Light

by Angel Payne

  Cal, seeming to read that thought from the resolve on my face, makes an attempt at levity. “Guess you drew the cosmic short straw, man.”

  I shove out a wry grunt. “Or the longest.”

  “Which makes you the world’s wisest optimist or blindest idiot.”

  “Or both.” With a sigh that’s more weary than my years, I gaze out the window for a second. We’ve started up the rise into the pass, with the LA Cemetery sprawled to our right and the white Travertine beauty of the Getty perched atop the hill to our left. The two edifications to the past have me reflecting backward, resulting in my philosophical follow-up. “Sometimes, blindness is wisdom, buddy.”

  Cal looks ready to nod again—but in commiseration or confusion, I’m not certain—but before he gets his chance, my head is yanked back down by a hand at the roots of my hair. “Okay, Gandalf, save it for your son,” Emma snaps, already writhing as her stomach really starts resembling the surface of the sun. “Who’s hell-bent on hearing it sooner than later!”

  All of that spews from her in a pained rush, and I’m positive she’s yanked out a full hock of my hair as the next spasm fully hits. I brace myself for the same cutlass through my middle, hanging on to her tightly when it does. With my forehead pressed sideways across hers, I join her in breathing through the height of the jolt, though I’m not surprised to feel myself smiling at the same time. I’m no stranger to knowing how to handle extended pain, but I’m a giddy virgin at the thought of it actually yielding an amazing gift at the end.

  The world’s best gift.

  The kid who’s already stolen my heart, captivated my spirit, and worked his way into the depths of my soul.

  The being with a vocabulary nearly better than mine—but likely doesn’t recognize the word “ordinary.”

  And if I have anything to say or do about it, he never will.

  As a matter of fact, I make a silent vow to the universe that I’ll never crave ordinary again.

  Even in this moment, with my bloodstream feeling like fried electrical lines.

  Even in this moment, with my woman working to scalp me with her fingertips.

  Even in this moment, with my desperate bellows matched to her strident screams—and not in the let’s-get-our-freaky-kink-on kind of way.

  As a matter of fact, if I so much as breathed the words “freaky kink” right now, I’m sure Emma would work on rearranging my ball sack instead of my hair. And despite the rampant joy in all my senses, I make a new deal with the universe: to happily trade places with her, if only for a few minutes, to give her relief from the storm clearly raging through her whole system. It’s worth a try, right? Before thirty minutes ago, who’d have ever predicted any man alive would know the torture of childbirth—or be grateful for it? But right now, I’m nothing but gratitude.

  All right, not entirely true.

  In between the awe and wonder, there are slices of pure pity for every member of my gender. And yeah, there’s a little arrogance involved on that one. But even stripping my inner Tony Stark out of the equation, the feeling remains the same. How can any man say he truly understands this miracle without sharing in every stage of it? Yes, even in the pain. Perhaps especially in it.

  Which is why, as Emma slams a foot against the door to gain traction for a new contortion, I let her yank my head down so hard that I’m getting a suntan from her stomach. Her other hand falls free from my hold and sweeps out to slam against the passenger seat headrest. She arches her torso up, and I indulge a few seconds of admiring how perfectly the move shows off every luscious curve of her pregnancy-ripened tits before guilt takes over on a bunch of different levels.

  “Velvet.” I let it vibrate with every husky note of my emotion as I lift back up and then shift beneath her, hoping to cradle her head more comfortably. “Goddamn, you’re amazing.”

  She tilts up enough to get down a new swig of water. As she settles back onto my lap, still breathing hard, she wobbles out a small smile. “Says the only man in history experiencing his kid’s birth like this?”

  “Says the guy who wouldn’t have it any other way.” I pull a towelette out of the plastic dispenser that Cal’s managed to wedge between the two front seats. Each of the gentle swipes I give her cheeks causes a temporary swath of cyan through the pulsing gold of her skin, practically matching the brilliant gleam in her eyes. As soon as I stop, they darken once more to the color of midnight. Not the dreamy midsummer kind, either. Her irises are nearly indigo as she grabs the front of my shirt and twists hard.

