The simplest answer is that a quiet cancellation would have let him escape.

If I had called it off two days out with no explanation, Nathan would have walked away intact — bruised, perhaps, inconvenienced, but with his mask still on, his reputation whole, free to find the next tired hopeful woman with a house and a soft heart and do to her what he had tried to do to me.

I did not only want to save myself.

I wanted to stop him.