---- My mind drifted back to our third year of marriage. There had been a brief, fragile time when he was almost tender with me. It was the night he'd finally trusted me with his greatest secret: he was born with congenital analgesia, the inability to feel physical pain. It was his one true vulnerability, and he had made me its sole keeper. Then, somehow, the secret was leaked. Armed with that knowledge, his rivals set a trap during a sit- down.
They took a blowtorch and knives to his skin, searching for the crack in his composure. He made it out alive, but his trust in me was dead. He never accused me. He never even asked. He simply decided I was guilty. ---- From that day on, the look he gave me was the same one he reserved for traitors before sending them to the bottom of Lake Michigan. And now, seeing the impossible tenderness he showed Claire, that old, familiar bitterness threatened to swallow me whole.
He hadn't even glanced my way. My eyes were fixed on his back, but my whisper was lost in the bar. "You've got company. I should go."