  “Hey.” I toss aside the towelette and rub my hand atop hers. “Baby? What is it?”

  “Reece.”

  “What, Velvet?”

  She gulps again. Licks her lips. “I’m—I’m scared.”

  I tuck my head, kissing her fingertips while keeping my stare locked to her face. “My brave little Flare. I’d be worried if you weren’t.”

  She wants to be soothed by that—I can feel her spirit reaching for the comfort to the tips of my nerve endings—but her face remains taut. At last she mutters, “Like you’ve never faced anything more nerve-racking, right?”

  I preface my answer with a quick kiss to her knuckles. “Oh, baby…I’ve never been more terrified in my life.”

  Her confused scowl is beyond adorable. “Huh?”

  “Scout’s honor.”

  And so is her quick eye roll. “You were never a Boy Scout, Richards.”

  “Pfffft. I’ll bet Cal was.”

  The guy flings a laugh. “For a few years, yeah. Until my mom got sick.”

  “There,” I quip. “I’m borrowing his cred.”

  Her features soften and her eyes brighten. “Fine. I believe you. You’re officially terrified.” She stretches her fingertips against my cheek. “But at least now you have company.”

  “More than ‘company.’” I emphasize it by diving my gaze into the turquoise depths that give me so much of her soul. “I have my heart now.” Another fervent brush of my lips, this time to the center of her palm. “My family. My more.”

  Her eyes turn into liquid pools. “Me too,” she whispers—but the words she’s preparing as follow-up, with a huge inhalation, are plucked away by a startled gasp. She tags on a musical giggle, but it’s the backing soundtrack to the next voice I hear in my head. That clear, joyous, excited little boy I’ve already been hearing in my heart for so long…

  Me more too! Me more too, Dada!

  I share a dazed smile with Emma as Bean proves his point with a happy gig against her navel. No way can I resist answering his happiness by pressing back down over that swell, alive with a million shades of shimmering gold. This time, I burrow my nose against that mesmeric heat, reveling in how she still smells like spice and summer even in the last few hours of December. Just like the effect of my fingers on her cheeks, my touch leaves a light-blue path. Suddenly feeling like a kid playing with the textures of a velvet pillow, I do it again. And again. Of course, the echoes of my child’s delighted laughs have something to do with that—as well as the equally happy sounds that flow out of my wife, like tantalized little sighs mixed with ecstatic groans.

  And unbelievably, this whole experience just got crazier.

  While it gives me nothing but pleasure to be the cause of the exact same for my wife, I don’t blame Calvin for hurling a startled gawk over his shoulder at us. If anyone called us right now and heard only the audio from the car, they’d swear Emma and I weren’t back here getting ready to push out a new baby together.

  Okay, not exactly together.

  But, I’m damn sure, as close to that as two people can possibly be.

  “All right,” Cal ventures. “So no hospital. But do I—uhhh—need to be pulling over or someth—”

  “Just drive, damn it.” I try retracting the growl with as much of an apologetic look as I can manage and tack on, “Please.”

  Cal throws me an understanding glance before announcing, “Las Virgenes is the next exit.”

  “Take it sou
th until you hit Mulholland. I’ll give you the left-rights when we’re closer.”

  He kicks up half a grin. “You mean without getting a video nondisclosure or anything?”

  I cock a brow. “Do I have to worry about that?”

  “No, sir.” He clearly receives the message—good thing, since Emma has a broadcast of her own to order as soon as I let up the caresses on her belly.

  “Reece!”

  “Here, baby.” I’m all about her and nothing but her again, pushing the force of my soul into the passion of my words. “Right here. What do you need?”

  “Don’t…stop.” While her words are both spurted on gasps, her clutch packs the strength of fifteen men. She uses that fury to haul my hand back down to her stomach. “Just…don’t…stop.” After just ten seconds of my renewed rubs, her eyes drift shut and her body again goes limpid. “Oh, God. So much better.”

  Like the man with half a brain that I’ve become, it takes me until now to snap all the logic together. The currents from my fingers…they’re her Bolt-alized TENS unit. But while a hundred kinds of happiness suffuse me at giving her relief from the pain, I’ve researched enough about every pregnancy aid on the planet to know that this isn’t exactly the right way to be approaching this. “Bunny, I should be doing this to your spine, not your—”

  “Do. Not. Stop.” Once more with the grip that carries the force of a small army. She secures her hand across mine, working it tighter against the rounded surface at her middle.

