Worth the Wait (Picking up the Pieces #4) (28 page)

“Love y’all, too, rugrats.”

Kathy shot me a knowing grin as Brett placed a kiss on her head, as well. Then we were out the door.

“I’M NEVER HAVING SEX AGAIN!” Emmy wailed from her seat in the wheelchair.

Brett and I rann into the hospital just in time to see the nurse begin to wheel Emmy to the back.

“It’ll be all right, baby girl,” Luke cooed, running a hand over her hair lovingly.

She used both of her hands to slap at him. “Don’t touch me! Don’t you touch me! This is all your fault, you asshole. I’m gonna kill you.”

That, of course, was followed by a long groan as she hunched over in pain as another contraction took over. Yeah, I so didn’t miss those.

“Can someone please get her the fuckin’ drugs?” Luke shouted, his eyes dancing from nurse to nurse frantically.

“Sir, we need to get her in a room and see how far along she is first.”

“I’M FAR ENOUGH! Gimme the drugs or I’ll murder everyone!”

Another long groan
.

“Is this normal?” Brett leaned in to whisper to me as Emmy and Luke disappeared around the corner.

“Yep,” I answered as we made our way into the waiting room. Our friends were already in there waiting, along with Luke’s mother.

Savannah sat, wringing her hands in front of her as Jeremy tried to calm his clearly worried wife.

“Hey, it’s going to be just fine,” I told her, taking a seat in the empty chair to her left and wrapping her in a tight hug. “Everything is okay. She’s exactly where she needs to be.”

As I looked around the room, I saw the same sullen expressions on everyone’s faces. They were all concerned about Emmy. After what had happened the last time, our little group was waiting with baited breath, praying this delivery would have a different outcome.

I did what I could to try and keep the spirits up. I made coffee runs, offered to go grab dinner for everyone, anything I could to try and keep their minds off the negative. But the mood in the waiting room remained grim until Luke finally walked back in three hours after they’d taken Emmy back.

Savannah immediately jumped from her chair and scurried over to him. “Is she okay? Is he here? How’d it go?”

“Slow your roll, killer,” Luke chuckled. She wasn’t as far along as we’d hoped when they took her back. She’s only just now getting close, but I wanted to update y’all. The doctor’s seen our girl and it’s all systems go.”

I could practically feel the tension in the room melt away.

“So she’s doing okay?” Savannah asked, still concerned for her best friend.

“Well, she hated my ass up until they gave her that epidural thingy, but now it’s all good. I’ll come back as soon as the little guy’s here.” Luke leaned over and planted a kiss on Savannah’s head before taking off back in the direction he’d come from.

With that little reassurance, everyone was finally able to feel the excitement that the day warranted.

“Jesus,” Brett grumbled two hours later. “Does it always take this long?” he asked me. “I mean, this can’t be normal. This isn’t normal, right? Shouldn’t we have heard something by now?”

I continued to flip through the year-old magazine I’d found in the waiting room, having already answered that particular question three times. “Yes, honey,” I replied, not once taking my eyes off the magazine. “It’s totally normal.”

He opened his mouth to argue just as Luke came flying into the waiting room.

“I’M A DADDY!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, fists held high in the air. Everybody jumped up to take their turn giving hugs, but it wasn’t until Luke’s mother stepped up to him, eyes bright with tears as the smile wobbled on her lips, and whispered, “So proud of you, baby. I love you so much,” that he finally broke down. Wrapping his tiny mother in a tight embrace, he cried against her shoulder, so overwhelmed by his love for his new son. It was one of the most moving things I’d ever seen in my life. It was
exactly
how a man should react to welcoming his baby into the world.

“Can we see her? Can we see her?” Savannah jumped up and down as soon as Luke pulled himself together, anxious to get to her bestie.

“Yeah. We want everyone to come on back and meet our little guy.”

Walking into the hospital room, hand in hand with Brett, I tried my best to stay back, giving everyone else a chance to ooh and aww over Emmy and the new baby. I desperately wanted to hold the little guy, but I knew everyone else was more important. I was new to the group; they all needed their turns first.

“Come on,” Brett tried to coax me into moving closer, but I just released his hand with a smile and waved him on.

“You go ahead. I’ll see him. I’m just going to wait until y’all are done.”

“Beauty.” His brow furrowed as he stepped closer to me. “You know you’re a part of this family, right? You’re just as important to us as everyone else is.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but no words came. He truly meant that. These people who had life-long bonds had accepted me as a part of their family without so much as blinking.

Just as I took a step toward Brett, Emmy called out, “Kenzie! Oh, thank God.”

I rushed over to the side of the bed and looked down at her anxious face. “What’s the matter, sweetie?”

“I don’t…” she sniffed. “I don’t know what I’m doing!” Then the waterworks began. “I don’t know the first thing about being a mom. What if I mess up? What if I do something wrong? What if
I break him
?!”

I rubbed a hand over her hair. “Aw, honey, it’s all gonna be okay.”

