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“You’re crowning, Faye.” The doctor tells her gently, urging firmly, “Give me another push.”

The noise that peels from between her lips is enough to make a man want to shed his skin. Nothing could have prepared me for this—and Mom tried. She tried, but she failed.

I’m not prepared.

Faye’s head drops to the pillow as sweat and tears drench her. Her entire body is shaking now, like it’s going into some kind of shock.

From the corner of my eye, I see the door open, and a woman enter behind another nurse. There are already multiple nurses in the room. Candace settles herself on Faye’s other side, taking her other hand.

“Mom—” Faye doesn’t get the rest out as her body tightens. A loud, keening sound tears through the room as the doctor praises loudly, “That’s it, Faye. Another push, now. Give me another push.”

Candace urges her through it so much better than I could ever hope to urge her through this. I realize how much I’ve been struggling as tiny black stars dot my vision. The sounds of the room begin to bleed together with a kind of tinny chime that feels both too close and somehow far away.

Someone is touching my shoulders, tugging at me.

I can’t release Faye’s hand.

The touch falls away and a chair is shoved into the back of my knees. I fall into it, and it feels a little like the world is falling out from under my feet. I still hold her hand.

I will hold this woman’s hand until the very end.

The next minutes are a blur of sound and color and—a baby cries.

My vision sharpens. Someone is pushing on Faye’s stomach—why are they doing that?

“You are so powerful, my darling girl.” Tears flow from Candace’s eyes as they shift from Faye to me. “He’s so beautiful.”

He. The baby—our baby—is a boy.

Emotions rush me. There are too many to count. They come one after another after another, and I can’t settle on just one until a nurse brings the baby to Faye. She settles him on Faye’s chest, skin to skin, and my heart threatens to burst from where it’s been contained all my life quite happily inside my chest.

It wants to fall at their feet to serve for the rest of its days at the mercy of this woman and this tiny child.

“He’s so perfectly beautiful,” she breathes. I watch, mesmerized, as Faye traces his tiny brow. It wrinkles in the most endearing way in response to her soft touch. “Owen.”

“Owen,” I repeat. “It’s perfect.”

We’ve been talking names on and off for the last few months, but these last two weeks, while she stewed about being overdue and barbarically uncomfortable, names were all we talked about. There were two she’d loved for boys. One if it was a girl.

Faye shifts her head to smile at me. “We’re perfect, aren’t we?”

I pull my phone from my pocket, snapping a photo. Then I snap one of just him.

“You both have made the most beautiful baby,” Candace compliments softly, her eyes wet with tears she hasn’t shed.

There’s a small pinch in my heart at her words, though, because I can’t take credit for Owen like that—and yet I need to. So, I pull my shoulders back and say, “Thank you.”

“Do you want to hold him?” Faye asks.

“Yeah…” I reach for the baby and stop, then start again. “I—I don’t know how.”

“Let me help.” Candace rounds the bed, lifting the baby carefully from Faye’s chest to settle him in my arms.

Love of a kind I’ve never been struck with hits me like lightning, changing me irrevocably as I stare down into familiar deep brown eyes I’ve stared into all my life, set in the face of my father and brother—and now my son.

“I’ll love you forever, Owen Wilder,” I tell him, vowing, “To my last day and beyond, I’m so honored to call myself your dad.”

The next hours fly by in a whirl of tears and snuggles as Mom and Dad and Doug flood the room we’ve been moved into for Faye to rest and recover. Everyone held Owen, and I watched, holding Faye’s hand, as each one of them fell hopelessly in love with him. Mom brought us burgers, and I enjoyed watching Faye scarf down hers before eyeballing the remaining half of mine. I gave it to her with a laugh that had the rest of the room joining. Doug brought a box of Cherry’s famous chocolate glazed croissants, and I watched Faye enjoy that, too.