Sonia already feels a deep curl of regret, a sputter of self-loathing at having hit him. She'd wanted to. She'd thought about doing it plenty, all those times she'd cried into her pillow, oscillating between hurt and anger. But she doesn't feel much better for having done it.

Only a little.

Why? Why is he looking at her like that? He's never looked at her like that before, never so plainly, with no trace of the mocking irony that was always there even when he'd struggled to tell the truth. When she thought he had, anyway. It shakes her, jars her out of every response she could have rehearsed. Sonia curls her fingers around her stinging palm, tears bright in her eyes despite herself, all of that tangled emotion now rendered muddled and uncertain.

"For what," she says, her voice utterly flat but nearly as choked as his. She wants to hear him say it out loud. She needs to hear him say it.