For Love of Freedom (Stone Brothers Book 3)

by Samantha Westlake

  Seb drew back an inch, his blue eyes blazing into mine. "Things only weren't working because my body, if not my brain, knew what was wrong," he said softly to me. "I thought that I wanted my old life back, but I couldn't get it."

  "Why not?"

  "Because the best thing about it..." he stopped, took a deep, shaky breath. "Because the best thing about it, the thing that made it so special, was that you were in it with me."

  This contraction ended just as his words reached my ears. "So what?" I got out, speaking quickly before the next wave of tightness and pain swept through me. "You decided to come rushing down and threaten to pay Vicky a bunch of money, just so that I'd talk to you?"

  He laughed at that! "No, not right away. First, I turned up as a sad sack on my brother Richard's doorstep, got some psychological counseling from his wife. Ended up talking to her every week for the last month or two. For all the crap that I used to give her, she does know her stuff. I might owe her a hell of a thank-you card, after this."

  "You... got counseling?" It was like hearing that a hurricane had hit the Sahara Desert, or that Seb had given up drinking altogether. It was totally unlike him.

  "That's not all," he said. "I realized that the alcohol wasn't helping me, either, so I gave that up as well."

  I just stared at him. Another contraction hit me, but even the pain wasn't enough to overcome my shock. "I don't believe you."

  He smiled. "Want me to kiss you again?"

  Yes, definitely. "Maybe later. Just tell me how I can get this baby out of me!"

  Seb's smile widened, and he plopped another kiss on my gross, sweaty forehead. "One sec, love." He sat forward, bending down to peep over the gown that was hiked up around my knees. "How are things, doctor?"

  "The baby's head is crowning," Rick answered. "Just a few more pushes, and we'll be there."

  Seb sat back, once again lying beside me. "Hear that, Tori? You're almost there. You've been doing great. Just a few more times, and you'll have a baby."

  I shook my head, wincing. "I don't know if I can. Seb, this is so much harder than I thought it would be."

  "I know," he said softly. "But I believe in you. I believe you can do it – and I love you because you're so strong."

  At these words, the little ember of love in my chest flared brighter. "Why else?"

  That little smile flickered around the edges of his lips. "Because you're so much more than I ever realized. I always thought that you were just another party girl – but now I see that you're so much more. You're smart and capable and I never should have distracted you from excelling by dragging you off to parties."

  "How do you figure that?"

  He shrugged. "I saw what you've done for Ellen's café place. This morning wasn't the first time I stopped by – and it's super busy, and looks like business is doing great. And Ellen tells me that it's all because of you."

  I felt a little surge of pleasure, of pride, bloom inside me alongside that glowing fire of love. "Why else?"

  "Because you're a great cook. Because you're the mother of my child, and I am going to step up and be the dad that I should be. Because you're the one who understands me best, even more than my brothers." He tilted his head slightly to one side. "Heck, sometimes it's as if you have my voice inside your head, telling you what I'm about to speak aloud."

  I tried to not look like that last part was true. I was almost grateful for the next contraction that came along, tightening my face and making my next words come out breathy, spoken through a clenched jaw. "Is that all?"

  "Did I mention that you drive me crazy and get under my skin like no one else?"

  I started to laugh at that last one. "No, but that sounds more like the Seb that I remember."

  "Well, he's not gone." Seb took my hand once again, squeezed it, his eyes bright as he looked down at me. It was love, I now realized, shining back from his eyes at me. I'd never seen it so naked and exposed on his face, so clear in his expression and actions. "Just a little more mature. And I'm never going to leave you again."

  "What if I tell you to leave? What if I tell you that I'm over you, and I don't want you here? That I've moved on?"

  His smile flickered, but never fully faded away. "Then I'll just have to keep working until I win you back," he answered softly. "Because now, for the first time in my life, I know what I really want. It's you. And I'm not going to let it get away from me again."

  I opened my mouth. I didn't know what I was going to say. The love inside my chest had swelled into a blazing bonfire, and I needed to express it, to tell him. As much as I wanted to drag him over broken glass for a bit longer, make him suffer, I couldn't keep it to myself any longer. I had to say something, tell him how I felt.

