Our Time, On the Clock
Every year, Callum Walker gave me exactly five hours of his personal time.
A meal with me cost forty minutes. A trip to visit my parents together cost two hours. Even sex was on the clock, starting the second he kissed me.
Callum was the youngest senior partner at an elite white-shoe law firm, and his private consulting rate was 8,000 dollars an hour. I'd always assumed he was simply meticulous about his time.
Then, at the firm's annual gala, Mia Garfield, the young lawyer he'd mentored himself, asked with a laugh, "Callum, how much time does your wife have left this year?"
Callum glanced at his phone. "Seventeen minutes."
Everyone in the room laughed.
Mia tilted her head up at him. "W