Markets of the Heart

The numbers scrolled across Marcus's screen like running water—red today, green tomorrow, always demanding more. Three years at Goldman Bergman had taught him to read the pulse of the market the way a cardiologist reads an EKG. Today, it was in a bear mood, rearing back on its hind legs and mauling portfolios across the floor.

"You're still here?" Elena stood in his doorway, hair falling across her face in that way that made his chest tighten. They'd been dancing around each other for six months—flirty emails, drinks that lasted too long, hands brushing "accidentally" in the elevator. It was the slowest fuse he'd ever watched burn.

"Market's a bitch," Marcus said, gesturing at the screens. "Trying to decide if I ride this bull or take the loss."

She stepped into his office, closing the door behind her. The click sounded like a trigger cocking. "We need to talk about us."

Outside, lightning cracked the sky—a sudden, violent flash that illuminated the dust motes floating between them. The storm had been building all afternoon, thick and gray as old wool.

"Marcus, I'm leaving." Elena's voice didn't waver. "The offer from Chicago came through."

The words hit him like a physical blow. He'd known it was a possibility. Had even encouraged her to apply. But hearing it out loud—the reality of it—made something in his stomach drop sickeningly. The market could be predicted, charted, analyzed. People couldn't.

"When?"

"Two weeks."

She crossed to his desk, her dog—a rescue terrier she'd brought in during take-your-pet-to-work day last year—waiting patiently in the hallway. They'd bonded over that damn dog, bonded over late nights and leaked earnings reports and the way they both took their coffee: black, no sugar, bitter as the job itself.

"Say something," she said.

"What do you want me to say?" Marcus stood up, his chair scraping loudly against the floor. "That I should've said something six months ago? That I should've told you that every time you walked into this office, I forgot how to breathe?"

Elena's eyes widened. The silence between them stretched, thin and trembling as a high wire.

"Why didn't you?"

"Because this job, this life—it's already taken everything. My relationships, my sleep, whatever part of me that used to give a damn about anything beyond the numbers. I didn't want it to take you too."

Another flash of lightning, closer this time. The thunder rattled the windowpanes.

"You're a coward, Marcus Berg." But she was smiling, just a little. "The market drops ten percent and you don't blink. But you're scared of trying to be happy."

"Terrified."

"Good," she said. "Fear means you're alive. Now come upstairs. My place. We have two weeks to figure out if we're bull or bear, and I'm done wasting time."

Marcus followed her out, leaving the screens blinking behind him. The market would still be there tomorrow. Some opportunities, he was finally learning, didn't come around twice.