Hearing Beth’s name never failed to jolt Jane. “Do you mean like some sort of test?”

“Not a test so much as a catalyst to some profound realizations.” Annie reached for her wine and swirled the liquid around in its glass.

“What I learned most of all from that… episode,” Jane said, “is that relationships can endure bad times. And that as much as you hope there will only ever be good times, kinks in the road are inevitable, perhaps even necessary.”

Annie looked into her glass for a moment, then fixed her gaze on Jane. “Back then, I did very much fear you would leave me.” There was a slight tremor in her voice. “And what was the hardest of all, was that I didn’t have any control over it. It was entirely up to you. If you didn’t want to stay, there wouldn’t have been very much I could have done about it.” She looked away. “In the very worst moments, I pictured running into you and Beth in the street. Maybe to prepare myself for the worst. Possibly one of the most excruciating thoughts I’ve ever entertained.” She shook her head. “The fact that you didn’t hesitate for a moment to break all contact with her when it mattered, means so much to me. Because it could have so easily gone the other way.

“No. Not easily. Far from easily.” Jane had to take a sip of wine to swallow away a tear.

“Why did you… decide to stay?” Annie looked Jane square in the eye again.

“Leaving you would have been like,” Jane paused to think, “leaving a limb behind. The pain possibly comparable to chopping it off with a very blunt knife.”

“I do love it when you get all hyperbolic,” Annie said.

“Maybe that was a little over the top.” Jane exhaled and let some of the tension seep from her muscles. If all else failed, she and Annie still had a sense of humor between them to fall back on. Something to lighten the mood when it needed lightening most.

Annie leaned over the table. “I’m sorry that I hurt you, because hurting you is the last thing I ever want to do.”

Jane regarded her wife. The crows’ feet crowding around her eyes. Her short gray hair she’d always stubbornly refused to dye. Her kind blue eyes in which Jane often wanted to drown. This was her wife. The woman she knew through and through—and vice versa. “I accept your apology,” she said solemnly, knowing it wouldn’t be so easy as to just say those words. “And I certainly don’t feel like dragging out this stand-off. I hate it. And I hate sleeping alone as well. But I will need some time to just… I don’t know. Feel completely right in my skin again.”

“You mean some time to forgive me.” Annie’s voice was soft and low.