^^Above, chapter title credit: Song by INXS.^^

{Raina}

Somehow we end up at the hospital with Jake and Damon, who'd found Hugo Thomas bloody, beaten, and unconscious in their common room. Waiting to hear how he's doing is almost worse than bringing him in. I see Jake, gnawing on his nails, and Damon, flicking through an old magazine but not really reading it. El paces restlessly, like a caged tiger, running a hand through her hair repeatedly. I sit, opening and closing my fists, wondering if the churning in my stomach is from the not knowing, or the baby. Or both.

Finally, the doctor comes out. We all stand at the same time, crowding each other in our hurry to get to him. He solves that problem by pushing us all back.

"How is he?" Jake asks.

"All I can tell you is that he's stable. Sleeping right now." The doctor smiles at us. "It's good you brought him in. He would have been in a lot of pain when he woke."

El exhales and slides an arm around me. I feel her drop her cheek to my hair, and I let myself relax.

"But he keeps muttering 'Aisha'. None of you would know what that means, do you?" The doctor seems confused.

We all look at each other, but I can't ever remember hearing about anyone by that name. I didn't even really know Hugo that well.

"You all are welcome to visit him when he wakes up. But for now, I suggest you go home, get some sleep. It's been quite a long night for all of you, I expect."

≈

When we get back to campus, the last two people I expect to see are waiting outside the frat house. I see Matt first, immediately recognizable because of his build. And sitting down on the low wall, a little behind him, is Geoff. The second the car stops, I tumble out of it and run to him, throwing my arms around him and burying my face in his neck. He grunts with pain, but a moment later hugs me back, one hand fisted in my hair and the other rubbing my back.

"You did it," I say with a sort of half-laugh, half-sob. I cup his face and kiss him, repeatedly. "You came back."

"Hey. You know I would." He tucks some stray hair behind my ear, smiling. "And you know what else?"

"What?" I don't even care that I have tears running down my cheeks. I never thought I'd be so happy and relieved to see anyone.

"You can drink the water now."

I manage a watery laugh and kiss him again. It seems so far away now, when I was afraid he'd never come back, and that the kiss he gave me would be our last one. But now I can't even think of a time when I've been happier. He's here, he's safe, and he's mine. My boyfriend, the father of my child, and most importantly, my knight. My red knight.

≈

I wake slowly the next morning, to a low rumble of voices. Geoff had slept next to me all night, fitting his body perfectly to mine and resting his hand on my abdomen. The baby's nothing more but a little lizard-like thing — I remember El pointing it out to me on the chart at the first doctor's visit last week — with barely any limbs. But he's treating it like it's already born. It's what makes me love him more.

Now I'm more awake, and I prop myself up on one elbow, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes with my free hand. Geoff's gone and I'm alone now, but I hear him out in the hallway, talking to someone. I roll out of bed and pull the blanket with me, wrapping it around myself. I poke my head out, and I see Geoff pacing up and down the hall on the cordless phone. He rakes his hand through his already untidy hair, and his entire body is drawn tight.

"This is what I want, Dad," he's saying. "I know our principles haven't always agreed, but..."

I hear his dad's voice on the other end, and I remember, all at once, his illness. The expression on Geoff's face when he broke the news to me.

"What, so you want to tell her yourself how you feel?" His eyes suddenly catch mine as he turns around, and widen in surprise.

He listens for a second, and then sighs.

"Okay, Dad, fine. If I can't persuade you, maybe she can. She's right here now, actually." He takes the phone away from his ear and covers the mouthpiece. "Dad wants to talk to you."

I close the bedroom door behind me and put out my hand. He gives it to me with a Be careful kind of expression. I nod, and then raise the phone to my ear.

"Mr. Cromwell?"

"Hello, Miss Hardy...Raina. May I call you Raina?" He sounds polite and businesslike, if a bit reedy.

"Yes, of course."

"You see, Raina...my son just told me you two are having a child together. I'm sure you are well aware of my surprise. In my day, people only had children after they were married."

"I know," I say, but I'm not sure that's enough. "If anything, it was both our mistakes..."

"I've threatened to cut Geoffrey off of everything if he ever got a girl pregnant before he was married to her. But, seeing that my lifespan is now finite and much shorter than I planned, and I can't leave my son with nothing, I've decided on a compromise. I've revised my will and now he gets half of my assets when he turns twenty. Maybe more. I haven't decided yet."

"That's great, Mr. Cromwell."

"Daniel, please. And I'm not finished. That's only if he gets married. You see, if he died and had no dependent, everything would be seized by the state. So that's a condition I was absolutely solid on. Do you see where I'm going with this?"

"He needs a dependent." I bite my lip. It's strange, really, to think that I could go from nothing to everything. That is, if Geoff and I get married.

"Yes. And at the risk of offending you, it seems he has no others except who I'm speaking with right now."

