None of that mattered to Craig. As far as he was concerned, Xander was guilty of having sex with his little sister and that was crime enough. “We?”

“Of course,” Xander said. “I’m not just going to drop her on the curb and call our date done because her son is hurt.”

“Her son,” Craig repeated with a smirk. His gaze met Rose’s and she felt the urge to shrivel up into herself and disappear. Craig had figured out that Xander didn’t know the truth yet. Fireworks were about to fly in the E.R. and he would have a front-row seat. He shouldn’t look so damn smug about it, though.

“Shush, Craig. Come on.” Resolved to her fate, she took Xander’s hand and pulled him behind her. “Where’s Joey?”

Craig pointed down the hallway. “He’s in the fourth bed down on the pediatric side.” He started down the corridor and they both followed.

“Mom!”

The minute her broken child came into view, everything else that was going on no longer mattered. She let go of Xander and rushed over to her son’s bedside. They had his left arm in a sling to keep him from moving it.

She hugged him gently and brushed his damp hair back to press a kiss on his forehead. His skin was pale and moist from coping with the pain. “Hi, baby. How are you?”

“I’m doing a little better,” he said with a weak smile. “They gave me some medicine and it doesn’t hurt anymore. I also can’t feel my lips.”

Rose smiled. “That’s good. Did they take X-rays yet?”

“No,” Craig interrupted. “They’re coming to do that in a minute.”

Rose nodded but refused to turn and look at Xander. Not yet. She wanted to focus entirely on making sure her son was okay. That was the most important thing.

“Hey, everyone,” one of the nurses said, parting the curtains around his bed. She pushed a wheelchair over to where Rose was standing. “I’m going to take Big Shot here over to X-ray to get a look at this arm.”

Rose and the nurse helped Joey out of bed and got him settled into the chair. “Do I need to go with him?” She desperately hoped the answer would be yes.

“No, it’s better for you all to stay out here. We’ll be back in about fifteen or twenty minutes. Take a break. Get a drink. It will be a long night.”

Rose watched the nurse roll Joey away. The minute the chair rounded the corner, she heard Xander’s quiet, even voice from the other side of the hospital bed.

“I think we need to have a talk, Rose.”

She took a deep breath. The moment had come. She had been waiting eleven long years to finally unburden herself of this secret. Unfortunately, it was the kind of secret that was harder to tell the longer you waited. Now she didn’t have a choice. Rose nodded softly and shot a glance at her brother that said in no uncertain terms that he was to get out.

Craig gave her a disappointed look and started backing away. “I’m going to go see what they have in the gift shop. Text me if you need me.” He disappeared down the hallway.

Now it was just the two of them. And the truth.

“Rose...” His voice trailed off in near disbelief. His palm rubbed over his face, then back over his hair. His hazel gaze was near penetrating as he focused it on her. “Do you have something you need to tell me?”

“I think you already know, Xander. Yes, Joey is your son.”

* * *

The room felt as if it were spinning around him. Xander reached out and steadied himself on the footboard of the hospital bed. He tried to take a deep breath, but his chest was too tight to draw in the air.

He had a son. A ten-year-old son. And she’d never told him.

Rose sat down on the edge of the hospital bed. “I found out that I was pregnant about a week after you left for college. I was about to leave myself and I wasn’t sure what to do. I had broken up with you. You were leaving to do great things.... I decided to just start school and figure it out later. I had time.”

“You had a few months, not a few years, Rose.” He couldn’t keep the bitterness of betrayal from his voice.

“I know. I spent a lot of time at the hospital talking to my mother about my situation. It kept her mind off the treatments and how poorly she felt. She walked me through all my options, but I knew that I wanted to keep our baby. It might be all of you I ever had. She urged me to contact you. You know how moms are. She didn’t have much time left and worried about me doing this on my own. She thought you would marry me if you knew.”

“I would have.”

Rose turned and looked him straight in the eye. “I know. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”

Xander had a hard time processing what she was saying. “You didn’t want to marry me?”

“Of course I wanted to marry you. I wanted to go to D.C. with you, but it just wasn’t meant to be. I didn’t want you to marry me just because of the baby. That wasn’t the path you were on, Xander. Look at all you’ve done in the last eleven years! All that you’ve accomplished... None of that would’ve happened if you had come home and married me.”

Xander opened his mouth to argue with her, but he was struck with the truth of her words. She was right. Even if she had moved to D.C. with him and they’d gotten an apartment in family housing, finishing school would’ve been challenging. He’d had a full-ride scholarship with books, room and board, but it wouldn’t have covered baby food and clothes and diapers. He would’ve had to work. It was hard enough to finish school without the distraction of a young family at home.

“It wasn’t your decision to make,” he said instead.

“I couldn’t let you give up everything you worked so hard for because we made one little mistake.”

“Little? He’s ten years old.”

“I know that I should’ve told you later, maybe, when he was older and you’d finished school. But the longer you keep a secret, the harder it is to tell. I didn’t even know where to start.”

“So you just waited until you had no choice? No wonder you didn’t want to go to dinner and didn’t mention your son all night. Even when you had the chance, you didn’t want to tell me. You’ve had all these years to do it, but no, you wait for the worst possible time. I’m about to start my reelection campaign. My book comes out in two days. I don’t need any scandals right now.”

He watched Rose’s expression crumble into tears and his chest ached for her, even though he didn’t want it to. She had lied to him. Hidden his child from him. And yet she had done it for him. She’d sacrificed her own dreams, her own life, to raise Joey on her own and allow him to live his dream.

He wanted to be angry with her. To shake her and let out some of his pent-up aggression, but he just couldn’t do it. Instead he sank down onto the foot of the bed. “Please stop crying,” he asked.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Everything I’ve done was to protect your dream. It never occurred to me that Joey and I would still be a liability to your success this far down the road.”

“Well, we’re lucky, I think. The reporters got bored with me very early on and spend most their time digging up other people’s scandals. But the spotlights will be on me during the book tour and the reelection.”

“Can we keep it a secret for a while? No one else needs to know yet, right?”

“Perhaps. If we can keep this quiet for a little while, I might be able to defuse the damage. Compared to the things my colleagues have gotten into, this is hardly headline news.”

“Okay,” she said, her voice quiet.

“Who knows that I’m his father?” Hopefully, the information hadn’t spread too far. The fewer people who knew, the easier it would be to contain it. Given that Molly didn’t know, it had to be pretty hush-hush.

“For certain? Just the two of us, since Mom passed a few weeks after he was born. My brother knows, but I’ve never told him directly. He’s just pieced it all together over the years.”

“How did you explain it to everyone else?”