Chapter 14 Warren
FOURTEEN
Warren
I sit paralyzed in my truck, parked at the far edge of the soccer field.
My fingers drum against the worn leather of the steering wheel, thumping to a rhythm that matches my heartbeat. The morning practice crowd has thinned to just a few stragglers folding up chairs and gathering forgotten water bottles.
But I only see them.
Janie crouches beside her SUV, buckling Beckett into his car seat. My son. The words are still foreign in my head, like they belong to someone else's life.
He's clutching that neon-striped soccer ball I gave him last weekend to his chest like it's made of gold, not cheap synthetic rubber from the sporting goods store.
His mouth moves constantly. I can't hear him from this distance, but I can imagine the excited chatter, the questions, the observations that pour from him.
She brushes grass from his hair with gentle fingers, adjusting the straps of his seat with practiced efficiency. Then she leans in and presses a kiss to his forehead, her hand lingering on his cheek.
An unexpected warmth blooms in my chest. Gratitude.
He's happy. He's loved. He's safe.
For a moment, I can acknowledge that she's given him that much, at least. She didn't abandon him. She didn't fail him the way my family failed me.
But the warmth curdles just as fast, poisoned by rage that bubbles up like acid. Five years. Five fucking years.
The muscles in my jaw are tightening so hard I can hear my own teeth grinding. I roll my shoulders to relieve the tension balled up inside.
"Damn it." The words escape through gritted teeth.
I watch as Beckett rolls the ball in his hands, his small face alight with joy. He's an innocent child who doesn't even know I exist beyond being the tall man who gave him a ball. A child whose eyes are the exact shade of hazel-green as his mother's, but who has my dark hair.
How did I not see that when I first met him at the Harrelsons? It seems so obvious now.
Janie circles to the driver's side and slips into her seat. She doesn't look my way, doesn't acknowledge that she knows I'm still here, watching. I stayed to myself for practice, keeping my distance.
Maybe she doesn't realize.
Or, maybe she just doesn't care.
My phone vibrates against the cup holder, the sound jarring in the heavy silence of the truck. An unfamiliar number flashes on the screen. Every instinct says let it go to voicemail, but something, maybe intuition or maybe just the need for distraction, makes me swipe to answer.
“Warren Carter.” My voice comes out rough, even to my own ears.
“Mr. Carter? This is Beth at CHG. I know you’re on the board here, and when I saw Charles Carter III admitted, I put the connection together. I thought you’d want to know.”
The name is a fist to the chest. My father.
"Uhh. Um. Okay."
Before I can find words, she rushes on. “I hope I haven’t overstepped, but I know your mom is beside herself, so I took it upon myself to let you know.”
Overstepped? My family hasn’t spoken my name in twenty years. They didn’t call me, didn’t list me, didn’t want me. And yet here I am, hearing about him because some hospital administrator knows I'm on the hospital's board and knows I'm his son.
The irony burns.
"Oh, thank you." I watch as Janie's SUV pulls out of the parking lot, taking my son away from me again. "I won't be able to make it in, but I appreciate the call."
"Okay. You should know his condition has deteriorated significantly."
The steering wheel grows slippery beneath my palm.
The line goes quiet, and the choice hangs heavy in the silence. Neither of us seems to know what else to say. Perhaps there is nothing more that can be said.
"I appreciate the call." I hang up without another word.
But the image won’t leave me. The man who erased me, dying. My mother, breaking beside him.
After all these years, I thought I’d feel something. Maybe anger, maybe relief. But all I feel is the weight of it. The inevitability.
There’s no satisfaction in it. Just the hollow truth that even the mighty fall.
For twenty years, I’ve sworn I’d never go back. But the thought twists in my gut: if I don’t go, and he dies, I’ll never get the chance to look him in the eye again.
I start the truck and pull away from the soccer field. Against every instinct, I steer toward CHG instead of my empty apartment. Not for Charles. Not for Eleanor.
Maybe for Beckett. Maybe for myself. Maybe to finally close a wound that’s been bleeding for twenty years.
