Remember what I told you back in Japan.”She remembered what it was. Talk and listen. The basics of communication and the key to almost all marrige woes, according to Maureen.Why was it always easier said than done?

He needed to hear her voice, needed to know she’s breathing and living. He needed to feel her heart was still his.

His heart was screaming her name, refusing to believe what his brain was hammering down, repeatedly, into his soul. His heart was recalling all the times he saw pure, unadulterated love for him radiatingfrom her lovely face. . . or was it just lust? Was it all fake?

It didn’t feel like they were strangers who just met a few days ago. In fact, it felt like she had known him for a long time. She was one with him, feeling him, internalizing him, and by opening up his whole life to her, he synthesized their souls and their hearts into one.

Everything has a beginning, you know. Love has to start somewhere. And sometimes, it starts with the physical.

It also didn't matter that she had only known him for a short time. The heart knows no time when it meets its match, its better half, its kindred one, which long ago was planned by destiny and then thrust forward by serendipity in ways she had never imagined.

Love should give one peace, not turmoil; security, not uncertainty; happiness, not anguish; hope, not despair; and contentment, not fear.