“Why wasn’t I enough?” Brendon wraps his body around me, arms and legs, to hold me as tight as he can. “You are enough,” he says into my hair. My chest heaves with the emotions that I’ve kept locked up in a cardboard box in my heart. But it's been ripped open, and no amount of tape will put it back together. For the first time since my dad left me in the ER on my fourteenth birthday, I mourn the loss of my father. I let myself purge the fear of being in love, the fear of turning into my dad, the fear of never being enough. “Don’t leave me, okay?” I lift my face into the crook of Brendon’s neck
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