I hope you enjoy!

"Oh look, it's the wicked witch of the West. How did they put you back together? Last time I saw you, you were meeelltttinnnggg," Ridge laughed.

"Stephanie Junior, where's mommy? Did she give you permission to be this far from home? Or did she let you walk down the hall all by your lonesome while she stayed in the hotel room?" the woman mocked, blocking Ridge from seeing inside the hotel room.

"Not funny, Dara."

"The truth rarely is. What are you doing here?" Dara Jensen, Brooke's best friend asked.

"I came- -"

A baby's coos interrupted Ridge's answer. As Dara turned towards the noise, he barged in. On the bed he saw an adorable Chinese baby lying in the center of the bed.

"She's beautiful," he stated in awe.

Dara moved closer to the bed.

"Where's Bro- -"

Brooke emerged from the bathroom in khakis, t-shirt, wet hair, and a baby in her arms. Looking at Brooke and the baby in her arms, then back to the baby on the bed, he was confused.

"If that's our baby," Ridge said, pointing to the baby in Brooke's arms, "then who- -"

"Take a guess brainiac," Dara said, rolling her eyes. "What did you ever see in him?" she asked, directing her question to Brooke. "This is," she continued, picking up the baby, "Shelby Brooke Jensen."

"Hi, Shelby," Ridge cooed.

Shelby smiled, showing off her one tooth. Holding her daughter closer, she said in a stage whisper close to

Shelby's ear, "Traitor."

"No, unlike her mother, she just has good taste."

"Then I'll have to have her vision checked when we get home because all that's in front of her is a man with a head so big, I'm surprised you could come through the door face first. Of course the size is due to your ego, your conceit and all the lies you've been fed over the years about your greatness by your mother, evil incarnate herself, and that uptight, stuck up wife of yours. And you have as much depth as a ½" of dirty pond water. So based on that I'm sure you can see why I'm concerned that she smiled at you." Turning her attention to Brooke, Dara informed her college roommate, "If you need me, I'll be in the other room." Dara walked through the connecting door, closing it behind her.

"I- -"

"Don't finish that statement, Ridge," Brooke suggested.

"Why hasn't she married Storm already? They could be- -"

"Ridge," she warned.

"Fine, but how did you ever become friends with her?"

"Amazingly enough that's the same thing she says about you."

"Let's now talk about the witch. Aren't you going to introduce me?"

Brooke walked over to the sofa and Ridge joined them. "Ridge Forrester, please meet Faith Logan?"

"No," he said, shaking his head. "We're not going to do that to Hope. Hope and Faith. Faith and Hope. No way."

"I was just testing it."

"The testing ends now. How about Dawn?"

"Dawn," she repeated, testing it out.

"The dawning of a new day for the Logan/Forrester family."

"Dawn Jensen Logan."

"Dawn Jensen Forrester. Did you just say Jensen? We are not naming- -"

"Dara called me every day and would distract me with mindless chatter about any and everything. Every day without missing one day. In the midst of one of the biggest trials of her career, she offered to fly to LA and hold my hand while I waited for the bodies to be found. I had to use every trick, bribe, tactic in the book to keep her in Port Charles. On those nights when I was all alone in that house and the babies were sleep, I could have gone mad, but her calls kept me sane. They kept the demons at bay. Dawn is in my arms now only because of Dara's encouragement and conviction that I could do this."

"Jensen it is. I guess even a witch can show a nice side occasionally," he added.

"What are you doing here?"

"Did you think I could let you add this precious baby girl to our family and not be here?"

"Where are the kids?"

"Thomas and the girls are watching Jurassic Park in Chinese, in the room across the hall."

She nodded. "Dawn Jensen Forrester, meet your dad."

Ridge stared at the black hair cut into a crew cut and the dark brown eyes staring up at him. He noticed that Dawn had one hand desperately clutching on to Brooke's t-shirt. He had to take this slowly.

"Hi, Dawn. We've been waiting for you for a long time," he said in a quiet, calm voice.

Dawn gave him a tentative smile and reached out her free hand to cautiously touch his fingers. Brooke smiled over Dawn's head at Ridge.

"If you keep showing up where I am, I'm going to think you're stalking me or think I'm incapable of doing anything without you."

"You can do anything without me. You raised two terrific kids without me. On the plane ride over here, I was wondering if I would make it over here sane with the three of them. Yet with all the ruckus and drama that sometimes threatened to overrun your life, you were able to add to the world two great adults. Even with what Amber did to Ric, he was a real man and stood by her side. When he found out that Eric wasn't his biological son, he still fought to keep him and continued being a father to the little baby he loved with all his heart. Which when you think about it, it's pretty amazing because with all the Forrester men in his life, all he saw them do was walk out on his mother without a second thought and without ever looking back. Ric made the Forrester name honorable again. I strive to be as good of a dad as he was," Ridge articulated with tears in his eyes.

Brooke wiped the tears falling down his cheek, and then wiped her own.

"That's why I'm here, that's why I brought the kids. Families stick together. I don't want Dawn, for one moment, to think she wasn't wanted or welcomed in this family."

Shaking her head, she stared at her best friend. "Forrester, you should have gone to therapy a long time ago."

"I should've, but I think it would have been lost on me. I think," he shook his head, "I hate to say this, but I needed some great tragedy to befall me to drive home the fact that I needed help, that my life was a mess, that I was screwed up and so were a lot of the relationships in my life."

Why couldn't this Ridge have existed decades ago when he first proposed to her? Or after they got married the first time around? Maybe Bridget and Ric would still be alive?

Maybe they wouldn't have chosen so poorly in their own love lives after seeing all her disastrous attempts at trying to get over Ridge? They would all be different people if only, but if onlys were useless now. Ric and Bridget were dead. And if their deaths prompted Ridge or anyone else to reevaluate his or her life, then their deaths were not in vain, she thought as she held her newest daughter on the first anniversary of Ric's and Bridget's death.