Manster

by Cari Quinn

  “It’s cranked.”

  Callie blew out a breath. “I swear these Braxton-Hicks are going to be the very death of me.” She rubbed her lower back.

  “You sure you’re okay?” I turned in my seat.

  “Yes. I’ve had four doctors up my damn skirt today. This baby isn’t budging. Just gotta deal with these stupid contractions until he finally arrives.”

  Another twenty minutes of silence was going to kill me, but the traffic was backed up to the interchange and beyond.

  Maybe half of that time had gone by when Callie lowered the window and blew out a breath. “Um, guys?”

  “What?” we both asked.

  “Yeah, well, about that whole…you know, baby not coming thing?”

  “Yeah?” Hudson asked carefully.

  “My water broke.”

  “In my car!” he thundered.

  I winced and flicked my seatbelt off so I could turn around fully on my knees. “Oh, crap.” The pretty pink skirt of Callie’s dress was definitely wet.

  “Are you fucking kidding me here?” Wyatt yelled.

  “No. I didn’t mean to, and don’t yell at me!” Callie exhaled shakily. “So all those little cramps? I think those were finally the real deal.”

  She unhooked her seatbelt and swung her legs up on the bench seat. “I’m thinking maybe the doctors don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground and I’m having this baby now.”

  Hudson looked at me in horror. “She can’t have the baby here.”

  “Well, I’m thinking I will be,” Callie answered.

  He grabbed my hand. “Get back with her and look.”

  Fear made me clutch his hand, our fingers interlocking. “What the hell do I know about babies?”

  “You said you’ve helped out with cats. You know, with a litter.”

  “This is not the same.”

  “Just try.” He swiped his thumb over my hand like he used to.

  “This so isn’t a good idea.” But I climbed over the seat to sit across from Callie. She was blowing out crazy pregnancy breaths and I took her hands. “Okay, we’ve done all the classes for this, remember?”

  She nodded and let out even breaths. “Oh God. Call Owen. Please!”

  “Right. Um, maybe we should try for an ambulance instead first.”

  “Anything.” Callie squeezed my hands until they went completely numb.

  “Hudson. You need to call nine-one-one.”

  “How do you do that from a freaking moving car? What location do I give them?” He rolled down his window and held his hand out of the car to a guy in the next lane.

  The guy ignored him.

  Shitty California drivers—shocker.

  “Jesus, fuck. I can’t get off. We’re on the on ramp.” His voice was tight with stress.

  “Hudson. Come on, get a doctor on the phone.” I shoved up my sleeves.

  “What? Oh God.”

  There was much screaming and possibly a little bit of mayhem after that. It got hazy between Hudson yelling out the window for people to move their cars and a relay conversation to have an ambulance meet us at the next exit.

  Owen called in the middle of it all, which only increased the worry factor.

  “Hudson.”

  “What?”

  “Stop screaming. I need you calm.”

  “Right. I’m sorry. The ambulance is right there and I can’t fucking get there.” He slammed his hand on the steering wheel. “Not the time to get hysterical. Shouldn’t I be saying that to you guys?”

  Callie relaxed as the contractions lessened. She slumped against the door, her phone clutched in her hand as Owen kept talking to her with each successive wave. “I know you’ll get me there. Owen says he knows you will too.”

  The clear worry in Hudson’s hazel eyes as he met my gaze in the rearview mirror shook something loose in me. I was wasting so much precious time being proud.

  I didn’t know how we’d gotten here, but I wasn’t going to let another minute pass without laying it all on the line. What I wanted was so much more than the halfway relationship I’d tried to suggest under duress at his place.

  It was time for the real deal.

  “Hudson, I need you.” The words popped out before I could stop them. The words I’d really wanted to say since the second night I’d spent with him.

  “What?” He twisted around to look at me in the backseat. “You need me what?”