I shake my head, raking my fingers through my hair. "No, Daniel. I'm not offended."

"Good, because I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. The sense of impending death tends to do that to you. I've heard the way my son talks about you. He tells me he's found happiness with you, and that he can't stop thinking about you. And that he would spend the rest of his life with you if he could. But there was one thing stopping him, and that was me."

I say nothing, only lean back against the door. No one's ever said that to me or about me before. I thought I could never be happy — Dad never saw me as his daughter, only a sexual target; Mom only took care of me because she felt she was obligated to, nothing more — before Geoff. And now that I have, I never want it to end.

"What I'm getting at, Raina, is that I give you and my son my blessing. It's all I've ever really wanted, for my son to be happy. And if you can find it together, then there's not much else left to say."

"Thank you, Daniel," I say, my voice barely a whisper. "That means a lot to me...to us."

I don't have to see him to know he's smiling when he speaks next. "Tell him that if he breaks your heart, I'll come back and haunt him until he apologizes. And that the ring he gets you ought to be worthy of a Cromwell."

I manage a shaky laugh before we break the connection. Geoff's hovering near me, but when I get off the phone, he lays a hand on my shoulder and squeezes.

"You're crying again," he says, worried. "You okay?"

"More than okay." I cup his face, tugging him down to my level.

"What did Dad say?" His brow furrows.

"I'll tell you after you kiss me, Geoff, not before."

He does, and I finally feel the ghosts of my past vanishing into nothing. Now it's time to focus on the future. It's certainly brighter than ever now.

≈

The following weeks pass relatively smoothly. The baby grows, and I begin to show right around spring break. Geoff's proposal and the ring he gives me certainly do befit a Cromwell. He takes me back to Ithaca over the break, so I can meet his dad again on far more friendly terms. He has a live-in nurse now, who gives him his medicine, keeps him comfortable, and takes him to his chemotherapy. Her name is Yesenia, and she's so happy to see us at the door it's hard to believe this is even the same house.

Geoff's dad, when he finally joins us, is a changed man. It's alarming to see how different he looks since November: his hair is gone, and he's lost over a quarter of his body weight already, making his clothes hang on him and hollowing out his cheeks. But he gives Geoff a strong handshake and a one-armed hug, and even embraces me.

"Do you mind if I touch my grandchild?" he asks when we pull apart. He sounds timid, almost unsure.

Instead of answering I take his fragile bony hand and lay it over my barely visible bump. Geoff had called the baby Shrinky-Dink the other day, when he came with El and I to the doctor's office. So now that's all I can think of, as his dad's breathing hitches, and he looks up at me with a sheen of tears in his eyes.

"We were thinking of names the other day," I say to him when we sit down for lunch. "But we weren't sure if you were okay with naming it after you, if it's a boy."

"I suppose," he says, shrugging his thin shoulders. "Except I was hoping it would be a girl."

Geoff stops chewing, swallowing hard before speaking. "Why, Dad?"

"Because then I would name her Ninette, after my mother. She was in the exact same position as you, Raina, with my father. And when they married, against both their parents' wishes, he decided he would make his own way in the world, and the Cromwell family business was born." He takes my hand, on the tabletop, his grip surprisingly strong. "I see her strength in you, and her perseverance. And I see the unconditional love you have, for each other and for the baby."

"Thank you, Daniel." Nobody would have ever guessed that this was the same man who'd called me white trash five months ago. But, like he'd said, impending death had a way of making you rethink a lot of things.

Later that night, as Geoff settles down next to me in bed, he says, "Raina, there's something I didn't tell you about that night we stopped Ridley."

"Really?" I look over at him, lying on his side with his hand where it always is, on the baby. "What's that?"

He hesitates, and for a good reason. After that night, Ridley never came back to school. Some people said it was because he dropped out, and other said it was because he was taking a "break." All rumor, of course. Matt had told us that when he'd finally managed to run him down, Ridley's parting shot was one that chilled me even now.

You're going to rue the day you decided to stop me.

No, I knew where Ridley was. He'd decamped back to Nashville, to lick his wounds. And then, when we least expected it, he'd strike again.

"He killed Walker. Pushed him into the big blob-thing. I heard him being suffocated." Geoff shudders. "It was awful."

"So Ridley had Walker all along." I inch myself closer to him, and he adjusts to accommodate me. "And Felicia?"

"She split too. After Matt cut her free, she said she was heading off to Boston and she'd never come back. She'd disappear, so no one could find her."

"Well, she's smart, I guess." I'd never forgotten the only conversation we had, when she told me that Geoff would leave me when he'd gotten what he wanted. I was glad this had proven her wrong.

"Yeah, I guess." Geoff cups my cheek and kisses my forehead. "But I don't care about her anymore, because I have you."

I smile, closing my eyes. "That's all I need to hear."

