That refusal was his, sovereign and unforced, the one lever in the entire apparatus that belonged to no one but him.

If he let himself believe he’d been purely a victim, he would learn nothing, and he would do it again, to some other woman, the next time a beautiful lie came crying to his door.

I did not stay to save Nathan.

But I would not leave him the comfort of believing his own hands were clean, because they were the only hands in the whole story that had truly been free.

Chapter 16 — The Clear Highway