Gemma blinked her big, blue eyes at me. “I mean, what the hell do you think?”
“Of all the people I wanted to deliver my child, you, literally, are the last.”
“Gross, you’d rather have my mother? Or my grandfather?”
I grimaced. “Third to last.”
Another wave of contractions started and I dug my hands into the sand. I vaguely registered Gemma dropping to her knees before me. I heard the sound of Lottie’s cries—or maybe mine—over the ocean’s roar. Could hear Gemma cursing, and what sounded like her calling for help.
I don’t know how long it lasted.
I focused on the stars.
Yeah, Snitch. I’ll bring you the stars. The moon. The ocean. You name it.
“You’re having this baby. Now. Like…” Gemma looked at her phone, then lifted up my nightgown. “Like right fucking now.”
She then did the same to Lottie’s. “Yikes. This is gross.”
I fisted sand and chucked it at her. “You suck at this!”
Top Ten Midwife Tricks You Didn’t Know—
“Is that fucking YouTube?” I cried.
Gemma threw up her hands. “Am I supposed to do this without guidance?”
“I can help with that.”
My blood froze at the voice. I thought I was losing my mind. I lifted my head off the sand, and I saw him—them.
Grim Reyes, like a mythical being pulled from a painting, with the wild night wind his backdrop.
Grim smiled at Gemma. “This is a mighty big favor, Rich Girl.”
Sixty-One
STORY
“Gemma Crowne, midwife,” Grim drawled. “Did hell freeze over?”
“I don’t know,” she bit. “You tell me. You live there.”
In a hoodie and leather jacket, tattoos vining up his neck, Grim tilted his head, studying Lottie and me. He was completely at ease, totally undisturbed by two women giving birth on the sand. It was off-putting—but that was Grim Reyes.
Head of the Horsemen, king of the underworld, someone whose smirk belied secrets to all the dirty corners of the world, to questions you wouldn’t ever think to ask.
“Why is he even here?” I groaned, looking away from his obsidian glare.
“When Lottie said you needed to get out, well, there aren’t many places my grandfather doesn’t touch in Crowne Point. So plan A was getting you out of Crowne Point. This was plan B.” Gemma thumbed to Grim. “Well…I guess plan A was this not happening. So is this plan…Z?”
“I am not having my child with the fucking head of the Horsemen watching.”
A slight smirk lifted his lips. “I’ve seen worse.”
Gemma and Grim’s voices faded to a low murmur; above me the stars blurred into the black sky. I got lost in an ethereal world of pain and loss.
Grayson wasn’t here. West was dead. We lost.