CHAPTER 7

Once Mike was released from the hospital, he and Max returned home to pack whatever they'd need for however long their time away would last. Ideally, they should've left New York a week prior, but due to Mike's condition and Max's insistence for him to remain in the hospital until the doctor said otherwise, they were still in the city.

Despite the soundness of her reasoning, Mike and Ryan both knew it was more a case of reluctance on Max's part. Though it was of the utmost importance that they leave as soon as possible, neither men had the heart to argue with her.

"Max, come on. Clarke's waiting." Mike tells his wife for the umpteenth time in the past hour. He knew she was hesitant to go, but now she was stalling.

"But I might need this," he replies, holding up the coffee machine.

"You know you can't drink coffee while you're pregnant." And what a fuss she made about that one four months prior.

"But you can," she points out. "Don't you want coffee?"

He takes the machine from her hands and places it back on the counter. "I'm sure there will be coffee where we're going," Mike chuckles lightly.

Max huffs defeatedly, blowing hair from her face. Mike smiles softly and places his hands on her hips. "What's this really about?"

"It's silly." She shrugs against him, her eyes falling to his chest.

He tilts her head up so as to see her face. "It's never silly if you're fretting over it," he tells her, stroking the ends of her hair. Although Max had a knack for worrying, her reasons for it were never unfounded.

"It's just... we don't know how long this is going to last. What if I go into labour while we're there?"

"So what If you do?" He shrugs, unable to see the significance.

"No one, not even Ryan can know where we are." Max explains, her hands toying with the buttons on his shirt, "I wanted him and Jenny to be there." Of course, she did. They were the only blood related family she had left – of course she wanted them there when another Hardy was born. And Mike felt an overwhelming sense of helplessness because there was absolutely nothing he could do to speed along the process – not if he wanted to remain by her side. They might very well be gone when Max reaches full-term, and they just might be there longer than that. Either way, they couldn't come out of hiding until Mark was detained or dead. Preferably the latter, mused Mike.

"Forget it," Max smiles weakly, waving it off. "I guess you'll do." She says, tapping his shoulder and turning away to ponder taking something else she won't need.

"Oh thanks." Mike laughs lightly. He takes her hand, "come on, we really have to go."

Max sighs heavily, "fine." She relents and lets him lead her out of their apartment.

…

Present day.

Two and a half months later…

"Mike!" Max yells from the bedroom.

Mike pokes his head into the room by the door. "Yeah, babe?" he asks, attentive to his wife's needs.

"I can't get up." She whines, almost pouting. The ache in her lower back wasn't much help.

He had mastered the art of stifling his laughter in amusement to her circumstances. He knew she was having a tough time with the third trimester and that it was only partly because of the stress back in New York. The midwife who made a point to visit every fortnight had warned them to take it easier than one normally would while pregnant. She discovered that it was now a high-risk pregnancy, which didn't make much sense considering Max was only twenty-seven and perfectly healthy. Apparently, sometimes even the healthiest women can have troubling pregnancies for no particular reason that could be found – and they had yet to find one.

With that in mind, Mike had been overly cautious with her. Of course, it didn't take long for Max to notice and she couldn't say she appreciated it. Being coddled like a child was not something she'd willingly partake in.

"Up we get." Mike hoisted her up from the bed with little effort.

Once she was on her feet, Max sighed heavily, "i'm the size of a damn whale, Mike." She wailed semi-dramatically.

"What?" He laughed heartily, unable to contain it. Although the baby seemed slightly larger than the average size at this point, the extra weight had only manifested around her middle. "You really have no idea how beautiful you are, do you?" Mike remarked. How could she look in the mirror each day and not see the beauty that he saw?

"You have to say that - you're the one who did this to me." She huffed.

"I vividly recall it was you who jumped my bones that night." He smirked, leering at her/ "You just had to have me."

Max shrugged. "Of course I did. You were leaving me for four months the morning after."

Saddened by the memory, Mike slumped down on the edge of the mattress. "You know it was never by choice." After all, those were, quite frankly, the toughest months of his life.

…

Eight and a half months earlier…

"I'm not doing this because I want to," Mike argues into the uncomfortable silence between him and his wife. "I don't have much of a choice here, Max." He pleads with her, his hand coming to rest on her shoulder.

