Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Lina
I folded my father’s flannel shirt—the one he’d been wearing when he fell off his horse, still stiff with dirt and blood—and placed it carefully in the overnight bag Mrs. Patterson had packed for him more than a week ago.
“You know,” my father said from his wheelchair, his voice carrying that particular tone I had learned to recognize over the years. The one that meant he was about to say something I wouldn’t want to hear. “This place isn’t so bad. Lawton. You could stay.”
I kept my eyes on the bag, smoothing down the fabric. “Dad.”
“I’m just saying.” He shifted in the wheelchair, wincing slightly. The doctors had cleared him to go home, but he was still sore, still pieced together with pain and stubbornness. “Tatum would love it here. Wide-open spaces. Fresh air. A real childhood, not one boxed up in some city apartment.”
My jaw tightened. I reached for his toiletry bag on the bedside table and checked to make sure the nurses had packed everything: toothbrush, toothpaste, prescription bottles lined up like obedient little soldiers.
“We have a good life in San Francisco,” I said carefully.
“I’m sure you do.” He paused. “But you could have a good life here too. Better, maybe. Family. Roots. Tatum could grow up knowing her grandfather. Her uncle, when Eric gets leave.”
I felt the familiar tightness in my chest. The one that came every time he brought this up. Which had been approximately seven times since I had arrived in Lawton a week ago.
He didn’t understand. I had left for a reason.
Built a life somewhere else for a reason.
And that reason had everything to do with the ghosts still stalking this town—the memories lodged in every street corner, every familiar building.
The ghost of a man I loved. The ghost of a life I had nearly touched.
“Let’s just focus on getting you home,” I said, zipping the bag closed with more force than necessary.
“Lina.”
“Dad.” I turned to face him, forcing a smile that felt brittle on my face. “We’ll talk about it later, okay? Once you’re settled. Once we’re home.”
He studied me for a long moment; his weathered face creased with concern and something uncomfortably close to disappointment. Then he sighed. “Fine. Later.”
I exhaled slowly, grateful for the reprieve, and moved behind his wheelchair. “Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
I started to push him toward the door, but something made me pause. A question I had been avoiding, a subject I had been too afraid to broach. “How’s the farm doing?” I asked, trying to keep my voice casual. “Business good?”
The change in my dad was immediate. His shoulders stiffened. His hands gripped the armrests of the wheelchair. And when he spoke, his voice was flat, carefully neutral. “It’s fine.”
That tone. I knew it. It was the same one he’d used when Mom got sick, when the medical bills started piling up, when he tried to shield Eric and me from the weight he was carrying. “Dad.” I came around to face him and crouched so I could meet his eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
He looked away, his jaw working. For a moment, I thought he wouldn’t answer. Then he sighed, and the sound was heavy, defeated. “Business hasn’t been good,” he admitted. “Not for a while now.”
My stomach dropped. “What do you mean?”
“We’ve lost clients. Lost capital. The farm...” He trailed off and shook his head. “It’s not what it used to be, Lina. Not since your mother died. Not since Eric enlisted. It’s just been me, and I’m getting older, and—”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” The words came out sharper than I intended.
“How could I tell you, if I didn’t know where you were?”
He met my gaze then, and I saw the exhaustion there. The weight of years of struggling alone. “There’s a developer,” he said quietly. “Wants to buy the land. Build a casino.”
His words hit me like a physical blow. “A casino?” I stood abruptly, my hands clenching into fists. “You’re joking.”
“I wish I were.”
“Dad, that farm—it’s been in our family since—”
“I know.”
“Great-grandpa Wilcox built that barn with his own hands. Mom used to—” My voice cracked, and I had to stop, had to drag in a breath. “You can’t sell it.”
“I don’t want to sell it.” His voice was firm now, edged with frustration. “You think I want to? You think I want to watch some corporation bulldoze everything your mother and I built? Everything my father built?”
“Then don’t.”
