Chapter 26 Nina
Nina
We migrate to the kitchen table, mugs in hand. I take the chair across from Chris while Wyatt sits beside me.
For a moment, we all just drink our coffee and avoid eye contact.
But I can feel them looking at me, cataloging my posture, my silence.
I wish again for my robe, but at least it’s warm in the kitchen.
Though my nipples are still prominent little betrayals of how these two men affect me despite the complication hanging between us.
After several beats Chris sets down his mug and looks directly at me.
“When have you ever not been able to come to me?” he asks.
Not accusatory. Just steady, like he’s genuinely trying to understand.
“Ninth grade, you called me at two in the morning because you and Callie both got your periods. Dad was on call and Mom was working late. I left campus, drove to the store in my boxers.” He holds my gaze. “So what made this different?”
The question hits home. Because the old Chris, Callie’s big brother, the one who showed up no matter what—I never doubted him.
But this isn’t that. This isn’t a teenager calling her best friend’s brother for tampons.
I’m a grown woman navigating something I never imagined I’d have to face, with a man I once mourned as dead, whose relationship to me has no roadmap.
“Everything,” I say. “Everything made this different.”
“Then help me understand.”
I take a breath. “I need you both to understand something first.”
They wait.
“I’m not sorry.” The words come out steady, certain. “For the choice I made. For not telling you first. For any of it.”
Chris’s expression doesn’t change. “Good.”
“Good?”
“Nina, I remember what you went through as a kid. I remember how you looked at pregnant women, how you flinched when anyone mentioned babies. I remember you telling me you never wanted children, that the thought of pregnancy terrified you.” His voice gentles.
“The last thing you should be sorry for is taking care of yourself.”
Sitting across from him now, hearing his calm concern, the understanding of the one man in the world who always knew me best—it finally sinks in. “I kept bracing for you to be angry.”
“Why?”
“Because it could have been yours.”
He’s quiet for a long moment, one large hand wrapped around his mug while the other rests on the table top.
The sight of them shouldn’t be such a distraction in the midst of this conversation, but memories—both recent and distant past—keep threatening to resurface of what those hands can do to me. When he speaks, his voice is careful.
“It could have been Wyatt’s too. And honestly? The fact that we don’t know, that we’ll never know—that’s probably for the best.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because I’m the last person who should be responsible for a child right now,” he says simply.
“I can barely take care of myself. I’m still putting myself back together after years of being someone else.
The idea of being responsible for shaping another human being—” He shakes his head.
“That terrifies me more than any cartel boss ever did.”
Wyatt reaches over, covers my hand with his. “All I care about is that you’re okay. That you did what you needed to do to be okay.”
“Are you, though?” Chris asks. “Okay?”
I consider the question seriously. My body is still tender, still recovering.
My emotions are a tangle of relief and grief and shame that I can’t quite sort through.
The live wire living inside me at their proximity in this moment notwithstanding.
But underneath it all, there’s a sense of rightness—the certainty that I made the correct choice, even if it was difficult.
“I’m getting there,” I say finally.
“What do you need from us?” Wyatt asks.
Everything. Nothing. I don’t know.
“Patience,” I say instead. “I know I don’t owe anyone an apology for the choice I made. I know that intellectually. But the shame doesn’t care about logic, and I can’t just switch it off because you two tell me it’s okay.”
They’re both quiet, attentive.
“I’m glad you came,” I add. I look at Chris. “You were right to chase me. Even if the way you did it was—”
“Misguided,” he supplies.
“I was going to say idiotic, but sure.” A ghost of a smile. Then I turn to Wyatt, and a quieter ache moves through me. “And you—I know you were trying to give me space. But sometimes space is the last thing I need, even when I’m asking for it.”
Wyatt’s jaw tightens, but he nods. “I’ll remember that. But Nina, I wish you’d told me. I knew a little about your childhood, about why you lived with Callie’s family. But I didn’t realize how severe—” He stops, runs a hand through his hair.
“I was going to,” I admit. “When things got more serious. But then Chris came home, and everything got complicated.”
“And you thought I’d try to change your mind?”
