Page 143 of Everything After

I pressed a kiss to her forehead, wiped it with the washcloth and left it on her head. “Baby, you’re doing it. He’s nearly here,” I blurted. I shifted my glance from her face down to her pussy and became transfixed. Every pant brought our child one stepcloser to life outside of her body. When the contraction finished its whole head had been born between her thighs.

“Alfie’s right, your baby will be here with the next contraction,” Dr. Geoffry said.

“Here goes,” Lily warned, and began panting fast again. Seconds later, the baby’s head rotated from one side to the other and with two little moves to deliver the shoulders from her obstetrician, our baby came sliding out.

“Ho-holy shit,” Lily cussed, as the doctor lifted our child and laid it on her body.

“Congratulations,” Carlie muttered, as she rubbed at our baby on Lily’s belly with a towel. Relief flooded through me at the sound of his tiny cry.

“I can’t believe you just did that. Wow. Wow. Wow. You were incredible, baby,” I said, immediately checking on Lily to make sure she was okay. “He’s here,” I said, my eyes wide when they connected with hers. I ran my hand through my hair and glanced down at my beautiful wife.

Tears threatened in Lily’s tired eyes, but she blinked them back. “What is it?” she croaked, smiling. I gave her a brief kiss before I turned my attention back to her doctor.

“It’s a boy, right?” I asked.

Dr. Geoffry placed a clamp on the long rubbery-looking umbilical cord that still joined our baby to the placenta. “Take a look,” he suggested.

“Damn,” I mumbled, frowning at the cord attached to our baby before I stared back at Lily. I became distracted and fearful when the doctor handed me a set of funny-looking, small scissors and suggested I cut the cord. The moment I did this, Carlie lifted our baby from Lily’s belly and placed him in her arms.

“It’s a girl, isn’t it?” she asked. Curiosity stirred in her eyes when she raised a brow.

“See for yourself,” I encouraged, smiling. “I told you he was a boy.”

CHAPTER 74

LILY

“Huh?” I muttered, exhausted and thirsty as the maternity nurse placed our baby in my arms. She wrapped him in a towel and stepped back.

“I told you he was a boy,” Alfie gushed, proudly repeating what he’d said before, once his words sank in. I stared down at the beautiful baby in my arms and my heart instantly swelled with the love that filled my chest.

“It’s a boy,” I repeated, while the doctor delivered my placenta. It hadn’t mattered to me either way, what God had given us would be cherished. I only needed to look at Alfie’s face to know the truth about that. Once his word sank in that our baby was safely here, a sense of euphoria and elation temporarily overtook. Any fatigue I’d felt from the relentless hours of pain to give birth was quickly forgotten.

Once the doctor and Carlie had checked me over, Carlie and Dr. Geoffry left us in the room alone.

As I stared down at the beautiful new life in my arms, Alfie gingerly ran the back of his index finger over our baby’s head.“Jesus, Lily, look what we made. He’s perfect,” he softly stated. My gaze shifted from our baby, up to my husband’s face and I was surprised to see his beautiful hazel eyes shining with unshed tears.

“We did it,” I said, not even sure what ‘it’ meant. Was it that we’d pushed past how my fidelity and Alfie’s fatherhood had been brought into question? Or that we’d progressed from being a famous power couple to that of loving family?

Perhaps it was that I’d done what I’d believed was right for Alfie, myself and our unborn child in the face of the lack of support from Lennie and Cody.

What came out of all of that was my steadfast determination to do things for the benefit of my family. Maybe it had taken my accidental pregnancy for me to realize what really mattered to me in this world. I now knew that as fact—family first, then everything else after that. Nothing anyone else thought of us mattered right there in that labor room.

My path with Alfie hadn’t always been smooth, but since we’d been at home together, and spent quality time alone, I believed in my heart that he loved me down to his soul. So, whatever ‘it’ was, now felt insignificant as we faced our future.

The fair hair on our baby’s head was unmistakable even through the sticky gunk from the birth. I parted the towel he’d been wrapped in and placed his still slightly wet body next to my skin. The moment I did this he nuzzled his head from side to side. I recognized this from the books I’d read as he was rooting for my breast.

Suddenly, I felt inadequate as a new mom. For a moment, I stroked his back, as I thought what I should do, and became transfixed by how velvety-soft his skin felt. Carlie came back into the room just as he began to cry. A wave of panic tightened my chest, and I glanced up at the maternity nurse. “What do I do?”

“It appears to me he knows instinctively what to do.” She talked me through how to help our baby latch on. I winced the moment he started to suck because I hadn’t expected him to suck so strongly. However, after a few seconds into his feeding, all I felt was a rhythmic, drawing sensation.

“Does this baby have a name yet?” Carlie’s question drew my attention away from watching our baby feed.

“We’d thought Dana if he had been a girl,” I said, shrugging. “I’d bounced a few names to Alfie, but we hadn’t settled on one.”

“I’ve been thinking about that. What if we called him Charlie Dane Black?”

“You’d like our fathers’ names?” I asked, proud that the men who had given us life would be honored.