The sliding glass doors hiss open, releasing a blast of sterile air.
I’ve walked into this lobby a hundred times for quarterly board meetings over the last five years, even more often now with the community outreach committee.
I know the layout, the artwork, the donor wall with my last name carved into the top tier.
But today, the light is harsher. The air is colder. The walls are more clinical.
The receptionist glances up from her monitor. “Welcome to CHG. Can I help you?”
My throat is dry, scratchy, suddenly sore. “Charles Carter.”
Her fingers skim the keyboard, the clack of the keys louder than it should be. “Carter. Yes. Room 523. Oncology.” She hands me a visitor’s badge. “Take the main elevators to the fifth floor and take a right.”
My palm itches as I pin the badge to my lapel. The word visitor stares back at me. Not a board member. Not son.
Just a visitor.
“Thank you,” I manage. My voice comes more gruff than I intend, and I hesitate a moment, gathering myself.
“Are you family?” she asks, routine politeness. I know they are very particular about who can come in to visit here. I'm surprised I was able to get a visitor badge so easily.
The word punches harder than I might have expected. I clear my throat. “Ah, yeah. Distant.”
Her smile is kind, oblivious, and it makes my chest ache. I nod and step toward the elevators. For the first time, I notice that my shoes are loud against the polished tile. Are they always this loud?
With each step, I walk deeper into enemy territory, into a place I know well, and have been coming to four times a year for the last five years. At least, I thought I knew it. But today it's foreign, warped by a single fact: somewhere above me, on the fifth floor, the man who cast me out is dying.
The stench of disinfectant and decay hits me the moment I step through the door of room 523. Fluorescent lights hum overhead, casting a sickly pallor over everything.
My father looks... small. The Charles Carter III I remember commanded rooms with his height and presence alone. This withered figure in the hospital bed seems like a cruel parody.
His skin is stretched yellow over jutting bones, tubes snaking from his arm to various machines that beep and hum.
But his eyes, those cold gray eyes, remain unchanged. They lock onto mine the moment I step inside, piercing and calculating as ever.
For several heartbeats, neither of us speaks. The only sound is the steady rhythm of his heart monitor and the soft hiss of oxygen.
"Didn't think I'd see you again." His voice is a brittle rasp, nothing like the booming authority I grew up fearing.
I stand stiffly just inside the doorway, hands jammed in my pockets. "I didn't either."
"Why did you come?" No pleasantries, no pretense. Even dying, he's direct.
"I don't know." The truth slips out before I can craft something more dignified. I take three steps closer, close enough to see the map of blue veins beneath his translucent skin. "Maybe to understand how you could do it."
His eyes don’t waver. "Do what?"
"Erase me. For telling the truth. For refusing to protect Charlie when he killed that girl." My voice cracks, sharp and raw. "You chose him. You chose pride. Over me."
His lips twitch again. "You always thought you knew better."
The machines beep steadily. There’s no apology. No absolution. Just the hollow echo of a father I never really had.
The words vibrate between us, years of fury packed into each syllable. My hands tremble in my pockets, so I ball them into fists, hoping to still them.
I wait for the denial, for the cold dismissal I've rehearsed responses to a thousand times in my head.
Instead, his eyes close. His lips part on a ragged breath, and his voice breaks. “Yes. I thought if I threatened you, I could protect us all. But I failed.”
The silence hangs like smoke, thick in my throat. My chest contracts, too small to hold what he just said. I could live with anger. I could live with distance. But this…?
My father's skeletal hand trembles against the white hospital sheet. His chest rises and falls with labored breaths. The machines keep their steady rhythm. Beep, hiss, click. They're the only sounds in the room.
Charles closes his eyes, swallows, then rasps, "I failed all of us." His voice is thin, weaker than I remember, but unflinching. "I thought shielding Charlie was protecting the family. But I destroyed it instead."
