Chapter 17: The First Door

Otis's POV

They wouldn't let me in the room.

I was not family, and nobody on the maternity floor of the hospital would pretend otherwise.

So I sat in a plastic chair in the waiting room with my jacket on my knee.

I watched the double doors.

Libby came out twice.

The first time she said, "Contractions every five minutes, they're giving her fluids."

The second time she said, "They've slowed down. The baby's heart is perfect."

"Is she in labor?"

"She's thirty-four weeks and she's been shouted at by three Strouds in two days."

Libby sat down next to me, heavily, in her scrubs.

"Her body's saying a few things. They'll keep her tonight."

"Can I see her?"

"In an hour. She asked if you were here."

"What did you tell her?"

"That you've worn a hole in the carpet."

I looked down.

I had.

I'd never been so afraid of a room I wasn't in.

At nine, the elevator opened and Holden stepped out in a charcoal coat, with two men in dark suits behind him.

He looked as he had at the gala, cold and pressed.

The men stopped at the nurses' station and showed a nurse something on a phone.

Holden came across the carpet and stood in front of me.

"Otis."

"Not here."

"I want five minutes."

"You've had four years."

Libby stood up.

"I'll sit with her," she said, and gave Holden a long look.

"If either of you touches the other one, I'm calling security and telling them I saw nothing."

She went through the double doors.

Holden nodded toward the corridor, where a vending machine hummed under a window.

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