He said he loved her. 

Shouting matches, leaving her with a life he helped create, he said he loved her. 

He said he loved her too.

Late nights she spent alone, feeding four children while he was visiting someone else he loved, he said he loved her the most, and his child saw him crying the day she left. 

She said she loved him and his children. 

She said this as she took the lives of his four daughters and twisted them into what she thought was perfect.

She said she loved them even as one made herself sick everyday at school to see her mother, one was kicked out of the only home she had ever known. 

She said she loved them so she could make the youngest girls call her their Mommy.

Then she said she loved him instead, leaving a broken man to mend the broken home she had created. 

He says he loves her and her daughters. 

I have never seen her smile the way she does around him. He remembers our birthdays and favorite hobbies. He remembers to pick us up on school days, no matter how late. They watch TV shows together and laugh at the same jokes. He makes her happier, and that makes us happy too. 

Now, someone says he loves me. 

He makes me happy, and I make him smile. 

Part of me is frightened. I don't want to become the one that leaves, the one that breaks, the one that hurts. 

I don't want him to leave me, to break me, to hurt me. 

Yet somehow, the other part of me knows.

Things are not perfect, but he will not leave me.

He will not break me.

He will not hurt me. 

I love him.