My throat tightens. I've rehearsed this moment countless times in my head, the vindication, the righteousness I'd receive when he finally admitted his betrayal. But now, watching him struggle for each breath, I get nothing but hollowness.
I press a hand to my mouth, fighting the burn in my eyes. For my entire adult life, I've carried this weight, let it define me.
"You left me with nothing." My voice breaks. "You threw me away like I was nothing."
He doesn't flinch from the accusation. Instead, he nods slightly, the motion barely perceptible. "I know. It was all bluster. I never took anything away from you. I thought you would come back. I never thought it would go on this long."
My stomach lurches like I’ve been punched from the inside. He thought I’d crawl back? That abandoning me was some twisted test I’d eventually forgive? The arrogance curdles in my gut.
"Then why didn't you end it? Why go twenty years without ever once reaching out to me?"
"Pride. Evil, hateful, soul-stealing pride."
He coughs weakly, the words spoken almost too much for him, too.
The monitor's beeping speeds up slightly, the only sign that this conversation costs him.
Fuck me. I didn't know my father had a humble bone in his body. I guess death can humble anyone.
"Being a father..." He pauses, drawing a rattling breath. "It's not about the name. Not about the blood. It's about showing up." His eyes find mine again, suddenly clear and sharp. "I didn't."
The words slam into me, harder than any verdict I've ever taken in court. My stomach pitches and my mouth goes dry in an instant. And in that spinning second, Beckett’s face sears across my vision, those hazel-green eyes, that stubborn little furrow in his brow.
It’s not spoken, but the message is clear as a blade: history is waiting to repeat itself, and I’m standing on the edge of the same cliff my father jumped from.
I'm trembling now, unsure whether it's rage or grief.
Something breaks inside me. It's not forgiveness. I can’t give that. But there's a jagged crack in the wall I’ve built up around me for decades. Shame and heartache crash into each other until I can’t hold them.
My body moves before my mind decides to take action. My legs pump, my lungs burn, and I’m already fleeing the sterile wing to the elevator.
I press the down button several times as I try to catch my breath. All I know in this moment is that I have to get out of here.
By the time the elevator doors open, my pulse is still pounding in my ears. I don’t remember crossing the lobby, only the blast of mild, fall air as I shove outside.
I pull the truck door shut with a hollow thud. My hands shake as I press the ignition, the engine roaring to life like it shares my anger.
The hospital’s glare shrinks in my rearview as I merge back into Palm Beach’s picture-perfect quiet, a town that has no idea it’s holding my ruin inside its whitewashed walls.
Dusk has fallen while I was inside. Appropriate. Everything is darker now.
The words he said repeat in my head, but now they echo with new meaning. Words I hurled at my father. Words Beckett might someday hurl at me.
My grip tightens on the steering wheel until my knuckles ache. I drive without purpose, just needing to move, to outrun the thoughts chasing me.
Being a father is about showing up.
"Shut up," I whisper to my father's ghost, but his words have found their mark.
Five years. Four birthdays. A thousand moments, irretrievable as smoke.
I pound the steering wheel. "Damn it, Janie."
The rage feels good, familiar. Easier than the shame creeping underneath. I blocked her calls. I shut her out. I left her alone while she carried my child, gave birth to my child, and raised my child in a foreign city all alone.
"Being a father isn't about the name. It isn't about the blood. It's about showing up."
A semi blasts past, it's headlights briefly illuminating my face in the rearview. I barely recognize the haunted man staring back.
What happens now? I could demand custody, blow up everything. I'd certainly lose my friendship with my only life-long friend, the closest thing I have to a family, and possibly wreck Blake and Janie's relationship.
Or I could show up quietly. Be the friendly guy at soccer practice. The helpful colleague. See my son without destroying everything else.
Dad.
I whisper the word, testing how it sounds in my mouth. Strange. Foreign. A title I never thought I'd have.
Maybe it’s enough to orbit his life. To be there without ever claiming my place.
But that’s the lie.
I don’t want scraps. I want my son. Every messy, loud, beautiful piece of him. And claiming him means tearing everything else apart.