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“Good. And don’t wear yourself out trying to prove anything after I leave. You’ve already done your work for today.”

While he was getting ready to leave, Eternity sat on the couch beside my chair. She reached over and wiped a little sweat from my forehead with the edge of a towel.

“You tired?”

“A little,” I admitted.

“You want to go upstairs and lie down?”

“Nah. I’m staying down here for a while.”

Therapy had been kicking my ass lately, but I wouldn’t openly admit that to her. When I first came home from the rehabilitation center, there was so much shit I felt like I had to worry about, and well, now the only thing that was my focus was walking again. Ty had handled that FBI situation. It turns out that the FBI situation that we thought we had wasn’t a situation at all. Ty told me that the agent that was hassling Ghost wasn’t even active. He was a man with a vendetta and a former agent who went rogue.

From what Ty was able to dig up, Ryan hated the Ruiz Cartel, and anyone associated with it, because his sister had overdosed on some of our product last year. Some of the lower-level dealers out here would cut our product with fentanyl to stretch it. It’s something that Sha had been trying to crack down on, but it’s a work in progress. After Ryan had lost his sister, he had gone on a downward spiral that led to his suspension and then his removal from the agency. As far as Maliah, Tahari had worked hard with her to get her back behind the wheel. And when it came to Ghost, he was handling that too. The only thing left on my plate was to heal and get better.

Silently, Eternity and I sat in the living room. When she rested her hand on my shoulder, I looked over at her stomach. She was getting close now. Close enough that she’d started keeping her hospital bag by the bedroom door, and every time she shifted in her sleep, I woke up wondering if it was time.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Fine.”

“Try that again with a real response,” I prompted.

She smiled.

“I’m tired, Malik. My back hurts, and your son has been kicking me all morning. Other than that, I’m fine.”

I reached over and put my hand against her stomach.

“You giving your mama a hard time in there?”

He moved beneath my palm, and Eternity laughed.

“See?”

I kept my hand there until he moved again. I had been thinking about what would happen if she went into labor while I was still like this. I knew we had people around us that could help. MJ could get here, and Maliah had cut back on staying over at Tahari’s because she knew that we were close to her mama’s delivery date. Eternity had already told me she wasn’t worried about any of that, but I was. I’m her fucking husband. I wanted to be able to get up when she needed me. I wanted to carry her bag to the car and help her inside of it without somebody having to push me out of the way first.

“You’re thinking too hard. That forehead is creased all the way up,” she said.

I looked up at her.

Her eyes softened, and then she tilted her head to the side and stared at me.

“What’s got you staring at my stomach like that?”

I rubbed my hand over it once more before sitting back.

“I just wanna be ready when he gets here.”

“You will be.”

I looked down at the wheelchair.

“I’m working on it.”

Eternity leaned forward and took my hand.

“Baby, I know you are. I see you doing this every day.” She squeezed my fingers. “But I don’t need you to be walking by the time he gets here. You being here with us is enough, and don’t ever for one second think that it’s not.”