≈

The baby comes in September. Geoff's in Ithaca, sorting out his dad's will. Daniel finally died on the last day of August, living two months longer than the doctors thought he would. El transferred to NYU, so she could stay close to me. And even though I didn't like the idea any more than anyone else did, I had to stop going to school once I hit six months. I was almost always sore and tired. Cranky too, sometimes. Not to mention I was huge.

I'm in the middle of breakfast when it happens. There's a strange wet feeling on my chair, and then it hits me all at once, even as the cramps start coming. The baby's on the way. I clutch my swollen belly and heave myself up, barely making it to the telephone before a contraction cuts through me, making my knees buckle. I grit my teeth and cry out, gripping the counter edge to stay upright. Then I yank the telephone down and punch in Kim's number, telling her my baby's coming and I don't know what to do. She says she'll call Ken and get him up here, and that she'll meet us at the hospital.

"Get Geoff down here too," I manage. I can barely hold the phone, because my hands are slippery with sweat. "He needs to meet his daughter."

That's how we end up at the hospital twenty minutes later, the contractions still fairly far apart. Kim tells me that's how you know the baby's ready — they'll get more frequent and stronger the closer it is.

El gets to the hospital about half an hour later, joining us. With Kim's guidance she does her best to keep me comfortable, even though it takes all my willpower to not think about the contractions. It's even hard to walk. Putting one foot in front of the other seems a chore in itself.

After an hour of that, the doctor finally administers the analgesic. Not because they don't want me to be uncomfortable, but because they want me to be able to push. I hardly remember how. All those breathing exercises we practiced seem to be out the window right now.

Geoff arrives sometime during delivery. I don't know it, obviously, because I'm too busy roaring my way through the pain. El lets me grip her arm in one hand, and Kim's in the other. But for a brief moment, I don't know who they are, or who I am, or where. All I know is that I want this baby out.

It's when I hear her first little cries that I finally seem to come back to myself. I barely know what the doctors are doing, but it seems like no time at all that they're passing her to me, swaddled in white, her eyes still tightly closed. She's pink and wrinkled and her tiny fists wave in midair, but she's so small, so precious. I cup her head in my palm and kiss her wispy hair gently, tears running down my cheeks. I can't believe she's mine, my little girl, my daughter.

"Hello, Ettie," I whisper, kissing her forehead and smelling her skin for the first time. A distinct baby-smell, one I wouldn't even be able to describe.

She answers by sticking two tiny fingers in my mouth. I smile, and something between a laugh and a sob comes out.

"She's beautiful, Rains." El slides an arm around me and rests her cheek on my hair, wiggling her fingers in front of Ettie's face. Blindly she catches one, holding on tight.

"Look, she already knows her Auntie El." I lean into her, my entire body weak. "She likes you."

"What can I say, I have that effect." El flips her hair with her free hand, and both Kim and I laugh.

Then the door opens, and Geoff looks in. He's changed so much since the end of the school year. He'd cut his hair, so it was no longer shaggy and casually messy. He'd begun taking on more responsibilities of his father's company, which meant putting on a suit every day instead of his normal T-shirt and jeans. And the day his father died, he still went to work, this time as the full-time CFO of Cromwell Enterprises.

But now he resembles the boy I met. His hair is mussed and his button-down is undone by two buttons, tie absent. And his eyes, when they land on me, soften the way they always have.

"We'll give you some family time now, honey," Kim says, giving my temple the barest touch of her lips. El gives me one last squeeze around the shoulders, and then follows Kim out, flashing Geoff a sly wink as she passes him.

"What was that all about?" Geoff says when we're alone, sitting down in the chair Kim recently left.

"With El? You never know." I sag back against the pillow, Ettie wriggling in my arms and trying to get comfortable. I'm both exhausted and happy, and having Geoff here is a relief that's indescribable.

"Can I...hold her?" he asks tentatively, his hands fluttering up and down indecisively.

"She's your daughter. Of course you can." I hitch her higher so Geoff can take her, dwarfed by his strong arms and broad shoulders.

"Hi, Ets," he says, bobbing her up and down in his arms. "Aren't you a pretty little lady. Pretty as Mommy."

Ettie squirms and makes a squeaking noise, batting at his chin with her fingers. He smiles and catches her hand, kissing her tiny palm. Then he kisses her nose, and when he looks back at me, his eyes are shining.

"I can't believe she's ours." He sits down on the edge of the bed, facing me. "We did this together."

"Well, I couldn't have done it alone." I rub his arm, giving him a smile. "Thank you, Geoff."

"You'll never be alone again, Raina, I promise." He cups my cheek with his free hand, holding my eyes steadily.

"I know, Geoff," I say simply, because I do, and I believe him. When he leans forward to kiss me, I let him, even though I'm exhausted and my body still aches, dully. It's because I believe him, completely. He's shown me that. I know that whatever comes at us now, we'll weather it together. Because we're a family. And if it's one thing that families do, it's stay together.