He looked at it on her hand for a moment.
Then she reached up and pulled him down by the front of his shirt and kissed him, and he wrapped both arms around her and kissed her back and the coffee mug tipped slightly against her knee and neither of them noticed.
When she pulled back her forehead came to rest against his.
"You said you tried," she said. "To stop caring about me."
"Very deliberately," he confirmed.
"What did that look like."
"Mostly me being terrible to you and you refusing to be intimidated."
She laughed....surprised and real, the kind that came from somewhere before she could stop it.
He felt it against his chest.
"I was so scared of you," she said.
"I know."
"Not of what you'd do. Just of...." She shook her head slightly. "You saw through everything. I'd spent years being exactly what I needed to be in any given room and you just....looked at me and I felt like you were reading something I hadn't written yet."
"I was," he said. "I still am."
