I didn’t marry for love. Not the kind that keeps you up at night or makes your hands shake. Those twenty years were a loveless contract held together by the unconditional devotion we had for the kids. That was the glue. That was the deal. And it worked—until it didn’t.
But falling in love? That didn’t happen until Sedona.
At the tail end of my sabbatical, when everything inside me was unraveling just enough to let something new in.
That’s when it hit me—real love.
Not the warm, safe kind that looks good on paper.
I mean the unhinged, soul-cracking, blood-rushing kind.
And it came wrapped in a blonde Ukrainian with wild eyes and tighter leather.
She was perfume and fire and raw emotion in heels.
Beautiful and absolutely insane.
We were both out of our goddamn minds, caught in that strange Sedona magic that sneaks up behind you and injects itself straight into your bloodstream. I was shifting—spiritually, emotionally, existentially. And she didn’t just light the fuse.
She was the gasoline.
We were jealous bastards, both of us. Jealous of how the other spoke, dressed, walked, breathed. I hated how men looked at her when she wore those yoga pants and heels, swaying like a runway model in a grocery store. She hated the way I could charm a waitress without meaning to. We were mirrors—ugly, beautiful, cracked.
There’s this spot in Sedona—one of those overpriced dinner joints that tries to convince you live music makes the food taste better. I was there for the music, not the bullshit. Some guy with long hair and soft hands was playing this spiritual, fingerpicked guitar that hit me in the ribs like a memory I didn’t know I had. First time there. Fancy place. Linen napkins, women pretending not to look, waiters pretending to care.
That’s when I saw her.
She walked in like she owned the goddamn floor—leather mini skirt, black nylons, heels that could pierce your soul. She looked like a Polish hooker who’d been baptized in moonlight. Every man in the place turned to watch her walk, and they didn’t even pretend to be subtle about it. I didn’t either. But I was locked into the music, holding onto it like it might explain something to me I’d forgotten.
I ordered steak and broccoli.
She ordered silence.
Sat there stewing, burning holes through me with her eyes.
She wanted attention—hell, she deserved it—but I wasn’t handing it out like candy.
Not that night.
Not yet.
She wanted my attention, and I gave it to the guy playing guitar. That pissed her off. I could feel her burning in the corner of my eye. But when the music died, I turned my body to hers, smiled, met her lion eyes—those impossible, white-hot lioness eyes—and said something soft, something real. Something about how her eyes made me feel. And for the first time that night, she smiled like she meant it. Leaned in. Played coy. The script flipped. We weren’t strangers anymore. We were suddenly something else—some dumb love scene we hadn’t earned.
We left together.
She walked like sex poured into stilettos—like elegance and danger were drunk and grinding on each other down her legs. Those heels weren’t shoes, they were goddamn weapons. And of course, she drove a Jaguar—because what else would a woman like that command? When we got to it, something in me, something stupid and hopeful, reached behind her neck to pull her in for one of those soft, movie-scene kisses.
Instead, I got teeth.
Not lips—teeth.
She bit back. Turned her mouth into a locked gate. Reflexes of a woman who’d had to fend off too many weak men playing strong. I didn’t blame her. Hell, I respected it. Might’ve even loved her more for it.
In Sedona, women like her were unicorns in black lace.
I gave her my number anyway, and shoved the whole night into the back of my mind like a dream I didn’t trust.
I was shocked she ever called me back. But she did.
I acted different around her. She wasn’t just a body, not just another scratch on the bedpost. She had me—hooked. I couldn’t get enough. Dinners, hikes, road trips, stolen hours in parking lots and motel rooms. She was pure chaos dressed in European polish. She could walk out of Walmart with a plastic bag and somehow look like she just left a Milan runway.
We were glued together—every damn day.
Fought like wolves, made up like junkies.
We screamed.
We clawed.
We burned each other down and called it intimacy.
It wasn’t built to last. We knew that. But it didn’t matter. It was everything we wanted right then. It was toxic, electric, and alive. We fought just to leave scars. Deep ones. And before they even had time to scab, we’d fall right back into each other’s arms, desperate for the heat.
Over and over again.
It was the kind of love you survive, not the kind you build a home on.
That’s how I know I loved her.
Not because she was the one—but because she taught me what it felt like to fall, hard, into someone else’s gravity.
She wanted to settle. She was ready for roots, rings, and Sunday mornings that didn’t end in whiskey and silence. But I was still learning how to stand still without falling apart. Still stuck in the what ifs—what if I’m not done becoming whoever the hell I’m supposed to be? What if marriage is just a slow death with cake?
She didn’t want to gamble her youth on a man who couldn’t promise a future.
And I couldn’t lie to her.
Not about that.
The truth was simple, ugly, and heavy:
I wasn’t going to marry her.
And she couldn’t stay with someone who wouldn’t.
That’s what ended us.
Not a fight.
Not another woman.
Just the kind of honesty most people never say out loud.
Not long after, I met another woman. A tall, liquid brunette with a wine-soaked smile and a love for hiking. Cottonwood local. She was gentler, more grounded, less fire, more roots. It started strange. But once it bloomed, it took off fast and sweet. We’d hike out into the woods like hobos pretending to be poets. She said hiking was her meditation. I believed her. It made her quiet in the best ways.
We’d cook together, drink together, lie next to each other like two people pretending they hadn’t been cracked open by life. For a few hours, we made sense. No screaming. No chaos. She didn’t try to tear me down—she held me steady. She brought peace without making it boring. She’d dance for me in the kitchen, barefoot and smiling, glass of wine in hand. Sometimes she’d slip into a yoga pose mid-sip, like balance was just something that came easy to her.
Then one day, out of nowhere, she looked at me and said,
“I love you.”
Just like that.
Like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I didn’t say it back.
Not right away.
I couldn’t.
The word felt too heavy, too stained from the last time I’d handed it out and watched it rot in someone else’s hands.
So instead, I asked her—
“How do you mean? Like you love pizza? Like you love your dog?”
She laughed, but she knew what I was really asking.
She said love wasn’t one thing. It was layers. Stages. Phases.
That saying it didn’t mean we were getting married or picking out furniture—
It meant there was a foundation now.
Something real.
Something worth building on.
She said she loved my light.
Said it like she could see through the dents and damage and still find something worth holding.
And for the first time in a long while—
I believed her.
I didn’t know how to take it. Didn’t trust it. I was still shaking off the kind of love that comes with shared bank accounts and quiet betrayals—marriage love, where “I love you” sounds more like a contract clause than a confession.
She and I? We were still in the early pages. The kind where everything smells new and nothing’s broken yet. But I’d grown cautious around that word—love. Heard it and immediately started looking for the fine print. What do you want? What’s the catch? Where are the strings?
But she meant it.
Said it clean, without hooks.
And now, looking back, I believe her.
She was telling the truth.
Both women—wild and soft—showed me something I’d never known before:
Not just how to love,
But how to receive it.
How to sit still and let it come in.
And that shit’s harder than it sounds.
Neither of them could stay. And honestly, I couldn’t blame them.
The first one was a war. The second was a sanctuary. I wasn’t ready for either.
Long-term love with me back then? Impossible. I was still broken glass.
But I’m grateful as hell for both.
They didn’t fix me.
They didn’t have to.
They just lit a path to something better.
And maybe, if life has anything left for me, I’ll see that kind of love again.
And this time—maybe—I won’t fuck it up.
