grab-assy with one of the girls. That was just how they were wired; just like their daddies.