I ran like my life depended on it, and in this case it did. Emmie was the only thing in the world that mattered. When I skidded to a halt in her room it was to find nurses and a doctor that I had never seen before rushing around, talking so fast that it made my head spin. My eyes went to Emmie and my heart actually stopped.
She looked so small in that big hospital bed—pale with tears running down her face. For the first time since Layla’s frantic phone call, I felt tears starting to burn my own eyes and I rushed toward her. Her arms were trembling as she wrapped them around my neck and I buried my face in her neck.
“Are you okay?” I whispered.
“I hurt,” she told me in a shaky voice that wasn’t like my Emmie at all. “The contractions are coming faster.”
I gulped in a few deep breaths. I wanted to just lose it right then. Emmie was the strong one, not me. But I knew that this time I had to be her strength. I mentally started praying to every one of those damned gods that Emmie swore by. I begged for the safe delivery of my baby girl, for them to watch over and protect Em, and for the ability to help Emmie through this like I needed to. While I prayed mentally, I talked to Emmie trying to keep her calm. She was shaking badly and I wasn’t sure if it was because she was so scared, in so much pain, or a mixture of both.
Things were moving faster than I could possibly imagine and before I knew it a nurse was pushing me toward the bathroom with a pair of scrubs. I left Emmie with the guys, knowing that they would protect her with their lives in the few minutes it would take me to change.
I had to wait outside the operating room while they gave Emmie her epidural. It took them ten minutes to do that, and it was the longest ten minutes of my life. When they finally let me in, Em was lying flat on her back. A tent separated her head from the rest of her body so she couldn’t see what was going on with the doctor and his team.
I tried not to think about what the doctor was doing to Emmie as I took the seat the nurse said was for me. Tears were pouring down Emmie’s face when I sat down beside her and took her trembling hand. “Are you in pain?”
She shook her head. “No… Just scared.”
I gave her the best smile I could muster. “Me too,” I admitted.
“It’s been a roller coaster the last five months, hasn’t it?” she whispered.
“Roller coasters are fun,” I assured her, leaning closer so I could kiss away her tears. The sight of her damp face hurt me like nothing else could, and I wanted to take all the pain and anxiety away for her.
“Okay, Emmie. It won’t be long now. Another minute and this baby will be all yours.” The doctor spoke up from the other side of the tent. “How you doing?”
“There’s a lot of pressure,” she told him.
“That’s normal considering I’m pushing around inside of you.” The doctor paused and then he was talking to the team of nurses and other medical staff around him. Asking for suction, demanding a clamp here and one there. I was terrified with each new command that left his mouth.
The room grew completely quiet as he started tugging and pulling and Emmie cried out, her hand tightening around my own to the point that I was sure I was going to have a few crushed bones in my hand. “Emmie?” I stroked her hair with my free hand. “Talk to me, baby.”
“I… I’m okay,” she whispered.
“Here she is!” the doctor announced, and then the room was filled with a sound I had never thought was pleasant but suddenly sounded like the most beautiful thing I had ever heard.
My daughter started to cry, making her presence known in the world.
Tears burned my eyes and I was unable to contain them this time as a nurse urged me to follow her and the screaming bundle in her arms. I watched them intently as they wiped some smelly goo off my child. She was weighed and measured. A little cloth cap was put on her head, and she was wrapped in a clean blanket.
And then I was being handed the most precious little bundle in the world. She didn’t smell good at all, and she was a squealing, angry mess. But the instant she was placed in my arms, my heart filled with the kind of love I knew I had never felt before.
For months I had thought I knew what it was like to love the child I knew was growing inside of Emmie. But now that I actually had her in my arms, I was aware that those feelings had only been for a dream. Reality was so much stronger, so much better.
I hugged her close, talking softly to the still crying baby. But the more I talked, the calmer she became until she was completely quiet, seeming to hang onto my every word as I told her how happy I was to finally meet her.
“Nik?”
Emmie’s weak voice reached me and I rushed back to her, still holding onto the baby. The doctors were working fast to get Emmie put back together, and she looked exhausted when I sat down on the chair beside of her. “Look at what I have, Em.” I smiled through my tears and positioned the baby so Emmie could see our daughter. “She’s so beautiful, baby.”
“Is she okay?”
“She’s perfect,” I assured her.
A nurse came up beside me telling Emmie all about height and weight and something about an Apgar score. Whatever Apgar happened to be, the baby’s seemed to be good, and Emmie was smiling as she started to drift off to sleep.
Chapter 18
Once Upon A Time
Mia Nicole Armstrong came home later than we had originally expected, and so did Emmie.
Mia had jaundice, and not just a little bit either. She looked like an Umpa Lumpa from Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory by the second day. Her pediatrician said that it was because Emmie’s blood type was so different from my own and that Mia had my blood type. She had to be put under a light that would help bring her bilirubin levels down. During that time I felt such heartache and panic that it made my chest hurt to the point that I was sure I was having an anxiety attack.
The doctor and nurses kept trying to reassure us all that Mia was going to be okay. Jaundice was completely common when it came to newborns. I had to keep reminding myself that Mia was okay, that there were babies that were sicker and not nearly as lucky. If the nurses thought that I was an over anxious daddy, it was nothing compared to Emmie.
