The Art of Bleeding

Mara stood at the floor-to-ceiling window of her corner office, watching the rain streak down the glass like tears she'd forgotten how to cry. At 42, she'd mastered the art of appearing whole while quietly coming apart at the seams.

"You're going to burn out, you know," Julian said from the doorway, holding out a cup of coffee like an offering. "And no amount of vitamin supplements can fix what's actually broken."

She turned to face him. Julian, with his perpetually rumpled shirts and eyes that saw too much. He was the only one who noticed how she stayed until midnight most nights, how she'd stopped going to her daughter's soccer games, how she'd been running on caffeine and momentum since David left.

"The market doesn't care about my sleep schedule," she said, but her voice lacked its usual bite. "We're looking at a massive bear trend. Clients are panicking. If I don't hold this together—"

"Who holds you together?" Julian stepped closer. "Mara, you've been carrying everyone else's losses for three years. When do you get to stop being the goddamn bull?"

The word hit her harder than it should have. The bull market—aggressive, charging, unstoppable. That's what she'd been. Charging through grief, charging through lonely weekends, charging toward a future that felt increasingly like someone else's life.

"I don't know what you want me to say."

Julian set the coffee on her desk. "I want you to drink some damn water. I want you to go home. I want you to remember that you're not the portfolio's performance."

He paused, something unreadable in his expression. "And I want you to let me take you to dinner. Not as colleagues. As two people who are tired of pretending."

For the first time in years, Mara felt something crack open inside her chest. Not a wound—a window.

She thought of the fox she'd seen last weekend, sleek and alive, slipping through the hedge at dawn while she jogged on autopilot. It had looked at her with such unapologetic wildness before vanishing into the undergrowth. Alive. Unapologetic. Free.

"Pick me up at seven," she heard herself say. "And Julian?" She met his eyes. "I forgot what water tastes like too."