“I don’t care anymore, Sadie.” A pause, the kind that meant whoever on the other end was talking, and he was done listening. “Fuck you.” Another pause, shorter. “No. I’m done with this.”
His voice dropped even further, scraping the bottom register.
“Fuck you too!”
I stood still; I had prepared myself for a lot of things this morning: his disapproval, his silence, the particular brand of exhausting that was a Tuesday with Callan Ward.
I had not prepared for this.
His grip tightened on the phone until his knuckles became white, the tendons in his forearm standing out in sharp relief.
“You’re the one who cheated.” Each word clipped, deliberate, the voice of a man who had moved beyond anger into a place colder and more precise. “You’re the one who left. And now you want the house?”
I stopped halfway through shrugging off my jacket.
I had somewhere to go. Tanks to check, metrics to log, an entire morning’s worth of responsibilities that required my immediate attention.
I stayed where I was.
Because the thing about Callan—infuriating, scowling Callan who had made my professional life a quiet misery for the better part of six years—never once had I considered that he had a life outside these walls. That somewhere beyond the aquarium, things happened to him. Complicated human things.
Painful things.
Oh.
Oh, shit.
Mr. Crankass was getting divorced.
The man I had privately referred to, on more than one occasion, as the human equivalent of a warning label, was getting divorced.
“No.” Hisvoice dropped again, quieter now but somehow more dangerous for it.
“No, you don’t get to do this.” A breath, short and controlled, as if he were measuring it. “You don’t get to walk away and then come back when it’s convenient for you.”
The words registered differently than I expected.
I finished taking off my jacket, buying myself time I didn’t need. My eyes were on the floor, granting him the privacy of my pretending not to listen, which was the least I could do, given that I was absolutely listening.
He stopped pacing.
His back became rigid, and his free hand dragged down his face. It was such a human gesture, unguarded in a way I’d never seen from him before.
Because Callan didn’t do unguarded.
He was controlled the way tidal systems are controlled—operating according to rules so deeply embedded they looked like nature. Even at his worst, even when he could be his most calculated brand of insufferable, there appeared to be intention behind it. Structure. He didn’t snap. He didn’t slip.
Until apparently now.
This was different.
Raw in a way that made me feel like a trespasser, like I’d wandered through a door I wasn’t supposed to find and was now standing in a room that wasn’t meant for me. Something surfaced underneath the composure, and what was showing through wasn’t anger.
It was hurt. Plain and unadorned and very real.
A woman’s voice erupted from the phone—thin and distant, the words indistinct, but the fury in them carrying perfectly across the room.
His jaw tightened.