It's a word that doesn't exist between them - something they don't say, something they don't act on. Because love is for children - to love is to let someone in, give them a gun with a hollow point bullet and allow them to fire it at a point blank range into your chest.
It's a risk, it's a danger. And this? The small touches, when they slide into bed under the covers, trail their fingers along skin, trace the scars that tell their stories - it's not love, it's them learning - learning the cracks, crevices, points of weakness, the concentration areas necessary to break them. To win and to survive.
Because with love, doesn't there come trust? And trust is a thing that's long forgotten, broken and battered and corroded, fatigued and worn from the constant cycles of betrayal, of actions that led them down paths they didn't want to take, actions that were a catalyst for their own that resulted in the red stains on their hands and the irreparable cracks in their slates.