BEST FRIEND’S BROTHER

Kaleb snapped the light on, and through the blinking of her eyes in reaction Sasha saw him glaring at her as though she had just uttered the most awful blasphemy.

“No!” he roared.

Sasha pretended surprise. “You don’t want to keep having sex?”

“Yes!”

“Kaleb, if you’re going to yell like a hooligan then I suggest you go back to sleep!”

“If you weren’t pregnant I’d put you over my knee!” he retorted.

“If I weren’t pregnant, then you wouldn’t be here, buddy!”

“Says who?”

“Says me!”

“Oh, yes, I would!” he said fervently.

There was a pause. “You would?” Sasha gulped.

“Of course I would! Because sooner or later I would have come to my senses and realized just how much I love you. And I do, Sasha. I love you very much.”

She gazed back at him, too scared to hope for what had always seemed like an unattainable dream. He’d said the words, and she believed that he meant them- but was there substance behind them? Enough to withstand all the tests that life threw in the path of love?

She thought how easy they were in each other’s company. They laughed at the same jokes, they disagreed on all the things that men and women had been disagreeing on for years. Like whether women could read maps or men could do more than one task at a time. She didn’t have much experience of the opposite sex, but she knew that whatever chemistry they had in bed was pure magic. So did that add up to love?

“I love you, Sasha,” he repeated softly, and cradled her tenderly against him. “If I hadn’t been so damned dense I might have admitted it to myself a whole lot sooner.”

Her heart filled with a feeling of contentment so pure that it made her feel quite dizzy. “I love you, too. I’ve always loved you… Even when we were much younger… Before you left.” She turned to rest her head against his chest, and sighed. “Oh, Kaleb!”

He stroked her arm. “Mmm?”

“This is what it could have been like-if only we’d been together all these years”

He shook his head, secure now, letting go of the last of his regrets. “No, sugar,” he said softly. “We were both too young-the gulf was too wide. I was too arrogant and you were too…”

“Too what?”

“Too good for me!” he said fiercely.

Sasha smiled and didn’t correct him. After all, it didn’t do a man any harm to have respect for the woman in his life!

“We needed to part in order to grow, and-”

“Kaleb!” she interrupted frantically.

“What?”

Sasha gasped, and this time she looked scared. “It’s the baby,” she told him, wide-eyed. “It’s coming!”

“How do you know?”

“I just know,” she said firmly, as women had been saying to their men since time began.

————

The journey to the hospital seemed to take forever. Kaleb had never felt so helpless in his life as he’d located his car keys with shaking fingers. He had briefly considered calling an ambulance, but decided that the journey would be faster and more reliable if he was in the driving seat.

Which meant that now all his attention was taken up with trying to steer the car as smoothly as possible, with his precious cargo sitting in the passenger seat beside him. It meant that he wasn’t able to touch Sasha, or to comfort her. He was forced to concentrate on the road- and he didn’t need to keep looking at her to know that she was suffering. Her eyes were huge and dark in a snowy-white face as the contractions started coming more frequently and more powerfully. He saw her stiffen as another spasm passed, and he glanced over at the illuminated clock on the dashboard.

“How often are they coming now?” she croaked.

“About every five minutes.”

“That’s quick. I think. Oh!” She clung onto her belly.

“Sasha, I can’t bear to see you this way,” he moaned, as she gave a sudden whimper of distress. “What can I do for you, sugar?”

“Just keep driving.”

“Do you think-”

“No, I don’t! I’m not thinking about anything-and neither should you if you’re going to fret! If you want something to take your mind off things, Kaleb, then try deciding what baby names you could live with, as that’s something else we didn’t get around to deciding!”

Things got a little better when they arrived at the hospital. At least there were people in uniform who seemed to know what they were doing. For once in his life Kaleb was happy to stand on the sidelines and let them take over, while Sasha was bundled onto a trolley and rushed up to the labor ward.

“Just grip my hand,” Kaleb urged her as they waited for the lift, not seeming to notice that her nails were making tiny red, crescent-shaped lacerations on his palms.

Sasha had shut her eyes now, as if to blot out the pain, and he saw her face contort against the force of the new life trying to push its way out of her body. He found himself wishing that he’d told her he loved her sooner. Or maybe wishing that he hadn’t been so damned arrogant in the first place, and then they would never have been in this situation.

But he wouldn’t have unwished that. Not for the world. Because hand in hand with his natural fears for Sasha and their baby came the most breathless excitement he had ever felt. As if a miracle was happening right now and right here. And he was part of it.

The midwife who admitted her onto the labor ward was Sister Beth-the same rather bossy nurse who had given Sasha such a stern lecture when she had been taken there with the bleed, all those months ago. But now her face was wreathed in smiles as Sasha was wheeled into the delivery room.

“Hello again, my dear!” she beamed. “I was rather hoping I might be on duty when you came back!”

“Nurse, I need to push!’ moaned Sasha.

“Well, you think you do, dear,” said the midwife kindly, clearly not believing a word of it. “That’s what all you first-time mothers say-but because it’s a first baby, I think you’ll find you’ve got a lot longer to wait than that! Now, let’s have a quick look at you…”