Chapter 5
Wyatt
Chris looks like he wants to hit something.
Probably me.
He’s standing in Nina’s doorway, jaw clenched, gaze raking across the room—me, the sweat still drying on my skin, the taped-up boxes, the faint trail of her body wash hanging in the air like a ghost that doesn’t know it’s dead yet.
I watch realization hit him like a body blow.
His voice is taut. “You alone?”
“Yeah,” I say. “She left this morning. Said she wanted the drive. Something about clearing her head before starting over.”
Those two words make me flinch internally every time I hear them. Starting over means leaving the past behind. It means not going back, not reaching for the life I know we could have had if circumstances had been different.
The circumstance just showed up uninvited. And yet, I’m not surprised in the least.
I step aside and tuck the full trash bag I was taking out just inside the door, then beckon him in. Chris doesn’t move for a beat. Then he crosses the threshold like he’s stepping into a place he doesn’t belong. A crime scene, maybe. Or a chapel.
His eyes scan the evidence: a half-filled box on the counter, full of her favorite books. The softcover copy of The Left Hand of Darkness she made me read. Her notebook. A half-burned candle she only lit when she was trying to write.
I was packing it when he knocked. One object at a time. Like I was saying goodbye with my hands because my mouth couldn’t be trusted. Doubting with every breath that I did the right thing by letting her go. Knowing that my offer to help pack her things was too little, too late.
“Why’d you come?” I ask.
He rakes his fingers through his hair and exhales like it’s the first breath he’s taken since landing. “I thought maybe if I looked her in the eye, she’d listen.”
“To what?”
“That this op’s wrong. That she’s walking into a mess none of us can predict. That Flores and Amador are unstable at best and sadistic at worst.”
There’s real fear in his voice. He’s not faking. This isn’t tactical. It’s personal.
I nod once, slow. “And you think I don’t know that?”
He bristles. “You volunteered her.”
“No.” The word comes out harder than I intend. “Mason brought the opportunity to Nina through Callie. She did her own research, asked her questions, made her own call. I made sure the task force didn’t sideline her once she decided she wanted it.”
Chris stares at me. I watch the accusation recalibrate behind his eyes, the anger looking for somewhere new to land.
He finds it in the boxes.
His gaze sweeps the room again. The careful labels. Kitchen. Bathroom. Office / Books. The bubble-wrapped art leaning beneath bare nails.
“Fine,” he says. “She chose the op. I don’t agree with it, but I get it.” His gaze lands on me again, harder now. “But why didn’t you chase her?”
I don’t answer. It’s like he just held up a mirror to my own self-recriminations. He keeps going, sweeps his eyes around her apartment again.
“She drove out of here this morning and you’re in her place packing her things like it’s a favor.” His voice drops. “I saw how you looked at her, Wyatt. At the wedding. That night. Why are you here instead of with her?”
I close the box. Not sealing it, just covering the wound.
“She needed space. I’m giving her space...” I’ve repeated the excuse so often it’s ceased to have meaning. And maybe that’s the most damning thing of all.
“I was too late,” he says, cutting me off. “But I came.” He holds my gaze. “You were here all along and you let her go.”
The accusation lands square in my chest. Nina said the same thing on the plane a week ago—different words, same wound. And now a man who’s known me for all of five minutes just found it too.
Even though few words were exchanged that night after the wedding, once our clothes came off, we were all naked to the core, hearts exposed, trauma exposed. Every kiss, every touch, ever single thrust inside each other was a confession.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” I say.
He shakes his head then looks me square in the eye. “I know what that night meant to me. But don’t think for a second I missed what it was doing to you too. Or to her. I remember every goddamn second, Wyatt, every single word.”
The air leaves my lungs at the reminder.
Words did come, later in the dark, when we were finally still.
They came in whispers between the three of us, but it felt like we were different people.
The bare, naked kernels of ourselves that don’t really feel like us because it’s not who we show the world.
That night was an anomaly. Maybe it’s Nina’s superpower to get broken men to bare their souls, and we were both under her influence.
“I was there too.” I search his eyes hoping he sees his pain reflected in mine. How much it means to be seen, to be understood.
We fall silent.
And here’s the thing: we are not the kind of men who do this.
We aren’t the kind of men who speak feelings out loud, who stand this close without it being about control or challenge.
