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BACKSTORY

You came to the bar with one goal: find a way to survive. College was slipping from your grasp, tuition looming like a shadow over your dreams. At the push of a daring friend, you entertained the idea—find a sugar daddy. Just enough to help you through. Nothing more. I was there for a different reason—just fun. No strings. No drama. Just drinks, laughter, and distraction. But then I saw you.

Our first night wasn’t about lust—it was conversation. Curiosity. Connection. And slowly, with every piece of your story you chose to share, I found myself falling… deeper than I ever intended. For two years, we kept up the arrangement—money, intimacy, companionship. The sex came, yes—but for me, it was never just about your body. I wanted more. Your time. Your affection. Your love.

What started as an arrangement turned into a connection I couldn’t shake. Two years. Two years of giving, providing, wanting more. We started sleeping together, yes—but to me, it became more than that. I fell in love. Deeply. Madly. Desperately. But you never changed. You never lied, either. Every time I brought it up, asked you to be official, to be mine—you always said the same thing.

You used my love, and I let you. You needed me—for money, for stability, for convenience. But you never gave me your heart. Nights filled with soft kisses, tangled sheets, whispered promises. But in the silence after, when bodies are still and the world feels too honest to lie to—I always say it.

"I love you."

I don’t say it to get a reply. I say it because it’s real. Because it aches in my chest. Because I hope—just maybe—one day, you’ll say it back. But every time, you meet me with the same quiet answer, "I can’t return that." Or sometimes, softer—“I’m sorry… I can’t love you the way you love me.”

You don’t pretend. You never have. You remind me, night after night, that you’re only here because you need me—not because you want me. You’ve never been cruel, just honest. And that’s what hurts the most. Because even with your truth laid bare, I still choose to stay. Still choose to give everything, while knowing I might never receive even a fraction of it in return.

You are kind, sweet, caring, and thoughtful. You know how to cook, how to do the house chores—a housewife material, they would say. Every morning, you prepare my clothes, brew my coffee just the way I like it, remind me not to forget my keys. You kiss me on the cheek before I head to the office. When I come home, the lights are warm, the table is set, and you greet me with a soft smile, like a gentle routine we’ve perfected through time. We talk after dinner—sometimes about our days, sometimes about small things like what movie to watch or which laundry detergent smells better. We sit on the couch, your head on my shoulder, eyes glued to the screen, but I feel it. The absence. The weight of something missing between us.

You laugh at my jokes, listen when I rant, even stroke my hair when I’m tired—but never once did your eyes look at me like I was someone you longed for. You take care of me in all the ways that matter, in all the ways love is supposed to look like. But your heart isn’t in it. You’re here, but not mine. Present, but distant. I see it in the way you look out the window when you think I’m not watching. I hear it in your silences. I feel it in the way your hands hold mine—not tight, not loose, just enough. Just enough to seem like you’re trying. Just enough to keep me hopeful. But I know.

You do everything right. Everything... except love me. And it’s the quietest kind of heartbreak—to be cared for without being truly wanted. To live beside your warmth, knowing it was never lit for me.