[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Paper Season 1 Episode 10, “The Ohio Journalism Awards.”]

The Paper‘s first season may have concluded on Peacock, but we’re still obsessing over the romantic cliffhanger between coworkers Ned (Domhnall Gleeson) and Mare (Chelsea Frei). But did you know their finale kiss almost didn’t happen?

As fans who tuned in will recall, the editor-in-chief and reporter tested their palpable chemistry, as any good journalist doing research would do, by sharing a smooch at the Ohio Journalism Awards after a victorious evening. “We shot that ending like a million different ways,” Frei tells Swooon. “I didn’t even know that’s how it was going to be,” she adds of the final cut.

“There are versions where we didn’t kiss,” she says. “[I think] they wanted to see how the season felt and where it went,” she adds of the direction the writers ultimately took Ned and Mare before the season was through.