That is the terrible efficiency of the con that targets the heart: it does not defeat your intelligence, it recruits your deepest wish, and turns the very thing you most want into the weapon used against you.

I was not fooled because I was stupid.

I was fooled because I was lonely, and Chloe had built her entire approach around the exact shape of my loneliness.

Lying in that bed, hearing her drop the mask, I did not feel stupid, in the end.

I felt grieved, for the man I had been for two years, who had thought, at last, that he was loved.

Chapter 5 — The Countdown