  But instead of loving words, a scream came out instead.

  "Here we go!" Dr. Daniels called out, and even amid the sudden pain, I jumped; I'd forgotten that he was down there! Staring back at Seb's face, into his eyes, seeing his love for me, my own love reflected and magnified times a hundred, I'd somehow managed to forget where I was, what was happening right now. "The baby's coming!"

  I'm pretty sure that I blacked out for the next few minutes. I dimly remember the pain of pushing, but also the suddenly new sensation of something leaving me, of a huge release, of something warm and wet and alive, down between my legs. It was only there for a few seconds, and then Dr. Daniels' hands helped lift it clear.

  "Eww, this is very gross," Seb murmured to me at one point, making me halfheartedly lift my hand to smack him, but he did as promised – he never left my side, and kept his arm around me, comforting me.

  "And there you have it, folks," Rick finally said, standing up. In his arms, wrapped in a towel, he held a tiny little shape, a little pink head poking out from the wrappings. "You are now the proud parents of a new baby girl!"

  I glanced over at Seb, whose eyes had gone very round. "A girl?" he whispered.

  "That's right," Dr. Daniels confirmed, as he stepped up beside me. He looked down at me. "Would you like to hold her?"

  I nodded, and wordlessly accepted the little bundle from his arms. I looked down at the tiny, pink, puckered little face. I could scarcely believe that this was a real human, it looked so tiny and frozen – until she moved her mouth a little, turned her body ever so slightly against me.

  "A girl," Seb repeated, looking down at the baby's face.

  "That's right. That means that you're going to be outnumbered," I said softly, reaching in to run one finger ever so gently across the infant's cheek. She twitched a little, and I felt a surge of love shoot through me, swelling up almost like an orgasm.

  It took Seb a moment to catch the meaning behind my words – but then, his face lit up to rival my own happiness. "I guess I will be," he said softly, slipping one arm around my shoulders once again. I leaned in against him, carefully holding my new daughter – our daughter – between us.

  Wisely, Dr. Daniels quietly ducked out of the room, leaving us alone. We sat there, the three of us, for an indescribable amount of time, neither of us making a sound for fear of disturbing this tiny little bundle of life that had, so suddenly and so recently, come into the world.

  "A daughter," Seb whispered finally. I turned to look at him, and saw a huge, utterly happy smile on his face. "We have a daughter."

  "We do," I nodded. "But we need a name."

  Seb's eyes sparkled. "Actually, I have one in mind."

  Chapter Thirty

  SEBASTIAN

  *

  I had a daughter. I had a child. My child was born, and lying in the arms of the woman I love, right next to me.

  But I still had one more part of my plan left to complete. The riskiest part, the part that I'd been almost happy to think would never arrive. After all, if she'd thrown me out on my ass when I arrived at the café and lured her out of her apartment under false circumstances, we might never have gotten to this point.

  I certainly hadn't expected her to go into labor! That had thrown a hell of a mon
key wrench into my plans. Still, I'd been prepared for this to happen at some point – and putting together the supplies to rush her to the hospital, everything that she'd need for her stay here, had helped give me a concrete task to focus on as I tried to get my speech and words perfect.

  I'd screwed it up, of course. I'd composed a whole speech of love, telling her all the ways that I loved her, but I barely managed to get half of them out – and, given how Tori was screaming from contractions, I don't know if she even heard them.

  But I'd made it to this point – and it sounded like, even though I'd been awful at declaring my love, Tori loved me back. Despite everything I'd done, all the pain she'd been through because of me, there was still one last little ember of love inside her, ready for me to coax it back into a flame.

  She loved me back. I wanted to go dancing down the halls of the hospital, nearly convinced that I could step out the window and float in the sky like a balloon, that I could walk on the clouds with the warmth and lightness inside of me.

  But I had one last thing to do.

  Now, as we looked down on our newborn daughter, Tori mentioned that we didn't have a name. This was it, as good a chance as ever. I cleared my throat.

  "Actually, I have one in mind," I said softly.

