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“I’m not perfect,” she began, battling memories of just how imperfect she’d felt when confronted by his mother. “But I truly did what I thought right.”
She reached out to touch him, but he jerked away.
Tears rolled down her cheeks and she fought to keep from running out of the restaurant. Running back to Atlanta and the comfort of her carefully orchestrated life.
“Daniel, no matter what you think, I never meant to hurt you. I was only seventeen, and I was scared.” God, she’d been scared. Scared of being so young, of having to tell her mother, having to face her senior year of high school while pregnant, having to face the rest of her life as a single mom, but she’d done it. “I made the best decision I could at the time.”
He stared at her, his teeth gritted, his hands clenched, his body tight with tension.
When his eyes closed, she noticed the bulging vein at his temple, the rapid beat jumping, showing just how much he strained to hold in his wrath.
When he opened his eyes, he seemed to have reached decisions, and he motioned for the waiter. “We’re leaving.”
Unsure what to say, she nodded.
The waiter brought their bill and Daniel dropped money onto the table. “Let’s get out of here.”
He took her hand, but in more of a viselike grip than the tender caress of earlier. Without a word, he led her around crowded tables toward the front of the restaurant.
A commotion a few tables over caught her eye about the same time as it caught Daniel’s.
A morbidly obese man slid out of his chair and onto the wooden-planked floor. A young boy and woman also sat at the table.
“Ken?” the woman screeched, jumping out of her seat and going around to where the man lay still. “Oh, my God, someone call 911. My husband’s passed out.”
The little boy’s face turned white. He dropped to his knees and began tugging on the man’s straining shirt. “Daddy, wake up. Daddy, you aren’t supposed to lie down in the food place. Daddy, please, wake up.”
Daniel and Kimberly exchanged a lightning-fast look. Setting their private concerns aside, they headed to where the man lay. A crowd had already started to gather.
“I’m a doctor,” Daniel announced, pushing his way through the onlookers. “Please, step back so I have room to check him and he has room to breathe.”
Daniel did the ABCs of first aid. Airway. Breathing. Circulation. From the look on his face, Kimberly could tell he didn’t like what he found.
And that the little boy’s tears were getting to him.
Because she’d told him about Ryan? Because he’d missed out on seeing Ryan at that age? Because if he’d died, Ryan would never have known him, and vice versa.
She’d cheated him out of so much.
She sank her teeth into her lower lip to hold in a cry full of regret.
“No pulse,” Daniel told her, grimacing, though whether at her or the man she wasn’t sure. He loosened the man’s clothing in a quick yank that popped the straining buttons and started chest compressions. “I think he’s had a heart attack.”
“My mouth guard’s in my purse,” Kimberly told him, stopping him from doing mouth to mouth unprotected, although he’d been going to do so without hesitation, with no regard to his own health.
Daniel nodded, taking over the compressions so she could find the guard.
Not wanting to waste precious time searching through her cluttered bag, she dumped the entire contents of her purse on the floor and grabbed the Cellophane-sealed mouthpiece that prevented the exchange of germs, including if the man vomited, which sometimes happened.
Putting it on, she bent and blew a breath into the man’s mouth. Due to his large size, she honestly couldn’t tell if his lungs expanded or not, but she knew Daniel would tell her if she wasn’t profusing them with air.
Keeping in rhythm with Daniel, she gave a breath to every five of his compressions.
“He’s only forty. He can’t be having a heart attack.” The man’s wife wobbled. “Men don’t have heart attacks at forty.”
Unfortunately they did.
Kimberly motioned for a bystander to help the woman into a chair and for the little boy to join his mother, but he shook his head, glaring at Daniel.
