Chapter 24 Wyatt
Wyatt
The night air is cool against my split lip as we step outside. Chris’s car is parked at the curb right outside the gate, a generic sedan with rental plates.
We get in without speaking. The leather seats smell new, impersonal. Chris starts the engine, adjusts the mirrors. His hands are steady on the wheel, but his shoulders are bunched with tension.
“You know where she lives?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
Of course he does. He was there last week.
We pull away from the curb, heading toward the 10.
The freeway is busy with its usual flow of evening traffic streaming through the city.
Chris merges smoothly, the rental sedan anonymous among the river of taillights.
The silence in the car thrums with everything we haven’t said, everything we’re both afraid to face.
“That night,” Chris says finally. “In Denver. When you were packing her things.”
I wait.
“What happened between us—it wasn’t just about her.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I look at him in the dim light from the dashboard. His profile is sharp, focused on the road, but there’s vulnerability in the set of his shoulders.
“I know,” I say. “It was her bed, but I was the one you needed, wasn’t I?”
He casts me a longer look that reveals a crack in his armor—a glimmer of the vulnerability from that night. He just nods once and turns back to the road.
We drive in silence for a few more miles. Chris flicks on his blinker and merges toward the National Boulevard exit, then shakes his head and utters a soft curse as if he just realized he forgot something important.
We stop at a red light at the bottom of the off-ramp. Chris turns to me while we wait.
“What Callie said back there. About Nina being afraid we’d mourn a future she never wanted.”
I tense, waiting for another argument.
“She wasn’t just being poetic.”
“What do you mean?”
He glances at me and his expression softens. “The woman’s always been terrified of pregnancy. Not uncomfortable. Not ambivalent. Terrified.”
My stomach sinks. “What?”
“She has tokophobia. Severe fear of pregnancy and childbirth. Even small children scare her. Didn’t you guys talk about that while you were dating?”
“We... it came up. But I didn’t realize how severe it was.”
“Her mom died in childbirth. Nina was there. She was eight years old and watched her mother bleed out trying to deliver a baby that didn’t survive either. Her dad fell apart in the aftermath, so she basically lived with us until she and Callie graduated from high school.”
The pieces click into place with sickening clarity.
Her reaction to Zoey. Her insistence on doubling up on birth control.
The way she’d gone pale whenever the subject of children came up.
I knew some of it, but only broad strokes about her childhood.
Her father’s suicide—one of the formative tragedies we had in common—and her relationship with Callie’s family.
But the depth of her trauma around pregnancy wasn’t something we talked about.
We’d talk about our dads, about how men don’t get the help they need, about all the ways grief goes sideways when nobody teaches you how to carry it. But never this.
“She didn’t abort because we’re assholes who can’t figure out what we want,” Chris continues. “She aborted because she endured severe trauma surrounding pregnancy and never wanted to have kids.”
The words hit me sideways. Nina, alone with that. While I was giving her space.
For Nina, it wasn’t a loss. It was a nightmare. A living embodiment of her deepest fear.
“Jesus,” I whisper, trying to recalibrate all the complicated feelings I’ve been having since she told me.
“Yeah.”
We’re almost to her neighborhood now. The street is quiet, lined with jacaranda trees and older Craftsman houses converted to apartments. The apartments soon give way to more upscale single family residences with gates.
The car slows as we approach her building. Chris parks across the street, kills the engine. We sit in the sudden quiet, both of us processing what this means.
“We really are idiots,” I say finally.
“Yeah. We are.”
I look up at her building. The windows are dark except for one on the southeast corner. A soft glow that might be a lamp or a computer screen.
“She’s awake,” Chris observes.
“Probably hasn’t slept since it happened.”
We sit there for another moment, both of us staring up at that lighted window. Both of us knowing that whatever conversation waits for us up there, it’s going to change everything.
Chris doesn’t move to get out. His hands are still on the steering wheel, knuckles white.
“I shouldn’t have left,” he says quietly. “That night in Denver. After we—” He stops, takes a deep breath as if he’s about to unburden himself. “I lay awake after you drifted off, just staring at the ceiling. I could barely breathe. Everything felt too real. Too much.”
