It's like a slap, not because it's intended to hurt or because there's anger behind it, or even because it stings him in and of itself, but because he can feel the pain there, and a kind of loss that comes not when something is lost but when it's never possessed at all.

Sometimes he's a psychopath. And sometimes it would just be easier if he was.

"That's not it," he says quietly. "Not even a little bit."