Page 92 of Claimed By the Boss
“Did you tell him I’m thirty-seven weeks pregnant and currently more interested in shelving than calendars?”
“I told him it could wait.”
He picks up the instructions for the shelf, frowns at them the way he frowns at documents that don’t make immediate sense to him, and I laugh despite myself, watching a man who can dismantle a rival organization in four days struggle with a furniture diagram.
“We still haven’t decided on a name,” I say, watching him work.
“I have a short list.”
“You said that two weeks ago.”
“I’m narrowing it.”
“Narrow faster. Henrik keeps asking.”
He smiles at that, real and unguarded, the kind of smile I’ve only started seeing from him in the last few months, and for a moment the room feels exactly like what it’s supposed to be. Ordinary. A couple assembling furniture, bickering gently about names, waiting for their daughter to arrive on schedule.
I don’t yet know whether the schedule is about to become irrelevant.
It starts just after midnight.
I wake up because something feels different, low and tight across my stomach, and my first instinct is to dismiss it the way I’ve dismissed most physical sensations for months now, certain it’s nothing, certain my body is simply doing what pregnant bodies do this close to the end. I lie still in the dark and wait for it to pass.
It passes. Then it comes back, twenty minutes later, sharper this time.
I tell myself it’s Braxton Hicks. I’ve read about this. False labor is common, nothing to worry about, and it’s three weeks early too early for anything else to make sense. I get up and walk to the kitchen for water, the way every article I’ve read suggests, and I stand at the counter in the dark waiting for the tightening to ease.
It doesn’t ease.
By one in the morning, I’ve stopped pretending. The tightening is coming at intervals I can actually time now, close enough together that even my determined skepticism can’t argue with the pattern anymore.
I stand in the kitchen with my phone in my hand, the timer app open, watching the numbers confirm what my body already knows.
I go to find him.
He’s awake before I finish saying his name.
“What’s wrong?”
“I think it’s starting.”
He’s out of bed before I finish the sentence, pulling on clothes with the same controlled speed I’ve watched him move with in every crisis since I’ve known him, except this is different from anything operational, his hands not quite as steady as they usually are.
“It’s three weeks early,” I say, the fear finally breaking through the surface I’ve been keeping calm since midnight.
“I know.”
“That’s early enough to be a problem, Zane.”
“I know that too.” He’s beside me now, his hand finding mine, his voice steady even though I can see something tighter than usual behind his eyes. “We’re going. Now.”
He gets me to the hospital in under ten minutes.
I don’t ask how. I’m aware, distantly, of the car moving faster than it should through streets that are nearly empty this time of night, of Roman somewhere ahead of us clearing the path, of Zane’s hand never leaving mine the entire way, his thumb moving in slow circles against my knuckles, brushing over my ring in a way I don’t think he’s aware he’s doing.
I watch the city pass through the window, streetlights blurring slightly with how fast we’re moving, and I focus on small things because focusing on small things is the only way I know how to keep from falling apart.
The glow of the traffic lights. The sound of the tires on wet pavement. Zane’s hands on the wheel, steady even now, even with everything happening.
