The True Cowboy of Sunset Ridge (Gold Valley #14)(34)

As she’d gone deeper into her own postpartum depression, she’d wondered if she’d have been just as bad if her baby had lived. If she’d have been able to care for her at all.

She’d never know the answer to that, but her sympathy—empathy—for women in these situations made her ache.

And she couldn’t turn away from Cheyenne’s pain.

“What?” The girl looked confused and tired, dark circles under her blue eyes.

“Does anyone know that you’re here?”

She lifted a hand to her lip and started to chew a thumbnail that was half covered in blue nail polish. “I... I don’t have anyone to call.”

“Then can you talk to me? Can you tell me what’s going on?” Mallory asked, keeping her voice as measured as possible.

The woman—that was a stretch, Mallory realized now that she was closer, she seemed more like a girl—looked angry then. “I don’t know who you are.”

“My name is Mallory Chance. I’m a midwife. I take care of mothers. That’s what I do. And it looks to me like you’re in some distress. I just wanted to make sure that everything was okay.”

Cheyenne’s eyes filled with tears. “No everything is not okay. Nothing’s okay. And it will never be okay again. Ever.”

“Those are just feelings. Those are just feelings—it’s not reality. I think what we should do is sit down and have a talk.”

“I need to go.”

“You don’t want to leave your baby,” Mallory said.

Those words came out harder, with more conviction than Mallory intended.

“I have to,” she said.

And then the woman broke away from them and ran down the porch steps, running toward her car.

Mallory stood frozen for a second, her heart thundering, but when Cheyenne started to pull out, Mallory started to run after the car.

Because this woman was clearly in distress, and she had some concern that she would cause herself harm. If she had left the baby with Colt, then she must be worried about what she might do.

And she couldn’t just leave her alone.

She couldn’t just leave a woman who might be in mental distress.

She couldn’t let her leave this baby.

This baby was alive.

This baby was here.

This baby needed her mother.

And as much as Mallory believed she needed to care more for Cheyenne right now, she couldn’t stop those words from roaring through her like a flood.

She ran on the gravel until she slipped, fell onto her hands, her palms stinging. She was breathing hard. She looked down at her palms.

They were bleeding.

She closed her eyes and tried to process the last couple of minutes. Then she pushed herself into a standing position. She gazed down at her skin then, at the rocks embedded there and the blood starting to pool.

Dammit.

She was...

Broken.

She swallowed hard, her whole body shuddering.

This isn’t about you. This isn’t about you.

She pushed back against images of a small, still bundle that she’d barely been allowed to see.

And looked back at Colt.

He was still standing on the porch cradling the baby, the expression on his face one of fierce determination.

She huffed and started walking back toward him, her steps unsteady.

“What were you doing?” he asked.

“I... She’s obviously got postpartum depression, Colt. Somebody had to do something.” Her hands still stung.

“Sorry. I didn’t figure I could go sprinting after the car while I was holding the baby.”

“She might hurt herself,” Mallory said, insistent. “We need to call somebody. I assume you know how to get in touch with her?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t. I know her name, but that’s all. We can call the police where she lives and see if they can do a welfare check on her in a few days, but other than that...”

“You don’t know the mother of your child?” She couldn’t help it. She was judging. Now she was full-on judging.

You slept with him too. You don’t have a lot of room to judge anyone.

“This isn’t my child,” Colt said.

Well, that successfully shocked her. “It’s not?”

“No.”

Mallory felt thoroughly thrown off-balance now.

“Do you... Well, you know her, so you must know whose baby it is.”

“Yeah, I do. I...”

“We need to call somebody,” she said, charging forward, her brain running a million miles a minute. “We need to call the police.”

She was starting to pull herself back from the past, from her moment of making this all too personal.

“No,” Colt said.

“Give me the baby.”

“Hell no,” he growled, turning and walking into the house. Mallory followed.

“Give me the baby. I want to look at the baby.”

“She gave the baby to me.”

“And I need to make sure the baby is okay.” She was sounding and feeling a little panicky, so maybe she wasn’t as firmly back where she needed to be as she’d thought. “You don’t understand. The mother is obviously in mental distress. Not just upset. Sometimes people in that state... They might hurt a child. Or themselves. That’s my concern.”