Her heart wouldn’t let her lie. She wouldn’t say that Daniel didn’t have children.
Yet there was no way on earth she was going to admit to a total stranger that Daniel had a son.
Not until she’d broken the news to Daniel first.
“Kimberly?” Daniel’s voice cut through her dizziness. “You okay?”
She blinked up at the man standing beside her. Was she imagining him? Imagining the worried look on his face? The tenderness in his eyes?
Or was it just the fatigue making him look so concerned?
“I’m fine,” she lied, knowing now wasn’t the time or place to go into all the reasons she wasn’t fine at all.
She shot a quick glance towa
rd room number three.
Life didn’t always provide a right time or place.
Sometimes a person had to say what was in their heart because they might not be given another opportunity. Ever.
“Peyton wanted a minute alone with his father.” Daniel explained why he’d returned so quickly and why the boy remained in his father’s room unsupervised. “He had some things he wanted to say in private.”
“Oh, God.” Cathy’s face crumpled and tears rolled down her cheeks. “If Aaron doesn’t…” Her voice broke and a sob shook her body. She leaned forward, her face in her hands, shaking with emotion. She rocked back and forth, sobbing.
Nurse mode and fellow mom kicking in, Kimberly wrapped her arms around the woman, hoping to offer comfort and perhaps needing a bit of her own and an excuse to escape Daniel’s troubled stare.
“Shh, he’s made it through surgery and the night. That’s a good sign.” From her years of working on the cardiac unit, she knew that was true. Those first few hours were the most critical.
“You don’t understand,” the woman cried, holding on to Kimberly like a lifeline. “They argued yesterday evening. Peyton wanted to go somewhere and Aaron wouldn’t let him.” Several deep shudders shook the woman.
Kimberly hugged her tighter, offering soft comforting words.
“Peyton snuck out of the apartment—” Cathy sniffled “—and went anyway.”
“Kids push boundaries,” Daniel reminded from behind them, causing Kimberly to glance at him, then wince at the pain squeezing her heart.
She should have given him a choice, let him decide what he wanted from the moment she’d discovered her pregnancy. Instead, she’d lost him forever when she could have spent her life with him.
“It’s a natural part of growing up.”
The woman’s eyes closed. She took several deep breaths and pulled back from Kimberly to give Daniel an imploring look for him to understand what she was about to say.
“Aaron went after Peyton. There were drugs being moved at the abandoned building where Peyton was meeting his new ‘friend.’ It was a setup to lure Aaron in. He was shot outside the building he’d followed Peyton to by a drug dealer he’d busted a couple of weeks ago.”
She shot a weepy-eyed glance at where her son leaned over her husband’s hospital bed. Tubes and wires poked out of his body at various points and Aaron’s skin shone ghastly pale. The boy held his father’s hand and even from across the hallway his pain penetrated them all.
“He blames himself for this.” The woman wept. “If Aaron dies…I don’t know what Peyton will do. I know it’s not his fault, but he’s so frustrated by life at this point anyway, which is how this creep got to him so easily. And now this.”
Cathy curled into a crying heap.
Kimberly held the woman while she cried. A tear slid down her cheek for the woman’s pain. For the pain she’d cause Daniel when she told him the truth.
For the pain Ryan would feel when she told him about Daniel, that he could have had a father all these years.
“I think Peyton will be coming out in the next minute or so,” Daniel warned, his compassionate gaze going back and forth between the weeping women.
Cathy sat up, wiping at her eyes and trying to control her sobs. “I’ve got to be strong. He can’t see me like this.”