“I know.” Adam leaned back, pushing the crust of the half-eaten slice of pizza around his plate. He’d honestly held on to the belief for his whole life that he’d done the right thing by stepping back and letting Eileen and Clark take the lead with parenting. But Wyatt’s barely-concealed agony had him questioning it.
“Anyway.” Wyatt picked up another slice and shoved a bite into his mouth, turning to stare out the sliding door toward the magnolia tree in the back yard.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Not anyway. I really…Wyatt…”
Adam scrubbed a hand down his face, the words not forming into the sentences he needed to find.
“Dad, it’s fine.”
“It’s not.” He smacked his hand down on the table, startling them both. Adam breathed in and lowered his voice. “It’s not fine. I never meant for you to feel like I didn’t want you.”
“Okay,” Wyatt said, sullen.
“I didn’t want to compete with your mother,” he said. “I didn’t want you to compare me and her. I didn’t wantyouto findmelacking.”
He hadn’t come over to his own house to have dinner with his only son with the intent to have his soul laid bare, but apparently that was what they were doing. He’d admitted to Wyatt the quiet things that he’d always held inside. If Adam didn’t put himself in a position to be judged, then he wouldn’t be found lacking. He’d done it a lifetime ago when he and Eileen divorced, then again when Wyatt was a teenager. He did it with Cooper a decade prior, and he was sure he would repeat the same cycle over and over ad nauseam.
“How could I?” Wyatt asked simply. “You’re my dad.”
He made a derisive noise in the back of his throat. “That’s not saying much.”
“That’s saying everything.”
“You had Clark,” he said. “Youhavehim.”
“Clark wears boat shoes with socks.” Wyatt rolled his eyes. “You’re a completely different kind of man from him. A better man.”
The statement coming from his son had his chest feeling tight, and he rubbed his sternum, taking his turn to stare at the silhouette of the magnolia tree in the yard. “Let’s just settle for different.”
But Adam would have been lying if he said part of him didn’t swell with pride at Wyatt’s classification of him being better than Clark.
“I should have been a better parent,” he said. “When you needed one.”
“I need one now,” Wyatt rasped, chewing his cheek so hard Adam could almost make out the outline of his molars.
“Stop.” Adam reached up and tapped his fingers against the concave hollow of Wyatt’s face.
“Did you hear me?” Wyatt asked, eyes locked on Adam.
“I heard you.” He gave a small nod and shoved himself up out of his chair, opening his arms to his only son. “You have me, Wyatt. You’ll always have me.”
Wyatt practically jumped out of his seat, plastering himself against Adam’s front and wrapping his arms around Adam’s back. He held tight, fingers clawing at Adam’s shirt, and Adam’s brow furrowed as he pulled Wyatt closer.
His son was bigger than him. Taller and broader. His muscles threatened Adam’s bones, but Wyatt buried his face in the crook of Adam’s neck, doing his best to hide what sounded like the beginning of tears.
“I’ve got you,” he whispered, stroking his hands down the length of Wyatt’s spine. “I’m here, kiddo.”
Wyatt came apart in the dining room, in Adam’s arms, over a barely-eaten freezer section pizza that had long gone cold. And while Adam knew Wyatt needed to face what the future had laid out for him, he cursed himself for the decisions he’d made in his own life that had driven them both to that point.
Wyatt cried on Adam’s shoulder until his shirt was plastered against his skin, and even after he finished, he didn’t move. He kept his face pressed against Adam, their bodies tangled tight in a kind of father and son hug he never remembered having before. It was good, but the circumstances…Adam cursed them. He hated that Wyatt was being forced to live through divorce, especially one that wasn’t as amicable as Adam’s had been. But more than that, he hated that anything he’d ever done in his life had contributed to the way Wyatt was feeling in that moment.
“I’m gonna be a better dad to you,” he said.
Wyatt cleared his throat and broke their hug, swiping wildly at his face to dry the tears. It was futile. His cheeks were red and his eyes were already puffy.
“You’re good,” Wyatt said. “I wouldn’t ask for another dad.”
“I want to be better.” Adam sat back down at the table and Wyatt did, too. “You deserve the best things in life, Wyatt. Let me be one of them.”
