Ashley tilted Spencer’s face towards her, looked deep into her scared blue eyes.

“It’s still empty.”

Spencer waited for her to go on and explain what she meant, but Ashley seemed lost in thought again. Ashley’s words had scared her. There was a part of her still waiting for the old Ashley to poke her head in the door and blow all of Spencer’s new found dreams out the water.

“Ash?”

Spencer hated the fact that her voice sounded so small, so scared in that moment. At least it broke Ashley out of her silent, sightless stare out of the window.

“It’s still empty because I don’t have you. Didn’t have you. This all happened so quickly that I sometimes think I’m going to blink and it’s all going to disappear, like it was some kind of mirage and I’m just stumbling around in a dessert somewhere, delusional and lost.” She was quiet again, but only because she pressed a kiss against Spencer’s forehead. “But this isn’t a delusion, a dream. This is really us. So if keeping you means moving back here, leaving everything I built for myself in London then that’s what I’m going to do.”

Spencer felt guilty in that moment. She wanted to be with Ashley, but not if it was going to cost her so much. She loved her too much to do that to her.

“I don’t want you to give up everything you’ve built for yourself. We can work something out. I mean you have a point, we’re barely back together again after seven years! I can’t expect you to drop everything for a relationship that may not even be worth it in the end.”

Spencer almost gasped in shock when Ashley rather abruptly pushed her away from her and held her at arms length.

“Don’t say that! Don’t doubt this already. God, do you know how long I’ve dreamed of this, of being able to just hold you again? Yes, I have a good life in London, but did you just completely miss the part of my little speech where I told you it’s all empty without you? Do you know that the short time that I knew you, that I called you mine, was the happiest time of my life?” Ashley swallowed down the urge to cry old tears. “Spencer, I have an okay life in London, I really found my feet there, but in the end I truly believe that I could have a great life with you. Besides I want to come home, I have Kyla here. I have family here. I want to be around when Kyla and Glen have their first child. I’m kind of sick of missing everything in her life that matters, that her sister is supposed to be there for.”