Chapter 28 Chris
Chris
She’s sorry?
The words echo in my head as I watch Nina’s face cycle through embarrassment and uncertainty. She thinks she needs to apologize for having boundaries. Thinks what we just shared somehow wasn’t enough because we didn’t penetrate her.
It makes me want to find every person who ever made her feel like her worth was measured by what she could provide rather than who she is, and have a very pointed conversation with them.
I know that look. The way she’s curled into herself, waiting for judgment. It’s the same expression I wore for years—braced for the moment someone decides you’re not worth the effort.
“Nina,” I say, reaching for her hand. “Look at me.”
Her eyes are wary when they meet mine.
“What we did tonight—that was everything I needed. Not because it had to be enough, but because it was enough.”
Wyatt shifts beside her, his voice gentle. “You don’t owe us anything, Nina. Not your body, not apologies, nothing.”
“But you both wanted—”
“We wanted you,” I interrupt. “We wanted to be close to you. To touch you, to make you feel good. That’s what happened.”
She’s quiet for a moment. I can see her mind working, trying to reconcile what we’re saying with whatever story she’s been telling herself.
“After we thought you died,” she says finally, voice barely above a whisper, “I went a little crazy. Slept with a lot of people. Always made sure they got what they wanted, even when I didn’t really want to give it.”
I know that survival mechanism. The way you learn to shape yourself into what someone expects because it feels safer than risking rejection for who you actually are.
“I thought that was just how it worked,” she continues. “That if I fucked them well enough, made them come hard enough, they might stick around long enough for me to matter.”
A stone settles in my gut, because of how we left things all those years ago.
How we had sex the night of hers and Callie’s college graduation, and how I left literally the next day for the op that “killed” me.
I didn’t break her—Nina’s too strong for that—but I gave her a wound she had to heal without me.
No conversation with Wyatt about how she was when I was dead could have clued me in on that.
That’s on me.
Wyatt’s arm tightens around her. “And now?”
“Now I’m terrified I’m falling back into old patterns. Apologizing for having limits. Apologizing for not offering more than I want to give because I think you’ll leave if I don’t.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” I tell her, meaning it more than I’ve meant anything in years.
“How can you be sure?” She gives me a look that’s half silent plea, half blame for when I did leave, and it hits the mark.
“Because we already had the chance to leave,” Wyatt says. “Tonight, when we found out about the pregnancy—the abortion, we ran to you, not away.”
She nods slowly, some of the tension leaving her shoulders.
“The surgery,” I say carefully. “Are you doing it for us? To make things easier?”
“No.” Her voice is firm, certain. “I’m doing it for me. Because I never want to go through that fear again.”
“Good,” Wyatt murmurs against her hair. “That’s exactly why you should do it.”
The conversation fades into comfortable silence, bodies warm and relaxed in the dim light.
Wyatt meets my eyes across her shoulder, a silent challenge as if he’s expecting me to do what I did the last two times I was with either of them.
The only right answer is for me to pull back the covers and climb underneath.
They both join me, with Nina letting out a sigh as she curls against my side.
Only then does Wyatt reach over and click off the bedside lamp, cloaking us in darkness.
I squeeze Nina’s hand between us. “I’m sorry for ever leaving you. If there’s anything I could do to change what happened, I would.”
She turns her face up to me in the darkness, and I can feel her eyes searching the shadows of my face. “You’re here now, and that’s what matters,” she whispers, then kisses me softly before settling deeper between us.
Nina’s breathing evens out first, exhaustion finally claiming her. Wyatt follows soon after, his arm curved protectively around her waist.
I stay awake longer, watching them sleep.
Experimentally I search for any kernel of anger over what she did, but all I wind up with is a question about whether I should have a particular feeling about it, and what does it mean that I don’t?
And all I feel is pissed at a system that makes us ashamed of who we are at our cores.
That holds everyone up against some impossible standard of what makes a person worthy of societal acceptance.
I’m not often able to think about my time with Vicente in such an abstract way, but can’t help but wonder if it was always his shame over being left behind by Arturo that defined how he approached intimate relationships.
Ours wasn’t exactly one free from shame.
We were steeped in it with every word, every action.
I think some people get off on shame. I think I got off on his shame.
