The box pried open with a tiny creak. Inside was a heavy titanium band.
“George,” he said quietly, and then kissed me once. I could feel him shaking. I could see my hand shaking, too.
“Yeah?”
“Will you marry me?”
I had to swallow three times before the word would come out with any sound.
But my hoarse “Yes” turned into his elated “Yeah?” which turned into a hundred small kisses and one long one that lasted the entire time he moved over me, his puffs of breath warm on my neck.
I could have stayed curled up like that forever.
I would have traded my new Gucci messenger bag to stay in bed for at least another goddamn hour.
But fucking Sara the Pregnant Monster called five times while my boyfriend—fiancé!—was banging me delirious, and the five missed calls meant she had something pressing to discuss.
With Will’s face resting drowsily on my chest, I put the phone to my ear, listening to her most recent voice mail.
“Will.”
He pressed a kiss right over my beating heart. “Mmm?”
“We’ve got somewhere to be, babe.”
Bitch Epilogue
Chloe
Approximately Nine Months Ago
Bennett came up behind me, hands firmly bracketing my hips. “I’m headed to the bar. Do you want anything?”
I turned into him, smiling as his lips moved across my jaw and down to my neck. “I’m good.”
Pulling back, he inspected my expression. “You’re sure? Head still hurt?”
I blinked and looked away, not wanting him to see the lie in my eyes. “A little.”
He paused before turning me and bending so that I lifted my face to his, meeting his eyes. “Want some water or anything?” he asked.
“Water would be good; thanks, babe.”
He found me ten minutes later near the dance floor, mesmerized by the newlywed couple. I didn’t know them all that well; they were tangential business associates, but something about the thrill in their expressions, the way they seemed to be on the cusp of adventure, resonated in my blood like a quiet, persistent hum.
“You good?” He came up behind me, kissing my neck.
I nodded, taking the glass of water from him and lifting my chin toward the couple dancing in the middle of the outdoor dance floor. “Just watching them.”
“Good wedding.”
I leaned into his side, feeling my body calm at the warm, solid presence beside me. Bennett sipped his drink, wrapping one arm around my waist.
“She looks amazing,” I said, staring at the bride in her gorgeous pearl gown.
“He clearly agrees,” he said, lifting his chin. “He practically ate her face when they kissed.”
I turned to face him, recoiling mildly from the strong smell of scotch.
“Put that down,” I said. “Dance with me.”
Bennett pouted sweetly. “I just got this.”
“Would you rather wear it?”
He slid his tumbler onto a nearby table before tangling his fingers into mine and guiding me to the dance floor.
With his hands on my lower back, he pulled me into him, and—Lord, help me—I could tell some instinct made him do it carefully, without his usual Bennett Ryan command.
“You’re quiet tonight,” he said, bending to kiss my bare shoulder. “You sure you’re okay?”
I nodded, leaning my cheek against his collarbone. “Just taking it all in. I’m so happy I think I could burst.”
“You’re happy? We haven’t fought once tonight. I would never have known.”
I laughed, tilting my face up to his. “BB?”
“Yeah?”
I felt my stomach ride into my chest, my heart climb into my throat. I wanted to do this later, but I couldn’t wait. The words didn’t want to stay put.
“You’re going to be a daddy.”
Bennett stilled in my arms, feet halting their slow circle before a mad trembling came over him and he took a step back. The emotion I saw in my husband’s eyes was completely new.
I’d never seen him look awed quite like this.
“What did you just say?” The words came out a little too loud, too tight, like a mallet dropped on a drum.
“I said you’re going to be a daddy.”
His hand rose, shaking, and he pressed it over his mouth. “You’re sure?” he said from behind his fingers. His eyes had begun to shine.
I nodded, feeling my eyes burn, too. His reaction—his relief and thrill and tenderness—nearly made my knees buckle. “I’m sure.”
After two years of trying, I’d never once gotten pregnant. Months of charting and planning. Two rounds of failed IVF. And here we were, a month after our mutual decision to give up for now, and I was pregnant.