  The surface that’s now rolling like ocean swells.

  And then lurching like the sea under a tsunami watch.

  And then undulating as if every citizen in Atlantis has been awakened by that storm.

  “Holy…fuck,” I rasp, fighting to comprehend there’s only one creature responsible for all that tumult. The most precious, powerful creation in the whole history of this planet…

  The incredible little person who pushes so hard at his confines, I can count all ten of his fingers and all ten of his toes with one gawk at my wife’s stomach.

  And I mean a gawk.

  A dazed, dorky, utterly dumbfounded version of the term—which intensifies as soon as Bean seems to rear back and then punch out as hard as he can. The strike is so zealous, it audibly strips away Emma’s breath. But she gets in a tight laugh while inhaling once more. “Okay, Mighty Bambino, we get it. We get it.”

  I don’t join her in the chuckle. Pure paralysis prevents me—from the moment a force takes over her body that has me wondering why I dared to toss around the word terrified with such cavalier ease. What I’ve declared to her as terror was a whisper of sensation compared to this. On the other hand, I’ve never had to sit by and witness something like this.

  Her skin, glowing until the dazzling surface turns blinding white.

  Her face and hair, ignited like some video-game fire fairy.

  Her limbs, jerking out from her like splayed matchsticks—and then igniting the same way.

  “Ahhhh!” Cal unhands the wheel long enough to deflect a flying kitten-heeled shoe. “That yeet’s not cool, kids.”

  I attempt to work my mouth around an apology, but my throat still can’t produce anything but lame chokes. The emerging sounds may or may not be vowels. I’d like to think the dude who just used “yeet” in a complete sentence will understand, but as Cal speeds us deeper into the canyon, his knuckles are as white as Emma’s skin.

  Emma—who’s still giggling like we’ve simply gotten on a roller coaster.

  Emma—who’s radiating light as if that roller coaster has been erected on a beach in Tahiti.

  Emma—who deepens my astonishment and adoration as she speaks up, offering to Cal, “Sorry, dude. The yeeting wasn’t on purpose.” She grins a little wider and bites the inside of her lip. “But I’m pretty damn sure my sweet son just broke my water.”

  “Huh?” Cal spurts along with his instant kneejerk. No, really. The whole car lurches as he instinctively goes for the brake. “Wh-What the hell?”

  I layer the same demand over his, following it with a frantic burst at my wife. “Now?” I thunder as my pulse escalates to full thunder in my veins. I peer down and then around, petrified to venture my sights anywhere near her crotch. “And here? But I don’t see any—errmmm, I mean why isn’t there any—”

  And the guy who used to spend his weekends playing between women’s legs now can’t form his lips around the words amniotic fluid. My man card just went up in flames. Appropriate metaphor, considering what’s going on with the woman in my arms. Cradling her now feels like holding a kiln. Her hairline resembles a forest firebreak line. Her fingers and toes are feathers of flames.

  And she’s still smiling with the serenity of a damn Madonna.

  “Ohhhh, Zeus,” she chides, guiding my hand into broader sweeps across her belly. There’s no time to marvel that her fire feathers aren’t charring my skin, especially as she halts our twined fingers atop a spot where Bean has decided to pull a full Riverdance. “Feel that,” she exhorts, though her voice cracks with impending tears. “Feel your son, Reece. Soak in everything he already is. That life. That magic. That drive.” She swallows hard as we tangle our gazes, and I show her how thoroughly I’m obeying every syllable of her words. I do feel it all. I do feel all the brilliance of him. My God, he’s amazing. “Now tell me,” she finally murmurs, “do you really think he’s going to be bothered with bullshit like spilling membranes all over the place?”

  My breaths are threaded with lead now too. That doesn’t stop the lightning speed of the burn behind my own eyes as well as the quaver of my reply. “So…what now?” Or the desperation, as a full understanding decks me between the eyes. All the online classes, the procedure guides, the daddy workbooks…they all mean nothing now. I truly have no damn idea what I’m doing.

