My Husband Divorced Me for His Ex

I'd been married to the boss for a year, and nobody in the building knew it. The ones who thought they had me figured had me down as the girl who tried too hard.

He cleared his throat twice in the middle of the meeting. Ivy and I reached for our cups at the same time. Mine was plain water gone lukewarm. Hers was icecold and fizzing.

Roman lifted his eyes, barely, and took Ivy's. The HR director watched their fingers brush around the can, and said nothing for a long time.

He waited until the meeting broke up, then asked me into his office. "Roman and Ivy were together eight years. You saw it yourself.

There's a real chance they end up back together." "Charlotte's a promotion. But it's six hundred miles from here." "Nobody in this company can afford to get on his bad side.

So the transfer has to be you." Something went sour in my throat. I said, "Okay." Then I picked up my phone and sent him one line.

Me: [Let's get divorced.] Chapter 1 Back at my desk, I sank into the chair. The HR director's voice kept looping. "I never even saw a résumé for her.

She just showed up on payroll." "Then I searched the alumni group and found out. Eight years.

They were the couple everybody talked about." "Now she walks into his office whenever she feels like it. You saw the cup, right? She drank out of it. He took it and drank anyway.

Tell me how that's different from kissing her." My chest packed itself full of wet cotton. Nothing moved up. Nothing moved down. The transfer contract sat in front of me, unsigned.

I was still staring at it when a coworker knocked twice on my desk. "Mr. Sinclair wants you upstairs." "Okay," I said. The contract went into the drawer.

I took the elevator to the top floor. I didn't even get to knock. He caught my wrist and pulled me in. Cedar. Cold and clean, closing over my head.

He rested his chin on my forehead. His voice went soft in a way it never did downstairs. "The account's wearing you out, isn't it." "I just wired you ten million. Go somewhere.

Take a break." He didn't wait for an answer. He never did. "You've always wanted to see the northern lights in Iceland. This is good timing." "That account you've been running.

Hand it to Ivy. She—" I shoved him off me. Then I looked at him straight on. Dark suit, cut to the inch, one button open at the collar. Distant and easy at the same time.

Like touching him was a favor he hadn't decided to grant yet. My face must have stayed dark, because his smile cooled. "There's talk going around about her.

People are saying she got hired through connections." "If she lands this account, it shuts them up.

It gives her a place here." The laugh got out before I could stop it. "You know exactly how hard that account was to win." "You know how long it's been since I slept a full night.

Don't you?" "We're at the finish line. And you want me to hand it over." The break room came back to me then.

Ten minutes after the meeting, three of them talking, not bothering to lower their voices. "She really thought she had a shot. I'm dying." "With Ivy in the room?

He was never going to take her water." "Throwing herself at him like that. She should look in a mirror." It came up over my head all at once. A whole year of it.

When I spoke again, my voice cracked. I hated that it cracked. "I mean it. Let's get divorced." "Even I think you and Ivy are the couple now." My eyes were red.

He'd been half a second from losing patience with me, and then he stopped. He looked down at me. "Nora, I—" He never finished. The door to the lounge off his office opened.

Chapter 2 Ivy came out stretching, slow and unhurried, like a woman waking up from a good nap. "Roman, I'm impressed. You remembered I'm a light sleeper.

Blackout curtains, earplugs, the whole thing." "Points for effort." Then she saw me and stopped where she stood. "Oh. Am I interrupting?" "I'm going.

Right now." She gave me a small, apologetic smile and picked up her bag.

At the door she turned back like something had just occurred to her. "By the way, Aaron's been saying work is crushing him. He wants everybody out for dinner." "It's raining.

Can I ride with you?" Roman didn't answer her. He looked at me, and his voice dropped. "Aaron. You know Aaron.

We've been close since college." "It's just dinner." He took a breath. "I'll explain everything when I'm home tonight. Okay?" "If you're tired, go to bed. I'll tell Mrs.

Whitfield to warm you some milk." I kept my eyes down. At the edge of my vision Ivy stood with her chin lifted, and there it was in her face. The dare.

Every time I'd ever made noise about her, I got the same sentence back. She's the past. You're my legal wife. Delivered lightly, like it settled something.

Then I thought about the contract in my drawer. I dug my nails into my palm and kept my voice flat. "I'll wait up. We still need to talk about the divorce." Nothing came back.

I stood there long enough to feel how quiet the floor had gone. When I looked up, he was already out the door with her.

Down the hall I could still catch her laugh. "I never would have guessed. Your wife's good at playing innocent." "Seriously, look at her. Doesn't that get to you?" His voice, level.

Nothing in it at all. "I've explained this a hundred times." "There was nothing left between us. We ended it clean.

There's no version where we get back together." "I don't know what she thinks she's jealous of." The elevator doors closed and took the rest of it. I laughed at myself, quietly.

A year of what I'd been calling a good marriage, and that was the punchline. I went back to my desk. The contract came out of the drawer.

I flattened the crease with my palm and signed my name on the line. HR only had to tell me one thing. Once this account closed, I could go anytime.

From that minute on, my time left in New York had a length. One account long. There was an upside, if I wanted one.

Charlotte was six hundred miles away, but it was a lot closer to my parents. I'd finally have Sundays with them. The rain came down hard that evening. Roman sent a car.

It stopped a block and a half from the building, the way it always did.

He had told me once that going public would turn the talk on me, and that it would land harder on me than on him. I was a decentlooking scholarship kid from a nothing town.

