Some Kind of Perfect (Calloway Sisters #4.5)

by Krista Ritchie

  What? I wince again, my hand now in Lo’s. “That’s wrong.”

  “You’ve been fucking out of it, Lily.”

  I retreated in my head. It’s what I’m good at, unfortunately.

  Lo places his free hand on my kneecap, and he peeks between my legs. I’m too lightheaded to read his reaction. “How has she been?” he asks him.

  “Out of it,” he repeats.

  “An ambulance is coming, and maintenance is working on restarting the elevator,” he explains. “I couldn’t get a hold of either of you—and I thought…” He glares at the ceiling, his eyes flooding, upset and angry. “I called every goddamn hospital nearby. Then we found your car in the parking lot, and I knew you didn’t get in a wreck.”

  Ryke stands up. “You saw that the elevator was fucking stuck?”

  “Connor did. We found someone who knew how to get into the elevator shaft, and maintenance has been trying to restart it for the past two hours—”

  I scream at the contraction and squeeze the life out of Lo’s hand. Ohmy…I almost puke from the pain, nausea building in my throat. Lo strokes my cheek and whispers something that I can’t make out in my state. I dazedly nod.

  Ryke goes to the open hatch. He jumps, grabs hold of the edge, and pulls his body up with one hand. I have no energy to spare to freak out. Plus, he returns in a quick second. “I hear sirens.” Though it’s a distant sound.

  An ambulance is coming. Or is it in my head?

  I try to relax at the first thought.

  Lo and Ryke lock gazes, and they exchange a look of gratitude for one another. For Ryke taking care of me. For Lo coming to the rescue.

  “She needs you,” Ryke tells him.

  Lo stares back at me, and I stare at Lo. Our history blankets me with warm security, and I drown into those amber eyes. He cups both of my cheeks again.

  “You and me,” he says.

  “Lily and Lo,” I breathe.

  “Lo and Lily.” He wipes his own fallen tear and he nods. “We’re going to be okay.”

  I murmur, “I believe it.”

  The next events happen quickly, rushed between never-ending contractions, my screams, and an incoming baby. The elevator groans to a start. When we reach a new floor, the doors open to paramedics, and I’m hurriedly put on a stretcher.

  My sisters appear. So does Connor.

  I can hardly think while they assess and then move urgently, all to bring to me to the hospital. I never let go of Lo’s hand.

  Outside, as snow flutters in the pitch-black Christmas Eve night, the paramedics open the ambulance doors and I’m wheeled towards safety. My hands on my knees, gritting my teeth.

  Rose shouts at Xander to stay inside my uterus.

  Connor coaches me to breathe.

  Ryke talks to an EMT.

  Daisy sets a reindeer-shaped sugar cookie on my belly. Thank you, Daisy. It’s what I really wanted.

  And Lo is right beside me, clutching my hand, telling me that this is real. That no matter what happens, he’ll be here.

  By the time the world catches up with me, I’m in the hospital, the clock strikes an hour past midnight.

  And a Christmas miracle cries softly in my arms.

  Lily & Loren Hale welcome the birth of their baby boy

  XANDER HALE

  December 25th, 2022

  2023

  “I married someone much braver than me.”

  - Garrison Abbey, We Are Calloway (Season 5 Episode 12 – Street Fighter & Diamonds)

  < 29 >

  March 2023

  The Meadows Cottage

  Philadelphia

  DAISY MEADOWS

  “Are you sure?” I ask Rose for the twentieth time. Rose has a great track record when it comes to decision-making. She’s resolute, firm and unbending. I see that each time I ask, are you sure?

  “I want to do this for you. Let me.” Rose clasps my hand, both of us sitting together on the window nook. Connor and Ryke are quiet on the couch, watching us.

  Rose had her last child about a year ago. Ben Pirrip Cobalt. He naps in a nearby playpen next to Tom and Eliot. I can hear laughter from outside, today a rare warm day.

  I glance out the window. In the cul-de-sac, Moffy rides his bike in a circle while Janie, in a pale blue skirt and cheetah sweater, stands on the back pegs, her hands on his shoulders. They’ll both be eight in the summer.

