For Lucy

Biting her lower lip, her cheeks turned bright red, the way they always did when she knew we were about to get naked. Only, we didn’t make it that far. I kissed her neck and worked my way down her body. When I kissed her firm belly, she jumped and squeezed her legs together.

“Emmett …”

I glanced at the floor and the puddle at her feet. Small amounts of fluid continued to drip down her bare legs. She pulled up the skirt to her sundress and revealed her soaked panties.

“If this is your idea of a golden shower, your aim is a little off.”

“Oh my god … oh my god … it’s time.” She beamed with excitement, not showing an ounce of concern over the fact that she was in labor and would have to push something the size of a basketball out of her vagina.

She was my hero.

I stood tall and cupped her face, unable to move her grin one centimeter.

“We’re having a baby,” she whispered.

“So … call the doctor or just go to the hospital?”

“Both. I’ll call the doctor. You put my bag in the car and call our parents.”

Before she could get away, I tightened my grip on her face and brought mine a breath from touching hers. “I love you. I love you more than should be humanly possible. And I will never love anyone or anything the way I love you.”

Her eyes flooded with happy tears. “I love you too.”

On the way to the hospital, I kept her distracted from her contractions with important facts about babies because she did in fact marry a nerd.

Babies are born with three hundred bones—ninety-four more than adults. Those extra bones fuse together during development.

They also don’t have kneecaps. The patella develops into hard bone between the age of three and five.

They can’t taste salt (just sweet and sour) until four months. But they have three thousand taste buds compared to ten thousand in adults.

Sixty-nine is not just a great sex position, it’s also the highest recorded number of children born to one mother. A Russian woman. Sixteen pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets, and four sets of quadruplets.

When we pulled up to the hospital entrance, she grabbed my hand and cut me off from finishing my last amazing fact about babies. I didn’t realize until that moment that my body was shaking and hers was not. While we had a lot of things in common like the Chiefs and a love for traveling, we were complete opposites in many other ways. I was the storm—hard working but passionate about love and life. Sometimes to a fault. Tatum was the calm to my storm. Maybe it was the grace that came with her ability to dance and play music like her mom.

All I had to do was hold her hand and cheer her on, and I already felt like I might fail at that one simple duty. She had the hard job. She had to bring another life into the world by channeling immortal strength. And as her steady hand soothed my nerves, I knew she would be amazing.

I was so fucking proud of myself for stealing her.

I waited for her to say something, ask me for a favor, or just tell me to shut the hell up. She said nothing and did nothing except hold my hand. After a minute or so, I felt her calm energy wash over me. My shaking stopped. She smiled while releasing my hand and climbed out of the truck as a nurse greeted us with a wheelchair.

It took twelve hours of walking the hallways, squatting, swaying, back rubbing, ice chip eating, and a few tears of exhaustion before it was time to push.

“I should have said yes to the epidural,” she murmured as another contraction hit, and her midwife told her to push.

“You’re a rock star, Tate … the headliner. The kind that sells out the biggest stadiums,” I said with my lips at her brow as she squeezed my hand. “You’ll always be my rock star.”

She brought her other hand up to cup mine, face flushed and riddled with tiny creases of pain. “I need you to make me a promise?”

“Anything,” I said without a blink of hesitation.

“Love this baby more. You have to promise to love this baby more than me … more than us.”

“Tatum …”

“Promise me. You have to promise me. Parents are supposed to love their children more than each other. This baby is the best of us.”

At the start of another contraction, the midwife gave me the just-say-it look. I returned several tiny nods.

“Of course, honey. Anything you want.”

Minutes later, we welcomed Lucy into the world, and I instantly fell in love with her. Maybe I did still love her mother a tiny bit more, but my heart didn’t feel it in a measurable way, and I prayed it would never matter. I prayed I would never have to prove that I loved Lucy more.