Page 48 of Thunder

I call Thunder.

He picks up on the first ring, because of course he does, because Pops benched him off the run for the hip, and he's been prowling the ranch all day like a caged animal hating every second of being left behind.

"Presley."

"Grace is in labor. Her water broke, contractions are three minutes apart, Shadow's unreachable on the run and I've got to get her to Kerrville now and I'm scared I can't⁠—"

"Where are you?"

"The quarantine pens."

"Two minutes." No wasted words. "Get her in your truck, passenger seat reclined, I'm coming.

I'll drive, you stay with her. Two minutes, rattlesnake."

He hangs up. And the relief that goes through me is so total it scares me almost as bad as the labor did.

He's there in ninety seconds, truck sliding up in the dust, and he's out and moving before it's fully stopped despite the hip, despite everything.

The sight of him, big and steady and calm, undoes some knot in my chest I didn't know I was holding.

He gets Grace loaded like he's done it before.

Maybe he has.

Nine years of Raine, a whole club's worth of babies.

He reclines the seat and gets her buckled and says something low to her that makes her huff a pained laugh.

Then he looks at me over the hood for one second, one single second, and everything he can't say in front of my sister is right there on his face.

I've got you.

I've got you both.

Then it's gone behind the calmness of a man handling a crisis, and he's behind the wheel and I'm in the back leaning over the seat with my hand in Grace's, and we're flying down the ranch road toward the highway.

He drives like the professional he used to be before his body broke—fast and smooth and utterly in control, taking the curves so Grace doesn't feel them.

He talks to her the whole way in that low steady voice, telling her she's doing fine, telling her first babies lie about being fast and this one's showing off, telling her Shadow's going to be there and if he's not he'll answer to Thunder personally for missing it.

Grace laughs, swears, and breathes and crushes my hand.

I watch the back of Thunder's head and his hands sure on the wheel, and I think, God help me, in the middle of my sister's labor, how much I truly, irrevocably love him.

* * *

Kerrville's ER takes her back fast.

And then it's the part nobody warns you about, the sudden stop, the fluorescent waiting, the way a hospital swallows the person you love behind doors you can't follow through.

Except this time they do let me follow, because Grace grabs my hand as they're wheeling her back and says, "She's coming with me" in a voice that doesn't leave room for argument.

A nurse looks at me, and I look at Grace, and something enormous happens in my chest.

She wants me in the room.

The sister who couldn't look at me for a month wants me in the room when her son is born.