She was a wreck. The minute they put the little blindfold on Mia and put her under the light Emmie became hysterical. She tore her stitches from the C-section and had to be sedated for two days to keep her in bed.
It was a scary week and I was beyond happy to get home with my family.
Of course that all flew out the window when Emmie’s postpartum depression set in. My Gods! Were all women like that after having a baby? She could flay me alive with just a look, and her tongue was so sharp it left me bleeding from the inside out. And when she wasn’t tearing me and the others apart, she was crying.
Emmie’s scars from her mother went deeper than any of us could possibly have guessed. She was terrified of being a bad mother. Em wanted to take care of Mia herself. All of my help was shunned. I couldn’t pick Mia up when she was crying without causing an argument, something I tried to avoid. Everything was adding up and Emmie was looking worse and worse every day.
I spent more and more time in the studio so I wasn’t in Emmie’s way. It was killing me that I couldn’t help her or comfort her. Staying away was the only thing I could think of to ease some of her stress.
One evening Layla met me at the door as soon as I got home with the guys. She had the baby in her arms and the baby monitor in one hand. I frowned at the combination. Shouldn’t the monitor have only been necessary if the baby was in her crib?
“What’s up?” I asked, staring down at Mia with a tired smile. Just because Emmie wasn’t letting me help didn’t mean that I was getting any sleep when she got up with Mia throughout the night.
“Emmie has been sleeping all day,” Layla told me quietly. “I think she’s going to calm down and let you start helping her more.”
I felt tears stinging my eyes and blinked them a few times to keep from embarrassing myself in f
ront of Layla. “Is she okay?”
Layla gave me a small smile, her chocolate eyes full of understanding. “She’s fine. Just exhausted.” She carefully placed Mia in my arms before turning to put the monitor on a table. “I’ve been listening for Emmie. She’s probably starving. I made dinner so you can just reheat it when she’s ready.”
I glanced from Layla to Mia, who was safely bundled up in my arms. She was frowning up at me, and I suspected that she was making a mess in her diaper. “Thanks for helping, Layla,” I told the woman that had become such a lifeline in my life lately. Emmie didn’t listen to anyone but Layla right now.
“No thanks needed.” She pushed her long cinnamon hair out of her face and gave me a smile. “If you need anything, just call or come over.”
After Layla had gone home, I carried Mia upstairs and took care of the diaper issue. I had only changed about five diapers since she had been born, and never one so messy. But I muddled through, talking quietly to the baby as I cleaned her up and put a new sleeper on her. Mia was only a few weeks old, but she listened to my voice so intently that it seemed like she understood every word that I said.
Exhausted from having only gotten a little over an hour sleep the night before, I dropped down in the rocking chair beside Mia’s crib in the nursery and cuddled my baby close. “Mommy has been bonkers lately, huh, Mia?” I grinned down at her when she frowned at me yet again, not to fill her diaper but as if she didn’t like me talking about her mother like that. “But we still love her, don’t we?”
The baby’s only reply was to blow a bubble at me. “Daddy’s going to make sure that Mommy doesn’t get like that again.” I realized that I hadn’t been acting much like a daddy lately. Instead of staying away in hopes that Emmie would just get better on her own, I should have been insisting on helping her. I felt like I had let both Em and Mia down.
Determined to make it up to two of the most important people in my world, I brushed a kiss over Mia’s forehead. “How about a story, baby doll?” I crossed my legs and put the baby carefully on my lap, stroking my fingers over her face and peach fuzz hair that I knew was going to be just like her mothers. “Once upon a time there was a beautiful little girl with a tear streaked face. She had no idea that the boy next door was going to spend the rest of his life loving her…”
--
A cool hand brushed over my cheek and my eyes snapped open. Big green eyes set in a thin, pale face filled my vision. There were dark circles under Emmie’s eyes, so bad that it looked like bruises. Memories of her actually having a black eye from one of her mother’s rages filled my mind, and I reached out a hand to grasp her.
She gave me a small smile and sat down on the edge of the rocking chair. “Hi,” Emmie murmured before turning her gaze to the sleeping baby lying across my chest on her stomach.
“How are you feeling?” I whispered, trying not to wake the baby. I hadn’t remembered falling asleep, but it must have been a while ago. My neck was stiff and my body was protesting from sitting too long.
Emmie sighed. “Better. I slept eighteen hours.”
“This is my fault. I should have made you let me help out with the baby. Instead, I took the easy way out and let you deal with it all.”
Emmie rolled her eyes. “Since when can you make me do anything, Nik?”
I wrapped my free arm around Emmie’s tiny waist. She had lost the pregnancy belly and had lost more weight than I wanted to think about since Mia had been born. Gods, I sucked at taking care of my girls. “Yeah, but I need to start.”
“If you say so.” She leaned against me, putting her head on my chest much like Mia was. “This is my fault, Nik. No one’s but my own. I was jealous. Mia loves you so much, and she does nothing but cry when I hold her.”
