Page 5

And with tears still on her face, breathing through the tail end of the contraction, she said, “Xaden, I need you to wait outside. You're making it worse.”

Cas had my arm and was steering me toward the door before I could respond.

“Don't—” I started.

“Outside,” he said, and his voice had the particular quality it gets when he is not asking.

The door closed behind us.

I stood in the corridor.

I stood there for approximately ten seconds and then I turned back toward the door and Cas stepped in front of it.

“Move,” I said.

“No.”

“Caspian.”

“She asked you to wait outside, X.” His voice was level. Completely, infuriatingly level. “That means you wait outside.”

“She’s in there, in pain and she is doing it by herself. I am standing in a corridor in ice skates because she asked me to leave and I am telling you right now that I am going back in there⁠—”

“And I am telling you right now,” Cas said, at the same volume, with the same level, “that you are not. Because Toren asked you to give her this. She is not doing it by herself, there are three medical professionals in that room who are very good at their jobs. She is doing it without you in her face making it harder for her to focus. That is a different thing.” He held my gaze. “You know the difference.”

I knew the difference.

I hated knowing the difference.

I turned away from the door and put both hands flat against the opposite wall and stood there, weight forward, arms straight, and tried to find something to hold onto inside the specific chaos of having absolutely no control over the most important thing that has ever happened to me.

It didn’t work. I pushed off the wall and started pacing.

“You're pacing,” Cas said, from behind me.

“I'm moving. There's a fucking difference.”

“There genuinely isn't.”

“If you say one more thing I am going to⁠—”

“What?” he said, without aggression. Just the question, open and patient, from a man who knew I had nowhere to go with it.

I said nothing. I kept pacing.

“Stop looking at me like I'm a damn grenade,” I snarled after a moment.

“I'm not looking at you like a grenade,” Cas said. “I'm looking at you like a man who is two seconds from doing something that is going to upset the medical team and set us back significantly. Which is a specific kind of look.”

“I'm not going to do anything.”

“You told the intake nurse you were going to solve the problem yourself.”

“That wasn't a threat. It was a statement of intent.”

“Those are the same thing.”

“They are not⁠—”