That was what had happened to me, after all. I'd fallen in love with him, flown too close, ended up burned and thrown down like all the others.
He leaned closer, now, his face shifting from a smile to an expression of worry. "Are you okay, Tori?"
I blinked back at him. He was very pretty, even with this new, thinner, more focused look. I liked looking at his face, had missed it for the last few months. He was a total asshole, but I still loved his face. I loved how his eyes always locked directly on me, as if there wasn't anyone else in the world. My thoughts felt very woozy.
"I think..." I began, but then paused, trying to muster my scattered words in my head. "I think I need to tell Ellen not to wipe the chairs down so fiercely. This chair is all wet. My butt is wet."
Seb kept on frowning at me for a second longer, but finally tore his eyes away from my face. I giggled as he bent over to one side, lowering his eyes to peer down at my chair.
When he raised his head back up, I saw that his eyes were now wide. "Tori," he gasped. "Your water!"
"No, it's okay," I said blearily. "I didn't order yet. I don't have any water."
He blinked at me, his mouth opening and closing without any sound coming out. "No, not that," he finally got out. "Tori, I think that your water just broke."
Chapter Twenty-Eight
TORI
*
"What?" I looked up at Seb, astounded as he jumped up to his feet. He spun around, glancing back over his shoulder.
"Ellen!" he shouted. "Her water broke!"
A second later, my best friend came sprinting out from the kitchen area. I frowned at her. What had she been doing back there in the first place? Was she hiding from Seb instead of helping me stand up to him?
She skidded to a stop, however, at the sight of me sitting on the wet chair. Her eyes widened, and she looked open-mouthed at Seb as if unsure how to react.
I expected Seb to be just as helpless. One time in the past, he got freaked out when I asked him to pick up a box of tampons for me! He wasn't set to handle anything of this magnitude.
But to my utter surprise, his eyes grew steely, and he leapt immediately into action. "Here," he said to Ellen, pitching his keys across the room to her. She caught them, more on reflex than from any actual skill. "My car's down the street – pull it up to the front entrance, so that we can be ready to go." He stepped forward to me, digging his phone out of his pocket.
"What are you doing?" I asked in bewilderment, still off balance from how calm he appeared.
"Getting ready to time your contractions," he answered, grabbing a second chair and pulling it close so that he could sit down beside me. "As soon as you feel one, let me know. If there's fewer than ten minutes between contractions, we need to get you to the hospital right away."
I just stared back at him, amazed. Where had this smart, strong, calm and capable Sebastian Stone come from? He looked back at me for a second, and I saw concern in his eyes, warring with some other emotion that I couldn't quite place. It looked familiar, on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn't name it at the moment.
He put one hand on my lap, scooping up my fingers with his own, giving me a comforting squeeze. "It's going to be okay," he promised me, and then held his phone up to his ear with the other hand. "Hello, Dr. Daniels? This is Sebastian, here with Tori Lilly. Her water just broke."
He had Rick's phone number? He'd come along with me for one of the early checkups, but I didn't think that he had paid enough attention to even remember the good doctor's name! I looked at him with my mouth open as he answered a couple yes or no questions from the doctor.
Seb hung up, turning back to face me. "Deep breaths, Tori," he said softly, taking my other hand in his as well, looking straight into my eyes. "Just be calm. Everything's going to be fine."
"I'm still mad at you," I said, improbably. What was wrong with me? Why, as I was about to have a baby, were these the words out of my mouth? "Just because you're apologizing, saying that you..."
"That I love you," he filled in, when my own words faltered.
"Right, that. That doesn't magically make things okay."
For a second, Seb looked sad – but he never lost that resolute firmness to his face. "I understand," he said softly.
I wanted to go on, but suddenly, pain ripped through me. It was like the mother of all menstrual cramps, shooting up from the base of my pelvis into my spine! My eyes shot closed and I let out a moan, lurching forward on the chair.
