“Well, we’re in luck, because my waterhasn’tbroken, and I can still talk through the contractions. Plus, it almost never breaks like it does in—” A small and quick popping feeling emerges from my core, making me freeze. Liquid gushes between my thighs and drips down my legs to trickle onto the floor. My stomach does a nosedive, and Serena’s jaw drops.
“You mean like that?” She points to the floor
“Please tell me I just peed myself. I’d rather be embarrassed right now…” My bottom lip trembles and fear shoots through my veins like adrenaline.
“I don’t mean toburst your bubble…” she says sarcastically and giggles, but then she meets my death glare and immediately regrets it. “Right, no. Sorry. Bad timing. Come on, girl. Let’s get you in the car, and I’ll call Carter on the way.” She runs up to me and grabs my hand, and I squeeze it so tightly that I think I hear her hiss. “Did you ever pack a hospital bag like I told you to?”
I nod lightly and try to gather the courage to speak again. All of my badassery just flew out the door and now I feel cold, like my heart is pumping nothing but fear.
“Yeah… Our bags are in the garage,” I manage to mumble.
“Okay.” She smiles at me, looking much more excited than I am. “Are your keys on the hook? Damien and Tony installed one of the car seats in your car, right?” I nod again and swallow the lump in my throat. “Great, then we’re all good to go. We’ll take your car and I’ll just Uber back when you want me to leave—”
“Ser…” My hand shakes in hers, and hot tears hit my eyes. Leave? Why would she leave? She’s a trauma nurse, for fuck’s sake, and she’s my best friend. I figured she would stay with me. Why wouldn’t she stay? “You can’t leave, okay? She’s not due for another four weeks. What if she’s not okay, and you’re not there? I can’t—"
“Hey,” she coos and holds my shoulders in her hands. “Don’t think like that. It’s only almost four weeks early. She’s going to be just fine. Youbothare going to be okay. I will stay with you as long as you need me to, okay? You know that.”
I nod frantically. My body starts to tense up again, clearly building towards another contraction, and I hate how my breathing picks up. I’m feeling charged and jittery, like my heart is going to beat out of my chest, and that only makes the burning behind my eyes worse.
“Ser, I’m scared…”
“Oh, honey. I know.” She grips one of my hands, and runs her other one over my head in a soothing caress. “You worry about you and your little girl, and you leave the rest to me, okay? You and Damien just focus on your family, and you leave the medical shit to me. Alright? You just tell me how you want things to go, and I’ll make sure they do it,” she demands so confidently. It actually makes me feel a little better.
“Okay…”
“Okay?” She tilts her head and smiles again. “Okay! Let’s go.” She turns to Daisy and holds her palm out, commanding her to stay as she leads me to the garage. I lay a towel down on the seat before climbing in, and when I look up to watch Ser, I notice her already on the phone. She loads our bags into the trunk and rounds back to the driver’s seat with a blanket in hand. “Okay, thanks. We’ll be there in twenty, but we’re going to drive slow. It’s snowing pretty heavily… Yeah, got it.” She hangs up and turns the car on before connecting her phone to the Bluetooth system. “L&D is expecting you and getting a room ready, and Dad is heading here to sit with Victoria and Elizabeth.”
“Okay,” I reply through gritted teeth as the contraction hitshard—definitely stronger than the last. As Ser starts to back the car up, she reaches out and grabs my hand, letting me squeeze her as tight as I can.
“You’re doing great, Ash. I'm calling Carter now.” She presses the call button on the steering wheel, then the button for the garage door. “Call Carter Leighton,” she commands the car when it beeps at her. I raise an eyebrow, caught off guard by his contact’s name.
“Since when is he back to first and last name?” I ask between breaths.
“Don’t worry about it.” She tries to play it off, but I can hear the sadness in her voice. The line only rings once before he answers.
“Now isn’t a good time, Serena,” he dismisses her, throwing me for a loop. I thought they were working on getting back to good terms, but it certainly doesn’t sound that way.
“Yeah, it’s not a good time,Carter,” she replies angrily, clearly hating the way he used her name. “So, get your head out of your ass and call Damien back in. Ashia’s water broke.”
There’s a brief moment of awkward silence. I just grind my teeth together and take the pain, because I’mnotgoing to be the one to break it.
“Oh, shit. Okay. I'll pull him. Is she okay? Should I tell him to meet you two at the hospital?”
Her eyes narrow in the most dumbfounded look I think I’ve ever seen on her face.
“Where else would we meet? Chuck-E Cheese?” she jabs, and he just scoffs at her before hanging up. Her jaw hangs slack. “Did he just hang up on me?!”
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on with you two?” I try to relax against the seat as the pain starts to slow, watching the front windshield as snowflakes smack against it as we drive.
“I don’t want to bother you with that right now.”
“Well, tell me anyway. It’s a good distraction.” She huffs and then lets go of my hand to do her erratic gestures.
“Honestly? I don’t know… He was so mad at me for ghosting him, and I don’t blame him for that, but now it’s…it’s turning into something that I don’t know if I can handle.”
“What do you mean?”
“I see the way he looks at me. There’s something possessive in it, and I’m not used to that.” She glances at me, then back to the road. “I don’t do relationships, Ash, I don’t know how to. For years now, I’ve just wanted a good fuck and then leave. Hell, Idon’t even care if they don’t want to call me the next day. But if Carter ever stopped calling, it would hurt…especially if he ever did worse…” Sadness pulls her face into a frown, and it cracks it my heart a little. I’veneverseen her this worked up over a guy, and I don’t know how to handle it—even if it is over Carter.
