They are looking at the version of you they invented.

Nathan had spent three years looking at a mark.

He was going to keep looking at her, right up until the moment the lights went down.

Chapter 11 — The Performance

So I gave the performance of my life, and I gave it in a wedding dress.

I went to the venue.

I let them lace me into the gown, the beautiful dusty-rose-accented gown I had chosen back when I still thought I was choosing it for love.

I stood for the photographs, and I smiled, and the smiles were real enough on the surface — I have always been able to find something true to smile about, and that day I found it in the knowledge, held secret behind my teeth, of what was coming.