Ded shushed everyone with a stern glare and the room fell silent. He nodded in my parents’ direction, and I flicked my eyes between my mom’s teary face and my dad’s composed blank one.
“How,” my mom’s voiced cracked and she paused to clear her throat. “Sober? A year? How long, baby?”
I forced the emotion back that was threatening to make my face match my mother’s. “How long what?”
“How long were ya sufferin’ in silence?” she asked with so much sadness in her voice something inside my chest broke a little.
My mouth opened but no sound came out, and she leapt up off the couch and pulled me straight into her chest, my seated position breaking the barrier of our height difference and allowing her to cradle my head.
“My baby,” she whispered as she ran a hand over the back of my head. “How long?”
I swallowed several times before I answered, “Three years.”
She let out a pained puff of air against my hair and squeezed me tighter. My arm wound around her back and I breathed in her familiar scent.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for lying to you and pushing you away and I’m sorry it took me so long to tell you the truth.”
My mom shushed me, her body gently swaying. “I. Love. You. Enoch Michael. No matter whatcha hide from me, no matter how ya hurt me, I’ll always love ya. You’re my baby. I grew ya in my belly and pushed all nine and a quarter pounds of ya out of me. You’re a part of me and I will never,everstop lovin’ya. No matter what. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for ya. That I didn’t know my baby was hurtin’ so bad.”
“No,” I pleaded. “Please. Don’t apologize, Mom. It was my decision to not come to you for help.”
“But if I did somethin’ to make ya feel like ya couldn’t come to me—”
“Never. It was my shame. I didn’t want to disappoint you. The longer I hid it, the harder it became to tell someone, and the easier it became to lie.”
My eyes had closed, and I startled when I felt another pair of arms wrap around my body.
It was my dad.
“I’m still sorry too. I’m your dad. I should have known something was wrong, I shouldn’t have pushed you so hard when you were grieving, I—” My dad took a breath, squeezing my shoulder. “What matters now is that we’re here. There’s no more secrets between us. Alright?”
Guilt stung like a knife in my stomach as I nodded in agreement, “Right.”
It was only moments before there was a whole crowd surrounding our hug, everyone holding onto each other. And I was at the center still burning up from shame, reeling from how quick to forgive and accept me they were. As I sucked in a deep breath, I realized with relief that the weight sitting on my chest had just gotten significantly lighter.
Fuck.
I should have done this sooner.
Fuck.
I missed my family.
Everyone’s voices overlapped once again in a chorus ofI love yous and I let myself cry in my mother’s arms for the first time in four years. I let myself absorb the love my family had to give, accept the forgiveness they offered me, and cherish themoment that I’d hang on to in the coming years as I navigated what my future with Shiloh and my family looked like.
Because after this, I knew it was going to be near impossible to keep them away. And I didn’t want to. I only wished Shiloh were here because my family didn’t feel complete without her. Shiloh had permanently altered my DNA, rewired my heart to only beat properly whenever she was near.
This was the family that she deserved. This was the support network she should have had. A room of ten people who forgave fast and loved relentlessly.
I wished like hell that she could have this one day too.
Thirty-Eight
August 3, Monday
Emory
Fourteen days and I’d settled into my new routine. The one that included doing everything in my power tonotself-harm. Two days of therapy a week, at least an hour of exercise every day, and of course, a nightly check-in with Enoch that sometimes included a nice make-out session if we did it in person.