  Coconut circles Sulli, not to catch her attention exactly. The white husky protects the five-year-old, ears perked and alert. Sullivan has one of Moffy’s skateboards, but she’s still learning how to use it. She keeps tripping into the grass, but like her dad, she never gives up.

  Today is all about Ryke and me making babies, but not in the traditional sense.

  Sullivan has cousins as close as brothers and sisters. She’d be fine as an only child, so that’s not really why I’d want another baby.

  I was in surgery and close to dying after I gave birth. There was a greater chance that I’d never wake up and see the next day. I wasn’t supposed to live, and in the moments where Ryke was told that he might lose me—where he knew he could become a single father in an instant—he thought about the chance where I’d see him again.

  He thought about me and what I’d want.

  Ryke made sure the doctor preserved my remaining eggs. In what he calls one of the two hardest moments of his life, he did this for me.

  Through my body’s twenty-some years of ups and downs and a risky birth, I was left with eggs on a laboratory dish. Combined with Ryke’s sperm, they became embryos, all frozen until we need them. I feel sick at the thought of wasting something that feels like the last pieces of a certain part of me—something that Ryke made sure to keep safe.

  We might not have physically had sex to make those embryos, but so much love went into that creation. I want to try and see if surrogacy will work, but for however daring I may seem, I’m terrified often. And parts of this terrify me.

  “I can’t be the sole decider in this,” I tell Rose. “I just can’t. It’s a huge deal, and it’s going to affect all of us.” I look at Ryke. Then Connor.

  Rose does too.

  Connor sets down his coffee mug and then leans back. “Ryke and I have concerns.”

  Rose’s back arches, preparing for battle. “You’ve been talking? Together?”

  “Yeah,” Ryke says. “We fucking do that sometimes.”

  Connor stretches his arm over the couch. “Though it can be mildly annoying when he just stops speaking like someone cut off his tongue.”

  “Not everyone has to fill every fucking pause.”

  “Concerns?” I interject to steer this sinking ship to land. “You’ve both been talking about concerns that involve…us?” I motion between the four of us.

  They’re quiet again, their gazes intrusive and intense and practically burning through Rose and me.

  “Okay, so just my sister and me,” I realize. Rose squeezes my hand in support. I silently hear her war chants: we shall prevail over our foes.

  Which just may be our husbands in this scenario.

  “Darling,” Connor begins.

  “Don’t darling me,” Rose snaps. “We don’t need coddling from either of you. We’re trying to make a fucking baby, not be babied.”

  “Hey, I didn’t say a fucking thing,” Ryke growls.

  This went astray real fast. “Let’s regroup here.” They all respect my voice so much, and I don’t have any sort of problem saying what I want to say. So I just speak. “I think it’s important that we listen to everyone’s point-of-views on the issue because it really involves us all. I don’t want to infer what you guys are thinking, so just let loose.” I wave to them like I’m bowing, but I can’t really bow while I sit.

  Ryke nods to Connor to be the one to talk. Ryke isn’t much of a talker, but that’s already been established.

  “Here’s what we know,” Connor says calmly, his new approach easing Rose more than before. “There are only two embryos. If they fa
il, it’s over.”

  Part one of why Daisy Meadows is terrified. I had more eggs, but not all of them successfully created an embryo with Ryke’s sperm. Only two did.

  We have two small chances.

  “And?” Rose crosses her ankles, in a black Calloway Couture dress that hugs her frame beautifully.

  Connor says a word in French and stops himself, his eyes flitting to me. I’m the only one who can’t speak the language, so he respectfully keeps it in English. “We’re concerned about the possibility where this fails and you’re both emotionally distraught in the end.”

  Rose glares. “Then stop thinking about us being emotionally distraught.” My sister is defensive because she wants this to work as much as I do, and bad realities hurt.

  “My main concern is with you, Rose.” His severity grips every word. “Grief is a realistic outcome, and will you be able to meet it?”

