“I only regret,” I said, “ever confusing humility with letting myself disappear.”

That is the one thing that still aches when I look back.

Not that I didn’t use my family’s money sooner, not that I didn’t wreck Gavin’s company years earlier, not even that I once truly loved him.

It stings that I spent six years lowering my voice and dimming my own light so that an insecure man wouldn’t feel threatened by me — because I had believed, foolishly and for a long time, that love meant proving I needed nothing from him: no famous name, no fortune, no power of my own.

I thought that if he loved me while I looked ordinary, the love would somehow be purer.