I pushed open the driver’s door and slid out, running around to her side, and I handed the keys to the security guy who walked toward me. I followed my wife and the midwife inside. Within minutes Hettie was stripped out of her wet maternity jeans and underwear, and the midwife was preparing to examine her. Just as she did, Hettie began to bear down.
“Shit,” the midwife said, her cheeks becoming heated. “Sorry, that slipped out. You’re fully dilated. I just need to listen to your baby and then we can get you ready to push with the next contraction,” she said abandoning the idea of examining her. We could both see a tiny patch of dark hair. “I can see your baby’s head; it’s not going to be long.” Hettie’s eyes went wide, fear in them for the first time since we found out she was pregnant.
“That’s impossible, it’s my first baby, I’ve not had much in the way of pain.”
“Sometimes these babies need a smacked bottom for not reading the manuals before they make their appearance,” the midwife joked. She frantically tore open layers of white paper that contained a delivery pack tray full of metal instruments. Some of them looked like they’d come from The Tower of London’s torture chamber. The noise of heavy metal on metal clanking in the tray made my blood run cold. “Gray, if you could help Hettie breathe through the contractions it will slow down the delivery and help her not to tear.”
Tear? Fuck. I just about wigged out when she said that. I loved Hettie desperately and the thought of our baby hurting her, hurt me. “Tell me what to do,” I demanded, suddenly invested as the second midwife.
“Relax, breathe with Hettie and help her to stay calm. Hettie, when the baby stretches your perineum you’ll feel it burn, everything in your body will be telling you to push, but this is where I’d like you to try hard to breathe and not bear down. The baby’s head will be delivered shortly after.” Just as she finished talking, the contraction came again and Hettie tried hard to do as her midwife told her.
I obviously tried too hard with the deep breathing exercises because I was as dizzy as fuck, but after a few more contractions, our son’s head stretched Hettie’s pussy entrance tight. I’m sure if she’d have coughed our baby would have popped right out.
Two more contractions and Hettie was panting, focusing intently on the mirror the midwife held in place as our son’s head, full of dark hair, slid slowly out and sat between her legs. I was in awe of her bravery and stamina to go through pain like that to give us a child. Instinctively she reached down and stroked our baby’s hair.
I’d expected more of a process for the delivery of our baby’s body but with the next contraction he slid right out into the midwife’s gloved hand and was lifted slowly onto Hettie’s belly.
“Congratulations Hettie and Gray, you have a son,” Ally, the midwife informed us. I was sure she must have said her name before but the first time it registered was when I read her name badge. I leaned over and kissed Hettie’s forehead, and I watched speechless at how immediate her mothering instinct was.
With innate confidence she scooped his slippery, wet body up in her arms, and placed him up by her breast. Within seconds Ally rubbed his back vigorously with a green towel and he began to cry in protest. Seconds later, crying forgotten he blinked against the light and his mouth began to root around. I was in awe when he turned his head toward Hettie’s nipple like there was some tracking device attached. The midwife helped Hettie latch him on and he instinctively knew what to do.
Watching them both together made my heart so full I felt it was going to burst. I didn’t need any notes on love to recognize it when I looked at them together. They were my world. I sat in my own reflection of what I’d witnessed just a few minutes earlier and waited patiently to be told what to do next.
Our baby finished feeding and the midwife weighed, measured, and checked him over. She wrapped him in a blanket and gave him to me and I almost crapped myself at being given responsibility for someone so fragile.
My nerves settled and within a couple of minutes, I naturally began to check him out for myself. My finger slid into his hand and his tiny digits clutched it tightly, as Brody Callum Dennison looked up into my eyes. I knew he couldn’t really see me, but I could see him. “Hello, Son, I’m your Daddy,” I said. In all the movies I’d ever seen, that line had sounded corny to my ears, but when I said it to my son, it didn’t sound corny at all as I stared into his little wrinkly face.
