The Heart Surgeon's Secret Son

“You’re Ryan’s father.”

He shook his head as if to clear it. “I didn’t hear you. Tell me again.”

She took a deep breath and started over. “I was pregnant when I broke up with you, Daniel. You’re Ryan’s father.”

Stunned didn’t begin to describe the look on his face. “You’re sure?”

“Positive, Daniel.” She smiled softly. “Every time I look at him, I see you in his eyes, his smile, the way he carries himself. He’s your image.”

“I have a son?” His face pulled tight and dazed eyes stared at her, but she wasn’t sure they saw.

Fighting the panic in her belly, she nodded. “Ryan’s fourteen.”

“Fourteen?”

She nodded. “He’ll be fifteen in April.”

“I have a son who’s almost fifteen and you’re only now telling me?” Daniel snapped out of his shocked haze and glared. His fist came down hard on the thick wooden table, sending bottles toppling.

Wincing at his anger, Kimberly sc

urried to straighten them before anything spilled. “Daniel, please.”

“Please?” he mocked. “Please, what? Please, ignore the fact that you’re telling me I have a son who’s almost grown up and I’ve missed out on his entire life?”

“It’s not like that,” she began, but Daniel had a point. It was like that.

That’s exactly what she’d cheated him out of for fourteen years.

Sure, her reasons had started out noble, but she had to face the truth.

Fear of losing Ryan the way she’d lost Daniel was the only reason her son didn’t know his father, was the only reason Daniel didn’t know his son.

After Daniel had graduated from medical school she should have gone to him, told him the truth, begged him to forgive her and still love her. But time had passed and she’d been afraid. Afraid of rejection. Afraid of losing Ryan.

Afraid of not being good enough.

Even now, fear besieged her. Fear of how Ryan would take this, but even more, fear of the hatred she saw blazing in Daniel’s eyes.

Hatred she understood because she’d have felt it herself if someone had told her she’d had to give up the last fourteen years with her son.

“I’m sorry, Daniel. I made the choice I thought was right.”

“The right choice?” he scoffed, his breath coming out in heavy puffs, his jaw flexing. “You had my baby and didn’t tell me. How is that the right choice?”

When he put it like that, her thought process was difficult to recall. But she had believed it to be the right choice.

So had his mother.

Leona had begged her not to tell Daniel, to have an abortion, and let Daniel have his dream.

She’d even given Kimberly money to pay for the procedure.

For all she knew, Leona believed she’d had an abortion because she’d not spoken to the woman since breaking things off with Daniel.

Then again, if Leona had read her mother’s obituary last year, she would have seen Ryan listed as having survived his grandmother. At the very least, Leona had to have wondered about Ryan.

All she would have had to do was pick up the sports section to see article after article mentioning Ryan.