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GAGE

I don’t know how I ended up here—staring down at the little bundle in my arms, barely able to process what’s happening.

My mind is a haze of confusion and anger.

It’s late, the cold creeping in through the cracks of the house.

The doorbell rang just hours ago, and now there’s a baby—my daughter, apparently—wrapped in a faded hospital blanket with an envelope that says her name: Zoe Jane Donovan.

The note inside doesn’t explain much else.

It doesn’t tell me why her mother’s gone or why she thought leaving her on my doorstep in the middle of the night was the answer.

Obviously, I’m not a hard man to find, especially since her mother was someone whom I’ve hooked up with before.

A month ago, I was in the desert. Now, I’m a father.

A father with no goddamn clue what to do.

I wish I could walk away. I wish I could toss this responsibility on someone else, but the reality hits harder than any punch I’ve ever taken in combat. I’m her father, whether I want to be or not.

I’ve got a job to do. A life to live. And the one thing I know for certain is that I can’t do this alone.

I look down at her tiny face, her eyes still closed, her tiny fingers curled around my hand as if she already knows I’m the only thing standing between her and the world right now.

She’s breathing softly and steadily, but I can feel the weight of her existence pressing down on me like a thousand pounds.

I’m used to carrying heavy shit, used to the adrenaline of missions where life and death are hanging by a thread. But this... this is different. I can’t just run off and leave her with God knows whom, not when she can barely hold her own head up.

I don’t know the first thing about being a father. Fuck, I don’t even know how to change a diaper, let alone keep a baby alive.

I never even thought about being a dad. I’ve seen enough of war, of destruction, and of people broken beyond repair that I had no space for thoughts of family or of a future that involved children.

My world was simple: mission, objective, survival.

Then there’s this—Zoe. This tiny human that I’m supposed to keep alive.

The note from her mother is crumpled in my other hand, the ink smudged from my sweaty palms. It says she’s “sorry,” and that’s it. No explanation. No help. Just a damn baby and a cryptic apology.

I want to scream. I want to throw something—anything. Maybe punch a hole in one of the walls just to make the feelings crashing through me stop. But instead, I take a breath. I focus on her.

Zoe is the tiniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. The birth certificate says she was six pounds at birth. I didn’t know they could be that small. I’m six foot five and two hundred and thirty pounds, and this little girl just feels like a doll in my arms.

The silence in the house is suffocating. The only sound is the soft click of the clock on the wall, ticking away in the background, reminding me that time is passing and that decisions need to be made.

I feel a knot in my stomach. I need help. I need someone who knows how to handle this kind of thing. Someone who can tell me what the hell I’m supposed to do now.

I can’t leave for my next deployment, not now. But I can’t stay either—there’s too much I still need to do. It’s not like I can put her up for adoption, even though that would be the logical thing to do. I’m responsible for her, but I’m not ready for this. I never asked for this.

She’s mine.

I can feel it.

I don’t know how long I stand there, staring at her face. But eventually, I turn away, my mind already racing through options. The military has resources. Maybe they’ll know someone. A nanny, or whatever you call them. Someone who can help me figure this out.

But no matter what, I know one thing for sure: there’s no going back.

I’m not just Gage Mitchell Donovan III, Gunnery Sergeant of the 1st Marine Raider Battalion.

Not anymore.

I’m a father.

And that scares the shit out of me.