Chapter 18
Numb – Linkin Park
Wilder
The chair scraped against the linoleum, probably screaming at the fact that it had to be there.
I dropped into it anyway, arms crossed, jaw locked tight as the clock ticked loud enough to be heard over the soft hum of vending machines and muted conversations.
Sterling’s visiting room didn’t exactly inspire animated chat.
Dull beige walls, flickering lights and suspicious eyes watching from every corner.
Across the table sat a man with the same brown shade of eyes as mine, though his had dulled since I’d last seen them. His prison-issued shirt hung loose on a frame that had once intimidated the hell out of me. Not anymore. Now he just looked like a tired version of someone I didn’t want to be.
“Good to see you,” he said, voice low and sandpaper rough. “Wasn’t sure I would.”
“Yeah, well,” I shrugged, “I guess I needed a reminder.”
He leaned back, studying me with a smirk that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Reminder of what?”
“Of everything that I don’t want for my life.” I let out a tired breath, wondering what the hell I’d been thinking coming to see him. “You asked me anyway, remember.”
“And I had to ask you twice. My first request was months ago.”
“Had better things to do, like clearing up horse shit.”
My dad rolled his eyes. “You always have to be so damn crass.”
“I’m my father’s son I guess.”
A guy over the other side of the room jumped up from his seat, sending it flying backward. He started yelling at the tired looking woman who was cowering in her seat.
“Damn animal,” my dad muttered.
A guard dragged him away while he continued to yell and point at his visitor.
“It’s supposed to be medium security here.” Dad cracked his neck, jaw tight. “And they have animals like that in here.”
“What did he do?” I asked. “Steal millions from his kids and hide his wife’s last will and testament?”
“You’re not funny, Wilder.”
Huh, strange because I thought I was fucking hilarious. There was nothing funnier than the fact that I’d decided to visit him. It was hysterical in fact.
The silence between us lengthened as we sat there with the ghosts between us, thick as the drab concrete walls surrounding us. All I could taste was the poison of disappointment in having a father like him.
I took a deep breath because this wasn’t about him. Not really. This was about me. About the answers I needed. About the validation I needed that him being here wasn’t my fault.
“You look good. Strong,” he said eventually, nodding like we were catching up over coffee, not years of silence, disgruntlement and disappointment. “How’s the ranch?”
I didn’t respond. Didn’t plan to. I was there for answers, not compliments. But mostly I wanted closure.
I leaned forward, voice low and even. “I’m not here to discuss the ranch.
It’s none of your concern. Never has been, not even when you…
owned it.” I scoffed because he’d never owned.
Not when Mom was alive and not after she was killed.
Yet the whole time he acted like he did.
Pushed us around and spent all our money like he did.
He blinked, the smirk faltering for just a heartbeat.
Good. Let him feel what it’s like to lose control.
“What do you want to talk about then?” He shifted in his plastic orange chair, crossing his legs and resting one elbow on the back of the seat. Like he was running a mayoral meeting about town taxes and boundaries.
“I want to know why? Why you were such a crap father.” I started to count them off on my fingers.
“Why you felt the need to steal from your own flesh and blood? Why you cheated on Mom? Why you barely acknowledged us when we were kids,” I laughed emptily, “in fact, why you barely acknowledge us now. You know what, I just want to know why you’re such a shitty person, period? ”
“You think you’d still have that ranch if it wasn’t for me?” he asked, his tone measured, the personification of cool and calm. Like he really believed that he’d been our savior. “Believe me you wouldn’t. It would have gone under long ago.”
“No.” I shook my head. “We have that ranch because after Mom died, after Nash came back from college, he was the one who stepped up and made sure the ranch made money. Because I’ll tell you something, Daddy dearest, it was going to shit before he did.
All you’ve ever wanted to do is sell it and make a quick buck for yourself.
But let’s not forget that it wasn’t actually yours to sell in the first place. ”
“Wilder, when you’ve walked a mile in my shoes then you can comment.”
He actually believed he was innocent of any wrongdoing. I could see it in his eyes. The straightness of his spine. The superior tilt of his chin.
“You mean the shoes of a man who had a wife who loved him. Three boys who could have idolized him. A life of greatness on a land that is full of beauty and grace.”
“You don’t even remember your mother. She was not all that, believe me.”
Anger blossomed in my chest. A hard, jagged ball of it that made me feel like I was choking on it. My fingers curled into fists, nails digging into my palms.
“Don’t you fucking dare talk about her like that,” I snarled.
“She was a million times the person you’ll ever be.
And I do remember. I remember she loved us, cared about us, spent time with us, whereas you.
