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I lower myself awkwardly into the seat, starting to adjust my purse on the floor around my belly when the next contraction hits.

Stop.

Two minutes and forty-eight seconds. That seems extremely close.

Isla is leaning over in the seat, glancing at the screen of my phone. When our eyes meet, I see the surprise and panic in her eyes. My own start to water with fear.

“This isn’t normal, right? For this to be happening so fast, so soon?”

“It’ll be fine,” she says in a clipped, emotionless voice. The one I recognize as the vet who needs to have things under control, in case she needs to deliver bad news. “Your OB is out of Presbyterian, right?”

I groan through the next contraction, only able to nod as I grip the door handle and Isla jerks the wheel to send us into traffic. When it’s over, the phone shakes in my hands. My thumb hovers over Vasily’s name.

“Call him,” Isla urges, one eye on the road and the other warily on mine. “You have to call him, Matty; he needs to know.”

“I know,” I breathe, feeling like every muscle in my body is on fire.

And suddenly, absurdly, I think about his proposal. I said yes that night at the restaurant. I meant it then, and I mean it now. What I haven’t told him is that I’m ready to make Lake Placid my permanent home.

My own practice. My own decision.

We’ve been building toward it through months of visits and goodbyes. Today I finally told Damon. Once I get through this, I want to tell Vasily there won’t be another Sunday-night departure waiting for us.

I want him.

Not because I’m pregnant and not just because he proposed. Our circumstances are complicated, and somehow we’ve built a life around them. I want him because somewhere between hating everything he stood for and falling helplessly in love with him; he became home.

I want the lake house. His ridiculous schedule. His terrible habit of thinking he can fix everything. The odds and ends he leaves lying around to toy with as he thinks. The random pocket knives and coins.

His hands on me.

His voice calling me Zvezda.

I want our daughter to have him. I want to spend the rest of my life with this impossible man.

My eyes burn. Okay. First, I get through today.

Then I tell him everything. That’s the best plan I have at the moment, and the only one that matters.

Chapter 40

Vasily

I check into the maternity ward like I own the damn building.

“Matilda Pierce. Where is she?”

The nurse barely looks up before typing something into her computer. “You’re her spouse? Support person?”

It takes everything in me not to leap over the desk and find out from the triage board exactly what room she’s in, knocking the nurse to the floor in the process.

“Yes.”

Another glance up, then down. “She’s in active labor. Room 212. You’ll need⁠—”

“I need to be in that room.”

I don’t mean to say it like an accusation, but apparently I do.