Bennett slid his palm over his face before reaching for my elbow and pulling me a bit off the dance floor and into the shadow of the tent. “How do you . . . When?”
“I took the test this morning.” I chewed my lip. “Okay, to be fair I took about seventeen tests this morning. I mean, I’m barely pregnant. I was only a few days late.”
“Chlo.” He stared at me, breaking into an enormous smile. “We’re going to be horrible parents.”
Laughing, I agreed, “The worst.”
“We’ve never known failure,” he said, eyes manically searching mine. “I mean, we will probably be the most uptight—”
“Strict—”
“Overbearing—”
“Neurotic—”
“No,” he said, shaking his head, his eyes shining again. “You’re going to be perfect. You’re going to blow my goddamn mind.”
His mouth covered mine, open and claiming, his tongue sliding across my lips, my teeth, and deeper. I took a handful of that thick, perfectly messy hair and held him as he pressed closer, grew nearly desperate.
Holy hell.
I’m pregnant.
I’m going to have this bastard’s baby.
BASTARD EPILOGUE
Bennett
Tonight
Our driver met my eyes in the rearview mirror, apologizing silently for the fact that we seemed to be hitting
every
goddamn
red
light
in
Manhattan.
“Hhee-hhee-hhee,” I prompted, reminding Chloe how to breathe the way we’d learned.
Chloe’s eyes were wide, pleadingly fixed on mine as she nodded frantically, as if I were the life preserver thrown overboard in this goddamn biological farce called My Wife Gives Birth to a Melon Through a Straw.
“Did you text Max?” she cried, squeezing her eyes shut.
I watched as a drop of sweat rolled down her temple. “Yes.”
I have so many fucking questions. Not the least of which: how in the hell is this supposed to work?
Faced with the reality of this giant kid coming out of my wife, I was suddenly less confident that history can offer any statistical conclusion about women successfully giving birth.
“Will? Hanna?”
“Yes.”
She bent over, letting out a growl that turned into a scream. And then she sucked in a huge breath, squeaking out: “George and Will P.?”
“Sara called George,” I told her. “Breathe, Chlo. Worry about this, not them.”
I’ve seen her body up close, and I’ve seen that kid on the 4-D ultrasound. I’m no expert in physics, but I just don’t see this happening the way they tell us it’s going to happen.
“Are you sure you don’t want an epidural as soon as we get there?” I asked as the town car hit a pothole and Chloe cried out in pain.
She shook her head quickly, continuing to breathe with cheeks puffing and her hand a vise around mine. “No. No. No. No.”
It became a chant, and I thought back to the estate planning we’d done, the living wills and power of attorney documents we’d signed. Had there been a provision in there for me taking over all health
care decisions in the event of sudden and terrifying childbirth? Could I choose for her to have a C-section as soon as we pulled up to the hospital, to spare her the pain she was about to endure?
“Good breathing, Chlo. You’re perfect.”
“How are you so calm?” she asked, breathless, forehead damp with sweat. “You’re so calm. It’s freaking me out.”
I smiled tightly. “Because you’ve got this.”
I do not have a fucking clue what the fuck I am supposed to do.
“I love you,” she gasped.
She looks like she might be dying.
“Love you, too.”
Is this normal?
My hand itched to reach into my pocket, pull out my phone, and call Max.
What does it mean that she’s screaming every minute? Only a half hour ago her contractions were ten minutes apart. Is it possible she might break my hand in her grip? She said she’s hungry but the doctor suggested I not give her anything to eat . . . and yet, I’m a little afraid of her. She’s smiling—but she looks terrifying.
Another contraction hit her and her grip tightened again, painfully. I’d let her break every bone in my hand if that’s what she needed, but it made it hard for me to count how long this one lasted.
Gasping, Chloe whispered to me, or to herself, “It’s okay, I’m okay. It’s okay, I’m okay. It’s okay, I’m okay.”
I watched her struggle through it and then her face relaxed and she slumped back against the seat, her hands clutching her stomach.
