Page 219 of Creep

He shrugged. “I don’t. But it’s pretty obvious.”

“And what about you? Are you excited about being an uncle soon?”

“Yes,” he answered quietly. Seriously. My brother had always been serious—it seemed to be his default mode, but thisyesfelt much heavier than any other response he could give.

I reached over and cupped his shoulder, squeezing it affectionately.

He shot me one of those rare smiles.

My phone vibrated in my pocket before I could say anything else to him. I pulled it out and saw Lia’s name flashing over the screen.

My heart pounded heavily in my chest—a fucking typical occurrence ever since Lia entered my life. It was a fucking inconvenience, especially since I still didn’t know what to do about it, but I was getting used to it.

I nearly dropped the phone trying to answer it. “Baby?”

“Mael—” She let out a small groan that had my heart plummeting to the fucking ground.

“What, baby? What’s wrong?”

“It’s time.”

“It’s time?” I asked, frowning. What the fuck did that mean?

“Labor,” Theo mouthed to me.

It took a moment for the word to process in my brain.

Labor.

Lia was in labor.

Fuck me.

All that I had learned, all that I had done to prepare for this moment, seemed to be thrown right out the window.

I stuttered incoherently, which only drove Lia to hysterics, and she started crying.

Theo rolled his eyes and grabbed the phone away from me. “Just stay where you are, sweetheart. We’ll be right there.” He listened to her say something patiently on the other end of the line before ending it with “I promise.”

He hung up the phone and looked at me. Amusement flashed in his blue eyes, and I made a mental note to fucking punch him in the neck for that later. Right now, I was trying to get the trembling to stop.

“Come on,” Theo said, pulling me out of the chair and directing me out of the office. Theo drove us to Lia.

I couldn’t think, couldn’t feel.

I had thought it would be easy. I fucking thought wrong. And Lia was the one doing the heavy lifting. What if… what if something happened to her during labor? I closed my eyes and willed away the thought. I couldn’t even think about it. I didn’t know what I would do. The only thing I did know was that I couldn’t fucking live without her, and that was fucking that.

Theo pulled up to the side of a small park bench just across the street from her pottery class.

I was out of the car before he came to a complete stop. I ignored the curse he let out, my eyes focused on my girl. She stood quickly and rushed forward into my arms. I caught her in time, feeling her protruding belly pressed up against me. I pulled back and cupped her over the stomach.

“We’re about to meet our baby soon. Are you ready?” she asked me softly.

“As long as you’re by my side, I will be ready for anything,” I answered her, and wasn’t that just the truth? With her by my side, I felt like I could take on a fucking army.

Her face scrunched up when another contraction hit.

I led her to the car, shutting the front passenger door I had left open when I flew out of it and instead got in the back with her. We didn’t need to worry about the bags I had packed in preparation for this. I had stashed one in every car I owned, along with Lia’s car and every one of Theo’s cars.

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