“I think I’ve lost my appetite,” he admitted.
“You might change your mind in an hour. Are you going home or back to work?”
“Work.”
“My advice—as a friend—is to take it easy with that hand.”
“Will do. I’ve got paperwork to get through, that’s all.”
She nodded. “Can I drive you over? Or at the least follow you to make sure you get there okay?”
He looked at his truck. Thought about how scrambled his brain felt at the moment. “You know what? I’d love a drive back to the station. I’ll walk back at the end of the day, or get someone to drop me off.”
It was the longest conversation they had ever had. It had taken a deep laceration to his hand to make it happen, but as Owen settled in at his desk, with his untouched lunch and his stack of work in front of him, he was calm and settled for the first time in months.
Friends. Maybe he’d been barking up the wrong tree before. What did he know about women anyway?
Chapter Eleven
July wasa heatwave that never stopped, every day as relentlessly scorching as the one before it. Becca had a false alarm at early labour—Braxton-Hicks contractions that convinced him they needed to go to the hospital in a panic—at the start of the month, but then kept going. She worked through the rest of the month without complaint, and Owen made sure there were popsicles in the freezer for when she got home from her shifts at the golf course. As the weeks went on and her appointments with Jenna and Kerry got closer and closer together, it was clear that it wouldn’t be long before everything changed.
And yet, like with everything else around his daughter having a baby, it still took him by surprise when his phone lit up on his desk on the first day of August.
“It’s Rachel.” Becca’s mom sounded out of breath, and Owen’s pulse jacked up. “We’re on our way to the hospital. She’s having contractions non-stop, and they’re different this time.”
In the background, he heard Becca crying, and his heart tore in two. “I need to find someone to cover off the rest of my shift. But I’ll meet you guys there as soon as I can.”
“Thanks.”
He paused a beat. “Rach?”
“Yeah?”
“Tell her good luck. And that I love her, and I’m proud of her.”
“Yeah.” He could hear the smile in her voice. “I will. Me too.”
As soon as he hung up the phone, his fingers itched to pick it up again and call Kerry, to make sure she was on her way. But of course she was, and of course that wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to hear her voice, to have her tell him in her calm, confident way that this was going to work out just fine.
He rubbed the scar on his palm, the faint white scar evidence of her excellent care in the face of him being a terrible patient. Then he pulled up the schedule. Time to figure out who he could call in without disrupting the rest of the week. He had a waiting room to go and pace in.
An hour and a half later, he parked in front of the hospital. On his way through the front doors, he checked his phone. Rachel had sent him updates every fifteen minutes, and the latest one was that Kerry had arrived and Becca was waiting for an epidural. And Hayden hadn’t replied to her texts.
Owen thought about sending Adam to pick the kid up and drag his sorry ass to the hospital, but one thing at a time.
He’d already done this trip to Labour & Delivery once before, on the Braxton-Hicks false alarm, so he knew where to go. He found Becca’s room easily, and when he pushed the door open, he was relieved to see his daughter smiling—but it didn’t last long.
Becca was in a hospital gown, sitting on the side of the bed, and half way through him greeting her, her face tightened up and her gaze lost focus.
Kerry set down the chart she’d been writing in and hustled to his daughter’s side, giving her quiet instructions to slow down each breath and focus on the contractions doing good work.
Rachel curled up right behind Becca, his baby, their baby who was a woman now, but still so little to him, and something fractured deep in his chest. A crack in his heart that splintered and spread as Becca’s whole life flashed past in silent memories. Her first cry, her first steps, her first words. The way she sprouted while he was gone, growing so much between his visits that it physically hurt to say goodbye, knowing he wouldn’t see the same little girl two weeks later.
His desperate need to get back to her, to make a home for her half as good as the one her mother was making.
But in the last few years, he’d found himself itching for her life to speed up and fast forward? And now it had, suddenly.
Where had the time gone?
