New Love, New Life

My husband’s grave is cold.

The grass is wet under my knees, soaking through my black tights. I don't move away. I want to feel something.

"Ten years," I whisper, tracing the letters of his name with my fingertip.

CONNOR OSBERN. BELOVED HUSBAND.

The gold has faded at the edges, worn smooth by rain and by me, by all the times I've knelt here and done exactly this.

"Ten years, Connor, and I still buy the wrong coffee. Every single morning. I stand in that aisle like an idiot and I reach for the dark roast because it's yours, and then I remember."

The wind picks up, dragging a few dead leaves across the headstone, and I brush them off like they're an insult to him.

"Cleo says I should stop coming here so often," I tell him, and I laugh, but it comes out broken, more air than sound. "She says it isn't healthy. She doesn't understand that this is the only place where I still feel married."

I press my palm flat against the cold stone.

"I kept my promise," I say, and my voice cracks right down the middle. "I told you I'd never let anyone else in, and I haven't. Ten years of gray mornings and grayer nights, and I haven't let a single person close enough to ruin it."

A bird calls somewhere behind me. I don't turn to look.

"Cleo brought the kids by the house last week," I tell him, picking at a loose thread on my sleeve. "Noah lost a tooth. He wanted to show me so badly, gap and all, grinning like it was the greatest thing that ever happened to him."

I smile despite myself, and then the smile collapses.

"I had to go stand in the kitchen for a minute. Just to breathe. Cleo followed me in and didn't say anything, just held my hand until I stopped shaking. She's good like that."

I pull my knees up and wrap my arms around them.

"We were supposed to have that, weren't we," I say, and it isn't really a question. "Gap-toothed kids of our own, running around some house we never got to buy."

"Sometimes I hate you for leaving," I admit, and the words taste like acid on my tongue. "I know that's cruel. I know you didn't choose the cancer. But you left, and I'm still here, stuck in this life that used to have you in it and now just has all this — " I gesture at nothing, at the gray sky, at myself, " — this nothing."

I press my forehead to the stone until it hurts.

"I miss you so much I forget how to breathe some days," I whisper. "Is that alright? Is that allowed, after ten years?"

The cemetery doesn't answer. It never does.

I stay there another few minutes, tracing his name once more, memorizing the shape of it like I haven't already memorized it a thousand times, and then I push myself up, my knees aching, my tights ruined, and I walk back to my car without looking back.

"Christine, you're staring at your screen. Are you even listening?" Marla, my coordinator, snaps her fingers in front of my face, and I blink myself back into the conference room later that day.

"I'm listening," I lie, straightening the stack of mockups in front of me. "Sponsorship meeting. New investor. Go on."

"New co-owner, actually," she corrects, sliding a folder across the table. "Apparently he's buying in enough to get an office here. Mr. Halloway wants us all present for the introduction."

The door opens before I can ask anything else, and the entire room seems to sit up straighter at once. I look up, expecting some gray-suited businessman with a briefcase and a bored expression.

I do not expect David St Clair.

I know his face — it's been on gallery walls and magazine covers for a decade — but nothing prepared me for how he fills a doorway.

He's tall, unhurried, in a paint-splattered blazer like he couldn't be bothered to change, smiling like he already knows all of us. Grey strikes of hair look like a colorful detail shining on him while mine make me look older than I am.

"Sorry I'm late," he says, dropping into the chair like it's his living room. "I got distracted by the mural in your lobby. Whoever painted that deserves a raise."

A ripple of polite laughter moves around the table. I don't laugh.

"Everyone, this is David St Clair," Mr. Halloway announces, beaming like he's just unveiled a prize. "As most of you know, David's joining us as a co-owner and creative partner. He'll be working closely with the design team going forward."

"Closely meaning constantly," David adds, and his eyes land on me, unhurried, curious. "Which brings me to my favorite part."

Mr. Halloway clears his throat. "Christine will be serving as your personal assistant for the duration of the partnership."

I feel my stomach drop somewhere near the floor.

"Excuse me?" I say, sharper than I intend, and a few heads turn.

"You're the most organized person in this building," Mr. Halloway says, like that settles it. "David needs someone who can keep him on schedule."

"I have a full workload already," I argue, gripping my pen so hard my knuckles ache. "I manage three accounts and a design team of eight. I don't have room to babysit anyone."

"Nobody's asking you to babysit," Mr. Halloway says, waving a hand like he's swatting the objection out of the air. "It's a temporary reassignment. Marla can cover your accounts."

Marla gives me an apologetic little shrug from across the table, mouthing sorry like that fixes anything.

"I don't bite," David says, and there's warmth in it, easy and teasing, but I catch the flicker of something sharper underneath — like he's already decided I'm a puzzle worth solving. "I promise I'm not that much trouble."

I hold his gaze, and something in my chest tightens like a fist.

"We'll see about that," I mutter under my breath, and the meeting moves on without me hearing a single other word that follows.

I didn’t know back then just how much trouble he’ll actually be.

"This is the design floor," I say, gesturing at the open-plan office without slowing my pace. "Try not to touch anyone's monitors. They get territorial."

"Noted," David says, trailing a hand along the edge of a desk anyway, grinning at me like he already knows he's being difficult. "What's territorial mean on a scale of one to 'will actually bite'?"

"Ask Greg," I say, nodding toward a hunched figure in the corner. "He bit someone in 2019. Allegedly."

David laughs, loud enough that a few heads turn, and I feel my shoulders climb toward my ears.

I am not used to loud laughter in this building.

"Alright," I continue, pulling up the scheduling app on the tablet I've been assigned to carry around like a leash. "This is how you'll submit your availability. Green means open, red means booked, yellow means—"

"Yellow means you're bluffing," David says, peering over my shoulder, close enough that I catch the smell of turpentine and something warmer underne