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Love is a curious thing.
It never gives you much of a choice.
Sometimes you can choose to love someone despite their faults, seeding artificial emotions like a farmer would their crops.
But sometimes, when you don't want to love at all… well, sometimes love has other ideas.
She knows that's what this feeling is, every time she sees him smile.
A part of her likes to play dumb, that part of her that is still childlike, sheltered, and hiding away behind years of torture and isolation. Because it can't be love, not for a man like him.
He's American, his skin sun-kissed and tan but not like that of her people. He's as smart as he is stupid, sweet, and far more trusting than she could ever believe.
He's far from the husband her parents would have picked for her, a man who would have been learned and gentle, but hands without calluses. His lips and skin would not have cracked from dry air, nor would hers.
He would have been a kind man, but there would have been no telling what his loyalty would have been.
Would he have walked into certain death for her?
She thinks he wouldn't have.
But in that life, perhaps she would not have needed to ask that. In that life, she would have been a mellow, quiet wife. She would have born him sons and daughters, would have laughed and played and followed tradition with them.
Perhaps that life would have been a good one.
It's a shame she can never imagine herself there.
Instead, her fantasies show her a man with messy hair and a scruffy face. He had smile lines carved into his skin, arms, and torso covered in a riot of tattoos that never failed to captivate her when she caught sight of them.
In this fantasy, she was not swept off her feet by a man who would give her a soft life.
In this fantasy, their life was grueling, hard pressed.
But he was loyal, steadfast.
Like a dog that would never leave its owner's side.
Golden retriever, that's what Gaz had called him once. She still laughed about it to this day.
And she wanted to love him, wanted to live that fantasy of waking up every morning to the tickle of his facial hair and the warmth of his strong, solid body.
She wanted it so badly that it carved an ache into her chest and pulled on her heartstrings.
But like an a dog beaten to many times, she shied away from his smiles and kindness, confused and still healing wounds of past betrayals.
It would be so easy, to love Alex.
But it had been easy to love her brother as well. Easy to call him family and have his back. She had assumed he was loyal to his core, that he would have her back always .
He was her brother , a bond closer than any other she could ever form.
And even he had turned on her.
She wanted to love.
But she could not trust .
And it hurt more than anything she knew.
"I love you." He had said to her once, eyes open, honest, vulnerable.
"I'm sorry." She replied, feeling her heart twinge.
I love you too, she wanted to say.
The look of understanding hurt nearly as much as the words did.
Perhaps one day, she could learn to trust again.
One day
.