"Will you tell me how long you have loved him?"

"It has been coming on so gradually that I hardly know when it began."

**********

When did I ever not love him? It grew so gradually, so inconspicuously, that by the time I realised, I wasn't actually so surprised ... 

I didn't fall in love with him like what was in the books - I simply realised that I had always loved him, and that it had been years in the making. Every time he had given me his brilliant smile, my heart had warmed a little more; Every honest heartfelt conversation we had, I had understood a little better what the word 'soulmate' meant; As time passed, I found myself being able to know what he felt just by the look in his eyes. We could talk for hours on end, and never run out of things to say. And of course, I'd felt his pain as well - as acutely as if it was my own.

It had been years in the making; I was first his friend, then his companion and then, slowly but surely, I realised I had been his soulmate all along. He had, in turn, been the missing piece I had never known I had been searching for.

When did I ever not love him? It had been years in the making. Slowly but surely it had grown, until there could have been no one else ... ... but him.