I did love you, once.”

I paused at the door and looked back at him one last time.

“I know,” I said.

And it was true.

He had loved me, in his own ruined way.

The trouble was only that he had loved his ego, and his resentment, and his status, and Bianca’s easy worship, and the thrill of proving that no one could ever leave him, so much more — and a day had come when all of it together outweighed whatever respect he had once had for me.

“But loving someone,” I said, “doesn’t give you the right to break them, and then expect them to wait around while you decide who you’d like to keep.”