Too upset to allow him to touch her – to fold completely and to finally drop the matter, she stands up from the couch. "You keep saying that." She begins, "But I don't believe for a second that you absolutely have to go. Because you don't." And he didn't. She knew it; he knew it and yet, he refused to budge. He told her he wasn't doing this to hurt her but that's exactly what he was doing.

Mike dropped his head, unable to face the reality of the pain he was causing her as it shone in her eyes – they always did speak volumes. "I'm sorry, Max." He breathes with a conviction to solve something, anything while in truth, he didn't know what else to say.

"Whatever, Mike." She replies coldly, turning toward the bedroom. She was about to close the door behind her, leaving him to sleep on the couch, when he pressed his hand to the wood. He stood there, staring down at her and when he receives a glare in return, he stands his ground. "We're not leaving it like this." Mike says, and Max groans, turning into the room.

"Like it matters. You're not going to stay if we kiss and make up, are you?" It was intended to be rhetorical but she dared to hope that he'd answer in her favour anyway. He didn't and she found herself more disappointed than she had been an hour ago. "No, I thought not." She mused, that icy tone still thick in her words.

Mike had stepped further into the room, watching her pull her clothes off, far rougher than the damned things deserved. She was probably imagining they were his neck. Mike nodded, he deserved as much, but he meant what he said. He wasn't going to leave with her hating him for doing so.

Clad in nothing but her underwear, she crossed the room toward him, pushing passed him to shower. Mike caught her arm. "Max…" he said softly, wanting her to look at him.

Knowing he wouldn't budge in this either, Max's eyes met his. His heart plummets to his ankles to find that the anger she felt had swelled into tears, pooling within her eyes. "Please, Mike." She didn't trust her voice not to break along with their hearts, so she kept it small. "Please don't do this." Max certainly wasn't one to beg, but if it kept him from leaving to pursue what she believed to be a fruitless lead, she had no qualms with reducing herself to it. And if she could hate him for anything, it would be this.

Mike wouldn't atone again, for lack of anything better to say. He couldn't explain his need to disregard her wishes and go anyway. And he positively refused to claim he was doing this for her. Although it was true, she shouldn't be the one to bear that cross should anything happen to him while he was gone. Instead, with his hand still on her arm, he pulled her body into the embrace of his arms.

Max buried her face into his neck, her nose pressed to the pulse-point at its base. She didn't cry, but she let the tears fall from her cheeks and onto his skin. He felt them and his arms instinctively tightened around her, his lips to her forehead. They whispered 'I love you' and 'I'm sorry' and Max couldn't bear it much longer. She pulled back, staring up at him, their eyes saying what their voices couldn't.

Finally, as if accepting the circumstances, Max exhales heavily against him. There's no use in fretting over the inevitable, her mother always said. Instead, she reached up and kissed him; softly at first, then he kissed back and she became more forceful, yanking at his shirt, willing it to tear open.

Mike tried to maintain a steady pace, but Max, ever eager to get him naked, pushed him back onto the bed. She only slowed when he sat up to meet her, his hands guiding her hips to straddle his legs. With only her underwear separating them, Mike's hands were full and firm on her back while his mouth teased the sensitive skin at her clavicle. Her fingers clawed at his scalp and he could feel her wedding ring brush against his hair, urging the memory of their wedding night to appear at the forefront of his mind.

They hadn't slept apart in the six months since that night and he suddenly understood the ardency in her pursuit. If he left tomorrow, they'd be sleeping bereft of each other's company for four long months. That thought alone had the power to make him stay because he simply detested sleeping without her – or rather, he couldn't quite sleep at all.

Noticing his affections had ceased, Max leaned back to catch his gaze. "Mike? You okay?" She asked with her hands on the sides of his face.

Breaking out his reverie, Mike gives her a weak smile in reply and adjusts their position on the bed. He places her gently on her back, beneath him. Their lips meet again once, twice before his drift lower down her lean body. She had always been more athletic than him and it showed in the taut muscles of her abdomen. And while he admires the flawlessness of his wife's body, the last of the fabric between them is removed. He matches their heights once again, his forearms resting by her ribcage. His elbows kept his weight off of her while he pressed his skin against hers, no space for even air between them.

He tells her he loves her and he proves it for the next three hours, hoping it might somehow suffice for the time they were to be apart.

…

Present day.

"It didn't though, did it?" Mike remarks in the world of their shared memory.

They're both lying back on the bed now; Max was on her 'comfortable' side and facing Mike. "No. But it did plenty else." She said, referring to the bump between them.

