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Georgia did the same. “A sock might do? Hayden brought in some clean ones yesterday.”
“Yes!” Winnie stood and opened a chest of drawers. “They’re clean, Kara. I promise.”
How clean the sock was didn’t matter if it did the trick.
Vivienne’s eyes went wide with panic. Her gaze darted around the cramped, dirty room. “Wait. We aren’t seriously doing this here? In a dingy old bedroom? The water in the bathroom doesn’t even get that hot. This isn’t sterile!”
“Sterile?” Georgia asked. “We got bigger problems than that. Are we forgetting the fact none of us are doctors? Or even mothers. We don’t know what we’re doing. I’m getting Hayden. He’s been good to us.”
I gaped at her. “Good to you? He’s keeping you prisoner, not putting you up in a hotel. Besides that, if he’s friends with Caleb Black, he’s a monster. All men are.”
Another contraction hit me, this one stronger than the last. Despite myself, a scream tore from somewhere deep inside me.
The door crashed open, and the man who’d let Caleb put me here stood in the doorway, muscled chest heaving. “What the hell? Is someone hurt?”
His dirty-blond hair was tousled like he’d only just woken up. But his blue eyes focused in on me, and then down at my belly when I let out a guttural groan. “Oh, fuck. Please tell me this isn’t what I think it is.”
“She’s having the baby,” Nova announced in a bored tone.
I shot her a dirty look.
“What?” She folded her arms beneath her breasts with a pout. “He would have worked it out. You’re the one who screamed.”
“If you’d just given me the sock quicker—”
Hayden’s gaze flickered between us. “Sock?” He shook his head. “Never mind.” He came over to me and indicated for Georgia to move out of the way. He took her place on the bed beside me.
I flinched away. “Don’t touch me.”
His lips pursed. “Can’t do that, sweetheart. If you’re having a baby, we gotta get you to the hospital.”
I blinked in surprise. “You’ll…take me?”
His eyebrows furrowed together. “Of course. I don’t know what I’m doing here—”
I screamed again; the pain so intense I was scared I was literally going to rip in two. “Something is wrong,” I cried.
Winnie got one of my arms around her shoulders, while Hayden did the same on the other side. The two of them heaved me up, Winnie’s eyes huge with panic. “This seems to be happening too fast. Aren’t you supposed to get a warm-up? Some small contractions before the screaming starts?”
“My back has been sore all night—oooowwwww.” I couldn’t hold my weight. It hurt too much. I let Winnie and Hayden carry me back to the bed. There was so much pressure in my back. Instinctively, I crawled onto my hands and knees and rocked back and forth.
“What the hell is going on here?”
Caleb’s voice had me flinching away, even mid contraction. A chill rolled down my spine that had nothing to do with the drafty room and the ice on the late fall air outside.
“Call an ambulance,” Hayden barked at Caleb. “We can’t move her. She’s too close to having the baby.”
Caleb snorted with derision. “She’ll deal with it. I need you. We have another…shipment coming in today, and you have to handle it.”
Hayden stared at Caleb. “She’ll deal with it? Caleb, she’s having a baby. And by the look of her, she’s barely older than a baby herself.”
I was twenty-two but I didn’t have the energy to argue with him. It didn’t matter anyway. The pain swamped me again. I was barely getting any time now between contractions, and each one felt like I was splitting in two. I howled at the pressure, the pain that had been localized to my back now spreading to my belly, my arms, my legs. Every muscle in my body was locked tight. It wouldn’t have mattered if Caleb had allowed an ambulance to come and get me. I wasn’t moving. This was where my baby was going to be born.
Surrounded by four women I barely knew. A man I was scared of. And pure evil himself.
I suddenly wanted my mom.
But of course, she’d abandoned me as wholeheartedly as the rest of my family. Disowned me rather than stood up for me.