Page 53 of Lady and the Butcher
“Twenty?” Panic spiked.
“I’m close,” I lied. “I’m in the car right now.” I wasn’t. I would be.
She gave a small breath that sounded like trust and fear holding hands. “Okay.”
“Call me if anything changes. Text me when you park.” I hung up and closed my eyes for a beat, swore once under my breath, and turned.
Atticus looked at me like a man who had found a live wire and respected it. Hunger had not left his face. Something else lived alongside it now.
Understanding. Annoyance. A new kind of focus.
“Let someone else take it,” he said. Not a threat. A suggestion he already knew I would refuse.
“It doesn’t work like that,” I said. “Not the way I have things set up.”
“You have backups,” he said.
“For day shifts,” I said. “For scheduled inductions. Not for tonight. Not for her.” I bent to the garment bag and yanked out the simple flats I’d shoved in there, just in case.
He didn’t sigh. He didn’t argue again. He disappeared into the other room, came back with the jeans and tee I’d left folded over a chair, and held them out like this was a ritual instead of a scramble.
I pulled the denim on fast, cotton clinging as I shoved my arms through it, wincing at how the ponytail I scraped together was going to destroy the salon blowout he’d paid for. Dollars down the drain, hours undone in minutes. Still worth it.
His hand settled warm at the back of my neck for one beat, and I remembered who I’d be coming back to.
“Go,” he said.
At the door he caught my wrist. I looked up, braced for a battle I would have to win.
“Actually, I’m coming with you,” he said.
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.” His face didn’t change. “I’m not letting you go alone. I’ll wait.”
Something in my chest did a strange stutter. I was touched. I nodded, sharp so I wouldn’t cry.
We moved. The elevator ate seconds. The lobby looked at us and pretended not to. The car shot through the night like we’d prayed and received a small favor.
I texted Maria’s partner.Headed to Palmetto Birth now. Do you need anything brought?
He texted back three words that always melt me:Just you, please.
Atticus didn’t talk on the drive. He watched the road the way the driver did, quiet and intent. His hand found my knee and rested there like it had at the bench by the fountain. Not a claim in front of anyone this time. A quiet promise that he could be weight without pressure.
Palmetto Birth shone gentle at the end of a live oak tunnel—white clapboard, soft porch lights, planters stuffed with rosemary and geraniums. Not a hospital. Not a house. Something in-between that had made a lot of women feel brave and safe in that order.
We stepped in and the air shifted—lavender and coffee over scrubbed tile, the hush that always lives in places where someone is about to be born.
A receptionist glanced up, ready with her professional smile, then did a double take when she clocked Atticus: dark shirt,clean lines, the kind of intense that doesn’t belong on a birth-center brochure. Her eyes flicked to me like,You brought … someone?
“Hey, it’s Simone,” I said quickly, palms up. “I’m here for Maria Gonzales. He’s just—” I broke off, because there wasn’t a word that didn’t feel like a confession. “He’s waiting in the lobby.”
Atticus set his hand at the small of my back—not a push, just a claim—then withdrew like he’d signed something. “I’ll be right here,” he told the receptionist, calm as a locked door. To me, quieter: “Text me if you so much as change rooms.”
The receptionist’s brows went up a millimeter at the tone, then she nodded, finding her footing again. “Of course. Family’s welcome to wait out here. Coffee’s fresh. Restroom’s down the hall.”
“I’m not family,” he said, pleasant in a way that somehow read as territorial. “I’m waiting for Simone.”
