Page 83 of Ghosted By Texas
The same belly that hardened and scrunched painfully for a minute before the feeling went away. “Are you okay? You went quiet and pale for a minute there.”
“I think my birthday and another Halloween party in combination might be a bit too much…” I was about to say excitement, I swear, but then my stomach did that crunch thing again and I lost my breath.
“Holy shit, Becs! Are you going into labor?” Austin asked.
“What?” I huffed the word out because it was hard to catch my breath. “No. I still have…” Fuck me! The tightening of my belly happened again before I could remind him that I still had a week until my due date and Dr. Danvers kept telling us at each visit that first time moms almost always go into labor late.
“I’m calling Doc.” He pulled his phone out and while he dialed, he yelled across the noisy bar. “Houston!”
I swear to God, everyone in the room quieted and even the music turned down a notch or seven.
“What?” Houston yelled back as he dragged my best friend along with him to come see what his brother bellowed for.
“Becs is in labor,” Austin announced just as a gush of warm liquid trickled down my thighs and onto the floor below me.
“Please, tell me that didn’t just happen,” I begged. When I glanced back up, everyone’s eyes were trained on the floor and my wet feet.
Houston caught one of the servers, who was passing by, and directed her to put the wet floor cones up and get one of the dishwashers to come out and clean up the ‘spill’. Then he moved ahead of us to clear a path to the back door, so we could get to the employee parking lot.
“I’ll run to the house and grab your bag and meet you guys at the hospital,” Clea offered helpfully.
“Hurry,” I told her as Austin guided me to his car. We were still living in Clea’s place while Austin waited to see if not-so-hormonal-me wanted to keep his house and redecorate or sell the damn thing and buy a new one. My vote was still to buy something new. It might have been his dream home, but I couldn’t shake the negative feelings associated with it.
Luckily, he understood.
~*~
Five hours later
“We never did come up with a name for him,” Austin reminded me as he held our son for the first time.
“I did.”
“Were you going to share with the class or keep it secret until you had to fill out his school paperwork?” I laughed along with Dr. Danvers as she took care of the afterbirth situation that I had going on.
“Jacob Austin Mercer,” I blurted out my idea for our son’s name. My poor, beautiful, emotional husband cried big fat tears all over our newborn son.
“It’s perfect.”
“I know.”
“Stop blaming yourself,” Houston growled, again. As if that would happen just because he insisted. We’d both watched as Becs’ friend, Houston’s blind date for the night, fell all over herself to get to another man.
“I never would have set you up with the chick if Becs hadn’t talked up how virtuous she was so often. It was like a broken fucking record hearing how perfect her best friend was and how choosy with men. I’m really sorry, man.”
Houston offered little more than a nod of his chin. “We all know shit happens. Never met the woman before, not like she cheated on me and got knocked up with someone else’s kid after dating me for years.”
“Fuck man! That’s exactly why I thought she would be a good trial date to get back out there. After what Samantha did to you, a good girl was exactly what you needed. Unfortunately, my girlfriend lied to me about everything.”
“Stop, Aus. She didn’t lie. Shit happens. Another man got to her first. It’s my loss because I was supposed to wait by the front door so we wouldn’t miss one another, and then fucking Dallas had to go around nailing everyone with his arrows.”
Our younger brother showed up to the party dressed as Cupid. The idiot shot several people in the ass and other questionable places, forcing Houston and me to clean up his messes while he ran off, presumably to duck out of the party before he got his ass beat by someone.
His antics made it impossible to track down Becs and Clea until it was too late, and we watched the latter leave the party hand-in-hand with another man. Houston might act like he wasn’t affected, but to a man who had his ego crushed by his ex-girlfriend, or fiancé, I wasn’t quite sure of their status before it was all called off. Either, way, he already suffered a major blow when he learned she’d not only been cheating but was pregnant by someone else.
So, to have another woman agree to go on a date with him and then end up in the arms, or hands, of another man couldn’t have done anything good for my brother. The setup had been about getting him dating again, not delaying the process.
Still, I took a deep breath and tried to think through my anger logically. Becs couldn’t help the things her friend did. She would probably come here later, apologize, and tell me exactly that. There had to be a good damn explanation for what happened to set my brother back again.