“I need you. You’re the only one of us who’s done this before.” Her eyes were so full of panic as she looked up at me that I felt a tug at my heart. I understood that panic all too well. I’d felt the exact same thing when the twins were born. Fortunately for Emmy, she had something I never did. She had a solid foundation of people who loved her, Luke, and this new baby. Where I was alone, she had people who would do the best they could, even if they weren’t sure what it was they were supposed to do.

“I’m here, Em. I’m only ever a phone call away. Don’t ever hesitate to call me if you have any questions. I’ll always be there to help.”

Her chest rose and fell with a deep breath of relief and I couldn’t put into words how good that made me feel.
I
had been able to calm her. I was the one to offer her assurance.

“You want to meet little Matthew?” she asked me, her face splitting into the brightest, most beautiful grin as her gray eyes danced with happiness.

“I’d love to.” I reached down and took the snuggly little bundle from Emmy’s hands, holding him tightly to my chest as I leaned down to press my lips to his downy head. I wanted this again. I knew I’d been toying with the idea of having more children with Brett, but in that very moment, holding Matthew Allen in my arms, I knew without a doubt I wanted this very thing again. And I wanted it with the man who was staring at me from across the hospital room like I was his whole world.

“Seriously, woman,” Lizzy declared as I finished up my last appointment of the day. She was still going on about the same thing we’d been discussing all day. “You didn’t see his face. You were too busy sniffing on baby Matthew to notice—”

“Hey, in my defense,” I interrupted, “babies smell awesome! It’s like a new car smell but a thousand times better. Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“All right, I’ll give you that. But I’m telling you, the man looked like he wanted to push to you the ground and impregnate you right there in front of everybody.”

My head fell back in a laugh at her description of how Brett was looking at me in Emmy’s hospital room as I held the baby, gently rocking him to sleep.

“Oh, he did not!”

“Yuh huh! Swear to God. Brett’s got some serious plans in that head of his. I could see the wheels turning. He wants to make a billion little Brenzies with you.”

I looked up from where I was cleaning my station and arched a brow at her. “Brenzies?”

“Yeah, like Brett plus Mackenzie. It was the best I could come up with. Y’alls names suck combined together.”

“Whatever,” I giggled. “There will be no
Brenzies
being made any time soon.”

Lizzy gave me a knowing grin as she stated, “But you’re not ruling it out.”

“No,” I admitted. “I’m not ruling it out. We’ve actually talked about it.”

The squeal she emitted was almost enough to shatter glass. “You’ve talked about makin’ babies?”

She plopped down in the chair opposite me at my little table and I leaned in to tell her, “Yeah, we’ve talked about all that stuff. Honestly, Liz, I really feel like he’s the one, you know? He’s just so friggin’ wonderful. He loves Cameron and Callie so damn much…”

“He loves you too, sweetie.”

“I know,” I replied with a happy sigh. “Did I tell you Cameron called him Daddy the other day? You should have seen his face. He looked like he was about to explode; he was so damn happy.”

“Aww, that’s so cute!”

“And he told me he was going to propose one day, and that I was going to say yes. I never saw this coming, Lizzy. I swear, I never thought I’d ever meet a man who loved me the way he does, let alone love my kids so fiercely. He actually told me that, even though they weren’t his by blood, Cameron and Callie were
his
kids in every way that matters.”

“Oh, my God,” she breathed, her bright green eyes misting over with tears. She quickly reached across the table and grabbed my hands in hers. “Sweetie, I’m so damn happy for you. You deserve someone who makes you happy like that. You’re such an amazing person. I can’t tell you how excited I am for you and those rugrats.”

“I love you,” I told her, feeling myself starting to choke up a little. “I love all of you. Moving here was the best decision I ever made.”

“We all love you, too, sweetie. You’re one of us, you and those kiddos. You’re family.”

I gave her a watery smile before brushing a few stray tears from my cheeks. “Speaking of kiddos, I need to go get them from daycare. I’ll see you at Luke and Emmy’s tomorrow.”

Emmy and Matthew had been released from the hospital earlier in the day, and there was going to be a small welcome home party for the new mommy and baby. Luke had been absolutely beside himself, so excited to get his family back under their roof. Poor Emmy had actually called Savannah earlier, complaining about how he was trying to order the hospital staff around like they were at some five-star resort. She said that if he tried to tell one more nurse how to do their job properly before finally just trying to take over and do it himself, she was afraid they were going to mutiny and they’d kick him out for good. He even went so far as to try and tell Emmy how to breastfeed. That ended in her telling him that unless he grew boobs to nourish their child with, he could keep his damn mouth shut or she’d shut it for him. I was pretty sure there was also the threat of never letting Luke near her boobs ever again if he didn’t shut the hell up.

“See you there, babe. Have a great night.”

“You, too.”

I made my way to the break room and grabbed my purse from the lockers Lizzy had put in for us. As I headed out to the staff parking lot back behind the building, I pulled my cell phone from my purse to check for any messages. There were several missed calls from an unknown number. Dread began to set in as I scrolled through my missed calls. There were ten in all, all made within the last few hours. The only people who had my number were the people I’d met in Cloverleaf. I made sure to get a new phone and number after leaving Lance, so whoever had been calling over and over wasn’t someone I was in regular contact with.