She started stepping outside to take calls. Even in February. Even when the temperature dropped to fifteen degrees and her breath came out in white clouds.
Client dinners that ran late. Meetings that didn’t line up with calendars. A new perfume that didn’t belong to any department store I recognized.
Distance that had nothing to do with physical space.
I noticed it, felt it, and told myself I was imagining things. That I was working too much. That marriage after twenty years just settles into something quieter.
I told myself anything that meant I didn’t have to ask questions.
Back in February 2003, when I first met Nicole, none of this existed.
She was twenty years old, working as an event coordinator at a children’s hospital charity gala. I was thirty-three, wearing a rented tux and trying to look like I belonged in rooms full of donors and executives. I’d been working alongside my father for eleven years by then, learning the business, learning how to carry his expectations.
Nicole wore an emerald dress that matched her eyes. When she laughed at a stupid joke I made about load-bearing walls, something in me folded.
We talked for hours that night. About the event. About my work. About nothing important and everything important at the same time.
By November, we were married.
Nine months from meeting to vows.
Everyone told us we were rushing it. My business partner, Brandon Walsh, said I’d lost my mind. Even my mother asked if I was sure.
I didn’t care.
Nicole made me feel alive.
Twenty-one years later, that feeling was gone. Replaced by something hollow and sharp around the edges.
And I still didn’t see the truth.
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