“We have to go,” she said instead. “Rightnow.”
Without another word, Xander took Rylee’s hand, helping her down the stairs, out of the house, and into the truck.
The calm driving they were doing away from the house became much faster, Xander doing just above the speed limit as they drove past the Greene Gardens welcome sign.
The bumps in their ride sent a wave of sensations through Rylee.
“Just breathe, baby,” Xander coached, his eyes volleying between the road and his fiancée. “Shit, we don’t have the overnight bag you packed.”
“My mother told me,” Rylee said, feeling her stomach tighten with a contraction. “She fucking told me.”
Xander reached across to her, placing a hand on her belly for comfort.
He snatched his eyes off the road immediately, his hand feeling around her stomach. “It’s hard. Are you having a contraction?”
She peeked down, then up at him again. “A Braxton, maybe.”
He felt again, shaking his head. “This don’t feel like a Braxton, baby. You not feeling anything stronger right now?”
She shook her head. “How would you know the difference just feeling my stomach?”
“Experience,” he mumbled, anxiety evident in the wrinkle of his brows and the biting he was doing on his bottom lip.
In his haste and distracted in conversation while simply getting on the expressway to get to the birthing center in Brooklyn, Xander missed the pothole they were approaching and only noticed it as they were going over it.
The impact rattled the truck, shaking them in their seats, and triggering a strong contraction Rylee most definitely felt this time.
She shouted.
“Fuck,” he exhaled. “Sorry. You okay?”
That one contraction rolled immediately into another… and then another.
“Oh, God!” she gasped, pressing one hand to her stomach and the other to the handle on the door. “Ahh! Shit.”
“It’s aight, it’s aight,” Xander repeated.
He stopped speaking altogether as the truck gradually began to reduce in speed.
Rylee opened her eyes to a sea of red taillights in front of her.
“Oh, no,” she said, her head falling back against the headrest.
The traffic jam they’d passed on the way to the house in Greene Gardens that seemed unfortunate on the other side of the expressway was now what they found themselves stopped in.
“Okay,” Xander said, rubbing her belly, his other hand gripping the steering wheel as he moved the truck up in the slow-moving traffic. “You got this, baby. Just breathe with me.”
That worked for the first fifteen minutes… then the half an hour of sitting in traffic.
As much progress as they had made in traffic, the exit to the birthing center was still only 1.2 miles away. The contractions were back to back now, and Rylee was panicking.
Then suddenly, she felt the pressure between her thighs. And while her pregnancies before this one were different all the way around, that feeling was familiar.
Her moaning and groaning quickly transformed into screaming.
“I feel like I gotta push!” she shouted.
Rylee felt the air move as Xander looked her way.