  But that means nothing to this kid.

  This is happening.

  He is happening.

  “Holy. Shit.” I make a mental note to apologize to him for the profanity, in ten or so years. But at the rate he’s already tackling life, that might be ten minutes.

  Again, a factor I have no choice about.

  Suck the hell up, buttercup. You’ve faced drug dealers on Skid Row, embezzlers in Century City, and pimps in NoHo back alleys. You are prepared for this, just in different ways. A baby, even electrically enhanced, has to be easier than the collective lowlifes of LA—right?

  I don’t let my instincts answer that. There’s no time, anyway. Emma explodes with a sharp gasp as Bean changes up his beat, using her belly as his full-on mosh pit. As his kicks intensify, so does her exterior stress. The fire spreads out from her hairline, sizzling down her neck until the entire neckline of her dress is fried away. Through a jolt of divine grace, there are enough sequined tatters left to cover the essentials of her chest, as well as everything between her waist and knees.

  And yeah, divine grace really is the right vernacular.

  Since the woman still has flames for fingers and skin like gilded neon.

  But that’s my sole gift from grace—because then I notice the biggest change of all.

  Her smile is gone. Completely.

  Nibbled away by the pained winces that keep chomping at her serenity. With every new stab she endures, my gut is shredded into shark chum—especially with the comprehension that I’m no longer sharing the burden with her.

  What the hell?

  The circuit between us has been suddenly, inexplicably severed. And goddamnit, I have to accept it. Doesn’t mean I’m going to fucking like it. Now is the time fate decides to give me a taste of impending fatherhood, normal guy style? No thank you, asshole. I’ll take my mama-on-fire and my son-on-supercharge version any day of the week, along with every ounce of the physical pain that means. This worthless bystander shit isn’t even for the birds. At least birds can gather twigs and chop up worms.

  I’m worse than a worm right now.

  Beyond mush.

  A coiled ball of goo on the sidewalk, loo
king on as Emma wraps her fingers around my knuckles as if she’s about to challenge me to an arm wrestle. With the way things have been going since we left the house tonight, I wouldn’t be surprised if she did. Instead, with intent that’s equally as vehement, she states, “I think we’ll have to make this up as we go along, mister.”

  I roam my adoring gaze across every beloved curve of her gorgeous features. “I think you might be right, goddess.”

  She looks a little confused by my easy capitulation but issues just as firmly, “That also means you’ve got to listen to me, husband.”

  I pull her hand over and kiss her fingertips. “I’m hearing every beautiful syllable, wife.”

  She firms her features. “No. Not just hearing. Listening, okay? As in, complying.”

  I lift my head by an inch, arching my brows by an equal amount. Labor pains or not, she’s tiptoeing through the delicate phrasing here—but “delicate” is a word as useful as “worm” to me. “Yes, Emmalina,” I counter. “I know what that means.”

  It’s not a lie; nor is it the truth I want to accept. But there’s no time to debate the point. I’m not the one with the demanding creature in my stomach. So like it or not, I’m following her command—the exact same way she’s taking her orders from the bean.

  A modicum of solace comes when the car’s weight noticeably shifts, and I look up as Cal completes the turn onto Mulholland. “Thank God,” I mutter. “Less than thirty and we’ll be home, Velvet.”

  But as the words are leaving my lips, she’s lowered my hand back down across her stomach—and I nearly drop a shocked hiss as my own punctuation. But I’m too late. Emma beats me to the punch with a hoarse gasp that coincides with the massive heave of her midsection. At once, I’m joining her. No longer do I liken the swell to gentle ocean waves or a rowdy club dance pit. There’s a raging alien in that cramped cavity, seemingly determined to take inspiration from his cinematic counterpart—by punching his way out of his mother.

  Free. Free, Mama. Free, Dada. Now!

  The look that takes over Emma’s face is suffused with so much love and light, I finally understand why so many classic painters were inspired to create angels. But no masterpiece I’ve ever seen, even in all the galleries and cathedrals I’ve traveled to across the world, do justice to my wife’s beauty in this moment.