3 a.m. Blue Moon

Joey

 The shrill ringing of the phone cut through a very pleasant dream about cantering around the upper meadow with Jax at her side. He was in a kilt and nothing else.

“What?” she answered, her voice muffled by pillow.

“Joey? It’s Xavier.”

“Why are you calling me from our guest room?” The hot-bodied security expert and his stunningly beautiful wife, Waverly, were their top-secret guests. Joey’s husband Jax was, among other things, a BFD Hollywood screenwriter who had worked with Waverly before on movie projects.

“I need you to stay calm,” Xavier said, snapping out the order like she was one of his broad-shouldered henchmen.

“I’m so calm I’m going back to bed.”

“I’m headed to the hospital with Jax and your brothers-in-law.”

Poker. The guys had played poker tonight. And the mattress was empty next to her. Jax hadn’t come home.

“What happened?” she demanded, bolting upright. A gas explosion? Had Carter’s kitchen stove blown up while they were playing cards? The kids. The dogs. Summer. She shoved the covers off and ran to the closet pulling on a pair of boots and one of Jax’s sweatshirts over the pajamas she wore.

“Everyone is going to be okay,” Xavier said calmly. “Worst case scenario we’re looking at a broken arm and two broken legs, evenly distributed. I called you because they all agreed you’d yell but not freak out so don’t freak out.”

“What the hell happened?” Joey yelled, clomping down the stairs, her faithful dog Waffles on her heels. “And don’t even try to lie to me right now or I will wake your very pregnant wife and tell her that you knuckleheads tried to kill yourselves doing something stupid.”

“It wasn’t that stupid. They said they used to jump out of the hay loft all the time as kids.”

“I’m coming to that hospital and I am going to murder every single one of you idiots,” Joey snarled.

“Pulling up to the emergency department as we speak,” Xavier said as if he were describing a lovely spring day. “Do me a favor and let Summer and Gia know?”

Joey hung up and scrambled for her coat, her wallet. In her haste, she caught her knee on the sharp corner of an end table. “Son of a dancing penguin pudd!”

“Wow, you Blue Mooners sure have some colorful language,” Waverly observed from the stairs. It wasn’t fair. The woman had woken up in the middle of the night and she looked red carpet ready with her long coil of blonde hair, her fresh face, full lips curving in amusement. Her pajamas were white silk. She rested a manicured hand on her pregnant belly.

“Ugh, Caleb got busted for saying fuck at school the other day and apparently it’s all my fault,” she said, mimicking Jax’s tone. “So now, ‘fuck’ is removed from my vocabulary.” She shrugged into a winter coat.

Waffles whimpered next to her and laid a paw on her foot.

“I’m fine,” Joey told the dog, taking a second to ruffle his wiry fur. “So, Waverly, I don’t know how good you are at making breakfast, but I have to make a quick trip to the hospital to murder my husband.”

Waverly grimaced and clutched at her belly with both hands. “That’s handy, since I think I need to go to the hospital. Now.”

“Holy chihuahua croissants,” Joey muttered.

#

“I freaking hate full moons,” a nurse muttered under her breath as she shoved back the curtain. “Good evening, Mr. Pierces.”

“Good evening,” three men responded. They were all clumped in one exam room. Carter and Beckett shared the bed, each clutching a leg, while Jax massaged his left arm from a hard vinyl chair.

Xavier stood watch and tried to stay out of the way.

The nurse sniffed the air, picking up on the scents of beer and whiskey. “It smells like you gentlemen like had an interesting night.”

“We’re probably going to need some x-rays,” Xavier said, giving her his most charming smile.

Emergency department nurses were immune to charm. “Honey, your friends are also going to need some fluids,” she predicted.

“Jojo is going to murder me,” Jax moaned. “Why are we so stupid?”

“Because we’re trying to slow time down, recapture our carefree youth,” Beckett sighed, eyes closed.

“We’re married. We’re parents. We’re upstanding members of the community,” Carter said. “How the hell did that happen? Yesterday we were teenagers, jumping out of haylofts and sneaking out after curfew.”

“We’re old,” Jax slurred.

“Our bones are brittle from old age,” Beckett observed.

“I think you’re being a little dramatic,” Xavier cut in dryly.

“Said the guy with a baby on the way,” Jax snorted. “Kids change everything, man. Your life is never going to be the same.”

“Mostly in a good way,” Carter put in. “Let’s not terrify the guy.”

