The Ticket Was Never for His Mistress Chapter 14

The Ticket Was Never for His Mistress Chapter 14

My water broke during a thunderstorm at 2:14 a.m.

Of course it did.

I called Rhys. He answered on the first ring.

“It’s time,” I gasped.

“I’m on my way.”

He was at my door in eleven minutes. His shirt was inside out. He had one shoe untied. He carried my hospital bag, my pillow, my phone charger, and a bag of lemon cookies.

“Why do you have cookies?”

“Walter said they help. I don’t know. Walk. Breathe. Walk.”

Labor was fourteen hours.

Rhys stayed by my head the entire time. He let me crush his hand until his knuckles turned white. He fed me ice chips. He read me terrible jokes off his phone when I begged for distraction.

“What do you call a fish with no eyes?”

“Rhys, I swear to God-”

“A fsh.”

I laughed. Then I screamed. Then I laughed again.

At 4:52 p.m., as the storm cleared and sunlight broke over London, my daughter was born.

Seven pounds, two ounces.

Loud. Furious. Perfect.

The nurse laid her on my chest, and the whole world went quiet.

She had a full head of dark hair. A tiny pointed chin. And when she opened her eyes, for just a second, they were the exact gray–blue of my mother’s.

“Hello,” I whispered. “Hello, my love.”

She stopped crying. Looked at me like she knew me.

Like she’d always known me.

Rhys was crying openly. He didn’t even try to hide it.

“She’s incredible,” he said. “Hazel. She’s incredible.”

“What should we name her?” the nurse asked.

I didn’t have to think.

“June Margaret Quinn.”

June, for the month my mother was born. Margaret, for my mother.

Quinn, for me.

That evening, a nurse knocked softly.

“There’s a man in the waiting room. He says he’s the father. He’s been here since this morning.”

Rhys looked at me. Waited. He never assumed.

I thought about it for a long time.

It hadn’t been a year. It had been seven months.

But he’d flown five thousand miles. And he’d waited nine hours without making a scene.

“Let him see her,” I said. “Through the glass. Five minutes.”

Grant stood outside the nursery window on a cane.

He was thinner. Clear–eyed. Sober. He wore a simple black sweater, and he was holding a small stuffed bunny

with a crooked ear.

The nurse lifted June up to the glass.

Grant made a sound I will never forget. Not a sob. Something quieter. Like a man seeing the thing he almost destroyed.

He pressed his palm flat against the window.

June yawned.

He laughed and cried at the same time.

came up beside him, slowly, in my hospital gown. Rhys waited at the end of the hallway. Close enough. Far

enough.

“She has your eyes,” Grant whispered.

“She has my mother’s eyes.”

He nodded. Didn’t argue.

“June,” he said, trying the name. “Margaret. Quinn.”

He knew what the last name meant. He didn’t fight it.

“She’s beautiful, Haze.”

“I know.”

He held out the bunny. “It’s stupid. I just… I didn’t know what to bring.”

I took it.

“It’s not stupid.”

He looked at me then. Really looked. And whatever he was searching for in my face, he didn’t find it.

He found something else instead. Peace.

“You look happy,” he said quietly.

“I am.”

He glanced down the hallway at Rhys. Then back at me.

“Is he good to you?”

“He’s never once looked at his watch.”

Grant closed his eyes. Absorbed that.

“Good,” he said, and it cost him. “That’s… good.”

He turned back to the glass. One last look at his daughter.

“I’ll keep my promise. One year sober. Then once a month. I’ll show up. Every time.”

We’ll see.”

“Yeah.” He smiled, sad. “We’ll see.”

He walked away down the corridor, cane tapping on the linoleum. He didn’t look back.

He’d finally learned how to leave quietly.

I went back to my room.

Rhys was sitting in the rocking chair, holding June against his chest like she was made of starlight. He was

humming.

Badly.

It was “At Last.”

I stopped in the doorway.

“Where did you learn that song?”

He looked up, a little embarrassed. “It was playing from the music box. In the nursery. I didn’t know what else

to sing.”

My eyes stung.

I crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed. June’s tiny hand had wrapped around Rhys’s finger.

“She’s born,” I said.

He went still.

“You told me to ask you again,” he said softly. “After.”

“I did.”

He looked at me over my daughter’s head. The same gray eyes that had noticed everything since the first morning at the Savoy.

“Hazel Quinn. Will you let me be the one who shows up? For both of you? For the rest of it?”

I looked at him.