by Angel Payne
“Look, we don’t have to kneejerk this now,” I go on. “Taking a second to go inside and talk strategy here is—”
“A second we don’t have.”
She’s still all glowing fire and glorious impatience, tempting me to think about taking her inside to do other things, but I set my jaw and rebut, “All right; it’s clear that you’re still upset about all this—”
“Reece.” Her lips press together and her nostrils flare. “I’m not upset.”
“Okay.” I pull in a breath, focusing on being the neutral factor here. “Fine. Not upset. Freaked out, then.”
“Reece.”
“Or spooked. Or whatever you want to call it—”
“Reece.”
“What?”
“What I am is in labor. And what I need—what your son needs—is to take his first breath in his real home.”
So much for neutral.
Or pause buttons.
Or strategy.
Or thinking.
Or anything beyond the hot ball of pure terror that careens down my throat—before I finally manage to blurt, “Cal?”
“Yeah?”
“Grab the keys. Take the 405 to the 101.” I coincide the command with my full body dip, sweeping my gorgeous Flare off her feet before she can so much as yelp half a protest. Remarkably, perhaps even gratefully, she finally sags into me. Her head is a welcome weight against my shoulder. Her surging belly is pressed tight to my ribcage.
Her belly…
Where our son’s heartbeat throbs into me and through me…
Bringing a voice along with it.
A voice so steady and beautiful and pure, my entire breath leaves me as I listen to it. Recognizing it. Loving it beyond every human and superhuman sense in my being.
I’m ready, Dada.
Ready to see you at last.
I’m ready now.
For the world’s most notable super mutant, I’m one hell of a clueless jackass.
I don’t waste the breath to even admitting it aloud, though Emma’s assuredly gotten my gist by the time Calvin speeds us through the transition onto the 405 north. We’ve managed to find the sole hour out of the year that the notorious freeway doesn’t resemble strands of brake-light-colored Christmas bulbs, despite the typical slowdowns near the interchanges, Long Beach Airport, and LAX. A second item for gratitude: sometime before tonight, my brain worked long enough to pack a hospital go-bag for the car as well as the house. For now, at least, we’ve got the essentials, and I attempt to haul every one of them out as fast as my trembling hands will allow. Blanket, timer, bottled water, saltines, cookies, lip balm, massage oil, slippers, fuzzy socks, rubbing alcohol, iPod and speakers, the latest Helen Hardt book, wipes in a battery-operated warmer…
“Screw it,” I finally spit when the bag’s narrow opening slows down progress. On a burst of agitation, I lightning-slice the top two inches off the bag. Cal extends his right hand, ready to assist, and flings the discarded piece back to the rear stow space. I nod my gratitude but hide my guilt. In less than an hour, the guy’s become invaluable, though there’s been no time to tell him what he’s really signed up for. He’s now officially down the rabbit hole—yeah, the same one that Wade, Fershan, and Neeta have also leaped down…and are now paying for it by facing every day as if it might be their last. That’s not the kind of thing to spring on a guy without his knowledge. But like so many other chapters of this crazy story called my life, there’s been no time to notate with the proper bullet points.
Hell. I’m pretty sure I still don’t have the right bullet points.
As if those even exist for what’s happening here. And now.
Right now.
Whether I’m ready or not.
“Not” being the stronger candidate for the moment.
I’ve never been more terrified to wrap Emmalina in my arms—or been more driven to do so. I’ve never seen her look more frightened but brave, her skin alternating between summer gold and winter pale, her eyes lakeside peaceful in one moment and then fireside fierce the next. I do know I’ve never been more in awe of her graceful strength or more in love with her tenacious spirit.
But I’m utterly unable to describe the sensations that strike from the moment her first hard contraction sinks in.
“Oh! Ohhhh, shit! Reece!”
“Here, Bunny.” I’m astonished I’m able to form the words, even more so that they’re coherent. I sure as fuck don’t feel coherent. I’m dumbfounded but dazzled, weak but wowed, joyous but utterly and scarily helpless. “I’m here. I’m here.”
