She'd meant either. Both. It can end. Some day, it would end. But the way it would scare her was the first way: If so-called 'love' played a trick again and simply disappeared one day, overnight, like one more threadbare dream.

Ask yourself, if you wouldn't want to try. A year ago, even, she'd have said it wasn't worth the bother. It was a distraction - from career, duty, and the battlefield. There was no sense chasing something that didn't exist.

Now, she'd tasted those moments of peace, too rare to give up. But did I seem in love? Did it have a chance at all, from the beginning?

"So you're saying I did?" That she did want to try, that she did seem to look like someone in love; it didn't much matter which he believed she meant.