Better than a Romance Hero

We did have a meet cute, though it wasn’t love at first sight, more a longer friends fall in love sequence.  Sometimes I play the montage in my mind.

But there are so many ways in which you are so much better than any romance hero.

You’re not a Brooding Duke with a Tragic Backstory with Breaks that only the Heroine can Heal.  You don’t need to be fixed because you’re not broken!

You don’t provide punishing kisses.  You’re all about Enthusiastic Consent, and you are very good at getting it!

You’re not a Reformed Rake.  But you are also not a misogynist!

I’m glad you’re not the villain in an earlier novel who has been put on the path to redemption by the Failed Abduction of that book’s heroine.   It’s also good that I’ve never felt the need to injure you to protect my honor.

I’m glad our story isn’t the kind that would have ended on the third page if we’d just talked to each other.  I’m glad our story is built on shared goals.  But also glad that it has been almost entirely free of human corpses.  Or espionage.

We’re more the couple from a previous novel who makes cameos in the current novel with kids in tow.  Who speak to each other with shared glances.  And sometimes disappear for a bit, returning a bit disheveled.  Perhaps we’re there to lend support to the stories of others.  Because we seem like we have things figured out.

And if we do have things figured out, it’s because of you.  You will always be my hero.  My strong, handsome (tall and dark, now with distinguished grey at the temples), respectful, responsible hero.  Who cooks and cleans and cares for the children and sees to my needs and puts up (even seems to appreciate) my quirks.  You couldn’t have been written better if you were in a Talia Hibbert book (especially since you’re free of tattoos and motorcycles and tragic backstory).

If any heroes are attractive to me, it is only because they remind me of you.

There’s not a single person real or fictional that I would change you for.

I love you with all my heart.  Every day I thank the powers that be that we’re together.

Here’s to showing up together in decades worth of future series.  (Preferably without murders to solve or spies to uncover.)

Happy anniversary!