Page 74 of Under His Embrace

I nodded. “That’s doable, Nina. That’s not bad. They schedule C-sections at thirty-nine weeks on the dot, and that’s just a couple of weeks away.”

“Oh, God!” She sobbed between heaving breaths. “What if that happens? What if I have to have a C-section on top of this?”

I shook my head. “Then you have a C-section. It’s not that bad. However you bring this baby into the world, it is what it is.”

“But I’m so scared.”

“No, you’re not,” I soothed. “You’re strong. You’ve got this. You’re just unaware and nervous about the unknown.”

She nodded.

“But you’re so doing this. You’ve got this. And you have nothing to fear.”

She tightened her hand on my arm through the next contraction.

“Those weren’t…” She gasped as the wave passed. “Those weren’t Braxton-Hicks.”

I laughed weakly. “No, they weren’t. And now you know.”

“Now I know? What, like I’ll do this again and know for the next time. No. Nooo. No. Hell no. I’m never having sex again. Ever,everagain.”

Dante furrowed his brow, trying to calm her and rub her back as she curled onto me.

“I doubt that.”

“No.” She shook her head against me. “Never. Not if having a baby feels like a bowling ball is slamming through my hips. I will never have sex again for the rest of my life.”

I winced and shot Dante a look over her head. “She doesn’t mean that,” I mouthed.

He rolled his eyes, staying focused on her.

“Oh, my God. Chloe, Iammaking you bleed.” She sat up a bit but was stopped with another contraction.

“It’s fine. It’s nothing.”

“It is not fine. You just accepted the idea of moving and staying with us, with Franco, and now I’m scaring you away, mutilating your arm and oh?—”

I gritted my teeth through the ferocity of her grip on me. Her arm shook with the strain of her toughing out the contraction.

“I just can’t let go. You’ve done this. You know how this goes. I really want you to help me through this.”

“Whatever you want, Nina. I’m here to help.”

It was a mad rush to get to the hospital, but we got there in record time. No baby was born in the backseat, but with how quickly she strained to tough out the contractions, I wasn’t sure if they’d get her to a room.

“Nina, let her go.” Dante urged Nina to release my arm so I could let the nurses and emergency techs help get her out of the car.

“No.” She shook her head, not caring that she’d latched on to me as some sort of grounding presence. “I want Chloe to help me.”

“I’m right here,” I said as I crawled back out of the car, held back by her hand on my arm. “I’ll be right here, but we’ve got to get you out of the backseat and inside.”

“Hold my hand,” Dante offered, giving her his other hand.

She sobbed, holding on to me. “I want her to stay with me. You don’t understand. I don’t understand. I don’t have my mom, I don’t have a sister. No one. I wantherwith me because she gets it.”

I frowned. Half of her tirade sounded like nothing but hysterical nonsense. She wasn’t a needy, demanding woman. Not once since I met her had she acted like this. But if she was about to push that baby out, she had every right to act however she wanted to. Maybe she had underlying fears that needed to be addressed, abandonment or whatnot, but now wasn’t the time to analyze that.

“Okay, okay.” I nodded at Dante, talking to him and the staff trying to get her out of the car. “Dante, you open your door. You back up and get out, and we can get her out from that side of the car. I’ll crawl through.”

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