So, I built a fortress around us. Just the two of us, figuring life out one day at a time, surviving on cheap coffee, overtime shifts, and a fierce, terrifying love.
I loved Liam with a ferocity that sometimes scared me. But beneath that love, a river of anxiety always ran cold and deep. I worried constantly. I worried that our small life wasn’t enough. I was plagued by the thought that I wasn’t enough. Every time he looked at a father playing catch with his son in the park, every time he asked a question about shaving or cars that I couldn’t quite answer, I felt the sharp sting of my own inadequacy.
Liam, for his part, grew into a quiet, observant young man. He wasn’t like the other boys who crashed through life with loud voices and bruised knees. Liam was a watcher. He absorbed the world. He was sensitive in ways that made my chest ache, as if he had no skin to protect him from the harshness of reality. He felt things too deeply, perceiving the emotional undercurrents in a room the way other people perceive temperature.