  “Yes,” she says strongly. “This is complicated. I see that as much as all of you. She’s my littlest sister, and of course if this fails, I’ll feel partially responsible. It’s my body that’ll reject the embryo, but I want to help.”

  I turn to Rose. “Please don’t blame yourself if something goes wrong. Please.”

  “I will,” Rose says icily. “And you have to accept that.”

  Part two of why Daisy Meadows is terrified.

  Silence blankets the room. I’m the one who ends up breaking it. “We can put it off until you and Connor have a girl…” It’s taken many, many months for them to change our minds about this timeline. Rose even tried to bribe me with chocolate cake. It was a valiant effort, but her genuine tears did the ultimate trick. I felt how badly she wanted to do this now and not wait.

  Rose shoots Connor the worst kind of look, like he returned a hurdle to their track.

  “Daisy.” Connor draws my attention to his calm exterior. “Rose and I aren’t going to try for another child until we do surrogacy.”

  “Do you even want to attempt it?” I motion between Ryke and Connor. “You both seem so upset.” If you could see their faces, you’d know they’re the distraught ones.

  Just to do something with my hands, I start twisting my hair in a high, messy bun on my head. Both men exude a type of masculinity that makes them feel larger than the room. Every time I hone in on this, I remember how much younger I am in comparison. To take my mind off the age differences, I focus on Ryke’s unkempt hair and unshaven face, polarizing Connor’s smoothness.

  But their distraught features never change shape. They are upset. They don’t even say differently.

  Ryke rubs his jaw and then drops his hand. “Because we fucking love each of you, and we know exactly how you’ll be if this fucking fails.”

  Because we’re sisters. But that’s why Rose and why I want to do it in the first place. I couldn’t think of a better birth mom for our baby. I’d be the baby’s biological mom still, and I like that our child will know that her aunt carried her for nine months.

  The downside is disappointment and heartache if everything goes wrong. I worry about Rose’s health, but she always combats with, “I’m thirty-three. I’m not dead yet.”

  I think about everything and ask the men, “But you two—you’re both okay in the event that everything goes right, right?”

  “Why wouldn’t we be?” Connor asks, though there’s no confusion in his face.

  “This bonds all of us in a way. Rose and I want that, but do you two?”

  Rose wears this expression like oh, the tables have turned. We’re definitely on the offensive now. Rose pushes it one step further.

  Bluntly, she says, “Ryke’s baby is growing in my body, and you both have to watch. So if you’re not able to handle this, speak now.”

  I wait for Connor’s I can handle anything arrogance, but he’s pokerfaced and silent.

  Ryke shakes his head. “It’s not our fucking place to say whether we do or we don’t. Either way, it shouldn’t be a deciding factor.”

  I rock back in shock. “So you do have issues with this?”

  Rose is even surprised. “Connor?” I hear the vulnerability in her voice when she says his middle name right now instead of Richard.

  “I can view nearly everything from a scientific standpoint, but emotions are variables and this has many more than I’m used to.”

  I feel like they’re both speaking around something. “Can you just come out and say it?”

  “Look,” Ryke says. “We’re good friends, but when I think about Connor, I’m not filled with warm fucking feelings.” They can grate on one another.

  Connor, more clearly, tells us, “It’s about sex.”

  “What?” Rose swings her head towards both men.

  My eyes widen at this realization. Oh. It’s just been proven. Their friendship chips away at their maturity. Which is usually at one-hundred percent unflinching, unabashed, we can do anything kind of levels.

  It’s plummeted to something strange. I want to make a joke about this theory being proven, but I’m a little speechless.

  When Rose is pregnant with our baby (aka Ryke’s baby), she’ll still have sex with Connor. This whole thing is new territory, sure, but the only reason Connor and Ryke are taking short pauses at the idea is because of their complicated friendship. Otherwise, I think this would be smooth sailing.

  To Rose, Connor says, “I can’t tell you my emotions about it because I’m not sure exactly what I feel.”

  Ryke leans forward, closer to us, his forearms on his knees. “Connor and I talked it out, and we both don’t want it to sway the fucking decision one way or the other.”

