Strike Zone

The storm broke just as Marcus reached the parking lot, rain sheeting down like someone had overturned the ocean. A jagged fork of **lightning** split the sky, illuminating the abandoned **baseball** field beyond the chain-link fence—the same field where he'd spent every Saturday of his divorce, coaching his son's team and pretending his life hadn't fractured into something unrecognizable.

He should have been at the office. Elena had made that clear when she'd cornered him that morning, her voice sharp as broken glass. "Either you're all in on this merger, or you're out." She'd paused, her gaze dropping to his hands. "I know you talked to Jeff. Don't play me.

Jeff, with his **bull**-in-a-china-shop approach to negotiations, who'd somehow become the golden boy while Marcus silently cleaned up the wreckage. Marcus had rubbed his sweating **palm** against his dress pants, remembering how Jeff's wife had looked at him last Christmas—the recognition in her eyes, the quiet warning she didn't speak.

Now, standing in the downpour, Marcus thought about how easily things could go wrong. He could go back tomorrow, play the game, let them gut the department he'd built from nothing. Or he could walk away, let his severance pay for a few months of breathing room.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. Elena.

Marcus watched the rain flatten the outfield grass, each drop disappearing like a secret taken to the grave. Behind him, the office tower loomed through the storm-gray darkness, its lights burning like eyes that never closed. He didn't answer the phone. He didn't move at all. For the first time in fifteen years of merger deals and performance reviews and pretending to care about things that didn't matter, Marcus stood absolutely still and let himself drown in something real.