  “I just need you. I know I screwed up. I said all that stuff so you wouldn’t leave me and you left anyway. I wanted to just make things easier so you’d be happy. But then you just… I’m sorry. I love you and I don’t want to only be with you when you’re home. I want you all the time. I want you every day that you’re home and sometimes maybe I can come to see you on the road. I’m so tired of missing you.”

  “You…now? You’re telling me this now?” Hudson craned his neck to look at me more fully. His changeable eyes were now a bright gold with a fierceness that made tears prick my eyes. Tears I thought I’d lost the ability to make.

  “Okay, you’re going to make me cry.” Callie sniffed.

  Hudson wrenched the steering wheel and hopped the curb. He blared the horn and revved the engine until the cars started moving to the side to let him up on the shoulder. He slammed the shifter into park, pushed the seat back as much as he could without disrupting Callie, and shifted until he was sorta awkwardly on his knees. Almost. He had to be in agony in that weird position. “Say it again.”

  “Which part?” I squeaked.

  “You know which fucking part.” He gripped the seat, possibly for balance. Or to divert some of the pain from being bent like a Hudson-shaped pretzel.

  I dragged in a breath. “I love you. I think I’ve loved you from the moment you stood in the street outside my house at two in the morning.”

  “Guys, maybe not quite the time for this. Here we go, another one’s coming.”

  Hudson reached into the backseat and I inched forward so he could cup the back of my head to drag me in for a hard, hot kiss. “I love you so much I can’t even breathe around it. I don’t care what it takes, we’re going to make this work. I promise you. Everything in my life has been to get to you. I understand that now.”

  “This is really beautiful.” Callie blew out a growling breath. “And if I wasn’t trying to squeeze a human out of my body I’d be all about this, but right now, I’m going to rip your steering wheel off your precious car and beat you with it, Hudson Jefferson Wyatt. Can I have this baby first? Then we get the love and marriage proposal?” Callie screeched.

  “Right.” I glanced at him and grinned wide. “Right, let’s do this. Show us why you were one of the best Formula One racers on the circuit.”

  He twisted forward in his seat and threw it in drive. He maneuvered his way down the shoulder and into a small gap in the traffic. The EMTs had set up cones and flares, leading us right to them on the side of the road.

  Finally, the car came to a stop.

  “Piper!”

  “I’m here.” I clasped Callie’s arms to let her dig her nails into me. It seemed to make her feel better. Right now, I’d do anything to make her feel better.

  Callie was in the grip of another contraction and I was focused on keeping her calm. “You can do this. You are going to have this beautiful baby today.”

  “Not without Owen.” Fat tears rolled down Callie’s red face. “I can’t do this without him.”

  “Owen will be here, I promise. But you know what? You totally can do it without him if you have to. We’ll be right here with you, okay?”

  She nodded. “Okay.” She bit back a sob. “Okay.”

  The backseat driver’s side door flew open and Hudson disappeared for a moment. Then the passenger’s side back door opened and a pair of strong arms dragged me out of the car. “Wait!”

  “It’s okay, kitten.”

  I staggered into Hudson and let him hold me close. His arm was firmly around me as the EMTs took over and h
auled Callie out of the car and onto a board so they could get her to the ambulance.

  We hustled after them and tried to climb into the ambulance with her.

  “Only family, ma’am,” the female EMT said.

  “Just try and stop me. I’m her coach. I get to be with her.”

  The woman huffed out a sigh. “Ma’am, it’s against protocol.”

  “Is any of this protocol?” I waved to the side of the road with the cars flying by and flares kicking out smoke.

  “Bunny!”

  I spun around at Owen’s voice coming from the road.

  Callie struggled against the IV and emergency blanket they’d covered her with. “Owen. Oh, thank God.”

  Owen’s boots clomped as he raced down the shoulder of the highway. His truck was parked crooked a few hundred feet back. He got to the ambulance and climbed in without asking for permission.

  “I knew I shouldn’t have left you.” He clutched her hand and crowded in on the bench seat.

