I relaxed into him. “He doesn’t know you. Once he does, he’ll love you.”
“No, babe. No one loves me once they get to know me. Only you.”
I smiled up at him. “Because I’m the only one you show the real you to.”
His eyes glittered. “Plan on you being the only one for the rest of my life, Freya.”
My entire body thrummed, and our daughter kicked his hand. “We’re happy with that,” I whispered.
And I was. Happy. Home. Barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. Not long after, my biker and I were both naked in that kitchen.
Chapter Twenty-One
Evangeline ‘Eva’ Cooke came into the world with drama, pain and a heck of a lot of blood loss.
Cooke, that was Hades’s last name. I hadn’t known that until I saw Eva’s birth certificate. I didn’t know his first name until then either. Brian. Fucking Brian. “I get why you go by Hades,” I teased.
He tried his best to glower at me, but with everything that had happened, he wasn’t physically able to glower at me.
It was three weeks before my due date, so labor hadn’t even been on my mind. Our OB-GYN had assured us that first-time mothers almost always went past their due date.
Our OB-GYN had obviously never dealt with the fruit of Hades’s loins.
My water broke in the Trader Joe’s parking lot.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I hissed at my drenched panties.
Hades, who never let me do anything alone anymore, most especially grocery shopping with all the lifting of the bags and my history of parking lot drama, was at my side in an instant.
“I fucking knew those were contractions,” he chided.
I glared at him. “Really, you’re choosing now as an ‘I told you so’ moment?”
Hades examined my face then realized what a mistake it would be to lord his triumph all over me at this particular moment. I’d been in pain all day, but I’d been convinced that they were Braxton Hicks, especially since Hades and I had done the dramatic run to the hospital two times before that, and I was not going for three. I thought some cookie butter ice cream would serve as a distraction, hence us being at Trader Joe’s.
“At least now we get a positive experience in regard to parking lots,” I joked as he gathered me into his arms and carried me the ten feet to the car. “Of course, I couldn’t possibly walk the rest of the distance,” I muttered.
Hades chose to ignore that.
He did not ignore my curses and the contortions of my body as my contractions intensified during drive, though. He counted the time between them, and it was confirmed that he had correctly ascertained that my labor was pretty damn advanced when they sent me straight to the delivery suite upon our arrival.
“This is not how it’s supposed to be,” I whined in between pushing. “We don’t have the oil diffuser, the crystals, the Bluetooth speaker.”
Hades arched his brow ever so slightly. “You think I’m leavin’ your side to get a fuckin’ oil diffuser then you’re—”
My turn to raise my brows. “Then I’m what?”
He was pretty fucking lucky about Eva’s timing, since she chose that exact moment to save her father’s ass by making her entrance.
She made an entrance, and I almost made an exit.
I didn’t remember much from the whole process aside from the pain. There was no fucking way in hell I could forget the pain. Nor could I forget Hades, carved in black against the stark white walls of the hospital room, murmuring in my ear, kissing my head and never letting go of my hand. I could never forget the weight of our daughter on our chest, her warmth.
Then, to be horribly cliché, everything went black.
HADES
It was the best day of my life.
Until it wasn’t.
Freya had never been stronger. Her small hand crushing the bones in mine, her beautiful face dewy with sweat, with the effort that it took to bring our little girl into the world.
Our daughter.
Freya had not screamed as she pushed, she muttered curses, she squeezed my hand and she talked about how fucking stupid she was to refuse the drugs. She was Freya. She pushed. She fought.
Until the screams of our daughter drowned everything else out.
Her hand went slack in mine. I hadn’t noticed at first because I was enraptured by the world that the doctor had placed on Freya’s chest. I steadied the little body with my hand, my hand covering her entire body. She was fucking tiny and she was fucking everything.
Freya’s eyes were wide in wonder. With love.
Then, as the doctor took the baby to be cleaned, I noticed Freya’s hand, limp in mine.
“Freya!” My voice was dull to my own ears, all sharp edges.
“We need to get her into surgery, now,” someone yelled. Things moved quickly after that. Freya was surrounded by doctors; they had to get Swiss, Hansen and Jagger in from the waiting room to hold me back as they wheeled her away.