Most love stories start with a man. Mine starts with a house called Pebblestone, a Rottweiler with boundary issues, and two small boys who think I’m indestructible. It starts with me. A woman who has weathered enough storms to know better than to romanticise them, standing in the wreckage of a life that didn’t go to plan. It starts with me deciding, quietly, not to lie down in it. There are no fairytales here. Only saltwater and petrol fumes. A kitchen bench stacked with panc

I watched him for a moment, noticed the way the sunlight fell through his lashes, made shadows on his warm brown eyes. Caught on a dark spot on his right eye. What is that? I forgot what I was saying. And then — he laughed. Not polite. Genuine. Easy. Everything I hadn't felt in what seemed like forever. It cut straight through whatever I'd been thinking. And I experienced this overwhelming sense of recognition. Like remembering something I'd forgotten I was allowed to feel. A

People think the end of a violent relationship comes with relief. Freedom. Closure. Maybe one day it does. But at the beginning? It feels like stepping out of a burning building and realising you're still on fire. Missing a limb. And now facing lawyers.

I didn’t know then that this ache, this hunger for protection and acceptance that I had never been given, would shape every love that came after. But it did.

The woman who married at eighteen, who held the caravan together with tutoring money and good Christian endurance, who fell from Sydney back into shame — she was still in here somewhere. But she wasn't running the house anymore.

I went into labour nine days before I let myself give birth. My body knew what my mind refused to admit: I wasn’t safe yet. I didn’t get the luxury of just being a mother. I became a fortress. I didn’t know then the full impact this moment would have on us all, but as that new day dawned, with my newborn curled under one arm and my firstborn tucked against the other, I made a vow: I will not let the world hurt my children. Not their father. Not fate. Not fear. And I didn

THE PLACE I COULDN’T LEAVE People romanticise starting from scratch. They don't tell you scratch is sharp. Scratch cuts. Pebblestone was scratch. But it wasn't just a house. It was a promise — whispered to two babies who didn't know how close the ground had been. You're safe. I've got you.

The next day, my phone lit up around lunch time. A photo. A drawing. Me, on the Harley. Hair wild. My soccer-mum-van in the background, slightly off to the side, showing the contradiction like it made sense. He’d noticed everything. All these parts of myself, each so different and misaligned, he'd seen and somehow understood. I stared at it, looked again and again. No one had ever drawn me before. Not like that. Not with the contradictions blended together in a way that made

We stopped by the Murray River, wandered to a grassy spot under a tall shady tree. He laid out the blanket. Champagne. Strawberries. Pineapple. Sunlight moved across the water in bright, lovely patterns. The breeze kept catching my hair, pulling me slightly out of myself and then back again. As the light shifted towards late afternoon, he sat up and looked at me. Shy. Open. Almost unsure of himself. “Would you be my girlfriend?” Just like that. No lead-in. No context. No weig

He did a pastel drawing of me that morning in Dunsborough. Warm tones, sunrise behind me, hair wild, smile easy. I was happy. I was in love.

I suppose that nothing about this was confusing. I just didn’t accept the answer.

And then one evening, sitting on the porch sipping wine from a teacup, I looked up. And there was Finn. Finn arrived quietly. Like the tide. He was built like someone who could hold back the weather. Broad shoulders, hands made for fixing things, the kind of man who carried competence like a scent. There was no mystery with Finn. And after all the noise, that felt like relief. But stillness after fire feels a lot like loneliness. I’d lie awake beside him, his arm heavy across

Finn was easy to love in daylight. Warm. Physical. Present. He held me, kissed me, built little pockets of happiness I could step into without thinking too hard. But when I looked at him too closely there was a distance I couldn't cross. Like knocking on a door that never fully opened. He could meet my body but not my soul, and I think we both knew it. He didn't know I drew. He never asked. With Dion it was the opposite. Nothing about him was safe. Nothing about him was stabl

And I thought that maybe I’d done something small but good. That sitting beside someone in silence could keep the dark away. He smiled once, faint and faraway.
 I remember thinking he looked calm.
 That he was OK. When he dropped me back home, I felt light.
 Like I’d been someone’s guardian angel for the night.
 We didn’t hug. Didn’t touch. Didn’t need to. Just two people sitting with the sea. One trying to live through the night,
and the other believing she’d helped hi

In life, the day had been bright. In my painting, it became sunset. The light softened. Deepened. Gold and rose and something just beyond reach. He’s still there in the picture. Sitting at the edge of the world. His back to me. Love cannot keep a storm from chasing the horizon.

A boat. Small and yellow. Moving into mist. No shore. No horizon. Just a passage between here and wherever he'd gone. It felt like crossing. Like somewhere on the other side of the unknowable depths, he'd finally found quiet. It gave me hope. Dion looked at it. Frowned. Said the reflection was wrong. That it made his head hurt. Fine.

Lucien was in town. His first visit from Sydney in months, here on business. When he walked into the pub it was like no time had passed at all — same sharp jawline, same immaculate suit, same confidence that filled a room before he even spoke. He took one look around and smirked. "No, this is bogan," he said, rolling his r's in that Turkish accent, emphasising the word like it was beneath us both. He wasn't wrong. The next bar was smaller, warmer, the kind of place that smell

Two round canvases. One in the afternoon. A tree. Thick, gnarled, roots clawing into gold like they were the only things holding the earth in place. The second at night. Branches reaching across a bruised sky, heavy with wisteria. Two halves of the same soul. The one that survives. The one that still reaches. I don't feel strong. I'm just still here. Apparently that is enough.

The night unfurled the way Fremantle does — cobbled streets, stolen wine glasses, a hotel hallway mapped like a labyrinth. Somehow we ended up in a room where he lay on the bed, grabbed the complimentary notepad and said: "Don't move." He sketched me standing by the window, city lights haloing my silhouette. His lines were fast but careful, like he was trying to capture me before I disappeared. That evening, just before bed, he said it casually, like a fact he was simply repo

In my drawing, I gave Finn what I never gave him out loud. The words I'd said wrong when I had the chance. I told him, with windows and firelight, what I couldn't say to his face: I did love you. I'm sorry I said otherwise. I just didn't know what to do with it. The light stayed on all night. Morning. Sunlight spilled across the porch. I stepped outside with a coffee. The blanket was there. Folded neatly, edges stiff from the sea air that always found its way in. And on top o