Join the Club - Lani Lynn Vale Page 0,77

her.

It was only an hour later that the scream had me running back into our room.

Pushing the door open wide, I came to a sudden bone-jarring halt when I entered the room and saw what awaited me.

“Something’s wrong,” Delanie said as she hunched over her stomach, her face awash in pain. “Something’s really wrong. I think we need to call 9-1-1.”

Booth, who’d heard the scream as well, had his phone out in seconds.

Delanie fell back onto the bed, and then she screamed again.

This time, I couldn’t help but see what had been hiding with her being hunched over.

“Bourne,” Delanie cried. “Oh, fuck.”

Oh, fuck was right.

I walked over to her, a sense of calmness that was quite eerie washing over me, as I said, “Delanie, I think that you’re having a baby.”

It sounded all wrong and weird. As if what I was saying was coming from another person.

“I think you’re right,” she cried out. “Oh, God. This is exactly what I felt when I had Asa. What the ever-loving hell?”

Things went very, very fast after that.

Since we lived so far out of the city limits, the paramedics weren’t fast in showing up.

And, since Delanie had obviously ignored something that her body had tried to tell her over the last however long, we were now dealing with an impending baby that was only minutes from being born.

“Tell her that I can see the head,” I said to Booth, who was looking so wide-eyed and freaked out that I wasn’t sure he could process what I was saying.

Delanie thrashed on the bed.

“But I still had my period!” she cried, her back arching slightly.

She had.

At least, what we assumed was her period.

Not only that, but she still got her birth control shots.

She didn’t show in the least, either.

Her belly, though slightly more rounded than when I’d met her, was still as flat as a non-pregnant woman could be.

Hell, this wasn’t Delanie’s first rodeo. She should’ve felt all those kicks and shit, too.

Yet, there’d been none.

And I would know. I’d been sleeping with her every night, plastered up against me.

“Oh my God,” Dillan said as she finally made it into the room. “Booth, give me that phone.”

Booth handed it over as he stared on in shock.

I shoved my t-shirt up over Delanie’s hips and exposed her bottom half.

She’d probably be embarrassed later.

Right now, she was too busy having a fucking baby.

“They want her to not push,” Dillan said as she crawled onto the bed next to her sister.

“Fuck them!” Delanie cried.

That was when she pushed.

And within five minutes, I had a screaming, highly pissed off, very small baby in my hands.

“Umm,” Booth said as he looked on. “It’s a girl.”

Epilogue II

Every time a mullet reaches shoulder length, an angel gets his jean jacket.

-Coffee Cup

Bourne

Thirteen years later

“My uncle once told me we sometimes have to do the hard things to get the good things,” Asa said. “And at the time, I didn’t quite understand what that meant.” He looked out over the crowd, focusing on his dad. “He also showed me that sometimes, you get the good things even when you don’t do the hard things.”

I chuckled, remembering the day that he’d called me faking sick like it was yesterday.

His mom hadn’t been very happy with me. Saying that it wasn’t a good thing to teach him that he could get rewarded for faking sick. But that day had been for Asa and me. After giving him the lecture, I’d taken him out for ice cream, then to the doctor’s. Brought him to the movies and had then gone out to eat with him. It’d been when I’d gotten home that things had gone bad.

Now, that blow up between Delanie and me felt like a lifetime ago.

Now we had three more children. We were married. We’d built a house. Delanie had retired from training dogs, and I had retired from the SWAT team.

I hadn’t retired from the Reserves.

In fact, I’d literally arrived from being gone for two weeks to the graduation ceremony with only seconds to spare.

Asa and my family didn’t even know that I’d made it back.

Leaning against the fence, I watched as Asa finished his speech, then accepted his diploma and a handshake from the same freakin’ principal that liked to give me hell during my own formative years.

It was as he was walking back toward his seat that he looked up and spotted me standing there in full uniform.

I hadn’t even had a chance to take a freakin’ shower yet.

I was still covered