“Don’t,” he growled. Her apology made him want to drop to his knees and beg her for forgiveness. He packed instead, throwing in one of his shirts as a nightgown, a pair of her stretchy sweats, her toothbrush and the moisturizer she always used. “Slippers, hairbrush, lip balm. What else?”
Adara watched him move economically through the space they’d shared, demonstrating how well he knew her as he unhesitatingly gathered all the things she used every day: vitamins, hair clips, even the lozenges she kept by the bed for if she had a cough in the night.
“I—” read about your mother, she wanted to say, but another pain ground up from the middle of her spine to wrap around her bulging middle. She gritted her teeth and he took her hand, reassuring her with a steady stare of unwavering confidence and command of the moment, silently willing her to accept and ride and wait for it to release her from its grip.
His focus allowed her to endure the pain without panic. As the contraction subsided, she fell back on the pillow again, breathing normally.
“Those are close,” he said, glancing at the clock.
“They started hours ago. I was in denial.”
She got a severe look for that, but he was distracted from rebuking her by the arrival of the paramedics. Minutes later, she was strapped to a gurney, her hand well secured in Gideon’s sure grasp as she was taken downstairs and loaded into the ambulance.
From there, nothing existed but the business of delivering a baby. As promised, Gideon stayed with her every second. And he was exactly the man she’d always known—the one who seemed to know what she wanted or needed the moment it occurred to her. When the lights began to irritate her, he had them lowered. When she was examined, he shooed extra people from the room, sensitive to her inherent modesty. He kept ice chips handy and gathered her sweaty hair off her neck and never flinched once, no matter how tightly she gripped his arm or how colorfully she swore and blamed him for the pain she was in.
“I can’t do it,” she sobbed at one point, so exhausted she wanted to die.
“Think of how much you hate me,” he cajoled.
She didn’t hate him. She wanted to, but she couldn’t. She loved him too much.
But she was angry with him. He’d hurt her so badly. It went beyond anything she had imagined she could endure. And then she’d found out why he’d lied and it made her hate herself. She was angry most about his leaving her. Living without him was a wasteland of numbness punctuated with spikes of remembered joy that froze and faded as soon as they were recalled. He’d left her in that agonizing state for weeks and...
Another pain built and she gathered all her fury and betrayal, letting it knot her muscles and feed her strength and then she pushed...
* * *
Gideon stood with his feet braced on the solid floor, but swayed as though a deck rocked beneath him. His son, swaddled into a tight roll by an efficient nurse, wore a disgruntled red face. He wouldn’t be satisfied with the soothing sway much longer, not when his tiny stomach was empty. He kept his eyes stubbornly shut, but let out an angry squawk and turned his head to root against the edge of the blanket.
Why that made Gideon want to laugh and cry at the same time, he didn’t know. Maybe because he was overtired. He hadn’t slept, his body felt as if he’d been thrown down a flight of stairs, his skin had the film of twenty-four hours without a shower and his own stomach was empty. This was like a hangover, but a crazy good one that left him unable to hold on to clear thoughts. And even though he had a sense he should be filled with regret, he was so elated it was criminal.
“I know, son,” he whispered against the infant’s unbelievably tender cheek. “But Mama is so tired. Can you hang on a little longer, till she wakes up?” He tried a different pattern of jiggling and offered a fingertip only to have it rejected with a thrust of the baby’s tongue.
The boy whimpered a little more loudly.
“I’m awake,” Adara said in the sweet, sleepy voice he’d been missing like a limb from his body.
Gideon turned from the rain beyond the window and found her lying on her side, her hand tucked under the side of her face as she watched him. The tender look in her eyes filled him with such unreasonable hope, he had to swallow back a choked sob. He consciously shook off the dream that tried to balloon in his head. Get real, he told himself, recalling why he was missing her so badly. His heart plummeted as though he’d taken a steel toe into it.
“He’s hungry?” she asked.
“Like he’s never been fed a day in his life.”
Adara smirked and glanced at the clock, noting the boy was barely four hours into his life. With some wincing and a hand from Gideon, she pulled herself to sit up.