” My throat constricted, making it difficult to breath, difficult to talk, yet I had so much that I wanted to say to him.
“Yes, and she forgot she had a husband in the process.” His lips pouted like a child and there it was, every damn reason he did what he did.
“You were jealous of us, weren’t you?” I said with a laugh.
“Jealous of your own sons because we took her attention. We took her attention, so you took everything else didn’t you.
” I tapped my finger on the table; an exclamation mark for every vile thing he did.
“You cheated on her and then cheated us just because you were having a temper tantrum at the amount of time your wife spent with her boys.”
Focusing on him, it was clear he had no misgivings over his actions. The steady breathing, the way he was examining his fingernails, how he looked around the room like he was on a bench at the park watching people passing by.
Pushing my chair back, I cleared my throat. “Okay, Michael, I’m out of here.”
“That’s it. I get five minutes of your time?”
“Yep.” I stood up and shook my head. “Four minutes too long if I’m being honest.”
His lips twitched, his smirk morphing into something I hadn’t seen before…something sad. And I felt nothing. No pity. No sorrow. No regrets.
“Have a nice life, Michael, because I will.”
And I would. The shackles were gone from my heart, and it was time to start living. Time to let myself feel, because I was not the son of my father.
I was not responsible for his sins, and I would no longer carry them on my shoulders.
“Just think about this one thing, Wilder,” he called as I started to walk away. “I wasn't the only one to cheat in my marriage.”
I stopped. My whole body went cold, then hot, then cold again. When I turned around, my father was smiling. Actually smiling. “You're lying.” But even as I said it, doubt crept in like smoke under a door.
“Nine months before you were born, Wilder. Wild timing, don't you think?”
The visiting room tilted. Twenty-five years of wondering why I was never enough, why he looked at me like I was a mistake he couldn't undo. If this was true...
“Even if it were true,” I said, surprised by how steady my voice sounded, “it doesn't change what you are. What you did to us. To her.” I stepped closer to the table.
“You stole from your sons. You let us think we weren't worth loving.
And now you're trying to poison the one good memory we have left of her.” His smile faltered.
“I'm done carrying your damage.” The words felt like pulling shrapnel from a wound.
“Whatever you did to break her, whatever she did to survive you, that's between you and your conscience. If you have one.”
I wanted to puke. A slick, heated, sweat coated my back as I walked out without a backward glance, the steel door clanging shut behind me like it was sealing something in. Or maybe locking something out, I couldn’t tell anymore.
Outside the sky had turned the same color as the cinderblock walls inside. Heavy. Low. Threatening rain.
I stopped just outside, bent forward, hands on my thighs, lungs burning like I’d sprinted a mile instead of being sat across from a man with my jawline and none of my heart.
I wanted to believe he was lying. I needed to.
But the way he’d said it, like it was his life’s work to hurt me, that was the part that stuck.
My stomach churned. I swallowed hard and looked up at the sky, hoping for some kind of sign.
All I got was silence.
I kept walking, heart heavier than when I’d arrived, dragging questions I hadn’t wanted and answers I might never trust.
And maybe that was the real inheritance he’d left me—doubt. There was a voice that whispered in my head that it could be true. Maybe Mom had been distant those last months. Maybe that was why Dad never looked at me with pride. Maybe I really was the unwanted mistake.
Once back in my rental, I sat in the prison parking lot for an hour, engine off, hands shaking.
The rain on the windshield blurred everything into gray shapes, which felt about right.
Twenty-five years of questions, and all I'd gotten were more questions.
Worse ones. My phone buzzed. A text from Nash:
Nash
How’d it go?
I started to type ‘Fine’ three times and deleted it each time. Nothing about this was fine. Nothing about me had ever been fine, apparently. Another buzz. This time Tally.
Tally
Thinking of you today.
Just four words, but they hit me like a punch to the solar plexus.
When had someone thinking of me started to matter so much?
When had her caring become the thing that kept me upright?
I was falling apart in a prison parking lot, and all I wanted was to hear her voice tell me I wasn't as broken as I felt.
Her face flashed through my mind. Her barefoot on her back porch, hair tangled, laughing at something ridiculous I’d said. She didn’t ask me to be anything but exactly who I was, which somehow made me want to be more. No longer shaped by my dad and his slick words and hollow remorse.
I knew I didn’t say the things she probably needed to hear. Hell, I wasn’t sure I could. But when I thought about the things I didn’t want to lose, the things that mattered, she was one of them.
Not just in her bed. Not just fucking or chatting shit. It was her. Exactly as she was. And I had no idea what that meant.