“I heard you the first time,” she snaps but doesn’t elaborate. Breathing becomes her priority, and she pinches her lips to get in the zipping inhalations that Lydia and Neeta taught her. The actions are meant to settle her nerves, but I have no idea how. Every one of them is like dull razors scraping every inch of my tendons. I seriously wonder if I’m about to bleed to death from the inside out.
Good Christ. Really, asshole? You enjoying the hell out of that wuss bath, while your woman is trying to push a watermelon out of her womb? The melon grown from your seed?
But as she shrieks again, I’m not thinking about spoons anymore. Only knives, dipped in fire and then following the same path as the razors, sinking deeper into my physical fibers in direct proportion to the slice of her anguish into my spirit.
“Fuuuuck!”
We explode the word together, filling the car with the force of our torment. By the time the contraction is over, I’ve kicked the front passenger seat off its axis, folding the thing forward, with Emma prone along the whole back seat.
With her head in my lap, she’s fully staring up at me. Her eyes are sharp with pain, and her skin is dotted with sweat. Yet unbelievably, she tugs at my fingers and pulls them down to her mouth, capturing the tips in a pair of weak kisses.
“You okay, Zeus?”
I spurt an incredulous laugh. “You’re stealing my lines, cheeky bunny.”
One of the water bottles is jabbed into the space between our gazes. Cal, taking advantage of the slow-down before the 110 split, has yanked the bag onto the middle console and taken stock of the contents. “Drink up,” he orders. “Both of you. This is probably just the start, and you need to stay hydrated.”
I slant a grateful glance at him via the rearview but end it with a wry smirk. “You taking midwife classes in between the engineering curriculum, Neves?”
He chuffs. “Who do you think helped my mom push out Tosca and Jina? Not their asshole sperm donor, that’s for sure.” He shoots me a grin while checking behind us to switch lanes. “Only I’d just turned fourteen and had to figure all this shit out for myself. When I almost passed out because I hadn’t done anything to take care of myself in ten hours, I finally got the clue.”
So maybe the guy can handle the bullet points.
I only take half a second to indulge the thought before concentrating on my wife again. With a tender nudge, I urge her head up and coax the water bottle to her lips. “You heard the man, Mrs. Richards. Drink up.”
I expect Emma to slip out some snarky one-liner, but my terrified grate seems to move her as if I’ve just whipped out roses and laid them at her feet. Right now, I wish I could handle all of this with nothing but a bunch of flowers. I’m as out of my element as the first few months of learning about my powers—no, even more so because there’s no room for margin here. I’m not out in the middle of nowhere with trees and boulders for target practice. If I make a mistake now, the woman I worship will pay the price.
As well as the miracle of a child we’ve created.
Shit.
Shit.
Shit!
“Hey.” Her soft interjection prevents my panic from gaining root, though she’s nearly out of breath due to chugging practically all the contents of the bottle. But the stuff works its magic, returning some normal color to her face between the glowing splotches due to her stress. “You heard the guy,” she urges with a smile. “Take ca
re of yourself too, you big ox.”
I chug the final swallow of water she left behind. “There.” Then crush the empty plastic and overhand it backward, to join the leather I torched away from the go-bag. “Happy?”
Her smile grows. “Never been happier.” Emma guides my now-empty hand down to the rise of her belly. At once, even the sequins of her dress start vibrating, with the swell underneath seeming to dance to the same excited beat. “And I think Bean agrees.”
Her statement hardly does the meaning justice. My Thor hammer of a heartbeat and my Firebird flame of a throat are solid confirmations—but neither of them eclipses the brilliance that swirls up through me from where my fingers join with Emma’s. The happiness flames along my arm and across my chest, spreading out the rest of my extremities like a thousand racing, raucous comets.
All of them beginning to laugh out one joyous refrain.
Dada’s here!
Dada’s here!
Dada’s here!
