The drive home takes twenty minutes, but feels like hours. My mind replays the conference room. The way Ivy walked in when she could have stayed away. How she'd looked at Rivera with that calm professional certainty. Even after everything, she came.
My driver pulls through the gates. Nothing about the house is different from this morning, but everything feels different. Lighter. Like maybe we can fix this.
Patricia meets me at the door. "Welcome home, Mr. Blackstone."
"Thanks." I head straight for the stairs.
Outside Ivy's door, I knock. "Ivy, can I come in?"
She swings it wide and stands there. For a heartbeat, I think maybe—
Then I see the yawning suitcase on her bed. The neat stacks of folded clothes. The roller bag already zipped and standing by the dresser.
My stomach drops like I've missed a step in the dark.
"What are you doing?"
She doesn't look at me. Just continues folding a sweater with precise, careful movements. "I found an extended stay hotel. Madison and I will be moving there. I’m taking what I need now. I’ll be back for the rest later.”
The words don't make sense. They're in English, but they might as well be a foreign language. "Madison agreed to this?"
"Yes." She places the sweater in the suitcase. Reaches for another.
"What about the three months?"
Ivy shrugs. The casual gesture twists in my gut. I can't tell if it's anger or hurt. "She still wants to see you. If you're willing."
“Of course, I’m willing, but why do either of you have to leave?" The words scrape out of me, raw and desperate. "Can't we work through this?"
“No. And what's the point?" She finally looks at me and her eyes are dry. Resolved. That's somehow worse than tears. "You're leaving."
"I'd stay for you."
True. Completely true. I'd stay in Kentucky. Somewhere along the way, I'd stopped counting down the days until I could leave for Quebec and started hoarding every second I had left here instead.
"I can't stay for you."
My chest caves in. Air won't come. After two heartbeats, I suck in a breath and turn from her. She won't see how deeply that cuts. I won't let her. The anger rises then, hot and defensive, easier to hold than the pain.
"Why can't you forgive me?" The words are sharp. "I didn't ask you to show up today, but you did. You defended me. I'm not angry about it. Hell, I'm thankful. So why is this different?"
She stops folding. Her hands rest on a silk dress she'd worn when I'd taken her out to dinner last week. “You still don’t get it, do you?”
I wait for her to spell it out for me.
“When I helped you today, I wasn't trying to control your life or make decisions for you. You were allowed to make your own choices. I gave the FBI an account of the truth. You were free to add more or keep quiet. The choice was yours." She steps closer, but still too far from me. "What you did, you took my choice away. You didn't stand beside me. You stood in front of me and decided what I could handle, what I needed, what was best for me. Without asking. Without trusting me."
The fight goes out of me. I want to argue. Want to tell her she's wrong, that it wasn't like that. But the words stick in my throat because somewhere, in a place I don't want to examine too closely, I hear the truth in what she's saying.
She's right. I didn't trust her to handle it. Didn't trust her judgment, her strength, her ability to fight her own battles. This sits heavy in my chest, harder to carry than anger or guilt.
She closes the suitcase. The zipper is too loud in the quiet room.
Pulling out the handle of the roller bag, she pauses next to me. I smell her coconut shampoo, lean in, needing the warmth of her body close to mine.
She rises on her toes and presses a kiss to my cheek. Soft. Gentle. Final.
Then she's leaving. She stops at Madison's room, tells her she's going to get some of her work from the library, and then will be ready to go.