  She glanced up at me. Did she know what I was about to say, what I was about to ask her? Somehow, Tori always seemed to be able to read my mind with uncanny accuracy, as if she could hear my words in her head a second before I spoke them.

  But now, she looked at me with open curiosity. "What is it?"

  "Lily," I said softly, taking another look at the tiny little girl. Lily. A beautiful name, for a girl that would surely grow up to become a beautiful woman, if she was anything like her mother. I prayed that she'd have Tori's intelligence, instead of my bullheaded stupidity.

  "Lily?" Tori repeated. "But that's my last name. Won't that sound weird?"

  One last breath. Breathe, Seb, I told myself. Don't pass out now. Just say it, get it out.

  "It won't if you say yes to this next question," I said, reaching into my pocket for the last little piece of the puzzle.

  It wasn't there.

  Uh oh.

  "Shit," I said without thinking, as I checked my other pockets with increasing concern. "No, not now."

  Tori sat up a little, blinking at me. "What's going on?" Her eyes narrowed slightly. "And why are you swearing in front of our child, when she hasn't been out for more than just a few minutes?"

  Well, I'd lost the ring. Maybe it was still in the car, or in my coat, or it had somehow ended up in the bag of supplies that sat over on the window ledge. Whatever. I just had to press on without it.

  "I want to name our daughter Lily," I said, trying not to be derailed by this sudden stumbling block, "because I want you to take my last name."

  Her brow furrowed. "What? Why?"

  Oh my god, I was totally screwing this up. What the hell happened to normal Sebastian Stone, smooth ladies' man? "Because I want you to marry me, Tori," I blurted out. "I love you, and I want you to marry me! That's what I wanted to ask, and I had a ring and everything." Once again, without much hope, I checked my pockets. Nope. Still no ring.

  Tori stared at me, her mouth hanging open. "You're asking me to marry you?" she repeated.

  I nodded, not trusting myself to say anything else.

  She looked back at me for another moment – and then burst into delighted laughter. The tiny infant in her arms let out a gurgle, almost as if my newborn daughter was laughing along with her mother.

  "Seb, you just professed your love to me!" she pointed out, once she recovered from the bout of laughter. "I haven't even agreed to any details – are we going to live together again? Where? We don't know anything about our future yet, and you want me to marry you?"

  "I do know one thing about our future," I insisted. "I want it to be with you. No matter what else it might hold, I want you to be with me in it. That's all I need. We can figure out everything else – whatever you want. As long as you're with me."

  For a second, Tori just stared back at me. "You're serious," she said, the laughter fading from her voice.

  I nodded. "For once, more than anything. No more jokes. Just one question."

  For a full minute, she just looked at me. "Can I think about it?" she finally asked.

  "Yes, of course!" I let out a breath that I hadn't realized I'd been holding. "Take as long as you want."

  "Good. I'm thinking about six months."

  I blinked. "What?"

  She smiled up at me, our newborn daughter in her arms, so adorable that my heart wanted to melt inside my chest. "Seb, we've just become parents. We don't even know where we're going to live, or have any supplies, a crib, anything like that!"

  I cleared my throat. "Actually, I've got all of that," I said.

  She had been about to say something else, but snapped her mouth shut on the words. "What?"

  "All the supplies. I figured that you might not have thought of everything, since I read all the baby books – so I got it all set up. A crib, baby monitors, bottles, diapers, swaddling clothes, all of it."

  "Really? Where?"

  "At Richard and Linda's, the Stone mansion." I shrugged, glancing down at my shoes. "Last time I bought you a house, you ended up selling it a few months later. So I figured that this time, maybe you could pick out where you'd like to live."

  She didn't say anything, and I raised my eyes back up to look at her. She had her mouth hanging slightly open, her head tilted to one side. "Come here," she said softly.

  "What?" I took a step tentatively towards her.

  She patted the spot on the bed beside her. "Closer."

  Unsure what was going to happen next, I sat down next to her, leaned in for whatever might be coming next.

