I chose Mark.

The day I packed my bags, Chloe stood in the hallway, watching me. She reached into my open purse, pulled out my late mother’s gold compact mirror, and slipped it into her pocket.

“You don’t need gold anymore, Rachel,” Chloe sneered. “Your welder can buy you plastic.”

For 8 years, they treated me like I was dead.

They didn’t invite us to Thanksgiving. They didn’t call when my grandfather passed away. Once, I ran into my mother at the West Side Market, and she turned her cart around and walked the other way to avoid looking at me.

Maybe my parents were right. Maybe I was throwing my future away on a man who would always have black grease under his fingernails. I kept going back and forth about whether we would ever have enough to buy a house. I had moments of deep self-doubt, sitting at our small kitchen table while Mark worked late.

But Mark didn’t just weld. He was brilliant.

Every night, after working a 12-hour shift, he would sit in our garage with a drafting table and a legal pad. He designed a new automated orbital welding system that could seal pipeline joints 4 times faster than standard equipment, with zero structural errors.

He spent 3 years building the prototype.

He patented the technology.

Then, he found an investor.

Miller Advanced Fabrication started in a small warehouse with 2 employees. Today, it is a multi-million dollar industrial firm with contracts across the Midwest. But Mark never changed. He still wore his work boots, still went down to the fabrication floor to help the guys, and still kept his hands dirty.

Then came the Cleveland Business Gala.

Mark’s firm was the main sponsor of the event, but Mark had insisted on keeping our name off the press release. He didn’t care about the spotlight.

We walked into the ballroom. I wore a simple dark blue dress I had bought on sale, and Mark wore a plain charcoal suit.