“You don’t have to go easy on me either.”
“Do I look like the type who says shit I don’t mean?”
“No.” She palms her cup, sending him a few glances that make him think she’s working up to something. “I saw a sign for the library on our way back. Can we go there?”
“Looking for something specific?”
“A few romance novels.”
He raises an unimpressed brow at her answer until she confesses the truth.
“I need every book not nailed down about how to birth a baby.”
“You don’t…I mean, haven’t you…didn’t you already…” he gives up, while she watches him with a hint of amusement.
“Yes, I already had one a long time ago, but Emma was a C-section. They found the cord wrapped around her neck and got her out two weeks early.”
“Damn. I thought hospitals were forbidden in the sect.”
“They are. I’d been in pain for days. My parents knew I’d die, and they persuaded our elders to let them take me.”
“Your husband didn’t do any persuading?”
“No. He fought against it. Said that nature needed to take its course. That we had no right to interfere.”
“What a fucking asshole.”
She wasn’t kidding about fate trying to snatch that child away right from the start.
“I’m feeling like I should use the time I’ve got left to be more prepared. Unless you have experience delivering babies that I should be aware of?”
“Oh, sure, plenty.”
She stares at him like he’s full of shit.
“Okay, never,” he admits. “I did pull out a calf once at a dairy farm. Does that count?”
Her nose scrunches with a wrinkle. “No.”
“Fair enough.” He is not delivering this baby. Not a chance in hell. She’ll leave before then, or he will. The concept of playing midwife himself doesn’t compute, so he refuses to consider it. “We’ll find all the books. Don’t worry.”
He’s telling her not to worry, but he’s worried as fuck knowing she’s flying as blind as he is.
This also serves as a stark reminder that he never intended to stay here beyond a month. This place, this life, none of it was meant for him. He is only an intruder here, and he needs to get back to his plane and find his own patch of land that isn’t already inhabited.
When he was fresh off the terror of his fever, he only welcomed the concept of the three of them sticking together. Liked how it felt when she assumed he’d be there when the baby came, and that he would be part of her story somehow. Now that he’s lucid again, he knows he can’t stay. She’ll be the first to kick him out with her newly booted foot on his ass the moment she finds out the truth, anyway.
He doesn’t want to abandon them, though, not after her husband did the same.
Not after everything they’ve been through.
He wonders if she might agree to leave this place with him, but nixes that idea for now. Too afraid she’d say no, and even more afraid she might say yes. Then it would be up to him to find a safer place for this baby to be born. That’s a weight he ain’t prepared for.
“Sorry.” She shakes her head with a self-deprecating smile. “I worry, it’s what I do. I shouldn’t be dropping this on you.”
One hand covers her belly that hasn’t grown at all since he met her.
He nods toward her stomach. “Still a peanut?”
