“You are the first person alive who can force him out into the open.”

“So you want to use me as bait.”

“Yes,” he said, and did not soften it, and I respected him for that more than I could have respected any comfort.

I had spent three years with a man who dressed every self-interested thing he did in the language of love, and here, at last, was someone who simply told me the truth about what he wanted from me and let me decide what to do with it.

It should have felt colder than it did.