Lightning in the Blood

Sarah stood by the floor-to-ceiling window of her corner office, watching the storm batter the city. At forty-two, with gray beginning to streak through her dark hair, she'd finally achieved everything her mother had dreamed of for her. The corner office. The six-figure salary. The empty apartment waiting at home.

A flash of lightning illuminated the alley below, and there it was—a fox, its russet coat sleek with rain, pausing to look up at her through the glass. Their eyes locked for a heartbeat before it melted back into the shadows.

"You're still here?"

She didn't turn. David's voice, warm and familiar, behind her. "Storm's getting worse. My building lost power. My cat is going to lose its mind with all this thunder."

"Milo will be fine," she said, still watching the alley where the fox had disappeared. "He's a survivor."

"Unlike some people I could name." His tone was playful, but underneath it, something else. They'd been dancing around each other for six months—colleagues, friends, something more that neither dared name.

Another lightning strike, closer this time. The thunder that followed shook the windowpanes.

"Sarah." His hand on her shoulder, tentative. "I heard about the merger. They're going to dissolve our department by year's end."

She turned then. "And?"

"And you're going to take the package. You're going to leave."

"I haven't decided."

"You have," he said softly. "I see it in your eyes. You're already gone."

She thought of the fox in the alley—wild, instinctive, moving with the storm rather than against it. "Maybe that's not such a bad thing."

"It would be," he said, stepping closer. "For some of us."

The silence stretched between them, charged as the air outside. She saw then what she'd been refusing to see for months—in his gentle brown eyes, in the careful way he touched her, in the way he always knew exactly how she took her coffee. He wasn't just a colleague. He was what she'd been searching for through two failed marriages and a dozen half-hearted affairs.

"David," she whispered.

Lightning flooded the office, turning everything momentarily white.

"Stay," he said. "Whatever happens with the merger, whatever you decide—just stay."

She looked back at the alley. The fox was gone, but something else remained in its place—a possibility, wild and uncertain and terrifying.

"Alright," she said. "I'm not going anywhere."