The sound she made next would be burned into my memory forever.
30
LOCKE
Wren had been born sleeping on this ward. Rocco’s wife—Lettie—haddiedhere, birthing fuckin’ twins, a memory I’d somehow drowned out until this moment, thanks to Ranger and Folk blocking it as resolutely as I had.
This fuckin’ ward, though...
The pictures on the walls were different now, and more than two decades had passed since that night, but somehow it smelled the same.
I sat alone in a room, just a sweet-scented bundle in my arms for company. A girl, born screaming into my arms. Bornalive, as blood and energy had seeped from Orla, slackening her limbs, her consciousness fading as sirens bore down on us—firefighters who couldn’t do more for Orla than I already had.
Haemorrhage.
I’d known it even before the paramedics, who showed ten minutes later, had radioed it in, blue-lighting Orla and the baby to the hospital, taking Nash with them and leaving me at the side of the road.
Somehow I’d made it here. I’d never recall how.
The bundle in my arms shifted, tiny sounds coming from her tiny mouth. She had fair skin and eyes that wouldn’t close, her gaze fixed on me, waiting for news I couldn’t give her yet. Of her mum, of her unborn sibling. Of her dad and whatever hair he had left by the end of this. “I’m just the bonus pops, baby girl. Can’t wait for you to meet the real thing.”
I murmured the words so softly they were little more than a low rumble from my chest. The buzz from my phone was louder and my grip on it tightened, but I didn’t read the message on the screen. Couldn’t—cos it wasn’t Nash telling me our woman had made it through life-saving surgery. That our baby had survived. I had no clue who it was and no capacity to care. I’d spoken to no one since I’d hurled out texts and called Logan when I got here.
Couldn’t remember what I’d said.
What anyone had said to me.
Just that I’d been alone in this room since a midwife who knew me—who knewus—had ushered me inside and brought me the only light in my world right now.
Outside, the night faded into a crisp morning. I rose and moved to the window, showing our baby girl the first sunrise she’d ever see. Worry gnawed at my heart—raw fear—but the little hand clutching my finger kept the worst of it at bay. The devil was done with me. I’d lost enough.
“Locke?”
I spun around. The midwife who’d brought me the baby hovered in the doorway.
“No news. But your brother is here. Shall I bring him down?”
Brother. Cam, probably, but in truth it could’ve been anyone. Whoever had got here first, so maybe River.
I nodded.
The midwife darted away and the encounter dropped out of my mind. I went back to flitting my stare between the window and the baby, my daughter in all ways but blood.
My third baby girl.
Fuckin’ hell.
Footsteps sounded behind me. I didn’t turn. Didn’t even look up. But the tug in my heart had other ideas and my gaze drifted from the baby to one so familiar I thought it my own.
Logan.
Shock barrelled through me. Was I dead? Had the heart attack I was surely fuckin’ due finished me off? “How—how are you here?”
Logan drew closer, dumping his coat on a nearby chair. “I was already on my way when you called.”
“Why?”
“Just had a feeling this was where I needed to be today.”