Use it to help your mother.” He stared at the envelope with a broken look.

“If I could go back,” he asked, “would you have stayed?” And I stood, and I gave him the truest answer I had.

“I would have loved the ambitious man I met ten years ago, gladly, for the rest of my life,” I said.

“But that man became someone who mistook my love for a resource.

And I have learned the one lesson I will never unlearn: I will never again set myself on fire simply to keep another person warm.

Goodbye, Christopher.” And I walked back toward the elevators, and I left him sitting alone in the lobby of the company I had built while he was pretending to build one.