A chuckle rumbled within Mike's chest as he turned to mimic her position. He brought his hand to her belly, resting it there in hopes to feel a kick. "When did you realise you were pregnant?"

"I didn't. Gwen did." She tells him, recalling that one afternoon she spent bonding with her Uncle's new doctor-girlfriend.

…

Six months earlier…

Initially, Gwen had chosen the café Dulce to meet her boyfriend's niece for lunch, but since Max's ex-boyfriend Chris worked there, they had agreed to meet elsewhere, "Thanks," The younger of the two women began. "We didn't officially end things before I got with Mike. He took it pretty hard when he found out there was someone else." She explains, squeezing her eyes shut in response to a throbbing headache.

"Are you okay, honey?" Gwen asked concerned.

"What? Oh, yeah. I'm fine." Max waved it off, flipping through the menu.

Gwen surveyed Max carefully, noticing how her nose seemed to twitch slightly. "Is that why you cancelled breakfast? Did you wake up in pain?" She queried.

Max's brow furrowed in confusion, what was she getting at? "Um… yeah, my stomach felt a bit iffy. But it's better now." Before Gwen could say anything else, Max covered her nose with her hand. "Okay, that is gross! You'd think a restaurant would smell better." Apparently she was offended by something no one else in the establishment could smell.

Treading carefully, the doctor made an obvious prognosis. "Max, I know this isn't my place and you barely know me but… is there a possibility that you could be pregnant?" It didn't really take a professional to agree that, given the symptoms, it was indeed a possibility.

At first, Max was shocked by the notion and the boldness in the statement but, as she too pieced two and two together, her eyes widened in realisation. "Oh crap!" She exclaimed.

Max had panicked and worried herself straight to the restroom to vomit. Gwen called Ryan and he met them at the hospital where she'd carry out an ultrasound. Ryan offered to collect a test from a pharmacy on the way but his girlfriend, being a mother herself, knew Max wouldn't want to leave any room for doubt – if she could find out for certain right away, she might as well do so.

The ultrasound concluded that she was two and a half months along and Mike, who was off hunting who he thought to be Mark Gray in a different continent, was none the wiser. "You have to call him." Ryan told Max.

"I can't…" She frowned; her hands and eyes hadn't left her belly since the jell was cleaned away.

After much persuasion, the Hardy stubbornness shone through and Max refused to tell Mike before he came home. She didn't want to risk the chance of him finding Mark in the last six weeks he was gone. No. She would wait.

…

Present day.

"Then Ryan just had to blurt it out over the damn phone two weeks later." Max cursed, shaking her head. Apparently she was still pissed at her uncle for being so careless.

In the end, Mike had only been gone for three out of the four months that was originally planned. Once he found out that Max was pregnant, he booked the first flight to New York and went straight to her, like the dutiful husband and future father that he was.

Though of course, Max had been right about the false lead, so it didn't matter much that he missed the last month of the proven fruitless search. He was more concerned with having missed the first trimester of Max's pregnancy. "You didn't miss much." She assured him. She had only started showing slightly before he returned.

Mike opened his mouth to speak when suddenly, a sharp pain in Max's lower back caused her to wince. "What was that?" Mike asked immediately, sitting up.

"Nothing. My back just hurts is all."

"What?!" Mike starts, jumping out of bed and over to her side. He placed his hands on the area in which he believed the pain to be coming from. "Is it sore here?" He asked, adding a little pressure to the base of her spine.

"Ow!" She breathed, "Yes. Can you not?" She tried to push his hands away, irritated with him.

"Has it been hurting all day?" He asks and she nods. Mike's hands found hers and carefully manoeuvred her to face him. He knelt down in front of her. "Okay, don't freak out, but the midwife warned me about this…"

"Warned you about what?" Max interrupted, her concern peaked. "Why were you talking to her without me?"

"I wanted to know what I should do if you go into labour before your due date." He explains. They were stuck in a house nestled within the mountains of god only knows where – the nearest hospital was an hour helicopter ride from them, and Mike figured it was smart to be prepared.

"Right," Max nods. "Which is in two weeks."

"Yeah but… I don't think this baby's going to wait until then." She looks at him in disbelief, as if he was joking because she certainly wasn't in the mood for his jests.

She shakes her head and pushes herself up from the mattress. Before she has a chance to tell him to quit it, her water breaks.