  She wrapped her free hand around the back of my neck, kissed me deeply. "You know, when you're not an utter ass," she murmured to me, "you can be the sweetest, best man that I could ever have in my life."

  It was the perfect Tori compliment. Smart, sassy, stinging, but still filling me with warmth and love for her. "Yup, that's me," I said, and kissed her back. "So, what do you say? Marry me?"

  "Still thinking about it," she answered, even as she beamed at me. "And it's still going to be about six more months. Even if I live with you at your brother's mansion-"

  "It's part mine, too, you know-"

  "-because you've got the supplies for Lily," she kept going. "We need to ease back into things, figure out our plans ahead of time. If I'm going to marry you, we need to not jump in without thinking about things."

  "That's too bad," I admitted, even as I leaned in beside her on the bed, loving how my nostrils caught her scent, loving just being in her presence once again. How had I ever thought that this could be wrong, that there could be anything better in the world than this? "Jumping into things without thinking about them is what I'm best at."

  "And we're going to have to break you of that habit," Tori said. She yawned, a gesture echoed by the little baby still in her arms. "But right now, I'm so tired, I can barely think. Can you take our daughter? Can I trust you with that?"

  Carefully, as if she was made of glass, I lifted the tiny baby out of Tori's arms. "I've got you," I whispered down to the tiny little newborn. "I'm your daddy, Lily. You're my daughter. I've got you."

  The baby smacked her lips, turned towards me. I held her, standing there, frozen in admiration of the perfection of the tiny little human that Tori had created. I loved her, both the mother and this tiny little baby. I loved them both, with all my heart.

  I glanced back up at Tori – and saw that she was already asleep. She'd leaned her head back against the pillow, and her mouth hung slightly open as her chest slowly rose and fell. Small surprise, after all – having a baby seemed like the most exhausting thing I could imagine. Heck, even I felt exhausted!

  But after handing Lily off to a nurse, I headed out into the lobby of the hospital. I'd texted everyone,
and they'd all shown up – Ellen and Vicky stood to one side, and my brothers and their wives stood beside her. Richard smiled at me, his arm around Linda. Teddy wore a slight frown, as was typical for him, but his new wife, Callie, was the first to rush forward.

  "How are things?" she asked, pausing just in front of me, looking up at me from her five-feet-nothing height.

  I smiled, a smile of bone-deep weariness but utter happiness. "I have a daughter."

  Callie immediately let out a squeal and threw her arms around me, but she wasn't the only one. Ellen joined in, and Linda, and even Vicky and Richard. Teddy stood off to one side, still frowning a little – until Callie's arm shot out and grabbed him.

  "Get in here, you big lug," she commanded, and dragged him into the group hug. "Oh, Sebastian, I'm so happy for you!"

  "I am too," I said, squeezing them all back, trying to hug the half-dozen people at once. I felt hot tears brimming up at the corners of my eyes, and tried to fight vainly to blink them back.

  Linda and Richard finally disentangled themselves from the hug. "And are you..." Richard began, but paused, perhaps not sure how to finish the sentence.

  I nodded, shifting my smile to him. "We're good, I think. It will take some time, but I love her, and she knows it. And I think that she still loves me, too."

  Richard smiled, clapped me on the back. "My little brother, finally growing up," he said fondly. "I'm so proud."

  "Yeah, well, get ready to handle a lot of babysitting, Uncle Richard," I said, grinning as he winced at my emphasis on the 'Uncle'. "After all, we're moving back in under your roof!"

  "And we'll be thrilled to have you," Linda said firmly, even as Richard pretended to hesitate, weighing the pros and cons. "How is the new mother?"

  "Sleeping right now," I said, "but you can all come back and see her soon. I'm going to stay with her."

  No one looked surprised. Giving me handshakes, final words of congratulations, and – in Callie's case – one last bone-crushing hug, they said their goodbyes and headed out. Finally, only Ellen and Vicky stood in the hospital lobby with me.

  Vicky stepped up to me, glaring up at me with both hands planted firmly on her hips. "If you hurt one hair on that girl's head, or even her feelings," she warned me in a deep growl, "I'll find out. And I'll teach you to respect her, you hear?"