PART ONE: STOP
Prologue
Santa Barbara County – October 22, 2024
Nobody had told her …
Nobody had told Sierra Hunt how the contractions rolling through her body intermittently would leave her so physically drained, yes, but also so completely present. The agony grounded her in the moment, and after each contraction cleared, it left clarity in its wake. She could feel the hospital bedsheets underneath her. She could smell the antiseptic hovering in the room and hear the soft-soled shoes padding back and forth on the cold floor.
Although she had only just begun – not even an hour past that first slice of pain – sweat glistened on her brow. Although she knew that they were rushed, almost manic, the hospital staff seemed to move in slow motion as her body swam in a flood of hormones and adrenaline.
The nurse, a sweet older woman who had introduced herself as Jenny only thirty minutes earlier, whispered something to the doctor.
Doctor Samira Patel, the same doctor who had monitored Sierra throughout her pregnancy and asked her all those new small talk questions – Do you want to know the sex of your baby? Do you have any names? What colour are you doing the nursery in? – nodded tiredly and cast an indecipherable glance in Sierra’s direction.
Benji’s callused palm, so rough and familiar against her own, squeezed, pulling her attention to him. Sierra returned the pressure.
‘How are you doing, Si? What can I do? Breathing exercises? Ice? A shot of bourbon?’ he teased.
Because she knew him as well as she knew herself and understood that he hated feeling helpless, she ran her thumb against the back of his hand. ‘I’m good.’ She laughed, and it was anxious even to her own ears. ‘I can’t wait to meet her, Benji. I feel like I’ve been pregnant forever.’
He brought his hands together, cradling the one he held in both of his, and bent his forehead to where they were linked. ‘Me too.’
‘You feel like you’ve been pregnant?’
‘Damn straight.’ He raised his head, his green eyes momentarily glinting. ‘I’ve gained pounds of sympathy weight.’
He was trying to distract her from the hushed murmurings occurring at the foot of her bed. But hehadgained weight. Sierra might have teased him about it, except where her weight had piled on, softening all her hard edges for motherhood, Benji’s only made him look more masculine, more grown.
Long gone was the gangly boy she had first fallen in love with, and in his place stood a man that turned heads wherever he went. At six-two, with the sun-streaked blond hair and green eyes of a Rip Curl model, Benji should have been strutting some runway or surfing in Malibu instead of working as Hunt Ranch’s glorified barn manager. Yet here he was.
And he was hers.
Knowing it still made her heart catch in her chest.
‘Benji.’
They both turned to Doctor Patel at the softly spoken word.
Sierra’s tired smile wavered when she saw the look on her doctor’s face. The cheery demeanour that Doctor Patel had worn into the room was gone, and in its place was composed dread and sympathy, neither of which Sierra understood.
‘What’s wrong?’ Sierra asked as the first chill slipped through her overheated skin and into her heart.
Before the doctor could reply, Benji squeezed her hand. ‘Relax, baby. I’ll handle it.’
He kissed her sweaty brow and left her side to go and speak with the doctor.
They angled their bodies away from Sierra, lowered their voices. But she didn’t have to hear them to know that something was horribly, horribly wrong.
She had known Benji her entire life, loved him for over half of it. She understood instantly by his rigid posture and the way he could not look back to reassure her that her world was about to shift beneath her.
She tried to fight it, to delay the inevitable. She closed her eyes as the momentum of the shift became tangible. Placing both hands on the huge mound of her belly, she rubbed in slow circles, begged:Come on, Baby Girl. We can do this.Please. Please. I’ve been waiting so long to meet you.
‘Sierra.’
Benji’s voice,soquiet but thick with emotion, sliced through her silent pleas.
Sierra didn’t open her eyes. She knew from only one word, hernameon his lips, that it was already too late.