“I thought you might want different things than I do.” I pause, the words harder to say than I expected.
“Most people want a family, kids. You’re so good with Zoey, so natural with her.
I thought eventually you’d want that for yourself.
And I wanted to hold onto what we had for as long as I could, because I believed deep down that telling you might be a dealbreaker for us. ”
“Nina,” Wyatt says gently. “I want you. However that looks. Whatever that means. Families come in many shapes.”
Chris nods. “Same here.”
“Even knowing that children will never be part of the equation?”
“Especially knowing that,” Chris says. “Because it means you trust us enough to be honest about who you are.”
The words crack something open in my chest. But it’s not just about them. It’s about Callie.
“You know what scares me most?” I say quietly.
“It’s not this. It’s not us. It’s Zoey.” My throat constricts.
“Callie wants more kids. I know she does—she and Mason have talked about it. And I want that for her. I want to be there for her, the way she’s always been there for me.
But the thought of watching her go through pregnancy, of being in the room, of holding her hand—” I press my lips together.
“What if I can’t do it? What if my best friend needs me and I’m too broken to show up? ”
The silence that follows is different from the others. Heavier. Because this isn’t about romance or guilt or the mess between the three of us. This is about the person who matters most to me in the world, and the fear that I might fail her.
“Then I’ll be in the room with you,” Chris says. “You and me and Callie, same as always. You won’t have to do it alone.”
Wyatt’s hand finds mine under the table. “Neither of us is going anywhere.”
The tightness in my chest eases, not all the way, but enough.
Enough to breathe. And breathing makes me think about all the other weight I’ve been carrying.
About the pregnancy, the abortion, the shame I can’t seem to put down no matter how many people tell me I’m allowed to.
I can tell Callie some of it, but not everything.
“I hate having secrets,” I say. “This job is going to be full of them—surveillance and cover stories and things I can’t tell you, or that you can’t tell me. The last thing I want is to poison whatever relationship we have with more lies.”
“What kind of relationship do we have?” Chris asks, looking directly at me.
It’s the question I’ve been avoiding. The one that sits at the center of everything we haven’t said.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “But I know I don’t want to lose either of you.”
“You won’t,” Wyatt says immediately.
“How can you be sure?”
“Because we’re here,” Chris says. “After everything—the wedding night, the weeks apart, the fight tonight—we’re still here.”
I look between them, paying closer attention, focusing on how they are together. The way they sit, not quite facing each other but not avoiding each other either.
“What happened between you two?” I ask. “Tonight, I mean. After the fight.”
They exchange another one of those looks that have become increasingly frequent over the course of this conversation.
Chris clears his throat. “We talked.”
“And?”
“And we realized we were both being idiots about a lot of things.”
“Such as?”
Wyatt shifts beside me, and I catch a flicker of uncertainty in his expression. Or maybe guilt. He looks like he’s about to speak when Chris beats him to it.
“There’s something we haven’t told you,” Chris says carefully.
My stomach clenches. “What kind of something?”
“After you left for LA,” Chris begins, then stops. Looks at Wyatt, who nods encouragingly. “I went to Denver. To your apartment. I thought maybe I could convince you not to take this assignment.” He scrubs the back of his neck. “I found Wyatt there instead.”
I picture it—Chris showing up unexpected, Wyatt packing my things. How that must have looked.
“We didn’t just talk,” Wyatt says quietly, gaze fixed on his coffee for a moment before he looks directly at me, hazel eyes intense as if he’s bracing for my reaction.
Understanding washes over me, followed by a jolt I wasn’t expecting. Not relief—hotter, more complicated than that. The image forms unbidden: Chris and Wyatt in my bed, tangled in sheets that still smelled like me.
Chris nods, confirming what I just imagined.
My pulse kicks up. After what the three of us shared that night, after watching them come apart for each other as much as for me—maybe this was inevitable.
But hearing it makes it real. Makes me remember the sounds Chris made when Wyatt was inside him. The way he buried his face against my flesh, the desperate arch of his spine.
“How do you feel about that?” I ask, falling back on familiar speech patterns because my analytical brain needs to process this before my emotional one can catch up, but my voice comes out lower than intended.