There was a version of Damon Caldwell that Lena had always known.
The version that ate cereal from the box standing at the counter. The version that remembered her favourite films and forgot her birthday and then remembered it three days late and made it up with something so specifically chosen to her taste that she couldn't stay annoyed. The version that drove her to A&E at two in the morning when she was fifteen and had broken her wrist falling off the garden wall, and held her hand the whole time, and told terrible jokes until she stopped crying.
She had always known that version. She had loved it completely. She had also always suspected, in the way of people who pay close attention to the people they love most, that it was a version — not false, not performed, but partial. Damon sho
