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“That this is something, that you’re not just going to disappear tomorrow or even next year.”

She moved into the kitchen, maneuvering around me like it was a dance, waving her hand at a small table set into a breakfast nook. “Have a seat. I’ll make tea.”

Frustrated, I sat and watched her.

“I missed talking to you,” she said without looking at me, her hands busy measuring out tea.

“Oh yeah?” I asked dryly. “Is that all you missed?”

She didn’t respond to that. A first impression of her would have you think she was a little apart from the world, a bit above it by the way she held herself. But I knew her better, knew exactly what was underneath all of that cool armor of hers, and I knew without her ever having told me that I was the only one that ever had.

I remembered well exactly how it was with her. Her chilly exterior, her walls, her straight back, and unruffled manner as though nothing in the world could shake her composure. It was such a lie; the dichotomy of what she presented to the world. What others saw versus what I knew her to be forever fascinated me.

She brought me a cup of tea just how I took it and sat down with hers across from me. The table was small, our legs would touch if she pushed her chair in a bit more.

“How have you been?” she asked, locking her pale ocean eyes with mine.

“Fine,” I said shortly. “You?”

“Fine,” she repeated back, amused. “Are you Arch yet?”

I shook my head, one sharp motion right to left, rejecting the question. “No.”

“A lieutenant, then?”

“I don’t care for the current North American Arch, I wouldn’t work to be one of his lieutenants, and I have no plans to move to Europe, so no.”

“I’m surprised. I always knew you’d take over the world.” She said it with a certain pride of ownership in her voice and that was what caught me more than the words themselves.

“I think your ambitions for me outmatch my own,” I told her softly.

“We’ll see,” she said enigmatically.

I’d be annoyed by it if I wasn’t already feeling too many more overpowering things to name.

“I always just wanted to settle down and be a family man,” I told her softly, but it was nothing she didn’t already know.

Something about that made shadows move in her eyes, but she hid it quickly. “Perhaps I’m not your girl, then.”

“You know better than that.”

“Kids are out of the question with me, Dom.”

“I don’t care. I’ll take you as you are, whatever that means. I just want you.”

“You’re impossible,” she said affectionately.

I just stared at her, equal parts frustrated and desperate. “What will it take to get you to take me seriously?”

“I’ve always taken you seriously.” She paused. “It’s me I can’t take seriously.” She paused again. “And it’s very much mutual. I just want you, too.” Another pause and we ate each other with our eyes. “You don’t have to go easy on me, you know,” she said in her raspy, silken voice, “I can take it. Do your worst.”

My mind did filthy things with that. “Excuse me?” I was gripping the table, braced and trying not to pant as I battled for an ounce of control.

“Yell at me. Curse me out. Say whatever else you need to say.”

“Raging at you is not the first thing that comes to mind at the moment.”

She smiled, a tender smile that belonged only to me, and the knowledge of that was powerful enough to break me. She set her tea down and sat back in her chair, spreading her arms wide, “What I said still stands then. Do your worst.”