“Mostly in a good way,” they agreed.

Xavier swiped a hand over his face.

“We’re freaking X out,” Jax said gleefully.

“Look, Saint,” Carter said. “Kids are the hardest thing you will ever do in your life. Forget about taking down psychotic stalkers or keeping your wife out of harm’s way. This baby will destroy you.”

“In a good way,” Beckett reminded them. “You’re going to hold that kid in your arms and realize how wildly inadequate you are in every single way.”

“And then you’re going to dedicate your life to being good enough for your family,” Carter said. “Summer and the twins? Best damn thing that ever happened to me.”

“Gia, Evan, Roar, and Lydia?” Beckett shook his head, his eyes welling up. “My life would be so empty without them.”

Jax’s head lolled back. “I can’t imagine my life without Joey and the kids. We’ve built something here, man. Something that’s bigger than just a marriage, just a family.”

“It’s worth the endless diapers,” Beckett agreed.

“The never sleeping again,” Carter put in. “Did I tell you I found Meadow in front of the fridge at 2 a.m. yesterday? She was pulling out shit to make a sandwich. Planned to watch a little TV and have a snack. Said she does it a couple times a week.”

“Dude, she’s four. How can she even work the remote?” Jax asked.

“Where are they?” The men shut up at the whip crack of Joey’s voice.

“Pull the curtain, X,” Jax whispered. “Maybe she won’t see us?”

Beckett pulled the pillow out from under Carter’s head and held it over his face.

“You motherforking mayonnaise parrots!” Joey glared at them.

“What’s with the word salad your wife is serving up?” Carter stage whispered.

“Caleb got hit playing dodgeball and shouted ‘fuck’ at the top of his lungs on the playground last week,” Jax whispered back.

“Now, Joey,” Xavier said, stepping forward to catch her if she decided to attack.

“Don’t you ‘now, Joey me’. You need to get your fine ass to labor and delivery.”

“I need to what now?” Xavier blinked.

“Waverly is in labor. Contractions are three minutes apart,” Joey announced.

“Okay. Okay. Yes. The baby is coming.” He looked pale as he pulled his phone out of his pants pocket. “I’ll just make a couple of calls and-” Xavier’s eyes rolled back in his head and he went down like a razzed Las Vegas casino.

“Oh, hell. Bodies are piling up in six,” the nurse called over her shoulder as she pushed two men in inflatable penis costumes toward an empty bay.

Joey stepped over Xavier’s form and laid a hand on her husband’s forehead. “Are you okay?” she asked, softly. The bluster burned out.

“I’m fine, Jojo. I’m sorry for being a dumbass.”

“Again,” she prodded.

“Again. We were just trying to relive our young and dumb years,” Jax said. “But we realized that what we’ve got now is way better than anything we had back then.”

“Good answer,” Joey said, leaning down to kiss him lightly. “Now if you ever try to jump out of a hay loft again, I will be waiting on the ground with a pitchfork.”

Jax nodded. “Fair enough.”

Xavier moaned.

“Someone with two good legs is gonna to need to pick him up,” Carter observed, peering over the side of the bed.

“Where are they?”

“Uh-oh,” Beckett whispered, holding up the pillow again.

Summer and Gia appeared behind Joey.

“Are you okay?” Summer asked, stepping over Xavier’s feet to get to Carter.

Gia pulled the pillow out of Beckett’s grasp and sighed. “You poor, sweet, idiot. If you wanted to get out of my sister’s book signing in Boonsboro with Nora Roberts, you could have just told me!”

“I love you and I love Nora,” Beckett proclaimed. “And I promise I’ll never do anything like this again.”

“Yes, you will,” Summer sighed, stroking a hand through Carter’s hair. “It’s in your DNA. You can take the boys out of the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the boys.”

Gia snuggled in next to Beckett. “I guess you picked a good night to be hospitalized. I need to check on Fitz anyway.”

“Fitz is here?” Beckett asked, raising his wife’s hand to his lips.

“He had a little, um, accident in class tonight,” Gia hedged.

“Wait, you didn’t have yoga. You had pole dancing,” Joey said.

“Let’s just leave it at you don’t want to know,” Gia suggested.

“Agreed,” the men chorused.

The nurse reappeared with two orderlies and a gurney and a wheelchair. She pointed at the shorter of the two orderlies. “You pick up Prince Charming here and wheel him to L&D.”

They all watched as Xavier was loaded up onto the gurney. The nurse snapped a capsule of smelling salts under his nose. “Let’s go, daddy,” she said.

