Saving You (Words We Never Said #6)

Prologue

PROLOGUE

RIDGE

“Oh my God, oh my God, I feel like I’m about to shit out a bowling ball, what’s happening to me?”

If Ridge hadn’t been on the verge of panic at the sight of a baby’s head between the woman’s thighs, he might have laughed. But this was his first emergency call with a woman in labor. Not that it had been communicated over the line. She said she was having extreme intestinal distress and bleeding.

He’d expected to find a woman shitting red Takis on her toilet. Not someone crouched on their front lawn with a baby crowning.

Glancing around, he could see half a dozen neighbors pretending to check the mail, and he wanted to preserve this poor girl’s dignity. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen, if that, and she didn’t deserve to make a home-birthing show in her front yard against her will.

“It’s not a bowling ball. It’s a baby,” he told her in his most soothing voice ever.

Her hands—strong enough to leave bruises—flew up and clamped around his thighs so hard it made him grunt. “What do you mean it’s a baby ? How can it be a baby? I’m not pregnant!”

“Well, if the head between your legs is anything to go by, you were pregnant, and you’re currently giving birth,” he said.

He placed his hands under her arms, prepared to lift her. He was the only one on scene. He’d been down the street in the SUV on a Tim Horton’s run when the call had come in, and the only free wagon was eight minutes away, which was plenty of time for her to both give birth and bleed to death.

It was a no-brainer, really.

“How can I be pregnant?” she sobbed. “How is this possible?”

He wanted to say, “My guess is sex or some sort of biblical miracle,” but he didn’t. That wasn’t fair, and he had no idea how this had happened to her. She could have been assaulted or deprived of a basic education, and the last thing in the world he wanted was to make her feel worse.

She looked dazed and very pale, grunting as her muscles contracted against her will. There was another gush of blood and fluid, and when he peered down, the baby’s forehead appeared. Fuck.

“I just mean we…uh. We…we used a condom,” she managed to get out. “I thought those were supposed to make sure this didn’t happen.”

Ridge eased her to her feet, slipped his arm around her as they headed inside, and supported almost all of her weight while keeping his hand on the baby’s head to try and prevent the baby from being hurt. He didn’t want to make her give birth on her lawn, but he was terrified this was going to go poorly.

“Condoms aren’t a hundred percent effective,” he said as he helped her waddle to the couch. He’d heard of cryptic pregnancies, and as he laid her down, he could see that her stomach wasn’t all that big. “What’s your name, darlin’?”

She licked her lips as she lay back, and he got her legs bent so he could check on the baby. “A-ashlynn.”

“Pretty name. I’m Ridge.”

“You sound like—uh. Oh God…” Another contraction hit her, and she grunted again. He peered down, and the baby was the same, but he noticed the forehead was very, very blue. He’d never done this before, and in the training videos, it didn’t talk about what to do if the baby wasn’t breathing. Or maybe they did and he hadn’t retained that information.

He was probably panicking.

Fuck.

“I’m going to get a couple of towels and my kit from my truck, okay? I need you to breathe through the contractions and try not to push.”

“I can’t…I—uh, uhhhhhhh . I can’t help it,” she gasped.

“I know. Just do your best.” He ran to her bathroom and snagged the first couple of towels he could find hanging on a rack. Tossing them onto the coffee table, he bolted for his truck. He had a supply pack with enough in there to safely deliver the baby if it happened before the EMTs arrived.

“ETA?” he demanded as he ran. “Eighteen-to-twenty-year-old female in active labor. Contractions are about thirty seconds apart, baby’s head is crowning.”

“Eight-one-eight-six en route, four minutes.”

Four minutes was an eternity for something like this. He heard her scream right as he hurtled past the threshold. Ashlynn was sitting up halfway, and the baby’s head was out completely. Ridge threw the bag on the table and grabbed a towel. There was no stopping it now. He needed to get the baby out and make sure she wasn’t going to bleed out on him.

The next three minutes were pure chaos. Screaming, viscera, blood, panic. She hit him in the face twice, but he stayed between her legs, and with some careful guidance and two pink towels with Hello Kitty on them, he delivered a very small but breathing baby girl.

Ashlynn collapsed onto the cushions as the EMTs came through the door, and the next thing Ridge knew, he was cradling a freshly born, crying infant wrapped in their own sterile towels while they gave oxygen to Ashlynn and delivered the afterbirth.

He walked toward the window as the baby began to calm. Her eyes were very, very dark and terrifyingly aware. She had a red stain on her cheek that stretched to her ear. He’d attempted to wipe it off before realizing it was a birthmark.

“Hi,” he whispered. “You’re going to be okay. Your momma is going to live.”

The baby blinked at him, slow and sleepy.

He rocked her back and forth, the world around him going quiet. It hit him in the gut that he was lonely. He had a boyfriend, but that relationship was about to end. He’d gotten the death of romance text already, “We need to talk.” He was hours away from being single.

The baby’s weight in his arms was heavy but strangely comforting. God, he wanted this. He didn’t know why. He wasn’t a kid kind of guy. He’d never pictured himself with a family, but something was cracking deep inside his chest.

“We can take her. Thank you for all your help.”

The moment was almost violently shattered as the baby was pulled from his arms, but he let her go. Ashlynn was on a stretcher, and the EMT placed the baby in her arms. Ashlynn met his gaze, and he walked over to her, gripping her wrist lightly.

“Ridge,” she said, her voice hoarse. “I was going to tell you that your name makes you sound like a lumberjack.”

He laughed. “Believe it or not, I get that quite a lot.”

Ashlynn looked down at the baby. “How am I supposed to do this? I can’t be a mom. What do I even do with her?”

“You’ll figure it out. I promise,” he said, squeezing her wrist again. “What are you going to name her?”

