That he was so aware of the cost of caring it felt like dying sometimes.

But that didn’t mean it wasn’t love.

No.

It might even be deeper because he was so very, very aware of what it felt like to lose people.

And Sammy... He didn’t know what to call that feeling he had for her because it felt like it was as intrinsic to him as the blood in his veins. It was natural, like the beating of his heart, like every breath he took.

It felt deeper than anything.

He’d equated it to obsession. Need. Possession.

Living.

But he’d been too afraid to call it what it was.

“I love you,” he said.

In the moment the words left his mouth he knew that he meant them in every way.

That it had been true for a very long time. And it was even truer at this moment.

That he loved her as a friend, that he loved her as a wife, as the future mother of his child.

She smiled vaguely. “You know I love you, too.”

And he could hear, in the way she spoke that word, that she only meant it the one way. The way that they had said to each other pretty effortlessly over the past many years.

“No,” he said, picking up one of his own french fries. “I’m in love with you.”

“Oh,” she said and some of the joy seemed to go out of her french fry eating.

“That’s not so far away from where we’ve been, is it?”

“I don’t know. You know how I feel about...labeling things.”

“Yeah. But we kind of do have labels now. Husband and wife.”

She didn’t say anything. Instead, she took a sip of her milkshake and then started picking at the top of her hamburger.

“You don’t have to say it,” he said.

And he found that he really did mean that. He didn’t need her to say it. Not now. Someday, it would be nice. But as he looked at her, the chains that had been holding him in place seemed to fall away. And he experienced a kind of lightness that he didn’t think he was capable of feeling. And yeah, along with it came some terror. But it was more that he would have felt afraid of losing her no matter what he called it. He’d been afraid of losing her. Had been consumed by trying to find ways to not call what he felt for her what it was. Because he had been in love with Samantha Marshall from the beginning. She wasn’t just his sunshine; she was his heart. And it had been beating because of her all this time. She was the reason. His Sammy. His beautiful Sammy. And yeah, he wanted her to love him. The way that he did her.

But if she didn’t, that wasn’t a tragedy.

He’d lived through tragedy. And he had promised her that nothing would break them. He had promised that he would hold steady. He had promised. And he would.