But I’ve met his mother. I’ve seen what that family does with emotion. They’re the kind of people who bury it, sharpen it, turn it into something that cuts. If Chris learned anything growing up Longo, it wasn’t how to ask for help.
I had to learn the hard way that shutting down doesn’t protect you, it just delays the bleeding. Most men never figure that out. They leave the soft parts gagged and buried where no one can see them.
I’m still learning. But I know something now.
Softness bends before it breaks.
And Chris is slowly, painfully starting to learn that too, in the space between me and the boxes I packed with care.
He steps forward, shoulders squared like he’s bracing for a blow.
We’re eye to eye. His jaw is so tight he might spit out diamonds in a moment, but his gaze is a churning mess of conflict.
“You gonna hit me?” I ask.
“No.”
“Good. Because I don’t want to hit you back.”
Another step and we’re nearly touching. The air tightens, hot with things we’re not saying. Regret. Hunger. Fear.
He looks at the room again. At the already labeled boxes stacked by the door, at the fresh ones still leaning in a flattened stack under the window. At the walls where Nina’s art leans beneath the nails where it used to hang, ready for shipping crates. “You’re a fucking idiot.”
“I know. For the record, this isn’t me giving up. Just... trying not to make it worse.”
He swallows. His gaze drops to the box of books. The flaps have reopened on their own, a casket unwilling to stay buried. He picks up one of her books—The Body Keeps the Score. I wonder if he’s ever read it.
“She said she wanted to heal,” I say, taking a risk by bringing up that whispered conversation that we probably all believed would remain in that bed in Los Angeles. “You said you wanted to help her. Maybe that means letting go of control.”
He looks up from the book. “That’s rich coming from the guy who just bubble-wrapped her apartment.”
His hand tightens on the book. Mine tightens on the box flap. He’s not wrong.
I could kiss him. That’s the fucked up thing.
Not to comfort him. Not to fix anything. Because he just saw through me the way Nina did, and something in me doesn’t want to let that go.
Our eyes lock. The moment is charged, but not with desire. Just understanding.
I heave a sigh. “I could use a beer. Want to sit?”
And this time, he does. Like he wants to know what it feels like to finally be still.
I grab a t-shirt from the back of a chair and pull it on, then get a pair of beers from the fridge, pop them open, and hand one to Chris. He takes it, but doesn’t drink. Just rests the bottle against his knee and stares.
“I’d cook,” I say, eyeing the kitchen. “If there was anything to cook.”
I haven’t packed the kitchen yet. Nina already took most of her dry goods to the food bank, but one glance inside the nearest cabinet confirms it: one dusty bag of red lentils, an unopened bottle of sesame oil, and a single can of chickpeas that might’ve made the move from her last apartment.
“I’ll dig around. Maybe find a box labeled desperation.”
No smile from him. Just the same coiled silence while he watches me with a wary gaze.
I could sit. Could give him my full attention and ask the kind of questions that cut straight through.
After managing some of the emotional fallout from Mason’s Zavala op, I have some inkling of the kind of trauma Chris has endured.
But every question I ask is another chance for him to turn the mirror back on me, and I’m not sure I can take another hit right now.
So I move. Go back to the box I already packed—Office / Books—open the flaps again.
The binder’s near the top. Black plastic. Overstuffed. An archive of every dinner she didn’t have to think about.
“She hated cooking,” I say, flipping it open. “Said it was too much effort for results that didn’t scale. Takeout was efficient. Reliable. No dishes.”
No response. He’s staring at the binder like it might reveal everything there is to know about this version of Nina. The one I fell in love with. The one that broke when she learned he was alive all this time.
He flinches minutely, shifts his grip on the bottle.
Every detail I say out loud is another reminder. She lived. She adapted. Without him. But I’m still the idiot who let her go.
I flip toward the back, tap through a couple menus on my phone. Order enough food for two people who haven’t earned any comfort and are still ordering it anyway.
I set the binder back in the box.
Without looking at him, I say, “I can tell you more. If you want.”
And for a long moment, I don’t know if he’ll say anything at all.
“What happened?” he asks eventually. Quiet. Rough. The words cost him. “After I left.”
I take my time answering. Push the box aside gently. I want to get this right—because as much as I hate to admit it, Chris might be the most precious of all the things she left behind. Where that leaves me, I don’t know.