She was coming around, and I wasn’t done talking, despite the noise and shuffling from the people in the room trying to shut the tv off again. I set the guitar to the side and laid my head down next to her own. “As soon as you’re better, we’ll work out a date to go get it done. I’m not waiting anymore on what everyone else thinks is appropriate. Screw them! I already know everything I need to. You’re my woman, you’re carrying my baby, and we’re already a family so nothing else matters. We’ll just be making it official.” I kissed her on the cheek and laid my head down beside hers again, watching her as she fought to wake up. Hell, maybe she was fighting to stay asleep. All I knew was that she was gorgeous lying there in that bed. I brushed some hair out of her face and smiled at her as her eyes opened and her lips tipped up at the sight of me. Someone across the room moved, scraping the chair against the floor and destroying our moment. I wanted to roar and pounce on every last asshole in the room and kick them all out, but I couldn’t move away from her.
She took in all the faces of the people who loved her and had been worried for her. Then she reached up to run her hand through her hair, only she managed to snag some of it on the ring I’d put on her finger. I gently reached out and grabbed her hand to keep her from pulling harder and ripping at her hair. I took a moment to untangle her hair from the ring facets and then I watched as her eyes lighted on the sparkle coming off of the diamond in the center of the ring. Then she took a look around at everyone to see who was in on it, and then back to me. I couldn’t fathom what she was thinking in that moment, but instead of asking about the ring she glanced around the room once more and asked after my nephew instead. “Brant?”
The pallor of her face changed as the blood drained out of it and I watched panic take over. The machine attached to her started going a little nuts as her heartrate increased.
“Shh, calm down, honey. He’s fine.” I soothed, though the words didn’t seem to penetrate whatever state she was in. “He’s okay. He’s with Kent right now. He’s taking care of Bubba too, honey. They’re both fine. Leanne got there not long after your text.”
“The baby?” Her next question shouldn’t have surprised me. She was worried about everyone else first. Typical Poppy.
“Just fine. They brought an ultrasound in, and we all got to see the heart beat and everything.”
“How long have I been here?” I heard the light strings of my guitar being strummed by someone, but I didn’t bother to see who had picked it up as I answered Poppy.
“Two days. Leanne was here with you until we got back. Everyone just stopped in to check on you at the perfect time though since you finally decided to stay awake.”
“I’m so sorry,” she told me as tears began to form.
“You couldn’t help getting sick,” I admonished her.
“But Brant…”
“Stop! You let Leanne know something was wrong, and you did your best. Nobody is blaming you for anything. Brant was obviously worried about you, but he was fine. He just sat there with you until Leanne got there. He wasn’t harmed, and it’s not like you neglected him. You got sick and passed out. That is more my fault for leaving you with him so long with no help.”
“Enough of that shit from both of you,” Chief called out as he put my guitar back down. “Neither of you are at fault. It is what it is. Shit happens, and then we get over it and move on. I’m glad you’re getting better, Sis. You had us all worried! Don’t ever do it again though!” Chief moved to the opposite side of the bed that I was on and leaned in to give his sister a kiss on the forehead before he scrunched up his face and pulled away. “Maybe you should try to get up and get a shower sometime soon though, you stink!” Poppy playfully swatted at her brother, but I could see that even doing that much took it out of her, so I stood and turned to look at everyone who was still gathered in the room.
“Chief is right, Poppy stinks!” Everyone laughed as Poppy attempted to hide her embarrassment underneath a pillow. “I think maybe you should give us some time to get her cleaned up and back home, and then you can all stop in see her.”
“Don’t listen to these brutes, sweetie! You look fabulous, even in your sweat-soaked state. I’ll be around to check in on you as soon as you’re back home, okay?” Leanne asked, finally coaxing Poppy back out from underneath her pillow. “I’m really happy to see you’re feeling better. You scared the daylights out of me when I showed up and saw Snake was pounding on the door.”
“Snake?” Poppy asked. “What do you mean Snake was pounding on the door?
