She kissed the back of her neck and Jane gave her a light groan in return. This was the last of the day, their version of one last kiss goodnight, and Annie couldn’t help but wonder if it really would be this easy. If her little transgression could be buried like that underneath the vastness of their years together and the bond they had forged throughout them. Most of all, she had to ask herself whether she had truly snapped out of her infatuation. If a confession and a few conversations could really make that much of a difference, or whether she would have to rely on the passage of time to do its magic in that place in her heart where all of this had ignited.

“Good night, babe,” she whispered.

“Night.” Jane grabbed the arm that Annie had slung over her and pressed it a little tighter against her belly.

Had Annie really ever wanted it to be Kristin in her arms instead of Jane? Maybe for a fleeting moment. Or perhaps for the scratching of a faint itch. But not for this. What they had in that moment was the truest, purest form of intimacy. To have Jane fall asleep in her arms took a level of trust that could only be earned by a life lived together, by years of sharing everything. The good and the bad. By knowing each others’ less stellar sides and accepting them as part of the package.

Her infatuation with Kristin hadn’t had anything to do with what made her marriage with Jane so great and long-lasting. It was just a crush, a flash in the pan, everything reduced to a shiver of lust running up her spine when they were together. Not that it was purely physical. Annie admired Kristin’s personality, but there was no depth to that admiration. It was genuine, and perhaps time and the correct set of circumstances could have turned it into more, but Annie had already been swayed by time and circumstance once. And maybe other people believed that a person can have a few, or even many, great loves in their life, but Annie was not one of those people. She knew, all the way in her bones, that Jane was the one and only for her. She’d been privy to that knowledge for twenty years. She’d known when they’d met and Jane’s insecurities had almost ruined everything before it even began. She’d known when they’d first kissed. She’d known when Jane had fallen in love with another woman. Oh, how she had known then—the pain of knowing like a knife in her gut. And she knew now.

And yes, Annie had acted foolishly, and hung onto Kristin’s words a bit too much, allowed her into her fantasies a little too often, but it had also made her realize what she’d stood to lose.