Water Broke at Midnight, Husband Waited for Her BFF's Hair, Baby's New Daddy Didn't novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Ten Minutes

Greg's POV

Kira called a car at nine and went to see her old doctor alone.

She said she needed to do it herself.

I said okay, and I stood at my window until the taillights turned the corner.

Then I looked at the baby asleep in the crib.

She had one foot out of the blanket.

I put it back.

I was not supposed to be this far gone over a three-day-old girl and her mother.

I knew exactly how far I was.

I knew it by the way I'd lain awake the night before, listening to the water in the pipes as Kira ran a bath, and by the way I had counted the steps to the bathroom door and not taken them.

I knew it by her wrist.

I could still feel the pulse in it under my thumb.

My phone buzzed on the counter.

*Lacey: Downstairs. Ten minutes. Please.*

I stared at the word.

Then I texted back: *No.*

*Lacey: I'll say it on the porch where the whole street can hear.*

That was the way she had always done it.

She would ask for the smallest thing in the sweetest voice, and then she would make the cost of refusing larger than the cost of agreeing.

I picked Tilly up, blanket and all, and carried her out on the landing with me.

I was not going to leave her alone for one minute in that apartment.

Lacey stood in the hall outside my door with two coffees.

She had changed.

She wore a plain gray sweater and no makeup, and her hair was pulled back.

It was the way she had looked when she was twelve, and she knew it.

"There he is," she said, softly. "Gregory. And his new family."

"Say it and go."

"I brought you a coffee."

"Say it."

She set both cups on the stair.

"I only ever ask for ten minutes," she said. "You know that. I've never asked for anything else."

"You asked for ten minutes when Rhonda was in labor."

"And you gave them."

"Yes."

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