Seb caught me, holding me gently but firmly. My body leaned against his shoulder, my face pressing into the crook of his neck. I felt the softness of his shirt, and my nostrils caught a deep whiff of his scent that filled my head with memories of lying beside him, him holding me in his arms in bed.
He'd said that he loved me. Did he really mean it? Was that the reason that he'd shown up here today, this morning, under the pretext of investing in River's Edge? Was he telling me the truth?
And even if it was, could I ever trust him enough to tell him that I still felt the same way about him, deep down inside of me?
For a few minutes, I just let myself continue leaning against Seb, smelling his scent, feeling the comfort of his strength as he supported me. But too soon, another terrible, cramping pain cut through me, making me groan again and hunch further forward against him.
His fingers, still wrapped around mine, gave me a tight squeeze. "You can handle it," he whispered to me. "Just breathe. Focus on breathing."
I did as commanded. Each breath brought a little more scent of him into my nose, into my lungs. It somehow calmed me, more than anything that he could say. I just focused on breathing, and the contraction passed.
"Eight minutes," he said, checking his phone. "Looks like we need to get you to the hospital."
A little part of me wanted to ask Seb why he thought that he could come sweeping in, acting like we all put him in charge, but a larger part of me was just grateful that I didn't need to be making all the calls myself. He looped his arm beneath my shoulders and lifted me up onto my unsteady feet.
"This way," he murmured into my ear as he led me out the front door of River's Edge, out to where Ellen had his car waiting. "It's going to be okay."
"I don't forgive you, you know," I said, feeling that, for some reason, it was really important that I tell him this before climbing into his car. "Even if I still have feelings for you, that doesn't mean that you get to come back, act like nothing bad ever happened."
For a moment, he just looked at me, his expression unreadable. Weirdly, it almost looked like he was fighting to contain a smile! It took a second before Ellen's honk snapped him back to reality.
"Just focus on relaxing, getting through this," he finally said, moving me across the sidewalk and into the backseat of his car. "We can talk more later."
It wasn't until I'd splayed down on the back seat that another thought hit me. A backseat? I'd ridden in all Seb's different sports cars over the years, even slept with him a few times in them – and I didn't remember any of them having a backseat.
This wasn't his car, I realized a second later as I looked around at the interior. This was a large, spacious SUV, with cream-colored leather seats and a large tote bag stowed down near my feet.
"Whose car is this?" I asked, struggling to get the seat belt fastened around my huge belly.
Seb had supplanted Ellen in the driver's seat. "Mine," he answered, his eyes lingering on me through the rear-view mirror.
"No, it's not." Sebastian Stone, driving an SUV? I didn't believe that it was possible.
"I told you, I'm ready now," he said, putting the car in drive and pulling away from the curb. "And part of finally growing up and acting my age involves getting a car that can fit the three of us."
As we reached the end of the street, turned left on the green light, Seb put his foot down, and the car let out a deep, throaty rumble as acceleration pushed me back in my seat. "But that's not to say that it's still not rather fun to drive," he ad
ded, and I saw a faint hint of the smirk that I normally associated with him.
Seb drove with urgency, but not nearly as recklessly as he usually did with his sports cars. Still, we reached the hospital just as I finished fighting through my fourth contraction in his backseat, slumping forward a little and gritting my teeth to keep from crying out. Seb didn't say anything, but I felt his eyes on me through the rearview mirror, filled with concern.
Concern for me. Love for me. He still loved me, he'd said. Could he mean it?
I forced that thought out of my head. This was very definitely not the time to be thinking about love, not when I was about to have a baby come out of me!
Ellen ran ahead of us into the hospital to fetch a wheelchair, and Seb took the handles as soon as I'd settled myself down into it. "Hold on," he said, as he picked up speed behind me. "Let's get you up to your room."
"What about Rick?" I asked. "Dr. Daniels, I mean. Is he here?"
