Chapter 3
Wyatt
Nina is already at the gate when I get there.
She’s in sunglasses, slouched into her seat like she’s trying to disappear into her oversized sweater. Her hair’s pulled back, loose curls escaping.
She still takes my breath away just like she did at New Years, when I saw her across the crowded ballroom. She’d been standing at one of the high-tops next to Callie, sipping champagne and staring back with a sly look like a cat who’d just spied its prey.
Mason and I were only attending to get close to the Senator for intel, but had already done our business and had the rest of the night to kill.
It was moments later when Mason revealed he knew Callie already, but he wasn’t exactly spilling the details on how.
At least it meant I had the perfect excuse to introduce myself to Nina. The rest, as they say, is history.
Though I really, really hope it isn’t actually history for us.
Last night certainly didn’t feel like something people who’ve moved on would do, but last night may have been more of a drunken anomaly than a sign of what’s to come.
Either way, we’re sharing a flight now so it’d be rude of me to just ignore her, despite my promise to give her space.
She doesn’t notice me until I’m almost beside her.
When she looks up, the weight of the last ten months hits me all at once.
The cute black party dress is gone. The bright red lipstick is gone. But the look in her eyes when she sees me hasn’t changed. The spark of true tenderness that I hope isn’t actually pity.
The spark disappears when she blinks, then pulls out one earbud. “Hey,” she says.
“Hey.” I gesture toward the boarding area where passengers are prematurely lining up for their group to be called. “I’m not trying to crowd you. Just… if you want company, I can sit with you.”
She hesitates. Her mouth opens, then closes.
She nods. “Okay. Sitting together would be nice.”
I pretend that doesn’t mean more than it does.
Boarding is smooth. No assigned seats so I lead us down to a row behind the wing. She takes the window. I take the aisle. Some kind of miracle spares us a middle seat companion. We don’t speak, but the weight between us isn’t silence, it’s memory.
At one point, I glance sideways, and she’s already looking at me.
Not just looking, but studying, as if she sees a different man than the one she dated for the first half of the year.
Though I suppose knowing I was bi and experiencing me actively acting on the other half of my sexuality are two different things.
Our eyes meet. It only lasts a second, but it hits like a full-body blow. I can see the night behind her eyes, Chris’s mouth on her skin, her hands in his hair, the sound she made when I pressed into him while she watched.
I look away first.
The way he’d looked at me last night... not during, but after... is still lodged under my ribs. That flash of something raw. Unguarded. Like he didn’t know how to be wanted without flinching.
It wasn’t just sex. Not for me. And probably not for her, either.
But somewhere in the middle of it, when Chris finally let go, I realized something else.
His hands had been shaking. Not with want, but something closer to surrender.
The way he kissed me was less like passion and more like reaching for air.
I’ve handled enough agents coming out of deep cover to recognize what that looks like, when someone’s been living inside a lie so long, genuine touch short-circuits them. Chris’s file is worse than most.
Nina and I weren’t just there because we wanted him.
We were there because he needed someone to catch him.
That’s what I keep telling myself. That it was instinct—two people who saw a man drowning and reached in. But I’m still too close to it to know if that’s honest, or if I just needed a reason that sounds better than the ones I’m not ready to look at yet.
We didn’t plan it. Hell, I thought doing it might give us both the closure we needed to get back together.
Her getting him out of her system. Me having a taste of the reason we split to begin with.
But you can never really plan around someone as volatile as Chris.
And even though few words were shared, something about his desperate need for connection said it all.
I exhale slowly and let my head fall back against the seat.
I should be sleeping. Or reading. Or doing something other than cataloging all the ways last night wrecked me in soft, quiet increments.
There was a moment, maybe just before sunrise, when I thought about reaching for her. Just to hold her. Just to keep from forgetting what it felt like, the three of us woven together like that.
But when I opened my eyes, Chris was already gone. No note, no sound. Just the emptiness of a space that used to be filled.
I sat there for a minute, watching her sleep. Wondering if I should stay. If holding her would feel like comfort or intrusion.
But staying felt like a claim. And after the kind of night we had, I didn’t want her to wake up and think I was trying to take something that no longer belonged to me, if it ever did.
