My heart is freaking pounding out of control and she’s panicking. I need to calm her down and hopefully, we can do this and find a way out of this hellhole.
“Hey, hey, hey, listen to me. I won’t pretend like I know how much pain you’re in right now, but we’re just going to pretend like everything is going to be fine.”
“How is pretending going to fucking help?” she snaps.
“Keep your voice down,” I whisper. “Pretending will help because we’re going to try and believe that everything’s going to be all right because you know what, we’ve both hit rock bottom and now, the only way we have left is to fight through the pain and have this baby.”
“Ahh, I hate this.”
“This wasn’t what I had in mind for my first day of senior year, but here we fucking are, Kristine,” I mutter, wrapping the extra sheet around her bottom so she’s somehow elevated. “We just have to deal.”
A sense of déjà vu hits me.
Julian said that to me before. When I was lying in his arms. He whispered it in my ear.
Life is unfair but we just have to deal and now, here I am, pretty sure I’m going to have to deliver this baby.
Looking around discreetly, hoping those jerks are still ignoring us, I kneel between Kristine’s legs. I grab the biggest knife I see in the bunch and tuck in the folds of the sheet I’m wrapped in.
“You’re not going to cut my vagina with that, are you?”
“Not even to my worst enemy. I told you, you’re going to give birth the old school, natural way.”
I see the doubt un her eyes first. “What if—”
“Kristine, you have no idea the number of what ifs running through my head right now and the crappiest part is, each one doesn’t necessarily have a solution.”
“Gee, thanks for… ah!” she screams.
With her screams, another noise erupts from out of nowhere from outside, that makes my heart stop.
“What was that?” Sean snaps.
“Go and check.”
“No, you go.”
Fucking cowards.
“Push Kristine.” I urge, looking around the warehouse. Whatever’s going on outside, please let it be some kind of intervention or help pf some kind. The pool of blood is getting bigger, seeping into the sheet that covers me and still, I can feel the baby’s head.
“Oh god, I can’t, please no,” she cries, tears streaming down her pale face. She’s shivering and I don’t think most if it is because of the chilly breeze in the warehouse.
“Yes, you can,” I whisper.
“It’s too early! It’s too early, Mia. It can’t be coming now. I’m seven months along.”
The impartiality of her words, referring to her baby as ‘it’ is so heartbreaking.
“We’ll just have to deal with it when we get to it, now lie down and keep your voice down.”
“You keep your voice down since you don’t have a ten-pound sack of human bone and tissue pressing down your vagina!” she grits out.
“Your math is wrong. A seven-month-old fetus can’t weigh—”
“Fucking stop nerding out on me and get this thing out of me!” she screams.
And that’s when I see the baby crowning.
“Someone’s here!”
Chapter Fifteen
Mia
“Fuck!”
I perk up, my back ramrod straight as my heart stops beating. My breath stutters out of my mouth with a raggedness to it.
Someone’s here! Oh God.
Even Kristine pauses, her eyes wide as she listens to the shocked silence that falls over the warehouse, like the silence before a storm and all hell breaks loose.
I’m pretty sure whoever is here wasn’t in these bastard’s plan and probably took them by surprise because they start panicking. Hope blooms in my chest like a flower in Spring.
This is it! This is definitely it. Our chance to escape.
“Kristine,” I whisper hotly. “You need to scream.”
“What?” she whispers at me, a deranged look on her face.
“You need to fucking scream,” I say quickly, looking around to see where Sean and Shane are, but I can’t see them, but my God, I can hear them. They’re moving around in a rush. I hear something being pushed, maybe one of the metal shelves cluttered around. “You need to scream as loud as you can and male a lot of noise.”
Whoever it is out there needs to hear us.
“Mia, if it’s one of your boys or all of them, they’re going to kill them.”
Yes, I saw the gun, but even with that knowledge, I still freeze as fear unlike anything I’ve felt since the first time I woke up in that freezer grips me by the throat, almost choking me. Hearing it said out loud doesn’t dim its validity and closeness.
“No,” I croak.
“That’s been their plan all along, Mia,” Kristine cries, a look of intense pain on her face.
I stare at her, the blood pooling on the floor.
Blood.
I have to focus now.
“Whether we get help or not, this baby is coming,” I say, rolling back my shoulders as my adrenaline spikes some more. “You need to push and fucking scream so whoever it is out there can hear us. Now fucking push!”
At that, Kristine throws her head back and screams louder than she’s ever let out up to this point.
I can feel the baby’s head as she works to push, cursing and crying as she does. I scramble to tear off another sheet. The blood on the floor, the screams and cries, the pale look on Kristine’s face… it all makes me want to throw up all over again, but I hold fast.
“One more push!”
She screams again, and just then, I hear startled shouts and curses and then… the unmistakable sounds of a deadly fight breaking. I have no idea who it is until… “Welcome to the party, Fitz!” and then a maniacal laugh.
Julian!
But I don’t have the time or luxury to feel the relief of Julian’s presence—let alone panic about it—as Kristine cries out. “Ah, get it out of me!” she screams but just as quickly, she falls deadly silent like she just lost her voice.
I look up at her, thinking she passed out, only to see fear enter her eyes unlike before. Her face is paler and her eyes wider. Her lips drop open to scream as suddenly, her face is cast in shadow.
Instinctively, I quickly reach for the knife I tucked in the folds of my sheet, as I feel a hand on my shoulder and then over my mouth. Panic and fear bubble up in me as I smell faint trace of gasoline. I’m all but ready to swivel around and stab the fucker as many times as I can, to death hopefully, until I hear…
“Shh, don’t scream. Mia, it’s me.”
Cole!
Shocked and still in static disbelief, I whip around so fast, I think I make myself dizzy and awaken the throbbing in my head, but I don’t give a flying fuck as I launch myself into Cole’s arms and cling to him, desperately.
“Cole!” I whisper, tears stinging my eyes, but I don’t have time to be emotional or feel the crashing wight of relief. The baby is coming!
“Aww, baby girl,” he whispers in my hair and then he pulls back and takes a good look at me. Almost immediately, his face hardens. His jaw clenches, reminding of a marble Greek god at the intimidating, savage beauty. He reaches for the side of my head where my hair is matted with blood and I see his eyes darken further into dark pools of rage.