“No, Marcus,” I said.

“If I hated you, this would be revenge.” I leaned in, just slightly, and said the truest sentence I have ever spoken to him.

“This is compliance.” Julian almost smiled.

Marcus did not.

Those three words carried more than Marcus could hear in that moment, and they contained the entire difference between the woman he had left and the woman standing in front of him.

Because Marcus had spent our whole marriage, and the five years since, imagining me as a creature of feeling, governed by hurt, by need, by the desire for his approval and then, presumably, by the desire for his ruin.