Chapter 53
WILDER
“I just want to talk to my son, Wilder. It’s been years, baby. All I want is to talk to you. Will you please talk to me?”
Bile rises in my throat, my stomach folding in on itself.
I thought of this exact moment in my head a thousand times over the last twenty years. I’d played out every scenario you could’ve possibly considered if I ever came face-to-face with my mother again.
At least, I thought so.
But now that she’s standing here, I realize how fucking wrong I was.
I never could’ve imagined that I’d have Maisie, my fucking sunshine, who means… Fuck, who means everything to me, cowering behind me, and a sick, desperate kind of worry tightening my chest and making it hard to breathe.
Part of me always thought that if I ever saw her again, I’d turn right back into the broken shell of a boy she left behind. That the reaction I’d have would be similar to the one I had when I walked into the group home again for the first time.
But I don’t feel any of that shit right now.
Not the sadness, the pain, or the trauma.
Apparently, I’ve done enough of that in the last two weeks to last a goddamn lifetime because all I feel is anger.
Anger burning hot enough to consume me and anyone standing in its path, forging its way violently through my veins.
How fucking dare she show up here and call herself that?
While she’s standing there, clearly tweaked the fuck out on some kind of drugs. Probably meth—that was always her drug of choice.
If her dark-circled, sunken eyes, her hollowed cheeks, and the gaunt skin hanging on her bones didn’t give it away, the fact that she can’t stop fucking moving would.
She’s pacing now, tracing the same path over and over, clawing at her shirt.
So unstable that I’m scared. Not for me, but for Maisie.
I can’t control this situation, no matter how many times I thought I had prepared for the possibility of this.
The possibility of one day having to confront the demon of my past head-on.
But that pain and fear that I’ve lived with my entire life is nothing in comparison to the fear I have right now about something happening to Maisie.
When I step back, attempting to curl myself around Maisie while still facing my mother, she laughs.
A manic, high-pitched sound that makes me cringe.
Fuck, this is bad.
“What? You think I’m going to try and hurt her?
That why you’re acting like that?” She sniffs, dragging the back of her hand beneath her nose, and my eyes catch on the track marks.
Some old and faded, some fresh. “Sweetheart, I just missed you! When I saw that article they ran in the paper about you and found out you were back in town, all I wanted to do was see my son.” Each word is accompanied with a tick of her head, a scratch on her arm, a jittery twitch. “That’s all.”
She takes an erratic step toward us, and I shuffle back, my stomach tightening when Maisie makes a noise behind me like a scared animal. I can feel her shaking, and it makes me want to choke this bitch.
That she has the fucking audacity to come here and scare the woman I…
She keeps staring past me at Maisie, and my fucking blood is boiling.
“Save the bullshit, Tara,” I manage to push out through clenched teeth. “Do me a favor and fuck off to wherever you crawled out of. I don’t have shit to say to you.”
For a moment, she looks… surprised. As if she truly has no grasp on the trauma she’s inflicted on me, like she’s the mother she’s pretending to be right now.
Addicts have many faces, and she’ll never fool me again.
I’m not that scared, weak, abused boy I once was. I’m a grown man who’s trying to heal from the shit she broke me with.
And she’s not getting anywhere near Maisie. Over my dead fucking body.
“Oh, you think ’cause you’re famous and got a li’l money that you’re above me?” Tara snarls, her cagey demeanor shifting from fake, doting mother to the real her in a single breath. “All high-and-fucking-mighty?”
I laugh.
I actually fucking laugh at her.
I shake my head. “Money and fame have nothing to do with me being above you. Get the fuck out of here before I call the cops.”
I don’t miss the way her gaze widens when I mention the cops. I’m sure she’s still out on parole, or probation at the very least, after her latest prison stint. How she convinced them to let her out, that she’s capable of being a functioning, contributing person in society, is beyond me.
I knew she got out recently. I got the notification on my phone, something I’d set up long ago.
Because as much as I was trying to forget she ever existed, I still felt better knowing she was locked away.
So if she ever got out, I wanted to know.
I just never imagined that she’d fucking somehow find me.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
I blow out an exhale, realizing that she might just be desperate enough not to let the threat deter her.
That makes her even more fucking dangerous. The shit she’d done to me in the past was proof of that. I didn’t need any more than that.
And that makes her a big problem, because she’s not just going to go away, scurry back to whatever trap house she came from.
“Baby, I want you to go inside,” I say, never taking my eyes off Tara.
I don’t trust her for a single goddamn second.
“What?” Maisie cries, and her fingers tighten around my arms, nails biting into my skin. “Wilder, no, I’m not lea—”
I shoot her a pleading glance, one I hope is enough to convince her. “I’m okay, but I need you to go inside and wait for me, okay?”
I know that she wants to argue. She wants to fight me with everything inside of her, I can feel it.
But she doesn’t.
For once, I’m thankful that she doesn’t fight me. Not here. Not with this.
I feel her hand fall away from me, and she steps back before she hesitates for a moment, Tara smirking as she watches.
My fists clench at my sides, and I’m fighting to control my anger, stop from flying off the handle and giving her what I’m sure is exactly what she wants.
“Go, baby. I’m right behind you,” I say to Maisie.
After another moment of indecision, I watch out of the corner of my eye as Maisie walks past me toward the apartment building entrance, taking a path that is as far as she can possibly get from Tara.
I’m ready to move at any fucking second if she so much as looks at Maisie the wrong way, but she doesn’t. She keeps her glassy eyes on me now, her pupils blown so wide they’re black.
Eyes that have always been an unfortunate mirror to my own, eyes that now are just… just dead. Like there’s nothing left in them.
But I can’t find it inside to feel sorry for her. I mourned losing this woman when I was still a child, and there’s not a single part of me now left that wants shit to do with her.
Only once I know Maisie is safe inside, when I see her walk into the apartment building and the door close behind her, do I speak.
“I don’t know what you’re playing at, but I want you to get the fuck out of here and never come back.
You and I both know there is no reconciliation to be had, so take your bullshit lies and fuck off, Tara.
I mean it. If you ever come here again, if you ever fucking look at her again, I’ll have you put away for good.
I’ll give them every fucking cent I have to make sure they put you somewhere that treats child abusers the way that they deserve.
Do you fucking understand what I’m saying to you?
” The angry, venomous words spill out of me in a rush.
She flinches back an inch, her jittery gaze darting around us because she can’t hold eye contact. She’s too fucking strung out.
Finally, she looks at me, the corner of her lips curling into a half sneer, half smile, the skin busted and cracked.
“You can threaten me all you want, baby, but you know your mama that you seem to think is so beneath you is a lot smarter than you’d think.
” Her tongue darts out, and she slides it over her teeth before she grins, big and proud this time.
“I’ll be seeing you, sweetheart. Real soon. ”
With that, before I can ask her what the fuck she means by that, she spins on her heel and darts off, weaving through the parked cars until I no longer see her.
Leaving my stomach twisted in fucking knots and wishing that she’d do us both the favor and disappear forever this time.
But there’s something churning heavily in my gut as I start walking toward the entrance of my building, something that tells me that’s not going to happen.
And it unsettles me down to my bones.