“This is what I love about us,” Sharon murmurs, her voice soft and reverent as her eyes trace every curve and angle of his face, committing each feature to a memory she knows will never be perfect but feels urgent to hold onto. Love is such a strange, wild thing, tangled in everything they are and have become. It’s as delicious as it is confusing, an emotion that wraps itself around the soul and pulls tight. And not always gently.

“All the things we’re willing to do for each other,” she continues, the words slipping out with a quiet conviction. To Sharon, that’s the essence of it. Love isn’t just about the sweetness and warmth; it’s the sacrifice, the small and sometimes painful ways they stretch themselves for the other’s happiness. She’s felt love that wasn’t willing to take that leap, love that hesitated at the edge of discomfort. But she’ll never accept anything less again.

“I love you, I love you, I love you,” she repeats, her voice taking on a rhythmic cadence, like a chant, like a truth she needs him to feel as much as hear. Each repetition carries a weight, the intensity of everything she’s ever felt for him, and her heart aches with the fullness of it, with the strange, funny beauty of loving him.