“Oh. Um.” She blinked up at him. “What would you name her?”

He pulled back, startled. “I don’t know. I never really thought about that. Uh…I’d probably name my kid after my favorite grandma. Ina.”

“That’s pretty,” she said. “Old though.”

He laughed. “Sure is. But hey, it’s a classic. You take care, okay?”

“Yeah. I’ll figure it out, right?” she echoed back at him as he stepped away and the EMTs began to wheel her out. He followed after a beat, and they shut the door behind him.

The moment was over. It was all over. He had blood and baby goo all over him. He needed a shower to decontaminate and send someone else on a second Tim Horton’s run because he doubted a microwave could save their coffees now, but he couldn’t go back like this.

He stood by the SUV and watched the ambulance leave. It was the strangest part of the job, being so heavily involved in something so intimate—so powerful—and then knowing he was likely never going to see her or the baby again.

He felt profoundly changed and yet exactly the same. It was unsettling. But it was part of the life he’d chosen, and there was no going back now. After all, it didn’t really mean anything in the end. His life would carry on exactly the way it was.

So why, as he got behind the wheel and started down the street, did this time feel entirely and completely different?

Ridge got his answer three weeks later. It was two o’clock in the morning. Two of the guys were playing Xbox on headsets, two were sleeping. He’d been out, but something woke him, and now he was wandering the station, trying to figure out what had him on edge.

He was halfway to the fridge to grab a smoothie when his dispatch alert went off. Something told him this was big. This was important.

“SafeHaven drop-off at oh-eight-six.”

That was theirs.

His hands were shaking as he started to run. They’d had it for years, and he knew there had been a couple of drop-offs before his time, but never when he’d been on shift. He answered the call as he hurried through the door and came to a skidding halt at the sight of an infant behind the glass.

The SafeHaven box was temperature-controlled and looked like a little plastic hospital cot. He could see the baby wasn’t crying. They were sucking on their fist, wrapped loosely in a blanket. When Ridge began to move again, they turned to look at him.

Realization slammed into him as he pushed the button on the wall to open the box. It slid out toward him, and before he was even aware he was moving, he had the baby in his arms. The dark eyes held his. Three weeks ago, this baby had been bald and newborn.

Now, she had a tuft of black hair and was bigger and even more aware, but the mark on her cheek was the same. And so was that stare as she met his gaze.

“Oh fuck,” came a voice from behind him. “A baby.”

Ridge spun to see his captain leaning in the door, bleary-eyed and confused.

“I missed the call. How long was it in there?”

“Not more than a couple minutes,” Ridge said. “Mark.” His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. “I know this baby.”

Mark’s brows furrowed. “What the fuck do you mean you know this baby? How do you know a baby?”

Ridge touched the birthmark on her cheek. “I delivered her.”

“You’re shitting me. This is the call? The ‘I’m shitting a bowling ball, how am I pregnant’ call?”

Ridge looked down at her. His heart felt like it was breaking. He thought she would be okay. “Yeah.”

Mark walked past him and grabbed whatever was left in the box. “There’s a note.” Ridge didn’t look up, but he heard paper unfolding. “Hey, Lumberjack,” Mark read aloud. “What the fuck? Anyway, uh…sorry I couldn’t do this,” he read without any real tone except boredom and annoyance, “yada yada, I wasn’t expecting a baby, blah blah. I got someone to tell me what station you worked at. I figured you could look after her. Sorry for the trouble. Ashlynn. Wow, man.”

Ridge swallowed heavily as he watched the baby’s eyes start to close. He rocked her back and forth. “EMTs on the way?”

“Yeah,” Mark said. He stepped in close and touched the hair on top of her head. “Shame about her face.”

Ridge felt the urge to clock him in the fucking mouth. “She’s perfect. Shut the fuck up.”

“Sorry,” Mark said. He didn’t sound it. He was a perpetual bachelor and would probably never understand loving something so small or how something could be so perfect, even if they didn’t look the way he expected. “The wagon will be here soon. We don’t need to worry about this shit tonight.”

Ridge’s grasp tightened on her. “I think I’ll ride along.”

“That’s unnecessary.”

Ridge looked up at his boss. “You don’t need me tonight. I was there when she was born. I want to make sure she’s okay before the DCS agent shows up.”

Mark looked torn, but after a beat, he shrugged. “Yeah, alright. Go nuts, bud.” He handed Ridge the note, then walked off.

Ridge stood there staring at the little face, wondering if this time, it meant something. If the fact that she was there in his arms was a sign of something…bigger. He didn’t know how it could be. Likely they’d contact Ashlynn’s family and find a home for her with her blood relatives. That’s how it should be, anyway.

He shifted the baby in his arms to get to the note, and he glanced over at what Mark had skipped. His heart hammered against his chest.

…they told me at the hospital she can’t hear. I don’t remember what they called it. You should probably get her tested, and I’m sure there’s some kind of medicine or ear drops or something they can use but I couldn’t afford to see the doctor after I was discharged. My parents kicked me out and I’ve been crashing with a friend, but they won’t let me stay with a baby. I just turned nineteen. I’m sorry. I hope you don’t think I’m a monster, but I can’t handle a baby. I can barely handle myself. This is the only thing I could think of. This wasn’t supposed to happen, but I figured you could look after her until someone finds her a good home. Or maybe she could live with you? I don’t know. Sorry for the trouble.

-Ashlynn

He looked back down at the baby. There was no chance in hell he could keep her. How could he? He wasn’t a foster parent. He wasn’t in a relationship. He was barely put together himself. But somehow, thinking he was going to have to hand this baby off felt like ripping off all four limbs.

He’d do it, of course. What choice did he have?

But something in his gut told him this wasn’t over. And he supposed if he was good at anything, it was being a stubborn bastard when it came to the things he wanted.