What We Broke

by Marley Valentine

“That’s it,” he rasps, stroking us through our orgasms. “Show me how fucking pretty you are.”

“You have the most beautiful smile,” he says matter-of-factly before dropping the softest kiss on my lips. “That’s what caught my eye first.”

With his lips on mine, we just exist.

One man confessing his truth, the other one absolving him of the burden.

“You’re mine,” he says with such finality. “You’re my worry, my heartache, my burden. Whatever you think you are, whatever season it is for us, you’re fucking mine, Leo.”

And if I truly believed that leaving me would guarantee him a pain-free and fulfilled life, I would’ve been the one to leave him a year ago. I would’ve handed him my bloodied heart on a silver platter—veins, arteries, and all—and begged him to go.

“Leo. Baby,” I say with an exasperated breath. “We can’t be on the same page when we’re both reading a different fucking book.”

“I love you, Leo,” I say. “No matter what you try to tell yourself or how unloveable you try to insist you are. I. Love. You.”

I’m the caretaker, the provider, and the protector.

“Sometimes I feel like there aren’t enough letters in the alphabet to string the right words together to tell you how much I love you.”

I love you. You were made for me. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for not leaving me.

If the great loss that he and I have survived has taught us anything, it’s that we’re not invincible. Neither is our marriage and neither is our love. Bad things absolutely happen to good people, but so do good things. And the former should never be given the power to eliminate the latter.