“What ever happen to the ring?” Kyla asked suddenly.

                “Huh?” Ashley snapped out of her trance to look back at her sister.

                “The engagement ring you bought her.”

                Ashley thought back to the day she arrived at the Carlin’s, higher than she had ever been.  She had come to propose to Spencer but after she stumbled into the blonde’s room, she couldn’t find the ring.

                Ashley shrugged.  “I don’t know.  Why?”

                “I was just wondering, you know?  Like are you two just going to start over or from where you left off?”

                Ashley hadn’t thought about it.

                “Because it seems silly to backtrack so many years and start over.  But if you go from where you two left, then that would make her your fiancé.”

                “I never gave her the ring.”

                “That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have it.”

****

                “So I was talking to Kyla…”

                “Uh huh?” Spencer answered as she ran her finger through Ashley’s curls.  Spencer had come over an hour earlier and they had retreated to Ashley’s room.  Spencer sat upright against the headboard, while Ashley lay in her lap.

                “Where do we go from here?”

                “What do you mean?”

                “Like do we start counting all over again?”

                “How long we have been together, you mean?”

                “Yes.”

                Spencer thought for a moment.  “No.  I don’t want to discredit all the years we have spent together.  Even when we weren’t together, you always had my heart.  So I’ve always been yours.”
                Ashley smiled at this thought, crinkling her nose.  Spencer bent over and rubbed the tips of their noses together, giving Ashley an Eskimo kiss before gently placing her lips against Ashley’s.

                “I love you.”

                “I love you.”

                “Spence?”

                “Yeah Ash?”

                Ashley bit her bottom lip before glancing up to look at Spencer, whose eyes were already on Ashley.  “Do you remember the last time I saw you before you left on your trip?”

                Spencer was taken off guard by the question, but searched her memory.  It took her a moment, but when the day finally crept into her memory, she closed her eyes tightly; Spencer didn’t like that day.  She remembered the white of Ashley’s eyes, the speckles of power around her nostrils, the blood seeping from her nose and falling onto the carpet.  Spencer spent days trying to get the stain out, to no avail.  She had never seen Ashley more damaged than she had that day but her broken heart prevented Spencer from collecting Ashley up in her arms.  Instead Glen called Kyla, who eventually took Ashley home.