Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 110549 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 553(@200wpm)___ 442(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110549 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 553(@200wpm)___ 442(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
“I’ll see you in a little bit,” he promised. “I love you.”
I nodded, wishing I could will my fucking brain to work to say the words back to him, but with one look, I knew he understood what I wanted to say.
He quickly left the room. Lincoln tightened his hand around my own, his beautiful, blue eyes locking on mine. “You’re going to make it through this—both of you are. You’re too strong to let this bring you down, West, and our baby girl has our blood running in her veins. We’re fighters—fucking survivors. She’s going to survive,” he swore.
I prayed like hell his words wouldn’t come back to bite him in the ass.
If I lost our baby, there would be nothing left of me.
36
Jessie
I looked up through bloodshot eyes as a nurse made her way over to me with a wide smile on her face. “Are you Mr. Harold?” she asked me.
I nodded, standing up. “Jessie Harold,” I told her gruffly, confirming her question. Didn’t know who else could be. I was the only person sitting in the OR waiting room.
“Your fiancée has been moved to her recovery room. Mr. Reeds asked me to come fetch you,” she informed me.
West was okay.
She hadn’t mentioned the baby, and honestly, I was terrified to ask. If she hadn’t mentioned it, that couldn’t be good, right?
I quickly followed her to the elevators. We rode silently up to the fifth floor of the hospital, where she then led me down a couple of hallways until she knocked lightly on a door before pushing it open.
Lincoln was sitting beside West on the bed, holding her in his arms. She was snoring lightly, her face pale and exhausted.
“The baby?” I asked him, my mouth feeling too dry. My voice came out strangled and raspy.
Lincoln smiled up at me. “She’s alive,” he told me. She. I breathed a sigh of relief. West had given birth to our baby girl. “They were barely able to save her in time, but she’s going to be just fine. She’s hooked up to a few machines and is in incubation until she’s a bit bigger and older, but she’s going to live.”
I sagged into a chair, the relief so strong, it almost brought me to my knees. “I already texted Meghan,” Lincoln assured me. “They’ll come by tomorrow to see West.”
“How is our woman?” I asked him, running my eyes over her features. She was so pale and tired-looking.
He ran his fingers up and down her arm. “She’s very tired.” I nodded. “She lost a good bit of blood,” my frown deepened, “but she’s going to pull through just fine with some rest and good food to bring her iron levels back up.”
“I’ve never been so fucking scared in my entire life,” I rasped. Even now, I still felt a bit shaky. As soon as I’d left that room earlier, I’d fallen apart. I’d cried. Almost screamed. Asked the universe why all the bad shit in life had to happen to the best fucking woman I knew.
Lincoln swallowed thickly. “Trust me, I haven’t either, and I was in some scary, fucked-up situations overseas.” He drew in a deep shaky breath. “I’ll admit it has put me off the idea of kids for probably the rest of my life.”
I nodded in agreement. This was fucking terrifying, and I never wanted to go through this shit again.
I slid onto the bed behind West, and though it was a tight as fuck fit, Lincoln and I made it work so we could both hold our woman, reassuring ourselves that she was okay.
And when she woke up, she wouldn’t feel alone.
“If you put your hands in these,” the NICU nurse said as she placed her hands in the glove-like things that led into the incubator, “you can hold her.”
Lincoln clapped me on my back, a grin on his lips. “Go on,” he encouraged, nodding toward our little girl. Right now, she looked more like an alien, but I could see where she’d become beautiful. Most of her features were definitely West’s.
I frowned at him. “But she’s your biological—”
“Bro, she’s ours,” Lincoln reminded me. “I got to be in the room when she was born. Go hold her.”
I drew in a deep breath, and after following the nurse’s careful instructions, I held our little girl in my hands. Tears threatened to choke me as soon as her tiny, extremely light body was in my hands. “Holy shit,” I choked out. “She’s so small and light.”
“Her name is Hope Autumn Harold-Reeds,” West spoke up from her wheelchair, her eyes on her baby girl as I held her. She was riveted by her, completely in love. And I loved seeing her look like that.
“Hope,” I whispered. “It’s perfect,” I breathed. This little girl had given us all the hope in the world. Her name was right.