“You experienced a lot of trauma in your first couple years,” he says, and I see the pain in his eyes. “We were told your story, and…” He looks away from me for a moment, slowly blowing out a breath before looking back at me with a slight shake of his head like he can’t go there. “But after we heard all about you, and everything you’d been through, they showed us your picture. And I saw the most beautiful boy staring back at me, with big hazel eyes and bright blond curls, and you were smiling. Despite everything you’d been through, you wore this big, beautiful smile.” His lips tilt into a soft smile of his own. “I knew right then you were strong, and you were a force to be reckoned with in this world. And I felt a need to protect that, and to help you with the weight of everything you were forced to carry.”
My vision blurs as tears gather in my eyes, and I lower my gaze to my hands as I try to blink them away.
“And when we finally got to meet you…” He huffs a small laugh. “That sealed it for us. We met at a park, and you were so scared. You just watched us from a distance, until you saw the toy tractor I brought. You didn’t have much language yet, but once you had that tractor in your hands, it was nonstop gibberish. It was like you were trying to tell me everything about it. You pulled me down into the sand and showed me how it moved and how it worked. And when I told you about the tractors at home, and about the fields…” He releases a breath, but I keep my eyes down as I hear it catch in his chest. “I felt so muchexcitementin you. Like you couldn’t believe a world like that existed. And it felt like we were always meant to betogether.” He pauses for a moment. “I knew from that moment that I loved you, Silas.”
A tear slips free and falls onto my jeans, and I reach up to wipe my eyes.
I wish I could remember that part.
“You were, are, and always will be someone worth choosing,” Dad says. “You’re strong, stubborn in the best way, and a fighter. That’s why I, and so many people, want you.”
I pull in a hitched breath and shake my head. “Not everyone.”
Dad’s quiet for a moment, and the weight of Mom’s absence sits heavily between us.
“Not everyone knows how to stay when things get hard,” he says after a moment. “And if they leave, it doesn’t mean you weren’t worth loving. It means they couldn’t love you in the way you needed. Your mom…” He releases a sigh. “She didn’t have the tools to be the parent you needed and deserved. And that’s on her. Not you.”
I nod, picking at the seam of the pillow beside me as I try not to think of her any more than I have to.
“And you have people in your life who really see you,” he continues. “Me, Papa, Mama, Rob, Peter, everyone on the crew… Levi.”
My eyes lift to land on him, and he tilts his head as he watches me.
“Is that why you’re asking?” he asks.
I nod, shifting my gaze back out the window towards his house down the street. “I’m scared.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I get that.”
A heavy sigh escapes me, and I bring my attention back to him. “I don’t.”
Dad just watches me for a long moment, then drops his gaze as he seems to think about something.
“What?” I ask. It looks like there's something he wants to say, but maybe doesn’t know how. And I need to know what it is.
He sighs, meeting my gaze again. “You know your system is hard-wired to expect people to leave.”
I nod, having heard that from my therapist over and over.
“Do you want to know why?”
My body freezes, but my mind swirls like a fucking tornado.
He has the answers. He knows why I’m like this… He’s always known, and I’ve never wanted to know. I know it has something to do with my biological mother, but I never wanted to know why she gave me up and never wanted me, and what she did to me. But that’s because I always had something to keep me safe from it all. I always had Dad. And I always had Levi.
But now, whatever it is… it’s keeping me from him.
So I need to know.
“Yes,” I say, looking right into Dad’s eyes and trying my hardest to keep my heart from beating right out of my chest.
He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, and I can feel his hesitation as he chews his lip.
But eventually, he nods and releases a heavy breath.
“I’m not going to give you all the details, but… your biological mother neglected you,” he says carefully. “For your entire two years with her. She left you in your crib for hours at a time, sometimes for an entire day. When we got you, you didn’t even know how to be held.”
Ice slides through my veins as I stare back at him, and every muscle in my body tightens.