  “People, we have to go.” The female EMT flipped down the blanket. “She’s fully effaced.” She turned to Owen. “You’re the father.”

  His blue eyes gleamed with a sheen of tears. “Sure am. Husband too.”

  “Then we’ve got all our bases covered. Back it up, you two.”

  I stumbled back. Part of me wanted to get into the ambulance with them, but then I saw Owen with his forehead pressed to Callie’s, his voice low with words of encouragement and love.

  All the things Callie needed right now.

  Hudson slid his arm around my hip and pressed his lips to my temple. “Come on, kitten. Let’s get into the car so we can follow.”

  A moment later, Owen’s truck backed up and flew down the highway after the ambulance, his father at the wheel.

  I nodded. “I’m not sure they need us anymore though.”

  “Too bad. We need to be there. I know you want to be.”

  I sniffed. “I do.”

  “Then off we go.” He held out his hand to me. “But you’re not getting rid of me. I heard you say the words. You can’t take them back.”

  I dashed away the tears that I hadn’t realized were falling. “I don’t want to. I’m sorry I didn’t say them the first time. I was just…” I closed my eyes and pressed my face into his chest. Into the heat and smell of him that I knew so very well and missed oh, so much. “I was so afraid I was going to lose you. I wanted to make it easy for you to be with me.”

  “I don’t want easy. And I should’ve made that clearer myself. It takes two to mess things up, you know.” He pressed his lips against the top of my head, then reached down to tip up my chin so he could look into my eyes. “But just so there’s no mistaking it now—I want everything, Piper. The hard parts, the easy, the crazy things in between. I even want your freaking cats because they’re part of you.”

  “You’re going to make me cry.”

  He dashed away the tears with his thumbs. “No crying. I love you. That’s the only thing that matters today. We’ve got time to figure out the rest of it.”

  I rose onto my toes and he met me halfway.

  Cars rushed by us and the distant scream of a siren reminded me of where we were, but I took just another minute to breathe him in and hold him close. I’d almost lost him because I was afraid to call him mine.

  I was never going to do that again. I just hope he knew what he was getting himself into.

  Epilogue

  Six months later

  “Why did I let you talk me into this?”

  “Because you know you love her and she loves you madly. Even if she sounds like a demon at the moment.” Piper set the carrier down in the living room of my house. My new roommate was inside tearing at the sides of her carrier.

  I’d been hoping for a different sort of cohabitation soon, but Piper and I had only been involved for six months and three of them had included me out on the road.

  We were making it work. I’d promised her we would, but it really was work. She was independent as hell and didn’t pine for me as I’d expected. I admit that I sort of wished she would. The fact that it was mostly me climbing the walls when I wasn’t with her took some getting used to.

  The tour schedule was already gearing up and second nights were necessary in a lot of cities because we were selling out. It was going to be a beast of a summer. And I knew that meant more time away from her. I wasn’t really psyched about that part, but we were going to make the most of the spring together.

  The album was doing really well and we were doing a video for the third single while we were taking a break. The fact that most bands didn’t get a second single out there, let alone a third, was exciting and impressive.

  Dex, our manager, was very pleased with the way things were going. The crowds were getting a little hard to manage lately, and in turn, the big man himself, Donovan Lewis, was beefing up the tour program. He’d had a hand in adding on an opening act, which came with even more security.

  As usual, bullshit chased the amazing details to keep us humble.

  An extra added emotional component had to be dealt with during the tour as well. Hunter’s best friend, Tristan, had dealt with a sudden death in his family and it had rocked the foundation of the whole Ripper Records family. Randy Pruitt had been killed on stage during Warning Sign’s first official show of their new tour. What we’d first thought was a terrible accident now seemed a lot more ominous.

  New protocols were being enforced and that took some time getting used to. As if Quinn, our head of security, wasn’t bad enough. Now he was an extra special sauce level of insane. That included increased security personnel crawling all over us. Tensions between Reed and the band were at an all-time high because Victoria and her entourage couldn’t come and go as they pleased any longer.

