He Spent a Year Paying a Doctor to Write Down a Fragile, Unstable Version of Me That Didn’t Exist — So When He Finally Set Me Aside, the Whole World Would Believe I’d Simply Come Apart on My Own

That the love was aimed at a fiction was his crime, not my failure.

I would rather be a person capable of loving that fully and be deceived than be a person too armored to be fooled.

He took my sincerity and used it.

But he could not make it a flaw.

It was, and remains, the best thing about me.

Chapter 6 — Please Help Me

A few minutes later the door opened again, and Gabriel slipped back in alone, and when he saw my open eyes he went white.

I lifted one finger to my lips.