They are excellent readers of weakness and terrible readers of restraint, because the two look identical from the outside and are opposite underneath.

A man declining to fight because he is afraid and a man declining to fight because the fight is not worth having produce the very same quiet, and the predator, scanning for the first, mistakes the second for it constantly.

Vanessa had spent her life around people she could push, and she had learned to read the world as a collection of soft targets, and she genuinely could not tell the difference between a man who would not stand up to her and a man who was simply waiting for a reason worth standing up for.

Chapter 5 — The Comments I Let Slide