Because as powerless as I was with him, being given permission to exploit that shame was the only way I could pretend to have any control.
Shame is the last thing Nina should feel. It isn’t sexy when it tears you down, makes you believe you’re broken in such a fundamental way that you doubt your own sense of self worth.
It’s not an easy thing to shake though. Even now, lying in her bed, quiet, calm, and completely sated, listening to the two of them breathing, almost in sync, that compulsion to run is difficult to ignore.
Because that’s what I was conditioned to feel with him.
The exits to his bedroom are still mapped in my head.
The number of steps to reach each one. The aftermath of our assignations while he slept was the only respite I ever got.
Ever since I came home, the shadow sits like a loaded weapon in an unsecured room.
Because even after I ingratiated myself to a monster well enough to become his sex toy, even knowing I had zero agency, some part of me still craves that slow, velvet slide into darkness.
Still aches to relinquish all inhibition and control.
And that fucking terrifies me more than my job, more than even letting myself love these two people.
That isn’t the hard part. Wanting to stay is easy. Actually doing it in spite of that darkness creeping in, making me want to run, is the difficult part.
It’s the comfortable weight of Nina’s body tight against mine, her breasts pressed to my side, and the steady cadence of her breathing that finally, blessedly, lulls me to sleep.
I feel like I’ve barely closed my eyes when dawn light bleeds through the curtains against my eyelids. I’m conscious before I’m awake, cataloging heat, weight, the smell of Nina’s shampoo.
My cock stirs, predictable as clockwork. The dark musings of midnight a distant memory in the presence of Nina Palmer draped warmly over me. Her dark hair is a riot of curls against my chest, tangled from sleep, still slightly damp from the shower. The mess makes her look wild and beautiful.
Her breasts are less a comfort now than they were last night. Instead they’re a sensual distraction, exposed except where they press against me. Her leg is thrown over mine, thigh warm against my hip, knee almost nudging my cock. She’s completely relaxed, breathing slow and even.
She shifts, makes a soft sound in the back of her throat. Her hand slides across my chest, nails scraping lightly over hypersensitive skin.
“Mmm.” Not quite awake. With soft fingertips she traces the scar below my collarbone—Gustavo’s calling card—then drifts lower, following the line of muscle down my chest. Every inch of her teasing caress jacks the temperature of my blood and the ache in my stiff cock.
I can’t see her eyes, but her cheek is pressed to my pectoral so if her eyes are open she’s aware of it too.
When she reaches my stomach, her palm flattens against me, then slides beneath the edge of the sheet and the tent it’s making over my pelvis. Once underneath she brushes her knuckles up the length of me. It’s all I can do to keep from jacking my hips up into her touch.
“Someone’s up early,” she says, voice rough and sensual.
“Someone’s been up for a while.”
She lifts her head, dark hair falling across her face. Her eyes, still soft with sleep, focus on mine with the kind of intensity that makes my breath catch. The quirk at the corner of her mouth betrays the workings of her devious mind though.
“Poor baby.” She bites her lower lip as her hand finds my cock and wraps around it. “What should we do about that?”
Before I can answer, she’s moving. Kissing her way down my chest, tongue flicking over my nipple. The sensation shoots straight to my dick. I glance toward Wyatt still asleep. Should I wake him or just enjoy this?
“Nina—”
“Shh.” She glances up, lips curved in a smile that’s pure trouble. “Let me take care of you.”
There she is. The Nina I remember from college graduation night—bold, confident, going after what she wants without apology.
That brilliant mind working behind dark eyes, calculating exactly how to wreck me.
She tugs the sheet down, revealing my painfully hard cock, and the hunger in her eyes is my undoing.
She dips to press a kiss to the very tip, tongue darting out straight into the slit to capture the pre-cum gathered there.
I gasp involuntarily at the first hot lick, slide my hand to her nape, just to stay grounded.
Behind her, Wyatt stirs. His eyes open, take in the scene—Nina’s mouth on my skin, my hand already tangled in her hair. His pupils dilate.
“Good morning,” he says, voice gravelly.
Nina hums agreement, then slides lower. Her breath ghosts over my cock, a torturous tease, and I have to close my eyes.
“Look at me,” she says as she settles beside my hips, her breasts pressed against me.