By the time the doctor tells me I can push, I’m already exhausted.

Wrapping his strong arms around my shoulders from behind me, Remington buries his nose in my neck, as if my scent calms him. His scent calms me, and I try not to yell for his sake, because I want him with me, and I know he would never want to forget a moment like this. Chewing hard on my lip, I push and squeeze his hand while I swallow back my groans. Pushing harder against the pain, I push another time, harder and longer. I’d never wondered why it was called “labor” but now I know. After several more breath-stealing efforts, the baby finally slips out, and I groan tiredly as the pressure in my body eases, dropping my head back onto the table.

The doctor catches it, and through a gaze misted with relief, I see something wet, slick, and pink.

“It’s a boy,” we hear, and then the baby’s first cry tears into the room. His lungs may not be fully developed, but that soft little wail still makes my heart overflow with joy.

“A boy,” I gasp.

“A boy,” Remington gruffly repeats, and my chest floods as I hear the acceptance and contentment in the word. Remy doesn’t need to tell me, but I know that now, our son is real to him. Our son is real to both of us.

I smile quietly to myself while my eyes brim with tears. The doctor mumbles to the nurses as they cut the cord. “Breathing on his own. No complications. He’s still preterm—we still need to incubate.”

“We want to see . . .” I cry breathlessly. My arms are so weak that I can barely lift them, and I don’t even know why, since they hardly did anything while I pushed.

The tiny baby lets out another howl as they clean him, and then at last they bring him over to us. I don’t think Remington is breathing, while my own breath rushes out of my throat as I hold this tiny bit of life for the first time.

The doctor starts fixing me up while the nurse waits to take the baby to the NICU, but Remington has bent his dark head to mine. We nuzzle each other over the baby’s bald little head.

“I love him, Remy,” I whisper as I angle my head up, eager to feel his warm breath on my face, his lips on mine. “I love you so much. Thank you for this baby.”

“Brooke,” he tersely rasps as he engulfs us in his arms. I know that deep down Remy doesn’t believe he deserves this. Nobody taught him that he did, so I squeeze his big shoulders to me as tight as I can with one of my weak, trembling, tired arms while I hold the baby with the other.

“If he’s like me, we will support him,” he whispers worriedly in my ear. “If he’s like me . . . we’ll be there for him.”

“Yes, Remy. We will teach him music. And exercise. And how to take care of this little body. It will be strong and astound him and maybe frustrate him sometimes too. We will teach him to love it. And himself. We will teach him love.”

He wipes his eyes with the backs of his hands. “Yeah.” And he sets a kiss on my forehead. “Yeah, we’ll teach him all that.”

“Come hug us again,” I plead when he steps back as if I and this baby making the little chipmunk crying noises couldn’t possibly be his.

He moves back in and we melt in his embrace. He has the best hugs, and we fit perfectly right in. I feel him wipe a tear from the top of my head again, and it makes me start crying softly too. He is so strong. I never thought this small moment would do him in. I hold our baby in one arm because I need to hold Remington in the other. “Come here,” I encourage, holding out one arm. Then he drops his head and nuzzles me and I don’t know if my face is wetter than his. “I am so in love with you,” I whisper to him. “You deserve this and more. While you fight out there, I will fight for you to come home to this.”

He growls an exasperated sound and wipes his eyes again, like he hates crying. Then he grabs my face and kisses the back of my ear, his voice thicker than I’ve ever heard it. “I fucking love you to pieces. To pieces. Thank you for this baby. Thank you for loving me. I can’t wait to make you my wife.”

* * *

I’M IN A private room by the time I get to see Nora again. She comes in looking flushed and happy, followed by Pete, who looks almost as flushed as she does. Maybe even more so. While Pete slaps Remington’s back and congratulates the new dad, Nora makes a beeline straight for me.

“Brooke, I saw him! I saw him through the window! He’s the tiniest baby there is!”

“I know, Nora, he’s so very little!” My voice quivers with emotion as I talk about him. “He’s not supposed to even be here yet, but the doctors are amazed by how well he’s developed for his age.”

She settles down at the corner of my bed and reaches for my hand, her eyes sparkling with happiness. We hold stares for a moment, and though I don’t want to wipe that smile from her face, I have to ask the question nagging at the back of my mind.

“Nora, what were you doing with Scorpion?” I wince as I try to sit up straighter, then I reach under the bed and adjust my position a little better. “Why didn’t you tell us he was blackmailing you so that we could help?”

A flush spreads from her chin up to her forehead, and she buries her face in her hands again. “It’s just so embarrassing.”

Remington signals from the door that he’s going out with Pete, and I lock gazes with my big lion, his hair disheveled, in the sweatpants and hoodie he just changed into, and I realize we have a baby together, and my chest swells so powerfully, I feel like I’m going to float like a cloud.

He whispers softly, his gaze shining with a mate’s pride, “We’ll be outside.”

“I’m sorry I caused you so much trouble,” Nora tells him.

He holds the door open and shakes his head, with one dimple peeking out. “No trouble at all.”

When the door shuts behind him, all I can hear is my sister’s soft sobs in the room, and my own voice as I reach out to pat the back of her head and gently ask her, “Did he hurt you?”

She grabs a tissue from inside her small purse and pats the corners of her eyes. “No. He was a mess. He said he missed me. He wanted me back and would do anything to keep me. It’s probably why he was fighting so fucking bad,” she says. “I’m glad he lost. I just hate that it still hurts me.”

“Oh, Nora.”