"I've let him know to meet us at the room," Seb answered me. Just hold on. You focus on having that baby; I'll take care of everything else."
We sped into the hospital, and although several nurses glanced up at us, they looked away when they saw Seb pushing my wheelchair. Did they all recognize him somehow? My confusion only grew when he turned the corner into a large, spacious private room – one that already had my name on the open door!
"What is this?" I asked, as he brought the wheelchair to a gentle stop beside a hospital bed.
"Your room," he answered.
"I have my own room?"
"You do now," he said, taking my elbow and hand to help me transfer my big, bulky, awkward body over to the bed from the wheelchair. "I made sure that you'd have the best care, all the support you need for this baby."
"Why?"
He smiled down at me, leaning one cheek of his ass down on the bed so that he could recline beside me. "Because I love you, Tori," he said again, his voice soft and gentle. "I have for a long time, even if I've been too much of an immature ass to recognize it inside of me. It wasn't until I lost you, realized just how big of a mistake I'd made, that it became clear to me and I realized how stupid I'd been."
"And so what, you thought that getting me a nice hospital room would be enough for me to forgive you?" It was a really nice hospital room, I had to admit, with a big bay window letting in some of the morning's sunlight.
"No, but I hoped that it might be a start." He smiled at me, and it was that classic Seb smile, the one that told me that he knew how naughty he was being, but maybe I could look past it, just this once? It was that smile that I remembered best about him, just on the edge of becoming a smirk. That smile had first lured me away from my original path, away from straight-laced business school, off to the party scene to see the excesses of the world with him.
And now, that smile wanted to charm me, one last time.
I wanted to resist. I felt him tugging at me, but I dug in my mental heels to resist. "How can I trust you, though?" I asked him. I knew very well that I didn't want to get into this tired old fight, not right now, not as a baby was about to come out of me and sending contractions ripping through me every seven or eight minutes.
I half guessed what he'd answer. I knew what the old Seb, the one in my head, would say. He'd snap that of course I could, that he'd done all of this to prove himself to me, and wasn't it enough?
But the Seb lying on the little strip of bed beside me, on the verge of toppling off onto the floor, just sighed and shook his head. "I don't think there's anything that I can say or do to prove it, now," he answered. "You'll just have to decide for yourself."
"Well, that's not helpful-"
Halfway through my sentence, another contraction hit me, cutting me off and making me wince and grit my teeth. Seb immediately reached out and took my hand in his, giving my fingers a soft squeeze.
"Breathe through it," he murmured. "Just like in the books."
I managed to crack open one eye to glare at him. "I didn't read the books, though! You did!"
"And that's why I'm here with you," he said, not even ruffled by my snapping at him. "Ellen's going to check on the doctor, help bring you whatever you need. And I'll be here the entire time. I promise, Tori. No matter what happened before, I'm always going to be here now."
I looked back at him, out of words to say. What else was there to say to him? But he held my gaze, unflinching, and never pulled his fingers away from mine as I did my best to breathe through the contractions, waiting for Dr. Daniels, and then the baby, to arrive.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
TORI
*
"We're getting very close now, Victoria. Just keep focusing on the breathing. You're doing great so far." From down between my legs, Dr. Daniels smiled up at me.
"Uh, great." I didn't feel like I was doing great. I felt panicked, uncertain of everything, certain that, at any moment now, something was about to go terribly wrong. I could barely breathe, my entire body hurt and felt exhausted from pushing and straining with the ever-more-frequent contractions – and there still wasn't even a single sign of the damn baby coming out yet!
Just out of pure frustration, I gave Seb's hand another squeeze, as tight as I could manage. Glancing over at his face, I saw him wince a little as my nails dug into his skin, but he didn't utter a single word of protest. "You are doing great," he repeated, looking down at me.