“It’s not that simple, Lina. We don’t have the clients we used to. We don’t have the capital. The property taxes alone—” He stopped and rubbed a hand over his face. “Eric doesn’t want to sell either. But he’s overseas. And I’m one man. One old man who can’t even stay on a horse anymore.”
The bitterness in his voice cut through me. I wanted to argue. Wanted to tell him we’d figure it out, that there had to be another way. But the truth was, I didn’t know. I had been gone for seven years. I didn’t know the state of the farm’s finances, didn’t know how bad things had gotten.
I had run away, and while I was building a life in California, my father had been here carrying the whole thing alone.
“We’ll figure something out,” I said, even though I had no idea what that something could be.
“We’re not selling. Not to some developer who wants to turn our family legacy into a casino. ”
He looked at me, and for the first time since I arrived, I saw hope flicker in his eyes. “Okay,” he breathed. “Okay.”
I nodded, swallowing past the lump in my throat. “Let’s just get you home. We’ll deal with the rest later.”
“Later,” he agreed.
I moved back behind his wheelchair, gripping the handles, and pushed him toward the door. My mind was spinning, racing through possibilities, through options I didn’t have, through solutions that felt impossibly out of reach.
The farm.
God, the farm—with its sprawling pastures, the old red barn, the house where I grew up.
The place where my mother taught me to bake pies in the kitchen.
Where my father taught me to ride when I was five.
Where I once brought John on a Sunday afternoon while my father was in town.
Don’t think about him. I shoved the memory down and focused instead on guiding the wheelchair through the doorway and into the hall.
The hospital corridor stretched ahead of us, long, sterile, and fluorescent-lit. A nurse passed by, offering a polite smile. An elderly couple shuffled past, the woman clutching her husband’s arm.
Normal. Everything was normal, and then I saw him.
Standing in the middle of the hallway, maybe twenty feet away.
Tall—well over six feet—the way he had always towered over everyone else.
Broad-shouldered, with the same athletic build carved by hours in the gym and years of discipline.
Dark hair longer than I remembered, falling just past his collar in waves that looked like he’d been dragging his hands through them all day.
Tattoos curled across his forearms, intricate black ink I had once traced with my fingertips before it disappeared beneath the sleeves of his black T-shirt.
His shirt fit closely enough to show he was still in brutal shape, still carrying himself with that hard, dangerous control.
And his eyes—those eyes. Dark, almost black in the hospital light.
Intense in the old, ruinous way that used to make me feel like I was the only person in the room, the only person in the world.
They fixed on me with a focus so sharp it made the floor tilt beneath my feet.
My heart stopped—skipped, stalled, forgot its own rhythm—because it couldn’t be.
It couldn’t be. He wasn’t supposed to be here.
He was supposed to be dead. John was dead.
I had seen the news reports, heard the body count, stood outside that clubhouse and watched them wheel out the dead. He was gone.
He had been gone for seven years.
But he was standing right there. Alive.
The wheelchair stopped moving. I didn’t remember stopping, didn’t remember my hands locking on the handles, but suddenly we were motionless in the middle of the hallway, and he was staring at me. The air between us felt charged, electric, like the instant before lightning split the sky.
He looked different. Older. Harder. There were lines around his eyes that hadn’t been there before, a tightness in his jaw that spoke of years I knew nothing about.
His cut—the leather vest stamped with the Diamondback patch—sat across his shoulders like armor.
But his eyes. God, his eyes were exactly the same: dark, deep, and fixed on me like I was still the center of his ruined world.
My lungs forgot how to work. My brain forgot how to form thoughts.
My heart hammered so violently against my ribs I thought it might crack them open.
All I could do was stand there, rooted in place, gripping the wheelchair handles so hard my knuckles blanched, and stare at the ghost of the man I loved—the man I had mourned for seven long years, cried over through more nights than I could count, the man who had once been my whole world.
He’s alive. The thought crashed through me like black water, drowning everything else.
Every memory, every tear, every sleepless night spent clutching his old shirt to my chest—suddenly all of it felt like a cruel joke someone had let run too long.
My vision blurred at the edges, and I couldn’t tell whether it was shock or the tears already burning in my eyes.
