For the first time in six years, Damon believed I had nothing left to offer him and nothing left to threaten him with, and in that belief he finally relaxed into who he had been underneath the whole time.

I did not manufacture that man.

I did not provoke him or trap him into cruelty.

I simply declined to interrupt the performance, and let him show me, at his own pace and of his own accord, the face he’d been keeping behind the other one.

Every woman is entitled to see that second face before she decides whether to spend her life across a table from it.

Most of us only get to see it too late.