Page 74 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 4

Mama and Odette ended up on either side of my bed for a stretch of time I lost count of, taking turns wiping my forehead, feeding me ice chips, and telling me I was doing good, while Amai paced a track into the linoleum by the window, occasionally stopping to grip the metal bed rail like it was the only thing keeping him upright.

“You need to sit down,” I told him at one point, between contractions, watching him pace.

“I’m good.”

“You are the least good person in this room right now.”

He almost smiled. “I’m trying to be useful.”

“You’re being useful by not fainting.”

Mama snorted from the other side of the bed. “Boy done paced so much he ’bout to wear a hole clean through my grandbaby’s hospital floor.”

That got a laugh out of me, right in the middle of a contraction, which turned the laugh into a groan that turned into a genuine sound of pain. Amai was at my side in half a second, taking my hand and letting me squeeze his as hard as I needed to.

“You’re doing amazing,” he said, voice low, right up close to my ear. “You hear me? You’re doing amazing.”

“Don’t talk to me right now,” I said through my teeth, gripping his hand hard enough that I probably left marks. “Just—be here. Don’t talk.”

“Okay.” He nodded, quiet now, letting me use his hand as a stress ball and watching my face with an intensity that would’ve scared me if I hadn’t already known exactly what it meant.

Dr. Broussard arrived not long after, calm and steady in a way that settled something in the room the second she walked through the door. She checked me, told me I was at nine centimeters, told me it wouldn’t be long now, and something about her certainty made the fear in my chest ease up just a little. Made room for something closer to readiness.

The next stretch of time blurred together in a way I couldn’t fully separate afterward—waves of pain that came harder and closer, the nurse’s voice telling me when to push and when to breathe. Mama’s hand still gripping mine on one side, Amai’s on the other, Odette somewhere near the foot of the bed with her hand pressed over her mouth, watching.

“You’re doing so good, Truth,” Dr. Broussard said. “One more big push. I need one more.”

I pushed. I screamed doing it, a sound that didn’t sound like it came from me, raw and primal and completely unfamiliar. Somewhere in the middle of that scream, I felt something shift, something give, a pressure releasing that I’d been carrying for so long I’d almost forgotten what it felt like not to carry it.

And then there was a cry.

Small. Thin. Furious.

The most beautiful sound I ever heard in my whole life.

“There she is,” Dr. Broussard said. I heard the smile in her voice, even through the sudden rush of movement, hands, the nurse saying something about the cord, and somebody counting fingers and toes out loud, even though I couldn’t see past the flurry of activity happening at the foot of the bed.

“Is she okay?” My voice cracked. “Is she⁠—”

“She’s perfect,” Dr. Broussard said. “Ten fingers, ten toes, good color, strong lungs on this one.”

They laid her on my chest before I could ask another question. This small, warm, impossibly heavy-for-her-size weight settling right against my heart. I looked down at my daughter for the first time and forgot, for one entire second, how to breathe.

She was red-faced and furious, mouth open in a cry that softened the second her skin touched mine. Dark hair like Amai’s matted flat against her scalp, fists curled up tight by her face like she was ready to fight the whole world already. She had Amai’s nose. I noticed that after her hair, that small distinct shape at the bridge, unmistakable even on a face this new.

“Hey, baby girl,” I whispered, and my voice broke doing it. “Hey. Hello, baby girl.”

I looked up, needing Amai, needing to see his face in this moment, and what I found stopped whatever I was about to say.

He was crying.

Amai Landry—the man who put bullets in people without blinking, who buried men in concrete holes, who once told me he’d burn the whole city down before he let anything happen to me—stood at the side of that hospital bed with tears running freely down his face, and he didn’t even seem to know they were there. His hand had come up to cover his mouth like he was trying to hold something in, and above that hand, his eyes were locked on our daughter with an expression I’d never seen on him before, not once, not through any of the darkness we’d survived together.

“Amai.” I said his name softly, and he blinked like he was coming back from somewhere far away.

“I’m—” He wiped his face with the back of his hand. Seemed surprised to find it wet. “I didn’t even realize I was⁠—”

“Come here,” I said, and he came, careful, like he was approaching something fragile enough to shatter under too much weight.