So I left too. Quietly. Carefully. Like that might make it hurt less.
Does she regret it? Or is she trying not to feel anything at all? I’m not sure which would hurt more.
She shifts beside me. Crosses and uncrosses her legs. Then she turns a little toward me and I freeze like it’s going to mean something.
“How’s Nikita?” she asks.
It takes me a second to respond.
“Last time I was gone for longer than a weekend, she shredded the window screen and pissed on my pillow. So… I expect vengeance.”
Nina smiles faintly. “She holds a grudge.”
“She’s a cat,” I say. “She remembers everything.”
Her smile softens, edges into something more tender. “I miss her.”
“She misses you too,” I say, before I can stop myself, hoping the words aren’t loaded with deeper meaning, just the way I hope her words are.
Nina doesn’t answer right away. She just turns back toward the window.
“Can I ask you something?” she says, barely above a whisper.
“Always.”
She takes a breath and turns back to me. “When I asked for space—after Chris came back—you gave it to me. Exactly what I asked for. No pushback.”
“You needed it,” I say.
“I did.” She lets that sit for a second.
“But you negotiate for a living, Wyatt. You talk people off ledges and into impossible situations every day. You could have come back to the table. Said I hear you, but I’m not done fighting for this.
You didn’t have to break the boundary. Just.. . renegotiate.”
The shame is immediate and disorienting.
“Instead you just stepped back. Perfectly. Like it didn’t cost you anything.”
“It cost me everything,” I say.
“Then why didn’t you fight harder?”
The question sits between us like a live wire.
Because I saw the way you looked when they told us he was alive, and the man who walked out of that operation was everything I’ll never be. I’ve been living in his shadow ever since, and I couldn’t imagine a version of this where you didn’t choose him.
I don’t say any of that.
“I thought I was making it easier for you,” I say instead.
She’s quiet for a long moment. “You were making it easier for yourself.”
Not unkind. Just honest.
And I don’t have an answer for that. Because she might be right.
Nikita meets me at the door with a single, disgusted meow. Then she turns and stalks off like I’ve already failed her.
“Missed you too,” I say, closing the door behind me.
The Denver air is sharp. The chill seeps into the corners of the apartment, clings to the floorboards. After LA, it feels like stepping into a memory. My shoulder twinges as I shrug off my jacket. Cold always makes it worse. I roll it gently, fingers pressing into the scar tissue.
The wound isn’t open anymore. But it still remembers.
So do I.
I head for the kitchen. Nikita’s already sitting next to her bowl like I’m two hours late for an apology.
“Don’t act like you were starving,” I mutter. “You had food. And probably more attention than I did.”
She chirps once. A sound that says you abandoned me in fluent feline.
I open the fridge and toss some shredded chicken into her dish. She eats it with regal disdain, but it’s still forgiveness in slow motion.
I grab a glass of water. Lean on the counter. Try to ignore how the quiet is suddenly so loud.
Her name isn’t in the room. But the echo of her is. Even after three months, it lingers like a song I can’t get out of my head.
Nikita used to curl up on Nina’s lap whenever she came over. Purring loud enough to shake the cushions. Nina would scratch under her chin and tell her she was the only one who understood her.
She said it like a joke, but I always knew it wasn’t.
“She missed you,” I say quietly. Nikita flicks her tail but keeps eating.
I sip the water, then go to the shelf where the photo still sits.
The four of us in the snow. Me, Nina, Mason, Callie. Mason’s arm slung around Callie’s waist. Nina pressed into my side. My smile too wide. Her eyes bright.
That was the day I stepped in front of a bullet. The day I realized how much it would wreck me to lose her even though we’d known each other for barely forty-eight hours.
That was also the day she said she believed in fate.
I hadn’t said anything in response at the time—too busy bleeding on the snowy ground. But the pain had faded to the background when she kissed me. I kissed her back like she’d just handed me a piece of my future.
I’m not sure I’ve stopped thinking about it since.
Fate.
Maybe that’s what all this is. Me, her, Chris. Some strange, gravitational pull none of us knows how to fight. A spiral that started before we realized we were even moving.
She believed in it. I think I still do. But belief doesn’t give you a roadmap. Just a reason to keep walking when everything around you is falling apart.