“Holy shit.” At least I think that’s what tumbles out of me, though comprehending anything in terms as basic as syllables and words is like asking a baby to comprehend chess.
Bad comparison.
Because in the case of this baby, that might damn well be a possibility.
“Holy shit,” I repeat, twining my hold tighter with Emma’s. As we roam our meshed fingers back and forth across her belly, we share a spellbound laugh when tiny hands and feet from within start following our route. “I—I mean, my stars,” I stammer, grinning wide as her laughter intensifies—though we fall silent together when I’m joined by another voice again. That voice, so happy and innocent and absolute, ringing out from the center of her body…and resonating in the depths of my heart.
Stars, dada? What…are…stars?
“Oh, God,” Emma rasps, and I press my lips into several of the salty rivulets down her cheeks as I funnel my energy inward and then direct that electricity into a silent, electric thought of response.
Stars are just like you, son. Bright. Perfect. Magical. Original.
There’s a tearful gasp in my ear. I tilt toward it, kissing Emma on the lips this time. She’s eavesdropping on our little chat, but I have a feeling it’s not the first time. And dear God, I pray it won’t be the last. We’re a family now—and it hits me that we’ve been so for a while now, so much longer than what most families are blessed with. She and I aren’t just about to “meet” our son. In so many ways, we already have.
I pull back a little from my wife so that my gaze can fully take hers in. Her face, still a sheen of gold-flecked sweat, has never sucked the breath from me harder. Her smile, shaky and still a little scared, has never made the world fade faster.
“A star,” I whisper to her. “Woven to life inside a star.”
She swallows hard. Squeezes my hand. “And given life by a beautiful bolt.”
Our son kicks out his immediate approval on the assertion, followed by a new contraction of the walls around him. Our bean fights back at the bonds, doubling the intensity of Emma’s pain… And, at once, my pain too.
“Holy fuck!” Okay, I’m not imagining this insanity. As my head drops and I bonk foreheads with Emma, I’m given a shred of comfort in the steadiness of her stare, validating I really haven’t just signed up for a lifetime membership in the Worldwide Wuss Collective.
But it’s only a shred.
Incinerated as soon as the contraction goes on.
And on.
And on.
And my hope for relief is incinerated along with the biological dynamite charges that explode everywhere through my body—but most horrifically, south of my navel. Yeah, including the TNT stick between my thighs, feeling clamped into a merciless medieval torture device. It’s one of those cock cages with retractable spikes on the inside, except karma’s decided to ignore the “retract” lever. How I wish I could write off the imagery as melodrama, but it’s not. This shit is real. In the last three years, I’ve become an expert on pain, from the little smirk between level three and four up to whatever exists after the sobbing red guy at ten. This isn’t my goddamned imagination.
A conclusion leading me to an inevitable, incredible recognition.
I’m connected to her. I mean connected.
No. Beyond that.
Not just feeling every beat of her heart, or absorbing the Fahrenheit of her blood, or savoring every word that emanates from our son’s awakening spirit.
Beyond all of that.
Much further beyond.
Our baby hasn’t just become a product of our DNA. He’s the fusion of it, in every sense of the word. A product of the bond that’s melded the two of us, in ways that have never been humanly possible. But because of this impossibility, never making me feel more human.
Yeah, right down to every damn birthing pain.
Pain I’m not about to trade away, despite how Cal locates the ibuprofen I keep in the center console and frantically passes the bottle back.
But after I bat it away, sending it flying into the front windshield, he slams on the right blinker and declares, “Just saw a sign for a hospital off the next exit. I don’t know exactly which one—”
“And I don’t care,” I retort.
“But—”
“No hospital.” With perfect timing, the contraction wanes. I’m able to bolt him with a commanding glare via the rearview. And I mean bolt. My irises are the color of liquid steel, my brows hunched into low thunderheads. “We can’t afford a shred of unwanted attention, let alone what this might bring.”