He’s alive, and he’s here, and he’s looking at me like— “Hey, Monk.” My father’s voice shattered the moment.
I blinked, my gaze jerking down to where he sat in the wheelchair, a knowing smirk on his weathered face.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, his tone casual and friendly, like this was the most ordinary thing in the world.
Like the man standing in front of us wasn’t supposed to be dead.
Monk. My father called him Monk. Of course he did.
My father knew him. Had always known him.
Had even liked him, back when John and I were...
“Sorry, David.” John’s voice was rough and low, and it sent a shiver through me that I felt in every nerve ending.
“Would’ve been here sooner, but I just found out you were in here. ”
He was talking to my father. But he wasn’t looking at my father. He was looking at me. His eyes never left mine. Not for a second. Not even when he spoke, not even when my father responded with something I didn’t hear because the blood was rushing too loud in my ears.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything but stand there and feel the weight of his gaze like a hand pressed flat against my skin.
Seven years. Seven years since I’d last seen him, touched him, heard his voice anywhere but in my sleep.
Seven years since I believed he was alive.
And now he was here—close enough for me to see the faint scar above his left eyebrow, the one he’d gotten in a bar fight before we met.
Close enough for me to catch the scent of leather, engine oil, and something darker that was only ever him.
Close enough that if I let go of the wheelchair and took three steps forward, I could touch him.
My hands tightened on the handles. I wanted to cross the space between us.
Wanted to touch him just to prove he was real, that this wasn’t some grief-born hallucination.
I wanted to scream at him. Demand answers.
Where have you been? Why didn’t you find me?
Why did you let me think you were dead? But I couldn’t speak.
Couldn’t move. All I could do was stand there trembling while my father and John exchanged pleasantries as if this were normal, as if the world wasn’t splitting open under my feet.
“Appreciate you checking in,” my father was saying. “Lina’s been taking good care of me.”
And then John’s gaze flickered, just for a heartbeat, with something that looked like pain. “Lina,” he said. My name. He said my name, and the rough, reverent, broken sound of it cracked something open inside my chest.
I still couldn’t speak. My throat was closed. My lungs were empty. My entire body felt like it was vibrating at a frequency I couldn’t control.
“John,” I managed at last, and my voice sounded foreign, distant, like it belonged to someone else.
His jaw tightened. And for one brief, blinding moment, I saw it there too—the same shock, the same disbelief, the same raw, overwhelming thing I couldn’t name but felt in every cell of my body.
“I should...” I started, but I had no idea how to finish.
I should go. I should tell you that you have a daughter.
Oh God. Tatum.
The thought of my daughter—our daughter—hit me hard enough to make my knees weaken. He didn’t know. He had no idea. And I was standing here staring at him with no clue what to say, what to do, or how to even begin to make sense of this.
“Lina?” My father’s voice cut through the chaos in my head. “Are you okay, sweetheart?”
No, I wasn’t okay. I was the furthest thing from it. But I nodded anyway, forcing my fingers to unclench from the wheelchair handles. “Yeah,” I lied. “I’m fine.”
John’s eyes narrowed slightly, like he could see right through me.
Like he always had when I was hiding something.
The silence stretched between us, heavy and loaded, and impossible to break.
And then, from somewhere down the hall, a nurse called out, “Mr. Wilcox? We have your discharge papers ready.”
The spell shattered as my father shifted in his wheelchair. “Guess that’s my cue.”
I nodded mutely, my gaze still locked on John’s.
“I’ll, uh...” My father glanced between us, that smirk still tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I’ll give you two a minute.”
“Dad…” But he was already wheeling himself toward the nurses’ station, leaving me there alone with John. With the man I loved. The man I mourned. The man who was looking at me like I was oxygen and he’d been drowning for years.
Neither of us moved. Neither of us spoke. The air between us crackled with seven years of silence, grief, and questions with no clean answers. And all I could think was: He’s alive. He’s alive, and everything I thought I knew was a lie, and I have no idea what happens next.