  “We agreed on something,” Connor says. “It’s rare, so let’s leave it at that.”

  Rose is as rigid as can be. “You both made this weird.”

  “It was fucking weird to begin with,” Ryke says.

  “It’s funny if you think about it,” I chime in with a growing smile. It must be contagious because their lips slowly inch upwards. Now that we surfaced the buried concerns, we exchange more certainty than before.

  “Let’s vote,” Rose says. “I’m for surrogacy as soon as possible.” Her piercing yellow-green eyes set on me.

  I don’t hesitate. “For.”

  We look between the men.

  “For,” Connor says easily.

  Ryke nods. “Fo—” BEEEEEEEP!!

  The loudest honk outside jars all of us to our feet. Coconut barks outside, an alarmed, deep throaty noise that means bad things are happening.

  Oh God.

  The children are in the cul-de-sac.

  Only a quick glance out of the window, I see the kids stare at something incoming. Sulli—she’s in the middle of the street unlike Jane and Moffy, who’ve ridden their bike to the grass.

  My lungs ram in my throat, and in seconds, we all rush out the door.

  < 30 >

  March 2023

  The Meadows Cottage

  Philadelphia

  RYKE MEADOWS

  I run down our front yard, Daisy right behind me. “SULLI!” I shout, my veins beating out of my fucking neck. Sulli kneels on the pavement like she just tripped off her skateboard. Our white husky stands in front of her, growling at the massive tractor-trailer that drives down our fucking street. Headed for the end of the cul-de-sac. Straight towards my five-year-old daughter.

  The horn blares.

  Right before I reach the mailbox, Moffy drops his bike, preparing to run out into the street to grab her.

  “STAY BACK!” I scream at him. He freezes in place just as my shoes meet asphalt. I pick Sulli up in my arms and sprint to the yard, Nutty trailing close behind. We fall onto the grass at the loud crunch, and our dog licks Sulli, like making certain she’s cognizant and not sitting in fear.

  The driver just crushed the fucking skateboard beneath the tires.

  You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. My nose flares. That could’ve been my fucking daughter. How did this tractor-trailer even get through the fucking gates? />
  Jane holds onto the bike and stares wide-eyed at the scene. “Merde.” Shit.

  I frown deeper.

  It’s the first time I’ve ever heard her curse in French, and by Rose and Connor’s quick exchange, I’d fucking bet it’s theirs too.

  “Sulli?” I climb to my feet and then help my daughter stand. She’s in a state of fucking shock. Nutty nudges Sulli until she responds with a pat to the dog’s head. Then Daisy wraps her long arms around Sullivan, and our daughter relaxes at her mom’s embrace and hugs back.

  I grab Moffy’s baseball hat that fell off when he was about to sprint into the street. “You alright?” I put my hand on his shoulder. “Moffy?”

  He looks as shaken as the other two, and I’m just as fucking concerned about him as everyone else. This is my brother’s oldest kid. Same jawline, currently the same haircut. He’s the one who had a seventh birthday and held Eliot by the candles. Asking him to blow them out. The one who served a slice of his own birthday cake to every kid before he cut his own. The one who could make the rowdiest children settle down and the quietest ones speak up.

  He’s the fucking leader of this pack.

  “No one ever comes down here,” Moffy says, dazed until he looks to me. “I wouldn’t have left her in the street. I wouldn’t have. I promise.”

  “Hey.” I shake my head. “It’s not your fucking responsibility.” Stop carrying that weight.

  He beats himself up over it. The driver climbs out of the tractor-trailer with a clipboard, and that’s when I really examine the trailer portion of the vehicle.

  The blood just rushes out of my head.

  “Uncle Ryke?” Moffy frowns.

  Connor, who normally has to be involved in everything, never approaches the driver.

  He knows it’s for me.

  Rose knows it’s for me.

  Daisy’s eyes start to flood with tears, and Nutty sticks closest to her.

  “Mommy, what’s wrong?” Sullivan asks.

  Daisy is too choked to answer. She gives Sulli a weak smile and then kisses her nose.