I sighed. “Ah, Em, she can sense your stress. That’s why she cries so much when you hold her. You have been so tired, so anxious. Mia can feel all of that. Fuck, baby. We all could.” I combed my fingers through her hair, trying to soothe her as I had done to Mia earlier. “If you would just relax everything will be okay.”
“I want to be a good mom…” Emmie whispered with a small hitch in her voice that told me she was close to tears.
“You are a great mom. The best mom. Mia is so lucky to have you, baby.”
How could I relieve her fears? How did I make her understand that she was never going to be the mom her own mother had been? I wasn’t sure that I, or anyone else, ever could. If she didn’t get things just right in her own estimations on how a mother was supposed to be, Emmie thought she was a bad mother. It was going to drive her—and everyone around her—insane.
“Listen to me, Em. Worrying about being a good mother, about getting it right… That alone is the sign of a great mom. You love Mia and you want what is best for her. Fuck, Em. You have put her well-being before your own already. In my book you already qualify as mother of the year.”
She gave a soft, quiet little laugh, and I brushed a kiss over the top of her head. “You had the worst mother in the world, Em. I hate that and her. But you know what not to do because of her.”
“What if I mess up?”
“Then you learn from it and move on. But guess what?”
She raised her head. “What?”
“We can mess it up together. Mia has us both.” I glanced from Emmie to the only other person in the world that could stop my heart from beating by just looking at her. “I want to be a good daddy just as much as you want to be a good mom. I didn’t have much of a role model either.”
“Are you as scared as I am?”
“Probably more.”
“She’s going to have more than we did.”
I chuckled softly. “Of course she is. She’s a rock princess after all. Mia is going to own the world.”
A giggle escaped Emmie and the sound went straight through my heart and down to my dick. It had been months since I had made love to Em. The last trimester of pregnancy had been too uncomfortable for Emmie to have sex. We hadn’t done more than heavy petting for so long, and my body felt like it was on constant alert for any signs of attention. It hadn’t mattered to me that we hadn’t made love. I wasn’t going to do anything to hurt Emmie.
That didn’t mean I didn’t ache for her though…
“I meant love, stupid,” she corrected me. “Yeah. Mia will have plenty of that,” I assured her with a tender kiss on her lips.
Chapter 19
No, Is So Heart Shattering
Thanksgiving was fast approaching and I was getting a little anxious. When I had asked Emmie to marry me, she had said yes, but only after the baby was born.
Well, now Mia was here and Emmie hadn’t even mentioned getting married. I was so ready to make everything legit. I wanted Emmie as my wife, not just my baby momma as the tabloids described her recently when they had run the story of Mia’s birth.
I was worried that Emmie thought I wasn’t serious about getting married. We hadn’t discussed it since I had asked her all those months ago. Maybe she thought I had only asked to prove a point, not because I really wanted to. The truth was I wanted it more than anything I had ever wanted before.
Okay, I’ll admit that when I first started accepting my feelings for Emmie for what they really were I had been scared out of my mind. Marriage had terrified me back then. In the world of rock ’n’ roll, of any celebrity really, marriages didn’t last long. The touring, the crazy fans, the whole fucking lifestyle was rough on a relationship. But hell, Emmie had put up with me and that lifestyle for longer than most marriages lasted. I had faith that we could make it work now.
To show her how serious I was about marrying her I went shopping. It took me two days to find the ring I wanted. A five carat princess cut engagement ring that was handcrafted by one of the most sought after jewelry designers on the planet. It cost an ugly amount of money, which was nearly impossible to keep from Emmie until I gave it to her.
Luckily I had Axton. With Jesse and Drake distracted by their own relationsh
ips, and Shane doing only gods knew what, Axton was the only other friend I really had that I could ask for help. To keep Emmie from finding out before I wanted her to, I asked Axton to buy the ring and I would pay him back once Emmie had the ring.
Axton handed over his credit card without a blink of an eye. “Treat her right, man,” he advised me with a sad smile.
I clasped my friend’s hand in a tight handshake. “Always.”
With the ring in hand I set out to make this proposal at least a little more romantic than the last one I had made. Layla agreed to babysit Mia for us while I took Emmie out for the first time since the baby had been born.
I had never been so nervous in my life, and I wasn’t even sure why. She had already agreed to marry me. I had my yes. Now I just needed to give her the ring and ask her to set a date. The sooner the better.
A limo was already waiting on us as we stepped outside and I helped Emmie into the back seat. She gave me a grin as she scooted over, and I climbed in beside her. “This is unexpected.”
“I thought I would spoil you just a little.”
She reached for my hand, linking our fingers. “Thanks, Nik.”
I pulled her against me. “I love you, Em.”
“Still?” She grinned, but I saw the uncertainty in the green depths of her eyes. It gutted me to see it. “I figured that after the last few weeks I had driven all that love away.”
Her postpartum depression hadn’t completely disappeared overnight. She was still struggling with it, but I hadn’t let her push me away again. She had my complete support now. “No, baby. Nothing you do will ever stop me from loving you.”
I held her close as the driver managed to get us to our destination. We had dinner at one of LA’s most popular restaurants. I had thought about giving her the ring after dinner, but knew she would think it was too cheesy.
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