Nobody looking at the two of us would believe my name belonged on a marriage license next to an oldmoney Sinclair. "Mr.

Sinclair brought in a chef," the driver said, easing to the curb. "That restaurant in Italy you liked. He hired the whole kitchen team away." "Enjoy your dinner.

The new Hermès should be there any minute." My hand stopped on the door handle. That was the thing about him. It always looked like he treated me well.

It always looked like he treated me terribly. I was still sitting there when his call came through. I picked up and understood in two seconds that the phone was in his pocket.

Someone on the other end was sighing. "Roman, I'm telling you. Watching you sit next to Ivy again, I still can't make peace with it." "You two were so good together. Eight years.

How many eight years does a person get? And you just ended it." Chapter 3 "You have no idea.

When you married that Nora Bennett, we told Ivy that if you wanted to crash the wedding, every one of us would back you." My breath stopped.

So the meanness I'd picked up around his friends hadn't been in my head. They'd never liked me. Not once. Then Roman laughed, worn out. "Shut up.

Crash what wedding." "Ivy and I were really done. Eight years is too long.

We turned into family." "Family is what lasts forever." Ivy made a small sound and cut in, sour about it. "And you're telling me you'll never get bored of that pretty little nothing of yours?" "So why aren't you home with her right now?" "Admit it, Roman.

She's new, that's all. Give it eight years and look again. No. Give it three." Silence, long enough to hear him breathing. He didn't argue with her.

Something in my shoulders came down. Good. I'd already decided. Sunk cost isn't a reason to stay. Cutting my losses now wasn't too late.

He came through the door near two in the morning. I'd just finished putting the divorce papers in order. "Roman—" "Sorry, ma'am.

He's had a lot." The driver got him settled on the couch, careful and formal about it. "Everyone drank.

The rest of them are sleeping at the hotel." "He was the only one who insisted on coming home to his wife. The rain held us up." I looked at him.

He'd sunk back into the cushions, loose in the shoulders, eyes black and blurred at the edges. He watched me like something out of a story.

The kind that eats men. "Baby." "Come here." The driver read the room, stepped out, and closed the door.

I let my shoulders drop and went toward the kitchen to make him coffee and something greasy. Behind me, half under, he said a name. "Ivy." "Ivy—" The spoon came out of my hand.

It cracked against the tile and went to pieces. Mrs. Whitfield came running and crouched over the mess, gathering it up too fast. "Don't be upset, ma'am. Eight years is a long time.

That's an old habit talking, nothing else." "He married you in the end, didn't he?" "All that trouble he went to, chasing you.

That's proof of who he loves." I didn't argue with her, because I already knew the answer. I was done living like this.

For a year, whatever the two of us were in the middle of, one call from Ivy ended it. Monday her car got rearended. Tuesday there was a man following her.

It stopped two months ago, when he moved her into the office where he could watch her himself. Small things. Nothing you could hold up and show anyone.

Enough of them and you stop being able to stand up straight. From here on, I wasn't going to be the one who folded. I didn't want to see him again.

By then I didn't even want the conversation. So while Mrs. Whitfield was still in the kitchen, I packed. Every designer piece he had ever bought me went into a suitcase.

Eighteen suitcases, filled, zipped, lined up down the hall. I called a moving truck at three in the morning. Then I left the house.

I took the presidential suite at a hotel near the office and planned to stay there until the transfer went through. Once a decision is made, every extra minute of waiting runs long.

So I got in early, left the divorce papers on his desk, and went straight to HR to ask how soon I could go.

He was still pulling up the file when somebody started screaming out in the hall. Chapter 4 We looked at each other and ran. Ivy was down on the floor.

People stood around her in a ring, scared, useless. Roman had mentioned once that she had low blood sugar. I was digging the juice out of my bag when he came through the crowd.

He shoved me out of the way without looking at me. "Move." He was strong. I stumbled, couldn't catch myself, and went into the corner of a desk. My shin split open.

He didn't see it. "Did somebody call 911?" Somebody said yes. He put a hand on Ivy's shoulder, light as anything. She made a sound, and every muscle in his back let go at once.

When she was responsive enough to swallow, he got her to chew the glucose tablets from his assistant. Five minutes later her eyes opened fully. The ambulance came.

He stood, steady again. "I knew this would happen sooner or later." "I've carried glucose tablets on me for years." They left the building together. He never once looked at me.

I took a photo of my leg and sent it to him. Then I signed out for the afternoon and went to urgent care by myself. They cleaned the cut and closed it.

When I turned my phone back on, he had wired me ten million dollars.

Him: [How were you not more careful?] Him: [Use the best doctor, whatever it costs.] Him: [Something urgent came up.

I can't be there right now.] I looked at all those zeros sitting in the account. Then I typed back, sweet as a good wife. Me: [Okay.] HR told me the same thing again.

Sign this account and I could walk. Something in me went very quiet. I said thank you. Then I went back to my desk and started on the closing terms.

I was up almost the whole night getting the deck clean. In the morning I called the client, happy for the first time in weeks.

Their assistant sounded confused. "That was all signed yesterday." Cold went straight down my back.

My head emptied out. "What do you mean?" "What do you mean, what do I mean." She still wasn't following. "Mr.

Sinclair brought the team in himself." "The closing terms weren't as clean as the earlier version, but honestly, minor. They wanted to