Page 71 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 4

I noted the time on my phone without letting my face do anything. Eleven minutes was nothing. Real labor didn’t come in neat eleven-minute intervals right out the gate, not from everything I’d read, not from everything the class at the hospital told me. This was still just my body clowning around, getting ready, on bullshit per usual.

“You good?” Amai asked. He’d caught something in my face, even though I thought I kept it blank.

“I’m fine,” I said and put another forkful of rice in my mouth like that settled it.

He kept his eyes on me a second longer than I liked, then went back to his plate. Amai had gotten better at not hovering—three months of therapy sessions he pretended weren’t therapy sessions, three months of watching me grieve a son who wasn’t even his and learning to just sit in it with me instead of trying to fix it—but the man still had a radar for me that didn’t ever fully switch off. I loved him for it, and I wanted to strangle him for it at the same damn time.

Third contraction, nine minutes later.

That’s when I put my fork down.

“Truth.” Mama’s voice cut clean across the table, quiet, but it had that extra mamas get when they already know something before you say it.

“I think,” I said slowly, “I might be having contractions.”

The table went dead silent for exactly one second before it exploded.

Raven dropped her fork. Honor stood halfway up out of her chair like she was fixing to catch a baby right on the hardwood. Saroya grabbed her youngest by the collar and hauled him back like the child himself was a hazard. And Amai⁠—

Amai was already standing, already had his phone out, already talking.

“How far apart? When did they start? Are you sure? Is it your water? Do we need towels? Where’s your bag? Is the car seat still in my trunk or did we move it to the truck⁠—”

“Amai.” I tried to keep my voice level.

“—because if it’s still in the trunk, that’s fine, that’s fine. I got it, I just need to know which vehicle⁠—”

“Amai.”

He didn’t hear me. He was pulling up something on his phone, scrolling too fast to actually be reading anything, muttering the hospital’s name to himself like a mad man.

“Boy.” Mama’s voice hit the room like a slammed door.

Everybody stopped. Even Honor, who was still half out of her chair, froze in place.

“Put that phone down,” she said, standing slow and deliberate, wiping her hands on the dish towel hanging off her shoulder. “You gon’ be no use to my daughter if you done had a heart attack before she even gets in the car. Calm the fuck down, nah.”

“I’m fine,” Amai said, which was the same lie I’d told about ninety seconds earlier, and about as convincing coming out his mouth as it had been coming out of mine.

“You are not fine. Look at your hands.” Mama pointed. His hands were actually shaking a little, holding that phone.

I don’t think I’d ever seen Amai Landry’s hands shake before in my life, not once, not through any of the mess we’d been through, and something about seeing it now—over a contraction, over me—made happiness flow through me in a whole different way than the contraction itself.

“How far apart they coming, baby?” she asked me, and just like that, her whole tone shifted. Gentle now, focused. In full mama mode.

“Nine minutes the last time. Eleven before that.”

“How long they lasting?”

I thought about it. “Maybe thirty, forty seconds?”

She nodded slowly, the way she nodded when she was doing arithmetic she’d done four times before with her other daughters. “Alright. We got time. Ain’t no need to be flying down I-10 like the building’s on fire.” She shot a look at Amai. “You hear me? Worst case scenario I can deliver the baby here, hell.”

“I hear you,” Amai said, but he was already moving toward the coat rack by the door, grabbing his keys off the little hook Mama kept there, and checking them like he might’ve forgotten how keys worked in the last two minutes.

“Sit down,” she snapped, and he actually sat. Right back down at the table, keys still fisted in his hand, staring at me like I might push out this baby between one blink and the next.

I almost laughed. Almost, until another contraction rolled through, sharper than the last one. The laugh turned into a groan I couldn’t hold back. I felt as if my back would snap in two at any second.