Instinctually, I felt like she should be glaring at me, or picking a fight with me to distract herself, or something—anything—quintessentially bitchlike, but she still treated me so gently.
I appreciated it, but I wasn’t sure I liked it.
I liked the rough edges.
I’d fallen in love with that steel spine.
I wondered, for the millionth time, whether something had been changed irrevocably in her. And if it had, how would I feel about that?
Her breathing picked up as another contraction hit.
“Almost there, Chlo. Almost there.”
She clenched her jaw, managing a tight, “Thanks, sweetie.”
I took a deep breath, struggling to remain calm in the face of Chloe’s ironclad desire to remain sweet, and gentle, and reasonable.
We hit another pothole and her fist hit the door at her side.
I heard her inhale.
And then I heard the words come tearing out of her throat: “CAN YOU GET US TO THE MOTHERFUCKING HOSPITAL SOMETIME TODAY, KYLE? FUCK ME!”
This last word turned into a long screeching wail, and up front, my driver stifled a laugh—meeting my eyes again knowingly. It was like puncturing a balloon, the way all the tension seemed to leave me.
“That’s right, Chlo,” I said, laughing. “What the fuck, Kyle!”
He hit the gas, maneuvering around a car and taking two wheels up onto the sidewalk to get around a bike messenger who had stopped to fuck with his phone. Laying on his horn, Kyle leaned out the window, yelling, “I’ve got a woman having a baby in here! Move, you assholes!”
Chloe rolled down her window, leaning out. “Get out of the fucking way, for fuck’s sake!”
Cars around us began to honk, and a few pulled aside to let us through and into the clear stretch ahead of us down Madison Avenue.
Kyle grinned, pulling ahead and out of traffic before hitting the gas with enthusiasm.
I reached over, putting my hand on Chloe’s arm. “We’re only five—”
“Don’t touch me,” she growled, in the best impression I’ve ever heard of the demon from The Exorcist. Reaching out in a flash that took me by surprise, she grabbed my collar, bunching it in her fist. “You did this.”
I grinned, giddy with relief. “You bet your ass I fucking did.”
“You think you’re cute?” she asked in a hiss. “You think this was a good goddamn idea?”
Elation ripped through me. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”
“This thing is going to tear me in half,” she moaned. “And you’re going to have to push your ripped-in-half wife around in a wheelchair for the rest of her life because her legs won’t work together because HER GODDAMN SPINE HAS BEEN SHREDDED BY THIS GODDAMN BABY COMING OUT OF HER VAGINA IN A MOTHERFUCKING CAR, BENNETT! HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO SELL THE LANGLEY ACCOUNT LIKE THAT!” She let go of my shirt. “KYLE!” Chloe leaned forward, slapping the back of his seat. “ARE YOU HEARING ME?”
“Yes, Mrs. Ryan.”
“IT’S MRS. MILLS FROM NOW ON! AND THE GAS PEDAL IS THE SKINNY ONE ON THE RIGHT—ARE YOU FUCKING FLINTSTONING US TO THE HOSPITAL?”
Kyle guffawed, steering us around a delivery truck. Chloe gripped my hand in both of hers, grinding the bones together.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she moaned.
“It’s okay.”
She turned, glaring at me with clenched teeth. “But I want to fucking kill you right now.”
“I know, baby. I know.”
“Don’t you fucking ‘baby’ me. You don’t know. Next time, you have the child and I’ll sit there laughing about the fact that you’re being ripped in half.”
I bent, kissing her clammy forehead. “I’m not laughing at you. I just missed you so much. We’re almost there.”
Chloe’s birth plan had been very specific: no epidural, no food restrictions, the option of a water birth in the suite. Honestly, there had been three pages of notes, and she’d worked on it meticulously over the past few weeks. Her hospital bag had been packed, unpacked, repacked. Lather, rinse, repeat.
As it turned out, our child had a double nuchal cord, meaning the umbilical cord was wrapped twice around the neck. Not uncommon, we were told. But in our situation, not great.