As if Bean is listening—and by now, I truly believe that’s the case—he shoves hard enough at his confines to ignite a counter-protest from the skin he’s stretching. Once more, every one of my pores groans and burns in alliance with Emma’s, and I fantasize about being able to unzip my skin and then step out of the offensive stuff, leaving the burning husk behind.
Another thought my son is bizarrely in sync with…
As he kicks hard enough to turn Emma’s stomach into an orb as blazing and hot as the sun she got her name from.
Which means the front of her dress is now a slice of toast.
All right, so now I’m exaggerating—unless “toast” suddenly got redefined as a few scraps of smoked stretch fabric and a handful of charred sequins.
“Oh, holy shit!” Cal’s exclamation, spurted as soon as the smell of barbequed fabric has him swiveling a curious glance back, pretty much says it all. While I’m beyond tempted to add my echo of it to the air, I practically bite my own tongue off to abstain—an effort made easier as soon as I cast my own gaze back down to my wife’s face. She’s golden, glistening, gorgeous, and freaked the hell out. That’s my cue to man the hell up.
“Velvet.” I curl my grip tighter into hers. With my free hand, I caress the side of her face. My fingers slick through a layer of liquid gold. I’m unsurprised. If I had a creature inside me already capable of cognitive thought and the words that went with it, I’d probably be sweating a little too. “It’s going to be all right, baby. I promise.”
She swallows hard. Attempts an answering smile. “I know.” As she rasps it, she guides our joined hands in a gentle circle over her bared belly. “And so does he.”
No sooner does she finish saying it than her whisper is joined by another voice once more. The completion of our circuit. The new fire in our family.
Dada say all right. So we all right.
At once, I’m flooded with more feeling. Engulfed in emotions. Overtaken by such a cacophony of reactions, I’m shorted out before I can pick one to commit to. So what does that make me now? Nothing but a slack-jawed, mute-mouthed clod, forming my mouth around nothing but air and then releasing more of the same. But not completely. When Emma pushes her fingertips into my cheek, her fire combines with the wet tracks there, making me newly conscious of the amazement that’s taken liquid form too. I don’t make a single attempt to swipe the tears away or to hide the ones that spill out right on top of them. This moment
is a miracle. This child is our miracle. He’s already worth every ounce of the hell I had to pay to make him happen.
And, I learn with my next breath, the hell I’m still having to pay.
As the torture clamps us both again.
Except that this time, the spikes aren’t just driving into my crotch.
My hips, my abdomen, my stomach, my ribs—anything and everything below my sternum is gashed into ribbons and then twisted into knots, only there’s a goddamned burning coal cinched in the center of each one. My only lifeline back to sanity is the juncture of my hand with Emma’s, though she’s returning my desperate clutch with pressure that matches her excruciating wail.
“Ohhh, God! Ohhh, Reece!”
“Here, baby,” I somehow choke out. “I’m—I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”
“No shit,” Cal mumbles from the front—though his sarcasm is short-lived once he dashes another look back at us. “Ohhh, shit,” he’s sputtering instead, putting the new refrain on repeat as he concentrates on weaving through the traffic sludge through Culver City and the west side. Silently, I beg him to be careful. The countdown to midnight is well over an hour away, but I’d bet my left nut—if the damn thing agrees to talk to me again—that half the west side has been screaming hello to the new year since Manhattan did. “Guess the hospital option is really off the table now,” he utters, apparently really getting the point that the Richards Family light show is only just getting started.
“Just step on it,” I get out in return, checking off just about every box for testy-asshole-billionaire in the process. But when I have to interject a bunch of wheezes that sound more like a constipated rhino, I feel Cal’s empathy piling on top of his incredulity. “Over the Sepulveda Pass,” I continue. “Then out the 101 to Las Virgenes.”
He nods while trading glances with me again in the rearview. The motion is calm, but his dark eyes aren’t. He’s finally figuring out the scope of what’s happening here—not that he’s comfortable with it, which makes two of us. I’m not exactly down with being the poster boy for karma’s retribution on behalf of every woman since Eve, but at least there’s going to be a reward for this pain. A huge one.