Snake managed to pop back in the room as if he had been summoned. “Ah, she’s finally awake, I see.” He wasted no time replacing Chief’s place on the opposite side of the bed from me. I didn’t miss the lingering glance he gave to the ring that now sat on her finger. Not that I wanted to be that dick, but it pleased me a bit to see the pain in his eyes when he saw it. I needed him to know, in no uncertain terms, that she was mine. Now and forever. That quick flash of pain didn’t stop the bastard from leaning over and kissing my woman’s face though. I growled low in my throat, a warning to the fucker that he was treading on awful thin ice.
“Hey, sweet girl, how you feeling?” He gave her a small smile as she looked between the two of us. “I see you didn’t waste time moving on from Walker.” Poppy did not look happy at his announcement, but before she could rip him a new one, he threw his hands up in surrender. “I’m not judging, you know that. I just didn’t realize you had gotten so serious so fast.”
“Didn’t Walk tell you about his trip here last week?”
Snake shifted uncomfortably then. “He mentioned seeing you, but didn’t go into too much detail.” He turned to me then.
I nodded my head acknowledging the fact that we hadn’t actually talked about Walker’s visit earlier when it was mentioned. “He confronted Poppy before I could make it there. Seemed pretty sure of himself that he was going to sweep in, apologize, and carry her home with him on the back of his bike.”
Snake laughed. “No wonder he came back from his trip and sank into the bottom of a bottle.”
“You knew about his trip, and no one sent a heads up?” I groused.
“Nah, like I said earlier, we knew he was going on a trip, only he was supposed to be headed south to see family in Tallahassee. Thought maybe his ma took a turn for the worse when he showed up drowning his sorrows.” Shit, he had told me that. Having my woman lying in a hospital bed was fucking with my mind.
“Is she not doing well?” Poppy asked, seeming genuinely concerned, and pulling me from my own thoughts.
“Cancer’s back from what I hear. Though, I don’t hear much from him directly these days since he seems to think he picked sides between you and him.”
“I’m sorry,” Poppy started to apologize.
Snake simply waved her off. “Nah, don’t you go worrying about that. I just did the right thing when he wouldn’t, and he’s mad about that. One day he’ll realize he’s mad at himself and not me.”
“You came to my house and found me?” She asked, changing the subject.
“I did. I wasn’t sure what kind of support system you had up here, and after I found out about Walker’s visit, I figured you could use a friendly face.” Snake glanced over at me and I just tipped my head the slightest bit to indicate I’d go along with what he was saying. He had come for her, not to check on her. She didn’t need to know that though. “No one answered the door even though I could hear the dog barking and a kid crying inside,” he told her. I wished he had left the last part out. She didn’t need to feel any more guilt over passing out in front of Brant. “I took a look in the window and saw you on the floor.” He put a hand over his chest rubbed where his heart was. “Took at least a year off my life to see that.”
I couldn’t help that growl that his admission brought out of me again. This fucker was starting to get under my skin, and he knew it. “I know she’s your woman, I got that. She’s been my friend for a long damn time now though, so calm d
own with that growling bullshit. I’m not a threat. She’s never looked at me the way she does you. There’s not a damn thing for you to worry over.”
Poppy snickered and then it turned into a full-blown laugh as she took in the jealousy written all over my face. That was when I knew I had to leave and give them some time to talk without my being there. She was mine. I knew she was. That didn’t mean I could stand to watch a man who had been pining over her for years talk to her with a familiarity that, in some ways, we were still working on together. “I’m going to grab a coffee then find the nurse to hunt down the doctor to see when we can spring you from this joint. You two catch up until then.”
Ghost and Chief followed me out of the room, and we all made our way to the end of the hallway. “You doing okay?” Chief asked.
“As good as I can considering my woman’s sitting in a hospital bed because she was so sick that she passed out and stayed asleep for two fucking days.”
Ghost clutched onto my shoulder. “You have a strong woman there. It’ll all work out.”