Strangely, I believed him more than the doctor. Dr. Daniels might be willing to tell me a little lie to convince me to keep going, but Seb always told me the truth, even if it might hurt me. And, true to his word, he hadn't left my side for a single moment. He pressed a damp cloth against my forehead, and I sighed at its soothing coolness.
I needed something, anything, to distract me from this growing agony. I turned my head so that I could look up at Seb.
"Talk," I commanded.
He frowned. "What?"
"Distract me. Talk to me."
For the first time since we'd entered the hospital, he looked uncertain. "Talk about what?"
"I don't care!" My voice rose as another contraction hit. They were coming a lot closer, now, and that had to be a good thing. Right? "Just tell me something to distract me from all of this!"
"Okay, okay!" Seb switched my hand over to his other, shaking out his fingers. Fine, maybe I'd squeezed a little hard, but he certainly deserved worse. "I got an apartment downtown after I got back from Vegas, did you know that?"
"This is what you're going to tell me to distract me??"
"Just let me get through it," he said quickly, even as the wince that crossed his face told me he hadn't really thought through saying any of this. "I came back after probably the worst weekend of my adult life. I was at this rooftop party, with every celebrity and girl in my phone book-"
"Not helping!"
"Just hold on! I was at this party, and I was so drunk that I could barely stand, and this is when I decided to call you. So I stepped into this stairwell to call you, and then turned around, and found that the door didn't open to the party. I had to go down twenty flights of stairs, all the way to the ground floor, while practically falling-down drunk. And by the time I got down there, I couldn't bring myself to go back up to the party. Even though I was paying for it, I just crawled into bed in my hotel room."
"Aww, poor you. You couldn't enjoy your extravagant party, even after you dumped me by phone. You're like a tortured saint."
"I don't think I left that hotel room for the rest of my weekend," Seb went on, wisely deciding not to rise to my taunting. "I just laid in bed and felt sorry for myself. I told myself that there was something wrong with me for not enjoying this, getting back to being my old, single self. I told myself that I used to have so much fun, and I just needed to get back into it, and that fun would all come back."
"Still not feeling sorry for you – owwww!"
He paused his story as I tried not to scream through this latest contraction. Dr. Daniels said something, but I didn't even hear
the words. I just gritted my teeth and squeezed my eyes shut, lost in my own little world of pain, all alone.
No, not all alone. I felt Seb's body leaning against me, one hand caught up in my fingers, his other arm looped around my shoulders. Somehow, I drew strength and comfort form his presence, leaned into him.
"Keep talking," I managed to get out.
"Right, okay. So I came back, trying to get back to my old life. I got an apartment downtown, the most expensive place I could find." He sighed. "And totally unsafe for a baby, so I guess I'm going to have to get rid of it. But I got this huge apartment, threw around enough cash at every bar in the area to get my name on the permanent 'cater to his every need' list, and started trying to get back to my old ways."
The contraction passed, although I knew I'd only have a few seconds until the next one hit. "So, drinking constantly and hitting on everything with a pussy?"
I heard a sharp intake of breath from Dr. Daniels, down between my spread legs, but ignored it. Seb, meanwhile, took it in stride. "Trying to. But after Vegas, alcohol seemed to just curse me with a constant hangover, one that started even before I passed out that night. And I couldn't do anything, not with a single woman. No reaction, if you know what I mean."
"Aww, poor little billionaire. Maybe Dr. Daniels can give you a prescription for your broken little dick."
Suddenly, his hands were on my cheeks, and his lips met mine. I hadn't been expecting this kiss, and I'm sure that my hot, clammy skin felt awful to him – but that kiss still somehow took my breath away. Incredibly, even amid the pain and anger towards him and the next contraction looming over me, I felt a surge of something else, something new.
Lust – and love, flaring up inside my chest.
It gave me new strength, even as I tamped the emotions down. Not the time, heart! But even as the next contraction hit me, it didn't seem quite as devastating, quite as overwhelmingly painful, as the others.
For Love of Freedom (Stone Brothers Book 3) Page 19
