Maybe he would ruin her like the waves crashes the shore, but nothing was more beautiful for her than wanting to be wrecked into his demise. In his ruins she breathed to exist.

She'd never find another man like him as long as she lived. He was ruining her for any other, and the pleasure of it was beyond bearing.

If it's melted, it's ruined.

That's my daughter's baby pictures and my son's baby pictures. They're all ruined and mildewed.

Kind, reasonable, thoughtful. It wasn't 'love' or an admission of wild, passionate feelings, but he realized he liked her three words more. 'Love' would have been easy, another easy lie in a long line of lies. 'Love' would be easy to dismiss.

Who fixes broken people? Is it only other broken people, ones who've already been ruined? And do we need to be fixed? It was the messiness and hurt in our pasts that drove us, and that same hurt connected us at a subdermal level, the kind of scars written so deeply in your cells that you can't even see them anymore, only recognize them in someone else.