Page 3 of Claimed by the Alien Warrior Triad

Marissa means the words well enough, but they twist the knife into my wound. On the outside? I have it all. One the inside, I have nothing. I force myself to smile.

“That’s very kind of you. You’re going to take the corporate world by storm.” I force back my petty annoyance at her tender age. Marissa has the same drive as me – and the advantage of youth. She’s going to grow into a powerful force in the business world – and after walking in on Joshua, I feel a momentary pang of jealousy – worried that she’ll achieve the same dreams I just watched crumble around me…

But that’s not fair, so I reluctantly utter my sincere compliment, and it makes her light up.

That’s all the reward I need. Despite the pain I’m going through, I willnottake it out on her.

I leave Marissa and walk the hall to my office. The second I close the door, I crumple to the floor. Silent sobs wrack my body.

My future was snuffed out. I still can’t believe it. Life presses in on me, and my office feels like it’s growing smaller by the second, closing in.

I’ve spent the last eight months since the doctor told me I was infertile feeling likelessof a woman – inferior, somehow, as if my inability to bear a biological child was all that defined my worth.

Joshua had told me over and over that it was fine. He kept talking about adoption, and about how there are so many children in need of loving parents like we’d planned to be...

But then the truth came out. All my eighty-hour work-weeks and my finely-tuned legal mind meant nothing to Joshua.

Over the last eight months, I’d shifted whatIwanted. I imagined adopting a child whose real parents would have no idea of the gift they’d scorned – or of how the child they’d abandoned would be the light to bring me from the darkness.

I’d imagined being a mother – of a future filled with laughter and joy. Christmas presents. First reports cards. First steps.

Oh, God. It’s all gone!

I clench my fists so hard my fingernails dig into my palms. The pain centers me – reminding me of similarly dark days during high-school and college, in which I’d taken a Swiss Army Knife to my thighs and carved myself with the tip of the razor-sharp blade. The intense, but controllable pain would take me out of the stress – if only for a minute or two…

…but it left disgusting marks on my legs. Thin white scars that I hate to look at to this day.

“Iwon’tfall apart,” I promise myself, my voice raw.

I try to ground myself of thinking about the first time I went into a courtroom, as a junior lawyer.

I had a full-blown panic attack that day. My heart hammered, and I thought I was going to die. Through the grace of God, the panic happened moments before a break in proceedings. I rushed to the bathroom, ignoring my colleagues, and hyperventilated for thirty minutes in the stall before I could finally compose myself.

Then I came back, and I won that case.

It still haunts me to this day. If that panic attack had hit me a minute earlier, I’d have lost all credibility – and my chance at a career.

A career that had now seen me makepartner.

I pull myself up from the floor and fix my make-up in my handheld mirror. Seeing my own mascara-smeared face forces me to involuntarily compare myself to the woman I’d walked in on, moaning in my kitchen.

My logical brain kicks in.

When you go to the court, emotions are the enemy. Stress, fear, and anxiety? All of that will lose you a case. You need to be robotic. Precise. Controlled.

How did Aristotle define law? “Reason, free from passion.”

Trying to stick to that maxim, I intellectually work through all the legal ramifications of my separation with Joshua. He’ll argue that the combination of his work from home, his precarious financial situation, and the fact that he was the original renter of our apartment entitles him to the place. The judge will agree. Therefore, there’s no reason to fight for the only home I’ve known for the last decade.

Reason. Free from passion.

I must remember that.Liveby it.

I reapply my lipstick and attend to my mascara. My battle armor is on. I fix my hair, make myself presentable, and leave my office for the partners’ meeting.

I’m a minute late, and I take my seat to polite, reserved applause at my new position in the firm. It isn’t every day that a new partner is recognized – and never before one as young as me.

I sit at the boardroom table – the place I’ve been working towards for the last ten years. I see myself reflected, mirrored in the sallow faces sitting all around me. The five other partners, all male, range from mid-forties to their early-seventies; with hair ranging from bald to ashen white.

---