“After you have a contraction,” Dr. Bryant explained to us, her hand on Chloe’s shoulder and the steady beep-beep-beep of monitors all around us, “the baby’s heart rate isn’t going back up.” She looked over at me, smiling calmly. “If she was already pushing, we’d just work to get the baby out quickly. But here, the baby is still too high.” She looked back to Chloe. “And you’re only at five centimeters.”
“Can you check again?” Chloe groaned. “Because, I’m serious, it feels like twenty.”
“I know,” Dr. Bryant said, laughing. “And I know how adamant you are about having a natural birth, but guys, this is one of the situations where I need to play my veto card.”
Chloe didn’t even get to push before she was taken in to surgery.
Drugged and distraught over her perfect plan falling apart, she stared up at me, her hair held back in a sterile yellow cap, her face splotchy and makeup free.
She had honestly never looked more beautiful.
“It doesn’t matter how it happens,” I reminded her. “At the end, we get a baby.”
She nodded. “I know.”
I stared down at her in surprise. “You’re okay?”
“I’m disappointed,” she said, and swallowed back a clear wave of emotion, “but I just want everything to be fine.”
“Everything will be,” Dr. Bryant said, hands sterile and gloved, smiling behind her mask. “Ready?”
The nurse pulled the drape up, hiding Chloe’s midsection from view. I stayed up near her head, wearing a surgical gown, cap, and gloves of my own.
I knew Dr. Bryant was immediately getting to work. Knew, at least in theory, what was happening on the other side of the yellow barrier. There was antiseptic, and a scalpel, and all manner of surgical tools. I knew they’d started, knew they were hurrying.
But no pain registered on Chloe’s face. She simply stared up at me. “I love you.”
Smiling, I told her, “I love you, too.”
“Are you disappointed?” she asked.
“Not even a little.”
“Is it weird?” she whispered.
I chuckled, kissing her nose. “This whole . . . moment?”
She nodded, giving me a wobbly smile.
“A li
ttle.”
“Here we go,” Dr. Bryant said, and then murmured to the nurse, “Here, no—the retractor . . .”
Chloe’s eyes brimmed, and she bit her lip in anticipation.
“Congratulations, Chloe,” Dr. Bryant said, and a sharp cry burst into the room. “Bennett. You have a daughter.”
And then there was a warm, crying bundle in my arms and, with shaking hands, I placed her on Chloe’s chest.
She had a tiny nose, and a sweet kiss of a mouth, and wide, startled eyes.
She was more beautiful than anything I knew.
“Hey,” Chloe whispered, staring down at her. Finally, her tears spilled over. “We’ve waited a long time for you.”
In an instant, my world crumbled and was rebuilt into a fortress around my two girls.
“Oh, for fu—fudge sake,” Chloe growled, laughing. “Isn’t this supposed to be instinct?”
I propped our daughter’s head in my hand and tried to get the angle right. “I thought so, but . . .”
“It’s like, I’m the cow, you’re the farmer, and she’s the bucket,” she said.
The nurse walked in, checking Chloe’s incision, checking her chart, helping us position the baby. “Have you agreed on a name?”
“No,” we said in unison.
The nurse slid our chart back into the shelf on the wall. “You have an army of people here. Do you want me to let them in?”
Chloe nodded, pulling her gown back into place.
I could hear them coming down the hall. George’s laugh, Will Sumner’s deep voice, the curl of Max’s accent, and all three of the Stella kids’ squeals of excitement. And then they were there, bursting into the room, a tangle of bodies and gifts and words. Eleven smiling faces. At least eight pairs of crying eyes.
Max made his way over immediately, a magnet to the tiny, sweet bundle. Bending over the baby, asking, “May I?”
Chloe handed her off, eyes shining.
“Have you picked a name?” Sara asked, looking down at the baby in her husband’s arms.
“Maisie,” Chloe said at the same time I said, “Lillian.”
“That sounds about right,” George said, joining them in cooing over my daughter.
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