Before I turned thirty-five, my whole life was my career. I had never been in a relationship.
I figured I'd stay single forever, until Damien Hale crashed into my world at twenty-two.
Faced with a thirteen-year age gap and every insecurity I carried, Damien always stood firm beside me.
“Don't listen to anyone else. Just look at me.”
“All you have to do is stand there. I'll come to you.”
Two years later, he was in the stairwell of our apartment complex, kissing another girl his own age like he'd forgotten the world existed.
“She's thirty-seven. How could I possibly be serious about her?”
“You have no idea. A woman like that, successful but zero experience with men, she's the easiest mark there is. Desperate for a second bloom. I ask, she gives.”
“If it weren't for getting you to the top of the design world, I wouldn't take a woman like her if she threw herself at me.”
In that moment, I finally woke up from the dream he'd so carefully constructed.
That love that had burst into my life like a break-in was never love at all. It existed because I was the most renowned jewelry designer in the country.
But Damien, you were wrong about one thing.
I was never desperate. And you were never my second bloom.
——
I leaned against the door to the stairwell, listening in silence to Damien's ragged breathing.
“Christine James, the National Jewelry Competition is just days away. That first place is yours, guaranteed.”
“If it weren't for this, you think I'd still be stringing her along?”
I stood behind the door, still gripping the umbrella I'd brought to give him.
Lightning split the sky outside the stairwell window, thunder rolling after it, but Christine's breathy moans came through with perfect clarity.
“Everything you've done is for our future. A few more days and you'll never have to put up with that old woman again.”
“We've been together six years. Don't I know you by now? I'd never doubt you.”
“These two years must have been torture for you. And Zoe Payne actually thought you meant it. God, that's hilarious.”
My fingers tightened around the umbrella until my knuckles went white.
Damien and Christine had both joined my company two years ago.
Fresh out of college, they'd started as interns in the design department.
Damien was my assistant. Christine was assigned to another designer's team.
They weren't in the same group, and their projects rarely overlapped.
Other than being in the same intern cohort, I'd had no reason to think they even knew each other well.
Only tonight did I learn they'd been a couple all along. Six years together, four before they ever set foot in my company.
The wet, sordid sounds from the stairwell kept going. I turned and walked home.
The second I got through the door, I went straight to the bathroom and stared at my reflection.
I was thirty-seven. Damien was twenty-four. Thirteen years younger than me.
He'd come to my company the year he graduated, starting as my intern, then staying on as my assistant.
Two months into his internship, he'd looked me dead in the eye with that steady gaze of his.
“Ms. Payne, my internship ends in one month.”
“When it does, would you give me a chance to pursue you?”
I hadn't taken him seriously at the time.
But the look in that twenty-two-year-old's eyes, bright and vast as a sky full of stars, had been almost frightening in its intensity.
After his internship ended, he passed every evaluation the company threw at him and earned a permanent position.
True to his word, he pursued me with everything he had.
Now the voice of that boy in my memory and the voice of the man in the stairwell collapsed into one.
For a moment, the world blurred at the edges.
Damien, what was I to you, really?
I didn't know how much time had passed before his panicked voice jolted me awake.