I turn to face him fully.
“I’ve spent so many years pretending to be whatever someone else needed. Playing a role. And that night with you—and before, with both of you—I wasn’t pretending either time.” His voice cracks slightly. “I was just me. And it was terrifying.”
The admission sits raw and exposed between us.
“So you ran.”
“I told myself I had reasons. But yeah.” He finally looks at me, eyes raw. “Being seen—actually seen—feels like dying.”
“You’re not a coward.” I reach over, cover his hand with mine. “It meant something. It still does.”
He stares at our joined hands. “I don’t know how to do this. How to want something real without destroying it.”
“You don’t have to know. You just have to try.”
Something breaks in his expression. Before I can process what’s happening, he leans across the console and kisses me.
It’s not desperate like that night in Denver—it’s careful, deliberate.
He’s mindful of my split lip, his mouth gentle against mine, an apology written in the careful press of his lips.
When he pulls back, his forehead rests against mine.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “For leaving. For making you wonder.”
“You’re here now.”
“Yeah.” He straightens, takes a shaky breath. “I’m here now.”
“There’s something else,” I say after a beat, because the guilt is eating at me and someone needs to name it.
He glances at me. “What?”
“Nina doesn’t know about Vicente. About your history with him.”
Chris’s jaw tightens. “I know.”
“She’s going to find out eventually. She’s too good at her job not to dig into their pasts. And if Vicente starts talking about his relationships...” I let the implication hang.
Chris stares into the distance, his mind going somewhere I can’t follow. Whatever he’s turning over, it’s eating at him.
“She’s going to realize we kept it from her,” I continue. “Both of us. I know protocol dictates we keep it quiet.” I exhale slowly. “But we need to think about what happens when she connects it herself. It might be in her best interest to be read in, is all I’m saying.”
Chris is quiet for a long moment.
“She doesn’t have clearance, Wyatt. For any of it.
” His tone hardens. “Operation Broken Heart, my cover identity, the specifics of my relationship with Vicente—none of that exists at her level. And there are things about that operation that even the Agency doesn’t need to—” He cuts himself off, shaking his head. “The point is, she can’t know.”
The way he stops himself tells me enough. There are details he kept out of his reports. Things that happened with Vicente that he never documented.
He’s right, and I know it.
“But if she figures it out on her own—”
“Then that’s different. That’s her connecting dots from information Vicente gives her voluntarily.
But us actively putting it in front of her?
” Chris shakes his head. “That’s a career-ending violation.
She’s had two sessions with them, Wyatt.
The second was just yesterday—gave us solid intel that tracked with what Tatiana pulled together.
She’s building real rapport. You want to contaminate that by telling her that every question she asks Vicente about his romantic history could be about me? ”
Nina’s strength as a therapist comes from her ability to see people as complex rather than simply dangerous. If she knew that one of Vicente’s more recent relationships—one that ended in betrayal—was with Chris, her whole approach would shift. Every question would carry different weight.
“She deserves to know the risks—”
“She deserves to do her job without having to second-guess every breakthrough.” His fists clench, knuckles white.
“The second she knows, everything changes. Her approach, her instincts, her ability to read him cleanly. She stops being a therapist and starts being a woman trying to navigate her boyfriend’s ex. ”
I want to argue, but there’s logic in what he’s saying. Nina’s therapeutic process relies on genuine curiosity, authentic engagement. If she knew that every personal revelation from Vicente might be about Chris...
But the alternative feels like another betrayal. Another way we’re making choices for her instead of trusting her to handle the truth.
“She’s stronger than you think.”
“I know exactly how strong she is. That’s not the point.
” He exhales slowly, and something in his voice softens.
“Vicente and Arturo are dangerous, Wyatt. Not just operationally—personally. They don’t separate business from intimacy.
Every relationship is transactional, every connection is leverage. ”
The fear underneath his words catches me off guard. This isn’t just about operational security. It’s about Chris being terrified that his past will reach out and hurt someone he loves.
Someone we love.
“You think he’ll figure out her connection to you?”