Eat Crow (Cheap Thrills 6)

I should have quit when I started sounding like Cole, but I didn’t. I got all the way to the established labor, my contractions two and a half minutes apart when I realized that it wasn’t a fart that was about to happen.

There was no way in hell I was shitting in front of anyone, so I got up and ran as fast as I could with the contraction still tearing my guts out of my ass hole to the bathroom, only just making it in time.

That might have been one of the most embarrassing moments of my life, but pooping with the machine still squeezing the life out of me every couple of minutes was a close second.

Each contraction made me yell out a higher-pitched version of my normal yell, which got Doyle and Gramps responding with their own noises.

Yeah, the asshole uploaded it to the internet. Apparently he was old and didn’t realize he’d done it, but I wasn’t buying that for a second.

The money he’d gotten got from it paid for the furniture for the nursery, though, and she had a savings account waiting for her by the time she came into the world by cesarean at thirty-seven weeks.

The second I held her, I knew I’d never felt love like that before in my life.

I loved her mom with every breath in my lungs, but the way I felt when she opened her eyes and looked at me for the first time… It was like all the oxygen had been sucked back out of them, and all that was left was her.

It was suffocating.

It was overwhelming.

It was the most beautiful experience of my life, even though it sounded far from it.

Imagine having your reason for living being a part of you. Bexley was part of me without a doubt, I couldn’t imagine my life without her in it, but our daughter, Santana Lawrie Richards, was literally part of me. I’d made her with her mom, and she was the best thing I’d ever done in my life.

Together, they made up the reason my heart was beating, and my lungs inhaled oxygen. I gave no shits if it sounded corny to people, it was the only way I could describe it.

And when I walked in from saying goodbye to our families later that night and saw Bexley holding her, I said a quiet thank you to Lawrence for keeping them safe.

I wasn’t religious, and I wouldn’t ever say religion was pointless, but I’d just never based my life around it. But I knew that old man would never leave his granddaughter alone, so he had to be watching over her.

That meant that when Bexley fainted and was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia and her blood pressure rose to a dangerous level, I knew she’d be okay.

Even when she was rushed in for an emergency cesarean, and even though I was scared out of my mind, I knew he’d make sure she was okay.

I could live my life never watching her go through that again, but Bexley had Lawrence’s stubborn blood in her veins, and so did Santana, and with me watching over both of them, they would be okay.

Leaning over them both, I smiled as my baby girl twitched her mouth. “Milk dreams, she’s going to be a hungry monkey when she wakes up.”

“The nurse gave us some formula in case I can’t feed her,” Bex whispered, stroking Santana’s hand. “I’m determined to feed her myself, though.”

Kissing the top of her head, I breathed her in and felt some of the lingering tension from earlier today leave me. I could say I knew she was going to be okay, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t scared out of my mind.

“We have a plan b if you can’t, and the nurse said that some babies struggle to latch on initially, so don’t blame yourself if she doesn’t.”

“What if she gets dehydrated or won’t take the bottle? What if—”

“Bexley, we’re in the best place if any of those become a problem. Don’t worry about what you don’t know is going to happen, you’ll drive yourself crazy and miss out on her first moments. It’ll be okay regardless.”

Lifting teary eyes to look at me, she rasped, “But how do you know?”

Moving her hair away from her face, I stared down into the beautiful brown eyes I’d dreamed about for years and would be lucky to have in my life until I took my last breaths. “Because she may have my last name, but she’s got Pops’s blood in her veins.”

And later on that night, when my baby girl woke up, screaming her ever-loving heart out, she latched on and fed from her mother. Then, not even close to being full, she fed from the small bottle of formula I was holding.

That’s how it went after that. She was either the hungriest baby in the world, or she just wanted to share her feedings with both of her parents.

Her great-grandpa up in heaven got the final kick in the ass in to me, though. A majority of babies say ‘dada’ or ‘da’ as their first word. My girl didn’t.

No, she pointed at the big furry asshole who never left her side and said, “Dol!”