“I’m not ready,” Xavier moaned. “We have another two weeks until her due date. We’re supposed to be in New York. The baby stuff is there. We haven’t even washed the newborn clothes yet!”

Jax shook his head. “That man is the coolest cucumber in the entire universe. And look what having a baby does to him.”

“Okay, which one of you yahoos wants to go to radiology first?” the nurse asked grimly.

#

Leaving the menfolk to their x-rays, Joey, Summer, and Gia traversed the bustling emergency department. A doctor ducked out of a room and failed to yank the curtain the whole way closed.

“Am I seeing-” Gia’s eyes were wide.

“Either that woman is actively giving a bj or it’s a classic case of cock ring stuck on tongue ring,” Summer observed.

Joey took a step closer. The woman gave a weak wave to their audience. “N-n-n-ice night,” the guy said.

“Mmphferklug,” the woman said.

The doctor returned and yanked the curtain closed.

They maneuvered their way around what could only be described as a thong convention and headed toward the information desk.

“Wait, did you hear that?” Gia asked, holding up a hand.

“My pumphandle!” a voice wailed.

“Fitz,” they said together.

They found him on a gurney tucked away in the corner of the department. He was a tall, lanky man with a frizzy rattail and glasses. He put the hippie into Blue Moon’s culture, retiring from pot dealing to embrace the exotic dancing industry.

“Fitz, are you okay?” Gia asked, trying not to make eye contact. She, like everyone else, was still scarred from her mother-in-law’s unfortunate bachelorette party.

“Is this your friend?” a nurse asked.

Gia nodded and reached for Fitz’s hand. “He was injured in my class tonight.”

“Sprained his pork sword real good,” the nurse said, checking the computer monitor.

“It was when I tried to spin on the pole,” Fitz said. “I had one leg hooked like this and my other-”

“It’s probably best if you don’t try to re-enact it,” Joey advised.

“This could be a career ruining injury,” Fitz moaned. He jumped off the gurney and shucked his pants. “Look at me! I’m hideous!”

Summer spun around, knocking into Joey and sending them both to the ground.

“Get it away from me,” Joey howled.

Fitz shuffled closer, his pants around his ankle. “It’s all swollen and purple and not in the good way. How am I going to dance at Esther’s 90th birthday party tomorrow?”

“Oh God! It looks so angry!” Gia said, clapping a hand over her mouth.

“Excuse me,” Joey said from the floor, stopping a nurse with the wave of her hand. “Do you happen to have a therapy department?”

#

“X.” Waverly’s smile was pained, and blindingly beautiful.

Somewhere around the third floor, they’d transferred him from the gurney to a wheelchair. The orderly had all but shoved him through the delivery room door before running back downstairs.

“Angel,” he breathed, levering out of the chair. His legs were jelly as he crossed to his wife.

“It’s happening. Baby Saint didn’t want to wait anymore.”

He took her hand and brought it to his face. “Already stubborn like his or her mom. How do you feel?”

“Right now?” she glanced at a monitor behind her. “Okay. In another minute, not so good.”

“I can’t stand to see you in pain,” he whispered.

“I know, X,” she said stroking his cheek. She knew her husband hated not being able to stand between her and pain. “But this is the good kind. The kind that’s worth it.”

A doctor in blue scrubs bustled into the room. “Mr. and Mrs. Saint. Are you two ready to be parents?”

“Yes,” Waverly said with a dreamy grin.

“No,” Xavier said definitively.

Waverly’s laugh turned into a groan.

“Make it stop hurting her,” Xavier ordered the doctor.

She blinked over her surgical mask at the hard edge in his tone.

Waverly clamped down on his hand, hard. “I changed my mind. I’m not ready.”

“It’s a big one,” the doctor said, observing the monitor. “How do you feel about pushing, Waverly?”

“Fuck.” Xavier leaned over her, blocking out the rest of the room so it was just the two of them. “Tell me what to do, Angel. I’ll do it. Anything. I will move heaven and earth for you. Just tell me what you need.”

“Let’s go for a big push,” the doctor said.

Waverly’s gaze locked on to Xavier. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“Waverly, we’re going to do this together. You’re going to have to do most of the work, but if you need to break every bone in my hand to do it, I am right here with you. Let’s do this.”

“You and me, X,” she said, taking a deep breath.

