He never knew he had a son.
He chose hockey. I chose to survive.
Six years ago, Liam O’Connell signed a Swedish Elite League contract without asking me. I walked away before he ever knew I was carrying his son.
Finn is five years old now. Blue eyes, dark hair, and a hockey stick he carries everywhere — number seventeen, because that’s the number his favorite player wears. Finn had no idea it was the same number as his father.
When my agency assigns me to rehabilitate a St. Louis Blaze player’s torn rotator cuff, I walk into the training facility expecting a professional challenge.
Instead, I find Liam waiting for me.
Eight weeks. Daily sessions. Road trips. Stolen moments and old feelings I swore I’d buried. He looks at me like I’m the only thing he regrets leaving behind — and maybe I am.
But Finn is coming to St. Louis.
And when I finally show him a photo of a little boy with his eyes wearing number seventeen on the ice, the secret I carried for five years will detonate between us.
He will be furious. He will have every right to be.
And I will have to live with the possibility that the man I never stopped loving will walk away from me — and our son.
