‘It’s always been you’ her ex-partner said.  Was that true?  For a while it wasn’t…right?  She was pushed away and it hurt.

Tina left her.  The first time because of her unimaginable blunder.  The second for someone else.  Then the threat of losing her beautiful daughter followed thereafter. 

The anger swam through her veins at the memory.  Her jaw clenched.  The temptation to say something hurtful to match what she felt was bubbling.  It would have been so easy to attack.  With Tina’s demeanor she would have been allowed an outburst. 

But time was fleeting.  So much having been wasted already.

Bette looked up thoughtfully at the cloudless sky.  Although innately confident, that didn’t necessarily mean she would arbitrarily welcome challenges to confirm that trait.  One like today’s encounter.

Had too much happened to thwart a future together they now admitted to wanting?  Both filtered doubts because of the events that led to their present.  It would continue to test them.  Everyday. 

And yes, it hurt.  Still.  Intensely so.

Would it ever stop?  Would both ever truly believe they were going to be together no matter what?  Was the risk of another heartbreak worth the effort they were making? 

Bette’s own heart broke after her affair.  Again it broke when Tina’s relationship with Helena blossomed.  Yet again with the lacking in their union after their daughter’s birth culminating with Henry and his imprint on their lives.  She would never be someone who could complete the picture of the family Tina had in her mind in the recent past.  Never. 

Then again it wasn’t only her heart that was mending.  Tina too was still working past Bette’s fling.  What broke everything that meant anything to her.  Though much lay before the affair, it served the pivotal act that brought them to their present.  In part triggering thoughts of another kind of life. 

Subsequent to that the disquiet with the art lover’s willingness to surrender the duty of ensuring financial security that went against a planned outcome.  And who could forget the personal loss they both lived through.  Both women’s spirits crushed after the passing of their unborn son. 

There was so much pain surrounding their coupling one could wonder why they would ever want to pursue rekindling their bond.