The voice from the phone floats in and out, calm and steady, but it’s Kade I focus on. Kade’s hands. Kade’s voice. Kade’s eyes when he looks at me like I’m the bravest thing he’s ever seen.
“There’s pressure,” I pant. “So much pressure.”
“I know,” he murmurs, kissing my temple. “That means you’re close. You’re almost there.”
Another wave hits, and my body bears down without asking my permission. I scream his name, gripping him like an anchor. “I need to push,” I cry.
And then . . .
Something shifts.
A release. A burn. A moment that feels endless and instant all at once.
“I can see the baby,” Kade says, his voice breaking completely now. “Eden . . . oh, my god . . . I can see our baby.”
I sob, half-laughing, half-crying. “Please . . . please don’t let go.”
“Never,” he chokes. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
I push again, everything in me focused on this one final thing, this one impossible moment.
And then . . .
A cry.
Sharp. Small. Perfect.
The sound hits me right in the chest.
“Oh,” I breathe. “Oh . . .”
Kade is crying. Properly crying. I hear it in the way he laughs through his tears, the way his voice shakes as he says, “You did it. Eden, you did it.”
He grabs a fresh towel and crouches between my legs. Then he places the bundle on my chest, and the world narrows down to warmth and weight, and a tiny, wrinkled face scrunched-up against me.
My baby.
Our baby.
I’m sobbing now, my whole body shaking as I cradle instinctively, like I’ve always known how.
Kade’s hand covers mine, big and steady and reverent. “Hi,” he whispers to the baby. “Hi, baby.”
Something in me finally unclenches.
I look up at him—this man who broke me, who lost me, who found his way back not with words but with staying—and I know with absolute certainty that whatever happens next, we did this together.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
KADE
“I specifically saiddo notgive birth while I’m gone,” Martha declares as she breezes into the room, dropping her bag and kissing Eden gently on the cheek.
Eden lets out a weak, exhausted laugh. “It wasn’t the plan.”
Nothing about the last twelve hours was.
The ambulance had finally arrived just after two in the morning. The cord had already been cut by my shaking hands, following instructions barked through a phone while rain hammered the roof. The local midwife came shortly after, calm and unflappable, checking Eden over, checking the baby and showing her how to latch, like we hadn’t just dragged a woman in labour through a storm on a motorbike.
