Page 327 of Wild Card 13

The controlled mobilization that followed would have been impressive if it had not involved someone I loved screaming through contractions beside a lake.

Ezra pulled the SUV around.

Alois guided Bea across the grass with his body angled around hers, blocking nothing, controlling nothing, but making himself a structure she could lean into. His hand did shake once when he reached to help fasten her seat belt.

Lo climbed into the back seat without asking. Ezra got into the passenger side after one look from Bea that apparently authorized him to exist nearby. Freya handed Alois a water bottle and a stack of towels someone had produced from the lodge. Arlo was already directing staff to pack up food, because even impending birth did not stop my brother from seeing a logistics problem and making it submit.

The rest of the team stood in stunned silence until Zee said, “Are we going?”

Alois looked back from the driver’s door. The entire lawn straightened like they had been called to formation.

Bea, pale and sweating, rolled her head against the seat and said, “If anyone live-posts my cervix, I will ruin them.”

Marco placed a hand over his heart. “Sacred privacy. Understood.”

The Frosthawks did not decide to go to the hospital so much as accept that going to the hospital was the only available reality.Players grabbed keys. Staff packed leftover food. Someone collected kids. Someone else called partners.

Ty looked at me. Then down at Dottie. Dottie looked back, still faintly damp, still smelling like lake mud and poor judgment. “We drop her at my place,” he said.

I nodded. His lake house was on the way to Northbend Medical. “Fast.”

“Fast,” he promised.

At his house, we moved like people who had already practiced being a unit without realizing it.

Ty opened the door. I unclipped Dottie’s leash. He filled her water bowl. I tossed the muddy towel into the laundry room. He grabbed the extra chew from the pantry and set it on her bed. I checked the back door. He checked the lock. Dottie circled twice on the blanket near the window, then collapsed with a sigh like she had personally managed the birth emergency and could now rest.

On the way back to the truck, Ty stopped me beside the driver’s door. “You okay?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

He nodded. Then he kissed my forehead, slow and steady.

“We’ll go find out together,” he said.

By the time we reached the hospital, the waiting room had already become a Frosthawks occupation.

There were players along every wall. Staff members in clusters. Families tucked into corners. Kids asleep across laps. North Line bags stacked on a side table because Arlo had apparently decided labor required sandwiches. Ezra paced near the double doors with his phone in his hand while Lo sat rigidly in a chair, eyes closed, lips moving around what might have been a prayer or a threat.

Freya stood near the nurses’ station, calm and watchful. Zee sat on the edge of a coffee table until a nurse gave him a look that made him relocate instantly. Marco had somehow found flowers in the gift shop and was now holding them like he had been assigned to play the role of Emotional Support Florist.

Ty looked around once, then guided me toward the far wall. He lowered himself to the floor, back against the pale hospital wall, one knee bent, one leg stretched out. Then he looked up at me and held out his hand.

I sat beside him. His arm came around my shoulders, and I leaned into him because I wanted to. Because my body knew where to go now. Because every part of me that had once braced against needing him was too tired to pretend need and choice could not occupy the same space.

The waiting room buzzed around us.

Soft conversations. Coffee cups. The squeak of nurses’ shoes. The low murmur of the television no one watched. Every now and then, someone would laugh too loudly and immediately quiet. Every time the doors opened, half the room looked up.

I looked at our hands. His fingers threaded through mine. My nails short and plain against the calluses on his palm. A month ago, I would have wondered who was watching. I would have measured the distance between us and corrected it before anyone else could assign meaning.

Across the waiting room, Arlo leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, talking quietly with Hal Burns. Ruth sat beside Lo, her hand over Lo’s, both of them watching the hallway with the fierce concentration of women who had spent their lives loving people through closed doors.

Evening thinned into night. A nurse came out twice with updates that were not really updates, just enough to keep everyone from vibrating through the floor. Bea was doing well. Labor was progressing. Alois was with her.

At some point, Ty shifted and stretched out both legs, then pulled me closer when I shivered. He gave me his hoodie without asking. I put it on without arguing.

Near midnight, Marco fell asleep sitting upright with the flowers in his lap.