Because that was the real danger of the long game I was about to play.

Not that Derek would catch me, but that I would disappear into the act, that six months of pretending to be beaten might slowly make me beaten in fact, that the mask might become the face. I remember was the thread I tied to myself before I walked into the maze, so that no matter how deep I went into the pretense, I could always find my way back to the woman on the kitchen floor who had promised herself this would not stand.

I held that thread for six months.

Every time his tenderness almost worked on me, every time I almost softened, I touched those two words in my mind and remembered who I actually was underneath the performance.