Weirder things had happened in the forty years we’d walked the earth together, and if I hadn’t been in desperate need of a distraction, I might’ve believed my twin. But I saw the half-truth as clear as the day dawning outside and he fuckin’ knew it.
“I needed to talk to you,” he amended. “But it can wait.”
Like fuck it could, but a disgruntled cry from the puddle of tiny limbs in my arms put any plans I had to interrogate Lo on hold.
His gruff features melted. “Who’s this?”
“Who do you think it is?”
He rolled his eyes and moved to the sink to wash his hands. “How’s Orla?”
“I don’t know.”
“Still in surgery?”
“Yeah.”
Logan dried his hands and came back, taking the baby from me as if he handled five-pound bags of flesh and bone all the time. “What about the other?—”
“Don’t.”
Logan took a soft breath and gazed down at the baby girl in his arms, the same gentleness on his face as when Willow had been born. He’d never got to hold Wren. “Well, look at her. She’s small, Lockie.”
He hadn’t called me that since we were teenagers. I didn’t want to think about why it had slipped out of him now. Or the possibility that baby girl was our biggest baby. “She’sstrong,” I said instead.
“You all are.” Logan tilted his head just enough to make contact with mine. “It’s going to be all right. Just hold on a little longer, okay?”
Until he said it, I didn’t realise how close I was to the edge. Tears burned my eyes. “I can’t lose them.”
Logan held my gaze, toughness shining through the love. “You’re not going to. I can fucking feel it.”
The midwife knocked on the door again. “Still no news, but Orla’s brother is here, and I can’t have so many of you on the ward at once.”
“I’ll go.” Logan handed me the baby.
Terror seized me.
He felt it and gripped my shoulders. “I meant outside to the fucking corridor. I’m not going anywhere, I promise.”
“Don’t leave.”
“I won’t.”
But he had to leavethis room, taking the stoicism I’d leaned on my whole fuckin’ life with him, and I panicked every second he was gone until not one, but two brothers slipped into the room and surrounded me.
Cam.
River.
They wore the same expression of nervous anticipation. Of dread as they found me alone and holding a baby.
River froze. “Where is she?”
“Surgery.” I tried to school my face. “She bled a lot. They took her down to fix it.”
“But theycanfix it?” River glanced at the door, as if he was having the same visions I was of blasting into the operating theatre and standing over the surgeons until they made this right. “Was it bad?”
I shrugged, cos honestly, I didn’t know—it had been too dark and chaotic for me to tell how much blood Orla had lost. “Haemorrhaging was always a risk,” I said instead. “It’s why the C-section was planned, but Little Miss had other ideas. Orls had her in the car.”