Page 60 of Ruin Me Sweetly

We had a hospital protocol for the entire family.

Phase one. Let Luke panic and come to terms with the birth.

Phase two. Notify the reliable female child, who would call in the reinforcement, the male child, and they’d both travel home.

Phase three. Make it to the hospital alive, and give birth.

Phase four. Try not to act traumatised when Amber and Zach came to see the baby. I wanted grandchildren from them, one day.

Luke was saying something about Sadie now being in the psychiatric unit on a long-term basis.

“What? Is that it? She’s locked up?” I asked, rubbing my belly protectively.

He nodded.

I closed my eyes and enjoyed the brisk breeze against my face as it pushed my hair back.

I wasn’t looking forward to being stuck in hospital, but I desperately wanted to meet our baby boy.

“Let’s go inside,” I murmured, already thinking of the hospital bag.

I made the mistake of taking longer going up the stone stairs. His brow furrowed, and he began to inspect me, but then he showed some restraint and didn’t comment. The hospital was a fifteen-minute drive. Rush hour had been and gone.

“Are you okay, darling?” Luke asked.

I smiled and nodded, and then a real contraction hit. I hissed and grabbed onto his arm.

He froze. I watched his face turn two shades paler.

“Get the hospital bags,” I rasped.

“Okay,” he said, nodding. “Okay. Yes. We practised.”

I frowned.

“We did?”

“No. I practised in my head,” he mumbled, moving me further down the foyer until he’d settled me onto the leather bench. “I’ll be right back with the bags.”

I blinked when he bolted out of sight, turning at the bannister and taking the stairs two at a time.

“Hold it inside. Don’t let it come out until I’m there,” he screamed.

I sighed.

He knew it would take hours. What did he think I was going to do? Stretch myself out and lube myself with Vaseline, just to give birth extra quickly out of spite, so he’d miss it entirely?

I could barely reach down there.

I began to take deep breaths, trying to find the calm before the storm. My thoughts drifted, and I imagined holding a dark-haired, brown-eyed baby boy. Or he might look like a mixture of the two of us. Ever since that first scan, it had driven me crazy.

Just as I heard Luke crashing into something upstairs, I thought of the morning I’d taken the pregnancy test. It made such a difference, knowing my child would be wanted. It also helped, not being a teenage statistic this time around.

A little more tension left me.

Luke reappeared minutes later, two hospital bags slung over one shoulder and a third clutched to his chest like a shield, his tie already loosened, his hair standing up in three different directions. He looked like a man who’d survived a small explosion rather than a man collecting overnight bags.

“Right. Right. Right,” he muttered, herding me toward the front door with one hand hovering an inch from my back, as though touching me might set something off prematurely. “Hospital. Now. Yes.”