They didn’t mean to have a baby. Not yet. Not at twenty-five, not while still learning how to live, let alone raise someone else. But life never asked for permission—it just arrived, in the form of two pink lines and a future that neither of them had planned for. She told Spencer in the quiet of their small apartment, her voice trembling and hands wrapped around a cup of tea like it was the only thing holding her together. And he just… froze.

Spencer Reid was barely steady himself. He’d only just crawled out from under the shadow of addiction, his body still remembering the way Dilaudid felt like control. Clean, yes—but raw. Open. Exposed. And now, he was going to be a father?

He was terrified.

Terrified of being like his own dad, who left when things got complicated. Terrified of repeating every painful chapter from his childhood. But unlike his father, Spencer didn’t leave. He didn’t run. Instead, he stayed up nights reading parenting books and research journals, whispering aloud to the little life growing inside her belly. He mapped out birth plans on the backs of old case files and learned how to swaddle with the precision of a surgeon.

She was the anchor in all of it. She was scared, too—of losing freedom, of messing up, of being “too young”—but she looked at Spencer like he was made of something strong, something real. And he clung to that gaze like oxygen.

When their baby girl was born—red-faced and screaming, fingers as small as flower petals—Spencer held her like she was a formula he didn’t need to solve. Just love.

He never expected to be a young father. But as he sat beside the crib at 3 a.m., tired and humming softly, he knew: this wasn’t a mistake. It was a beginning.