Chapter 30: Six Fifty-Two

Diana's POV

The first pain came at four in the morning on the second of June, and I knew the date before I knew what it was.

Wyatt would have been six.

I lay in the dark on my side with my hand on the hard curve of my belly and counted.

Twelve minutes, then eleven.

I didn't wake Dean right away.

He was asleep on the couch downstairs, where he had slept since March.

I went down and held the banister through the next one.

"Dean."

He was on his feet before I finished the name.

"How far apart?"

"Nine minutes."

"I'll get the bag."

"It's by the door. You packed it yourself."

"Right," he said, and put his jeans on backward.

I laughed so hard that the next pain came on top of it, and I had to grip his arm.

He drove to the county hospital at forty miles an hour with both hands on the wheel and the hazards on.

"You can go faster," I said.

"No."

"Dean."

"I'm not going to be the man who crashed with you in the car."

I looked at his profile in the dashboard light.

He kept his eyes on the road.

"Okay," I said. "Forty."

At the hospital, a nurse put me in a gown and a bed and a monitor, and by eight the pain had a fist in it.

Dean stood at my head the way I'd asked.

He held a cup of ice chips and let me squeeze his other hand until the knuckles cracked.

Connie came at nine and told everyone she was staying in the hall.

Delilah came at ten with Eli on her hip, and the nurse sent her to the waiting room, and she went without arguing.

By noon I hated everyone.

"You," I told Dean, between breaths, "did this."

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