As I sat silently holding him while Ally tended to Hettie, my thoughts drifted to how my parents may have felt when I was born. My dad probably felt just like me, the same feelings of anxiety for his wife and unborn child turning to heart crushing joy the minute I was born.
From meeting my mother, I doubted she had ever felt the joy I had in my heart at the prospect of being a parent. And in truth I was apprehensive that my feelings about our son may not have been as strong as they should have been when he arrived.
More than once I had woken in the night anxious of how I would respond when the time came to being a dad, and if I’d treat him with the same coldness that my own mother had toward me. For many years, I had pretended, mainly to myself, that I was intact, and what had happened had no effect on me as I grew. It was my trust in Brody and his open honesty that gave me the cause to challenge my feelings, and when I did I was hardly prepared for the Pandora’s box of emotions I’d long locked away.
Being brave and refusing to acknowledge emotional damage will affect the injured party at some time in their life. I’d read that a hundred times. And pretending to be okay only validates someone else’s actions. By seeking help and support, I knew my life was enriched by all the new emotions I felt on my journey through life. It took a long time to realize what Hettie was to me, but even for all my suppression, a part of me knew. I believe my love was so strong for her it led me back time and again, even if I had no idea it was love I felt.
Time’s a great healer, but sometimes time can make us set in our ways too, and if it weren’t for Brody in particular and the honest and trusting relationship we shared, I may have gone on being superficial in my needs and never felt what it was to share a deep and loving relationship, like I had with Hettie.
The lack of emotional wealth I’d had for most of my life made me scared for how I’d behave and feel about my son, but when he looked at me for the first time the love I felt in my chest was fierce. The protective swell and tightness was undeniable, and I knew I’d give my life for his. Something inside shifted as soon as I held him and as soon as my son’s eyes had met mine I instantly knew about love at first sight.
I glanced over to Hettie with tears in my eyes, and for all she’d just been through she looked serene. “How do you feel?” she asked when I should have been asking her.
“Speechless,” I whispered past a growing lump in my throat, “Thank you,” I said, bending to press my lips delicately against his forehead. Gently, I stood and wandered over beside her, perched my ass on the bed beside her and she immediately placed her hand to cradle his head. “To think I may have missed all this,” I said quietly, in reflection of how I used to be.
“But you didn’t, Gray…we didn’t,” she said, and gave me her megawatt smile.”
“Tell anyone I cried and I’m leaving you,” I teased.
“It’s never gonna happen, Gray, you’re whipped, right?” she countered with the kind of sassy confidence that had made me fall in love with her a lifetime ago.
“Baby, you know it,” I confirmed, and smirked back.
For most of my adolescence all I wanted was to play music and get laid. When it happened, I felt like the luckiest guy in the world. It wasn’t until I knew what love was that it dawned on me no matter who I was or how famous I became, none of that mattered if my heart was empty. Being a rock star wasn’t the be all and end all, it was what I was inside that counted.
During my journey to self-acceptance I found being happy wasn’t about material possessions or having thousands of women lusting after us guys
in the band. Through my notes on love I learned it came down to who I loved and who loved me back.
Even though I’d found her years before, it had taken Brody and two people who didn’t know me to help me find the key to my happiness. All the fame and money in the world would have made no difference if I hadn’t found that. I’ve kept my notes on love as a constant reminder of how I almost missed out on love and how to find it in my heart, only to learn that it wasn’t my heart anymore it belonged to Hettie.
The End.
Other Books by
K.L. Shandwick
Last Score Series
Gibson’s Legacy
Trusting Gibson (book 2)
The Everything Trilogy
Enough Isn’t Everything
Everything She Needs
Everything I Want
Love With Every Beat
Just Jack (spin off from The Everything Trilogy)
Everything Is Yours
Ready For Flynn Series
Ready For Flynn, Part 1
Ready For Flynn, Part2
Ready For Flynn, Part3
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Notes On Love Page 37