You Chase Love, I Build My Empire

Damien Whitfield strolled over with a bouquet of carnations and pushed them into my hands. "I picked up 99 white roses earlier," he said with a careless shrug. "Bianca said they suited her, so I let her have them instead." He smiled like none of it was a big deal. "It's our one-month anniversary today. She tried the cake too, said it was pretty good." Every year on my birthday, he used to upload pictures of the pre-ordered cake and flowers to our shared album, wait for my okay, then have someone set everything up. He nudged the bouquet toward me. "Mother's Day was yesterday. The corner florist had a stack of these left over. Here." The careless lilt in his voice landed on me like a stranger's. His broad hand came down on the crown of my head, and he bent slightly so the two of us were eye to eye. "Olivia, you've always been the reasonable one. But every gift I want to give you has to get cleared through that album first. No approval, no delivery. "You hate surprises. You hate people dropping by unannounced. There's a whole list of things you can't stand, and I've worked around every single one. "So now it's your turn to meet me halfway. Okay?" So this was what it had come down to. Damien had been sick of it all along. When we first got together, I was the one who'd set up the system. He'd called it sweet at the time. Said he didn't want to risk picking something I'd hate, and the album saved him the guesswork. That first year, he'd loaded the album with bright, showy bouquets. I vetoed them, and he came back with a bundle of soft pink peonies. He'd also tried to give me elaborate, expensive jewelry. I turned it all down. "All I want for my birthday is flowers and a cake," I'd told him. "I design jewelry for a living, so it doesn't really mean anything to me." This year, the white roses ended up on Bianca's arm. The cake landed on someone else's plate. Even the wedding necklace I'd designed with my own hands was now clasped around another woman's neck. Damien noticed me frozen in place and plucked a single bloom from the bouquet. With careful fingers, he snapped off most of the stem until only a short stub remained. He tucked the carnation behind my ear, his thumb grazing softly across my earlobe. His eyes, when they found mine, were warm with something close to tenderness. "Looks beautiful on you, sweetheart." His voice dropped low. "Happy birthday, baby." My fingers crushed the wrapping paper. The dry rustle of cellophane filled in for whatever answer I should have given. Without warning, I hurled the bouquet straight at his chest. He caught it on reflex, arms suddenly full of petals. "Damien, if you didn't want this, you could've just told me," I bit out. "Why pull a stunt like this and embarrass me?" A wet stain bloomed across the front of his white shirt. Stray petals clung to his collar, half hiding the mark underneath. "I'm not trying to embarrass you," he said evenly. "I just don't want to keep things hidden anymore." He took a step closer. "We've been together 10 years. I promised you we'd get married in the 10th, and I'm not backing out of that now. "You've said you were tired of us too, plenty of times. But at the end of the day, we can't do without each other. Right?" We had both been jewelry design majors. It had been love at first sight, and every professor and classmate called us a perfect match. Over the next decade, my original designs racked up award after award. I licensed my designs to him for free, and his team swept national and international craftsmanship prizes. By the 10th year, our wedding was on the calendar and his company was preparing to go public. The bright future I had pictured for us kept veering off course. "Why couldn't you have told me all this after we were married?" I asked. He arched a brow, amused by my naivety. "We're not 18-year-old college kids anymore, Olivia." He lifted his hand to my cheek the way he always did, waiting for me to lean into his palm. I turned my face the other way. My silence didn't faze him in the slightest. "Because I love you. I respect you," he said. "You told me once you hated being lied to, so I'm telling you now. I'm giving you a choice. You can walk away from this wedding. But you won't, will you?" Ten years had been a long time. Long enough that I had convinced myself Damien was as locked in as I was. Long enough that I had written off every small friction as something we could work through together. Damien left. It was the first birthday he hadn't spent with me. My stomach growled, and I went to the fridge to grab the pie he had bought me the day before. I picked out a piece of shrimp pie, stuck a candle in the top, and called it a birthday cake. The flame swayed back and forth, and my vision blurred over. As I made my wish over the pie, I told myself that if Damien came home that night, I would forgive him. One month against 10 years was nothing, weightless beside everything we had built. The instant the candle went out, Damien pushed open the front door.