His cheek still burns where she kissed him and for a second, he follows her toward the door.

He half-expects to see her turn and give him that familiar half-smile and say "just kidding." Then she won't be leaving.

She had loved him.

In an oddly obtuse way, he hadn't known.

Sure, she had given him puppy eyes for three years, but that wasn't love. In his experience, love hurt. Love was to ache and bleed and to foolishly let that vulnerability he so despised to tear him apart.

Love wasn't stupid cards or flowers or puppy eyes. It hurt.

This hurt.

But as he watches her go, the part of him that isn't dead can see the faintest flash of what might have been.

A glimpse of a smile as she slips into bed next to him.
The friendly brush of her fingers against his as she hands him a chart.
Fevered, frantic kisses in a supply closet. Digging fingers, and ache, what a wonderful ache.
Seeing her cry in frustration and knowing, somewhat smugly, that he is not the cause this time.

"I was teaching you to think for yourselves," he repeats softly.

He had hired her for that wide-eyed innocence. He hated it in her. He had wanted to destroy it, to tear it apart until she saw why he suffered, why he chose to never alleviate that burden he carried.

He wanted her, beyond anything else, to set down that relentless moral weight and join him at his table of self-loathing and disgust.

He wanted her to think for herself, to stop trusting people so openly.

And he, who had thought she would do anything for love of him, can't help but be surprised as she rounds the corner and disappers from his sight.

She has drawn the line. She had stopped the puzzle. She is thinking for herself.

Success tastes more bitter than he had hoped.