  All in all, I was very glad to be home for two months. The only drama I wanted was right here.

  I kneeled on the floor and peered into the carrier. “Maya, sweetheart, relax.” I went to stick my fingers through the wire mesh when Piper squeaked and grabbed my arm.

  “Are you nuts? You’re going to lose a finger. I know you have a little vacation going on, but I don’t think you have time to have a finger sewn back on before the tour starts up again.”

  I ignored her and stuck my finger inside. Maya instantly came forward and rubbed against my knuckles with a reverberating purr.

  “Traitor,” Piper muttered.

  I tugged Piper down into my lap. “Don’t be jealous. You’re the one who convinced me to bring her home.”

  “Only because she doesn’t like anyone but you. In fact, she’s so bitchy with our new Persian that I have to separate them into two different rooms. She almost took Queenie’s eye out. Literally.”

  “Well, when you have a cat named Queenie, you know she’s just asking for trouble.” I settled my chin into the space between her shoulder and neck. My very favorite place. At least when we had to be clothed.

  I reached around Piper for the little pincher lock of the carrier and opened the door. Maya came out like a shot and zoomed into the bottom shelf of my coffee table. She knocked a few magazines and a large book about the lunar cycles out of her way until she was jammed in the corner, her little body heaving in fright.

  I lifted Piper off me and crawled after the cat. “It’s all right, Maya.”

  “The pecking order is already being established, I see.”

  “You were the one who convinced me to take her home.” This was insane. Why on earth was I inviting a cat into my life?

  I slowly reached into the corner of the storage part of the coffee table. Maya growled her displeasure and I stilled my hand about a foot away from her. My phone and my iPad rang at the same time.

  “Oh, shit. Is it time?”

  Piper raced for the iPad. “Yes. Come on. Leave her for a minute to get acclimated.” She glanced over her shoulder at me. “She’ll be fine, Dad.”

  “Shut up.” I got to my feet and met Piper at the dining room
table.

  “Hi, guys. Oh my gosh. You put her kitten hoodie on. I love you.” Piper’s voice went gooey as hot caramel.

  I came around to find Owen and his daughter Lily on the screen. “Hey, man. You could have at least put your wife on. I’m sick of looking at you.”

  Owen grinned. “I haven’t let Lily out of my sight since I got home. You’ll just have to deal, Lucky Charms.”

  Lily was sitting on the table in front of him reaching for the iPad with her drooly, chubby little fingers. She was wearing a gray hoodie the same color as Maya with the hood raised and little cat ears sticking up. Owen pulled her back into his chest. “Say hi to Aunt Piper and the idiot I call a mate.” His voice was soft and sweet.

  We’d taken to FaceTiming with Lily at least once a week, if not more. After the crazy way she’d come into the world—and no, Callie didn’t make it to the hospital. She had her baby girl in the back of the ambulance in the ER parking bay. Perfectly healthy with a set of lungs her father was very proud of.

  Me too. We could use a few more rocker vocalists in this life. Lily Blackwell sounded like a rock n’ roller already.

  Anyway, after the crazy way Lily had come into the world, the five of us seemed more connected than ever. Families, I was learning, came in all shapes and sizes.

  Mine now included a cat. Three cats actually, including Piper’s Hank and Rosie.

  And that wasn’t even mentioning the many others that sashayed through our lives on a daily basis.

  Lily’s face lit up when she saw Piper and then her fingers went grabby when Maya hopped on the table and pranced right in front of the camera.

  “Don’t show her a cat. Then she’ll want one.” Owen sighed.

  “I think that ship is sunk,” Piper said with a laugh. “Callie’s been in looking at the new batch of kittens three times this week.”

  “Enabler,” Owen muttered.

  Piper grinned. “All my cats deserve great homes. She’s going to bring Lily in to make sure she’s not allergic.”

  “What if I am?”

  I leaned into the camera lens. “You haven’t figured out that we don’t count?”