From Lukov with Love

There was a pause. “I’m a catch.”

“A catch and release.”

You’re not ever going to be anyone else’s partner. Not while I’m alive, Meatball. I will drag your stubborn, beautiful ass kicking and screaming back to me because nobody else will ever be good enough for you

It was love. All I could feel was love.

I loved this man so much that losing him was going to break my cold, dead heart into so many pieces I was just going to have to stick them in the same box I kept my dreams and carry it around with me forever.

I didn’t want someone to pat my cheek and tell me everything was going to be okay. I wanted this man who would never take my shit, who would never let me quit, and I had a feeling would never quit on me. Not ever. Not if I screamed, not if I kicked, not if I told him to go eat a thousand mounds of shit.

This was my partner. This was more than my partner. He was my other half.

And the only thing I could do to thank him for this gift he’d given me, this knowledge that he thought I was invincible, was to make sure we won.

I’d give him the thing he had wanted me for in the first place.

I’d give him my fucking all.

And the other man, the one whose appreciation and respect I had told myself for so long didn’t matter, seemed to think the world of me.

Love to me was honesty. Being real. Knowing someone’s best and worst. Love was a push that said someone believed in you when you didn’t.

Love was effort and time.

“You’ve been in my life for thirteen years. How could you not think I don’t care about you? We fuck around with each other because we both like it. Because there’s nobody else we can fuck around with that can handle it.”

Because it was easy to forget that love was complicated. That someone could love you and want the best for you, and at the same time, break you in half. There was such a thing as loving someone the wrong way. It was possible to love someone too much. Too forcefully.

You can have all the talent in the world and still do nothing with it,

There was something wrong with us.

And I didn’t hate it. Not even a little bit.