“1, 2, 3…”

#

They limped and tip-toed their way into the dimly lit room. Carter and Beckett were on crutches. One tibia fracture and an ACL rupture between the two of them. Jax’s arm was in a sling with a hairline fracture on his radius. Joey and Summer held ice packs on elbows and posteriors that had hit the unyielding emergency department floor in their desperation to get away from Fitz’s nether region.

“Hey, Mom and Dad,” Gia whispered.

Waverly and Xavier looked up from the angelic face swaddled in its father’s arms.

“It’s a boy,” Waverly grinned.

“Okay, it’s not fair. I pushed out two babies and looked like a dump truck backed over me six times in a wet Walmart parking lot,” Summer groused. “She looks like she’s ready for a photoshoot.”

“They’re so beautiful it makes me want to die,” Gia agreed.

Xavier’s eyes were red-rimmed. Joey fanned herself. “I can’t handle the teary-eyed stud holding his newborn baby.”

“You guys know we’re right here, don’t you?” Beckett asked dryly.

“Shut-up. We’re blinded by beauty,” Gia told him. She winked at him and he limped forward to drop a kiss to her head.

“That’s one good-looking family,” Jax noted.

“We can hear you,” Waverly laughed. “Come meet our son.”

Xavier straightened, cradling the baby in his arms. “Everyone, meet Pierce Saint.”

The women sighed out a swoon.

“Cool name, man,” Carter approved.

“We thought it was fitting,” Waverly said with another angelic smile.

“Okay, I need to know what kind of drugs they gave you,” Gia insisted. “I did not have this dreamy look on my face after Aurora and Lydia exploded from my vaginal canal.”

“Forget the drugs. Are you wearing some kind of magical bronzer?” Summer asked, peering closely at Waverly’s face.

“Women are so weird,” Joey complained. She leaned in close to the baby. “Welcome to the world, kid.”

#

“Well, that was an eventful night,” Joey said dryly as they trudged into the dawn. They’d left Waverly and Xavier to enjoy a few peaceful hours with their son before both families descended upon the hospital from private jets.

“What are the odds the twins will nap for six hours today?” Summer asked Carter.

“What’s less than zero?”

A police car pulled up in front of them. The passenger window rolled down. “Well, if it isn’t a bunch of walking wounded,” Eva Cardona said smugly.

Her husband, Donovan, Blue Moon’s sheriff leaned over his wife. “Phoebe sent us to help round you all up. Breakfast at Beckett and Gia’s.”

“Phoebe and Reva rounded up all the kids that aren’t in utero,” Eva said, patting her rounded belly.

“I’m hungry,” Gia sighed.

“All of them?” Beckett winced, imagining the havoc that was being wreaked on his otherwise orderly house.

“Hey! Put my window down!”

Donovan pushed a button and the rear window lowered.

“Emma! Niko!” Gia reached through the window to hug her sister. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

“Sheriff Sexy here picked us up at the train station,” Emma explained. “We would have been here earlier, but Summer sent us to Waverly and Xavier’s place to grab some of the baby essentials.”

“Yeah, now Emma wants a $25,000 baby chair made out of stuffed animals,” Niko teased.

“Better take more pretty pictures so we can afford it.” She winked at her husband.

“Hey, guys! Can I catch a ride?” Fitz, icepack glued to his crotch, limped toward them.

“Not it,” Summer, Joey, and Gia said simultaneously.

“You can ride with us, Fitz,” Eva offered. “But you have to tell us why you’re icing your penal region.”

“I’ll do better than tell you. I can show you,” Fitz said.

“For the love of God, man! Keep your pants on,” Joey said, beelining for her truck.

“Okay folks, we’re blocking traffic here,” Donovan said. “Let’s head home.”

“It’s kind of funny, isn’t it?” Jax said, limping after his wife.

“What is?” Carter asked, huffing and puffing as he crutch-raced Beckett toward Summer’s SUV.

“A few years ago, it was just the three of us and Mom.”

They paused, grinned. Their family holidays had gone from quiet, somber dinners spent acutely missing their father to the colorful chaos of a large, happy family. John Pierce was still missed, still loved. But he was honored by the life they all lived built on the foundation he’d provided.

Phoebe found a new love with Franklin. Carter found his salvation in Summer. Beckett found his adventure with Gia. Jax found his second chance with Joey. Emma found her partner in Niko. Eva found her rock steady love with Donovan.

And somewhere bright and beautiful, John Pierce settled back in his chair and sighed with satisfaction.