Page 164 of Unwritten Rules

Shaking her head, she takes my pro-offered hand. “You’re delusional, Hawthorne.”

I smirk, remembering I’d confirmed that years ago in almost this exact same spot when trying to run from my feelings for the love of my life.

As she links her arm in the crook of mine, we slowly amble across the property, coming to a standstill when we reach the graves of my parents.

Mila edges closer, offering me her comfort, as always.

“There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t miss him.”

She rubs my arm, and I continue my musings.

“Do you think they’re together? Wherever they are?”

“Absolutely.” Her voice is firm and confident as she tightens her grip on my arm.

“I wish there was a way to know, you know?” I turn to regard my love. “I’d love to be sure that they’ve gotten the ending they deserved, and not just in our imagination, Hellcat.”

She reaches up, caressing my face gently while sharing her heart through the look in her eyes. “They did, Nathaniel. The universe works in mysterious ways—”

Her sentence cuts off on a gasp and I grip her arms when her eyes blow wide open.

In the years to come, when we retell this story, we will laugh at what happened next, but right now, in the moment, we just regard one another in pure and utter horror.

Both sets of eyes slowly descend down Mila’s body to the wet ground beneath her.

A long beat passes before she raises horror-struck eyes to mine. “Either I’ve just had a very big accident, or your son has decided today’s the day.”

* * *

MILA

“Give us one more big push on the next contraction, Mila. Baby’s head is right there.”

Kneeling upright, naked as the day I was born, with both arms wrapped tightly around my husband’s neck, I groan long and low as I feel the pressure building.

Burying my face in his neck, I grit through clenched teeth, “I need the epidural now.”

“Oh, love,” our Welsh-accented midwife, Dana, croons softly as she rubs her hand over my bare shoulders. “It’s too late now, I’m afraid. You’re almost there.”

Another fresh wave of pain grips my entire middle, wrapping around my waist and hips, squeezing tight, and my body bears down of its own accord.

Nate’s soothing hands rub my lower back, the pressure from his palms easing the pressure inside me until the wave has crested and begun to ebb away.

The drive from the Lake House to the maternity hospital had taken a scant twenty minutes, and it wasn’t until our arrival that the contractions had started.

I’d been offered an epidural alongside other pain relief at an earlier stage, but had declined. Liv’s delivery of Sebastian had taken around eight hours. So, I figured I had plenty of time before I needed to think about pain relief.

But I’d been oh, so wrong.

An hour. That was all it had taken to get to this point.

Dana had claimed the delivery tends to go faster sometimes when the waters go first.

Just my rotten luck.

“Please, I need the epidural for the next contraction.”

Nate leans back, wiping sweat from my face before dropping his brow to mine. “Hellcat, the baby’s head is here. He’ll be born on the next push.”