“Speaking of working out,” I started to say, and then I launched into my plan to buy a house big enough to accommodate our growing family. “I need you both to be on the lookout for something with enough room, and in a nice school district, but close to the club.”
“Jesus, you already sound like Mr. Mom,” Chief teased.
“Don’t laugh, Chief. You’ll find yourself settling down soon enough.”
Chief scoffed and then the two of them bantered back and forth as I got lost in my head with my own plans for the future. Of course, I never saw a trip to Georgia in our plans, but that’s exactly what happened. We ended up heading down there for a court ordered mediation where upon seeing my, by then, very pregnant fiancé, the court finally granted Poppy her divorce. Though, it didn’t turn out all roses seeing as to how we ended up in the damn hospital one more time for our troubles.
Chapter 16
Sweat dripped from her hairline as she grimaced while clutching her belly again. I knew this trip to Georgia was going to be fucked from the beginning since we had to deal with Walker trying once again, to hang on to the scraps of what he thought he had left with Poppy. It didn’t work. What it did do was add stress to my woman that sent her into labor early.
“Ow! It fucking hurts!”
“I can tell, honey.” Just watching her go through this shit was painful for me. I couldn’t imagine actually having to live through it. I had wanted a big family with Poppy, but I was beginning to rethink things when she asked me a stupid fucking question that caught me off guard for a just a moment.
“How can you tell?”
“You mean besides the fact that you’re dropping f-bombs left and right and damn near ripping my arm off with each…” I stopped speaking dead in my tracks as she gripped on to me with claws from hell and refused to let go. The pinch and scalding hot sting as two of them pierced my skin didn’t even phase me beyond the initial reaction my body had to the onslaught of pain.
“Damn, dude, that looks like it hurts,” I heard Chief interject into the situation.
“Why is he still here?” Poppy cried out while trying to see around me to find her brother, as if he could possibly be just a disembodied voice in the room.
“I was just dropping off your bag since you two were out of the house so fast you forgot it.”
“Hi, everyone! How is our patient doing today?” A nurse who looked as though she should still be in high school asked in a chipper manner as she skipped her ass into the room. She was wearing scrubs, but the damn things were so tight they were highlighting every damn curve she had. Something I was sure Chief had noticed, and appreciated, considering how his tongue was still wagging in her direction.
“I’m doing,” Poppy started to answer before another contraction rolled through her. If her reaction was anything to gauge it by, this one was the mother of all fucking contractions, because I kid you not, she was about to start speaking in tongues. At least that was what I thought before she opened her mouth and started yelling at the too-perky-for-her-own-good nurse. “FUCK THIS SHIT, I’m not doing just fine at all! Get this baby out of me!”
“Oh dear, that sounds like it was a bad one.” The nurse was clearly an idiot for speaking to a woman in pain like that. Poppy looked fit to be tied, and damn near reared up off the bed. I stepped a little closer to hold her down if I needed to, because I couldn’t allow her to go off and start a fucking brawl with the nurse while she was in active labor with our child.
“Honey, you’re doing just fine. You use as many f-bombs as you need. I’m sure they won’t be our child’s first word,” I told her. Okay, now I was the one poking fun at her because she had told me that I wasn’t allowed to curse once she went into labor because she didn’t want the baby’s first words she heard being an f-bomb.
“Oh, God, something’s happening down there,” Poppy hissed out and I nearly made the mistake of looking. Only Chief’s vehement shaking of his head caught my attention first and managed to warn me away from looking.
The nurse proved herself to be the idiot I thought she was. “It’s a bit too early for all that. I’ll be checking you in just a few minutes when the doctor comes in. She glanced down at the little tablet in her hand and nodded her head as if she needed to agree with herself. “Yep, it says here that your nurse prior to shift change just checked you about 45 minutes ago.”
“There is a head coming out of my body, and it burns like a motherfucker!” Poppy seethed at the woman.
