“You can do this,” he repeated.
I nodded, finding strength in his eyes, his presence, his firm body behind me.
“Okay, I can do this,” I told Sarah confidently.
“Let’s have a baby,” Sarah replied, smiling.
My mom squeezed my hand.
And things went well. For about five minutes. Then I realized why women did this in hospitals, where they gave you drugs. I really fucking needed drugs. Then it was what felt like hours of pure agony and exhaustion.
“I can’t do it,” I cried, shaking my head, tears streaming down my face, squeezing my eyes shut.
“Yes, you can,” Elden replied calmly.
“I can’t!” I screamed. “And if you were trying to push a human out of you, you wouldn’t either.” I stared into his infuriatingly captivating fucking eyes. “I cannot do this!” My eyes squeezed shut once more, and I let out a sound that was more animal than human.
“Bitch, you better fucking do this.If I just escaped that sick fuck then you can do give birth to a tiny baby.”
My eyes snapped open and found Sariah. She was standing in the doorway, leaning heavily on Colby who looked paler than I’d ever seen her but who was alive.
“You’re here,” I rasped.
She smiled weakly. “It takes a lot more than a deranged serial killer to get me down. “Now please don’t embarrass the cause by bitching out at this moment,” she joked, clutching Colby’s arm. “Let’s have this baby.”
I stared at my best friend. Then my mom, then … finally … my husband.
I found the strength.
Only five minutes later, Willow Sariah Donovan came into the world.
I cradled her against my chest, exhausted, overwhelmed and overcome. My eyes found Elden’s. They were bursting with wonder as he delicately laid his lips on our daughter’s head.
“Kiss me,” he whispered. “I need feel my whole world.”
Epilogue
TWO YEARS LATER
ELDEN
I woke up alone.
My eyes found the skylight directly above our bed, staring at the smattering of stars above me.
It was late, at least for us since we had a daughter who woke up ready to attack the world at exactly five thirty.
Though she was wild, willful, stubborn and extraordinary like her mother, she, like her father, liked structure. Order.
She also slept through the night, peacefully. So peacefully, Violet had ordered some fucking sock that monitored her breathing and heart rate. Which was a fucking waste of money since Violet had been up every hour on the hour checking to make sure she was still alive the first six months.
Violet was an amazing fucking mother. I thought I’d seen everything she was already, but seeing her with our child was something else.
I’d been right when I’d thought it would take a lifetime to know her entirely. She was patient. She handled the sleepless nights, the crying, the colic like she was made for it. I was in awe of her. She oversaw all of the construction on the house she designed for us.
The house she designed forme… with vaulted ceilings, large archways and more windows than walls. Everything was open. Because she didn’t want me to feel trapped. I knew there was no way to tell her that living in a home with my wife and daughter … I was never fucking trapped.
Though Violet no longer got up to check on Willow every hour, she was up for different reasons.