“When you came home, I couldn’t even think straight. You’re so . . . protected. Having his baby! He’s so in love with you. While I was in hell! Benny said he would spread the video around if I didn’t come back. He wanted to hurt you again. He wanted to have a way to make Remington lose. I didn’t want to be with him, but I was afraid he would blackmail you guys with that video about me! So I did. He offered me . . . drugs. . . . I wanted them. I really did, but I knew if I took them I’d never come home. My plan was to stay with him”—she pats her cheeks as her tears keep streaming, even though her voice is steady and strong—“until the season ended, and then he wouldn’t need me to hurt you two anymore. I figured I’d find a way to get the video back and run away from him.”

“Nora . . .” I open my arms, and she leans over and rests her head on my shoulder. “We need to move forward now,” I whisper. The words come out almost like a plea, because I have a baby now. A baby. He will need me, like my partner does, and I need Nora to be strong on her own. Remy has protected her for me, but I appoint it as my duty to protect my son and my guy just as fiercely—and this includes from my own family.

She curls out her pinky, like we used to pinky promise when we were young. Laughing, we hook them together. “Just don’t tell Mom and Dad. They’re desperate to see their grandchild and are flying over as we speak,” she tells me.

“Nobody has to know about the video. But they must have been thrilled to hear your voice on the phone.”

With new, curious excitement, she signals at the door. “So what are you guys going to call the little thing?”

I grin at her, ear to ear, and whisper, “I have no idea, so I hope the dad does.”

* * *

HIS NAME IS Racer.

Racer Dumas Tate.

Because he was racing to the finish line, before we even set up camp.

The nurses say he’s a big boy, for a preemie, even though Remy and I think he’s so tiny.

God, he is perfection. Ten tiny fingers. Ten tiny toes. Pink little mouth. Little button nose.

He’s needed the incubator for four weeks now, but apparently he’s almost ready to go home. He doesn’t need a tube to be fed anymore, and he now weighs eight healthy pounds, which impresses everyone who can’t believe he was a preemie. Then, of course, they see the father and understand why this preemie is kind of big and healthy.

Remington spends the day training for next season while I hang around the hospital, determined to feed him my own breast milk so he’ll get all the nutrients and immune system benefits he needs. I’d also read about a “kangaroo method” where the nurses set the baby against the mother’s bare skin to strengthen and mature all of his systems. I love reading about all the scientific evidence of what skin-to-skin contact can do.

So once a day, the nurses bring Racer out to me, where I open my shirt and feel our naked little baby on my bare skin. Sometimes Remy is here, and he spreads out behind me, so he’s my kangaroo, and then I’m the baby’s kangaroo—as the method is called. But no. Remy doesn’t feel like a kangaroo behind me; he’s too primal for that. He nuzzles my collarbone and peers down at our baby while I feel him on my skin, and it’s exactly today, as we are doing this, when Racer finally opens his eyes to look up at us. And they are blue, an achingly familiar pristine blue, and I fall in love for the second time in my life.

* * *

WE’VE BEEN DISCHARGED from the hospital, and the three of us are in Seattle, playing house at last.

Today is the fortieth day after labor, and tonight Remington and I will finally be able to have sex. Except he’s determined that the first time he takes me again . . . I be completely his. So, at noon, we’re off to city hall.

God, I am. Dying. To have my way with my baby’s sexy daddy.

“He’s asleep,” I whisper, from the chair in the living room where I sat to feed Racer this morning.

Remington is still in his pajama bottoms and bare-chested, and he comes over with such a proud, protective gleam in his eye, I die at the look on his face.

“Come smell him,” I whisper with a big, besotted smile.

He comes and takes a big whiff from the top of Racer’s head.

“He smells good, right?” I say.

“As good as you,” Remington gruffly whispers, and as I smell the baby, he scents me.

We laugh, and he slides his hands under my body to scoop me up and tells me, “Hang on to him.”

I do. He lifts me up while I hold the baby and carries us to the bed. “Diane is so excited about him—they all are. Is she here yet?” I ask.

“She’s on her way,” he says.

I nod eagerly.

Our iPod speakers are playing “Kiss Me” by Ed Sheeran. The song seems familiar somehow, but the familiarity of it really hits me as I set Racer down on the small cradle on my side of the bed, and Remington wraps me in his arms and starts kissing me. I want to do the girl thing and complain about my stomach. It’s still not completely flat, but he likes it, he kisses it. I want to complain with all these hormones in me, but I feel precious, treasured, and so lucky, I don’t even have words to say how much I wish this for the people I love. I know what it means to Remington to have a family now. He never lamented not having one. But now that he has one, I know he sees the difference. I know he sees what he was missing. Now he has a family to take care of, and one that takes care of him.

The knock on the door breaks us apart, and when Remy opens it, Diane steps in, beaming as she sees me in Remington’s red robe and him in his pajama bottoms. “I thought you two would be ready already!”

He kisses me roughly and excitedly, his eyes burning with a sheen of fire. “Go get ready. I can’t wait. To make you Mine.”

“I’m yours already!”

He scrubs his thumb down my lip. “I’ll be making you Mine your whole life.”

Running into the bathroom where I’d set my clothes out, I slip into them with fast, eager hands.

I can’t really leave Racer for more than a couple of hours, and our appointment is at twelve, so I didn’t want to torture myself with complicated attire. So I choose a plain but pretty white skirt and lacy white top to wear. Remington told me he’ll give me a big church wedding later, that he just can’t wait to make me his. I told him I don’t care about that, I just want the man!