His Ex-wife is Untouchable Now

Ivy Calloway was halfway through zipping a canvas bag she kept hidden at the back of her closet when her phone lit up on the bed, a short double-buzz instead of a ringtone, something easy to miss if you weren't listening for it. Theo: Emergency. Need you at the warehouse site, now. Bring the kit. "Not tonight," she muttered, already moving. "Please, not tonight." She didn't text back. Theo Marsh didn't send messages like that unless it was serious. She checked the bag's contents on instinct , gloves, a trauma kit, a flashlight, a folded set of dark clothes , then shoved her feet into boots and grabbed a jacket off the door. She had one hand on the handle when she heard footsteps in the hallway. Too fast. Not Damian's usual unhurried pace. She didn't have time to think. She opened the door and nearly walked straight into him. "Ivy." Damian's eyes dropped immediately to the bag slung over her shoulder , not her usual handbag, not a gym bag, something heavier, something clearly built for a purpose she'd never once explained to him. "What is that?" "Nothing." The word came out too fast, too flat, and she knew immediately it hadn't landed the way she wanted it to. "It's not nothing. I've never seen that bag in my life." His gaze moved from the bag to her face, something sharpening behind his eyes , not suspicion exactly, not yet, but the beginning of it. "And it's nearly eleven at night." "I have somewhere to be." "Where?" "It doesn't concern you, Damian." "We live in the same house. For six more days, everything that happens in this house concerns me." His voice wasn't raised, but there was an edge in it she rarely heard, something closer to real alarm than the careful detachment he usually wore like a second skin. "You're leaving the house at eleven at night with a bag I've never seen, and you expect me to just let that go?" Ivy's phone buzzed again in her pocket. She didn't look at it. She didn't need to , she already knew it would be Theo, impatient, the clock running on whatever had gone wrong wherever he was. "I need to go," she said, stepping sideways to get past him. Damian didn't move out of the way. "Not until you tell me where." "It's work." "You work at a hospital, Ivy. In scrubs. During the day, mostly. Not carrying a bag that looks like it belongs to someone in the military at eleven o'clock at night." His jaw tightened, the small flicker she'd learned to read years ago, except this time it didn't look like discomfort. It looked like fear, carefully disguised as frustration. "Is someone in trouble? Are you in trouble?" "No one's in trouble that concerns you." "That's not an answer." "It's the only one you're getting right now." Ivy's own voice sharpened despite herself, the careful composure she'd built over three years cracking at the edges under the pressure of the clock ticking in her pocket. "Please, Damian. I don't have time for this tonight." "Then make time. Because right now you look like someone who's about to walk out that door and not come back, and I'd like to know if that's actually what's happening." "This isn't about the divorce." "Then what is it about?" "I can't explain it standing in this hallway." "Then explain it somewhere else. The kitchen. The car. I don't care where, Ivy, just explain it." His hand came up, not quite reaching for her, stopping somewhere in the air between them like even he wasn't sure what he meant to do with it. "You don't get to just vanish into the night with a bag like that and tell me it's nothing." "I never said it was nothing. I said it doesn't concern you." "Everything about you concerns me. Whether either of us wants that to still be true or not." His voice cracked slightly on the last word, and he seemed almost surprised by it himself, like he hadn't meant to let that much show. "Six days, Ivy. We have six days left and I don't even know who's about to walk out that door." "You know exactly who I am." "Do I?" He gestured at the bag again, sharper this time. "Because that doesn't look like anything I recognize." "I'll be back," she said quietly. "I promise you that much." "That's not the same as telling me where you're going." "I know." "Is it a man?" "What?" Ivy nearly laughed despite herself, the question so far from anything she'd expected. "No, Damian. It's not a man." "Then what is it? Because I've watched you pack a bag like that was routine, like you've done it before, and I'm realizing I have no idea how many times you've done exactly this while I was asleep down the hall." "A few times," she admitted quietly, before she could stop herself, her grip tightening on the strap of the bag. "Not many. Not nearly as many as you're probably imagining right now." "A few times doing what, Ivy?" "I can't explain it right now." "Can't, or won't?" "Does it matter?" "It matters to me." He stepped half a pace closer, close enough that she could see exactly how tired he looked underneath the alarm. "I've spent three years not asking the questions I probably should have asked. I'm asking now." Her phone buzzed a third time. Theo's name filled the screen again: Ivy, I need you NOW. Bring everything. "Damian, I have to go." "Not until you answer me." "People could be hurt. I don't have time to stand here and," "Hurt where? Doing what? You're a surgeon who works day shifts at a hospital, Ivy, not whatever this is." "You don't know everything about what I do." "Clearly not." His voice dropped, quieter now, almost careful. "What aren't you telling me?" She opened her mouth, and for the first time in three years of marriage, in three years of caref ul half-truths and polite deflections, Ivy Calloway realized she didn't have a single ready answer.