That was the moment I lost my damn mind and moved just enough so that I could take a look between Poppy’s spread legs. A knee to the face stopped me from actually seeing anything this time! I had to physically shake the blow off, and apparently it did not knock any fucking sense into me whatsoever because I kept on moving around the offending leg and managed to see what my woman had been screaming about. Sure as fuck, there was a head full of hair staring at me from between Poppy’s legs. “There’s a head, get the goddamn doctor in here, now!”
Bubbles, what I had dubbed the dumb bitch of a nurse in my head, jumped into action and ran to the bottom of the bed, dropping the end portion out from under Poppy’s feet. The nurse caught one of her calves in her hand, and I instinctively managed to grab the other which effectively held her splayed out for anyone and everyone in the room to see what was going on down there.
“Shit! I did not need to see that!” Chief yelled just before I noticed him hightail it out of the room. I could hear his loudmouth at least calling for help as he went though. “I just saw the head, someone better get my sister’s doctor in there now!”
“Oh-dear-lord-sweet-baby-jesus-take-the-wheel!”Poppy screamed the last as I watched her push despite the doctor yelling for her not to do it.
“Please, you have to stop pushing, because the doctor isn’t here yet.”
A doctor came rushing in the room immediately and damn near dove between my woman’s legs. Any other time and I might have punched a mother fucker out, but it just so happened that Chief pulled me from my murderous thoughts with his loud as fuck question from the hallway. “Anyone have some whiskey? Jesus, I can’t un-see that shit.”
“Are you fucking insane?” Poppy screamed at Nurse Bubbles. “Get out! Get the hell out of here. My husband can deliver our baby, because it isn’t waiting!”
“Whoa, now, honey. We’ll get you there. If you need to push, you push.”
The doctor basically shoulder-checked the nurse to push her out of the way. “Get her out!” Poppy yelled some more.
After Bubbles gave a feeble attempt at protesting the order, the doctor turned a hell of a glare on her. “You heard the patient. Send someone else in, right now.”
“One more good push, and we’ll be handing your baby over to you, Poppy!” The doctor explained while the nurse was retreating from the room in tears. I pushed against Poppy’s leg to help her as she attempted another push, and then I watched as the relief flooded through her. T
he tension in her face slackened and she took a deep breath before laying back. That’s when I realized it was done and looked back toward the doctor who was now holding a squirming, somewhat bloody body with white shit coating it in spots. The doctor wasted no time in getting rid of his burden on my woman’s chest. A new nurse, an older woman, had entered the room and moved quickly with a suction bulb thing to try to clear everything for the baby and then after a few quick seconds, a squall filled up the room as our baby let us know she’d made her entrance into the world and she might not be entirely happy with how that happened.
“It’s a girl!” The doctor called out a bit late.
I couldn’t take my eyes off of the sight of my daughter lying there on Poppy’s chest. They were beautiful. Our daughter was perfect, and my woman was an amazing creature who had just worked her ass off to bring her into this world. I’d never in my life been prouder and more overwhelmed with emotion. No one ever tells you that it’s the happiest moment of your life when you get bowled over completely by emotion.
“A baby girl,” I finally managed to get out and watched as my baby girl tried to wiggle toward my voice, obviously recognizing the sound.
“You want to do the honors and cut the cord?” The doctor asked me, pulling me out of my reverence. I shook my head indicating that I did not. I tucked a single finger in my daughter’s grasp and stood in awe as she clamped her tiny little fingers around my larger one.
“Do you have a name for her?” The nurse asked.
“Sophie,” I told her, while trying to get the words past all the emotion that was clogging me throat.
“Layla,” Poppy added.
“Lewis,” I tacked on in the end while smiling down at Poppy and still holding on to our daughter.
“Sophie Layla Lewis?” The nurse confirmed the name, and we both agreed while watching our daughter. “That’s a beautiful name.” The nurse did whatever she was doing off to the side before moving back over to the opposite side of the bed than I was on. “I need to get this little one cleaned up for you real quick. I promise I’ll bring her back quickly.”
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