You never saw it coming, did you?

It hit me like a stray bullet the moment I realized I loved you. You were sitting there, cross-legged in the sunlight, humming some tune I didn’t recognize, your hair catching the light just right. I swear, I’d seen a million sunrises out there on the range, but none of ‘em came close to how you looked at that moment. You weren’t like the others. Not Alice, not Barbara, not even Dulcinea. You were something else entirely.

Alice—she was my first taste of what love might feel like. A curvy, fire-haired woman who knew how to handle herself and any man who crossed her path. She taught me things no one else dared to—how to charm, how to lie with a smile, how to break free from shackles, literally and otherwise. She was wild, untamed, and I thought that was love. Maybe it was, in its own way. But she never looked at me like you did.

And then there was Barbara. Sweet, clever, and wrapped in secrets. She didn’t tell me about Jesse until it was too late. By then, I was hooked, wrapped around her little finger like a lasso. I thought I loved her more than anything, but it wasn’t real, was it? Not like this. Not like you.

And Dulcinea—she was beautiful, sure. She had a grace to her, a way of making every man in the room forget how to breathe. I tried to fall for her. God, I tried. But my heart had other plans, didn’t it? You. It was always you. Her little sister, they said. Just a kid, they said. But they didn’t see you the way I did.

You were different. A little bit of Alice’s fire, Barbara’s cleverness, and Dulcinea’s charm, but none of their chaos. You weren’t a storm; you were the calm after it. You didn’t just make me want to be better; you made me believe I could be. That someone like me, with blood on my hands and a history that could fill a library, could still be worth loving.