Chapter 33 Wyatt
Wyatt
The waiting room at the surgical center is aggressively beige—walls, chairs, carpet all designed to hide stains and anxiety equally well. The only color comes from a fake ficus in the corner and the muted television playing a home renovation show nobody’s watching.
Chris sits several chairs away from me. He’s been checking his phone every ninety seconds since we sat down.
“She’s fine,” I say.
His thumb hovers over the screen. “I know.”
“Then stop checking the time like you’re waiting for a ransom call.”
He pockets the phone, but his leg starts bouncing instead.
Energy with nowhere to go. I recognize the pattern—it’s the same defensive energy he showed earlier when Nina brought up how we could be together while she heals, how we didn’t have to wait for her.
She didn’t just mean sex, either, though I’m not sure he realizes that. Or maybe he does and that’s the issue.
You aren’t just my boyfriends, right? You’re each other’s.
The way he’d frozen. The way his face had shuttered closed, that careful non-expression he wears when something strikes too near the bone. And that painful admission: It’s harder for me to let myself be what I am.
“You could sit closer,” I say. “Nobody here gives a shit.”
“I’m fine where I am.”
“Right. Because maintaining tactical distance is really necessary in a surgical center waiting room.”
His jaw tightens. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Point out that you’re being ridiculous?”
“Don’t push.” He glances at the other people in the waiting room—an older couple, a woman with her teenage daughter, a man reading a paperback. “Not here.”
I want to call it the same old dance—in private he’ll kiss me like he’s drowning, in public he keeps distance. But watching him vibrate with anxiety about Nina, I wonder if I’m making his stress about me.
The woman at reception calls someone’s name. The older couple stands, following a nurse through double doors. Chris watches them go, something flickering across his face.
“Relax,” I tell him. “It’s a simple procedure. She’ll be out in an hour.”
“I know the timeline.”
Of course he does. He’s probably memorized every possible complication, every statistical risk. It’s what makes him good at what he does—processing anxiety through information and contingency plans rather than panic.
“You worried about something specific?” I ask. “Or just the general concept of her being unconscious?”
He’s quiet for a moment. His voice drops when he finally speaks. “Rafael Marcano.”
Neither of us speaks for a moment.
“Still a ghost,” I say. “Mason’s tracking him but there’s nothing concrete.”
“That’s what worries me.” Chris finally moves to the seat right across from me, voice dropping as he leans forward, elbows on his knees. Not quite closing the distance between us, but acknowledging this isn’t a conversation for public consumption. “Been thinking about the timeline since yesterday.”
“Volkov’s accounts lighting up six months ago.”
He nods. “Right when Rafael’s name starts surfacing. Could be Serbian money trying to establish new routes after Bogdan.”
We both know who likely killed Bogdan Corluka, but that’s not a conversation for a hospital waiting room. Vicente and Arturo aren’t exactly hiding—their Los Feliz compound is practically public knowledge in certain circles. Getting close to them is another matter entirely.
“Or could be someone else,” I say. “Someone with old grievances.”
Chris holds my gaze intently, tracking where I’m going. “Yakuza.”
“Power vacuum in Mexico. Perfect time to move in.” I keep my voice low. “After what Vicente and Arturo did to their man—”
“The art collection. Haruki-kai’s oyabun.” Chris’s jaw tightens.
I’ve never seen the pieces myself—the tattooed skin Vicente and Arturo flayed from that yakuza enforcer and mounted in custom frames like museum exhibits. But I’ve heard enough descriptions to picture them hanging on those compound walls. Expensive. Grotesque. A message written in flesh and ink.
Not violence for violence’s sake. Theater. A guarantee that everyone knows what happens when you cross Vicente Amador and Arturo Flores.
And every time I think about it, I circle back to the same question: how smart is it, really, putting Nina in a room with men capable of that level of calculated brutality?
Then again, they’re on our side now, supposedly.
And if Nina becomes valuable enough to them as their therapist—if the intel keeps flowing—maybe they’ll care about keeping her safe.
I hope.
“They’d want payback,” Chris continues. “Or at minimum, to piss on Vicente’s grave by taking his routes.”
“And if they’re backing Rafael—”
“Then Nina’s the soft access point.” His fingers drum against his thigh. “She’s outside Vicente and Arturo’s security bubble. Regular schedule. Predictable patterns.”
“We don’t know that anyone’s watching. Her guard dogs are on point too.
” I still feel a twinge in my back where Lucia tackled me and held me down practically hog-tied in Nina’s back yard after they caught us sneaking around.
Though we weren’t exactly trying not to get caught. .. just not seen by the cameras.
“Someone’s definitely watching.” Chris shifts in his seat, fingers still drumming against his thigh.
“You have something concrete?”
He shakes his head. “Just patterns. Instinct. That prickle on the back of your neck before you spot the source.”
“That’s not nothing.”
“It’s also not enough to act on.” He exhales slowly. “When she goes back to work, we need to make sure she doesn’t leave the house without her detail. Not even to see Callie. Not until we know what we’re dealing with.”
“She won’t like that.”
“She doesn’t have to like it. She just has to stay alive.” The words come out harder than he probably intended. He catches himself, softens slightly. “Could be Dragonov’s people. Could be Rafael. Could be someone we haven’t even identified yet.”
“Mason will figure it out.”
“Maybe. Or maybe we’re looking at this all wrong.” He starts to say something else, but his phone buzzes. He checks it, frowns.
“What?”
“Tatiana. The ADA’s pushing for an earlier arraignment time. Wants to move it to one-thirty instead of two.”
I check the wall clock. It’s almost eleven. “Nina won’t even be out of recovery by then.”
“I know.” He shoves the phone back in his pocket. “I’ll handle it.”
I wait, watching him work through the logistics. The timing’s genuinely tight.
“You going to make it back before she’s out?”
“I’ll try.” He runs a hand over his face. “If they push it to one-thirty, the timing gets tight.”
“I’ll be here either way.”
He nods. But he doesn’t reach for his phone to deal with the arraignment. Not yet. This morning catches up to both of us in the quiet.
“This morning,” I say. “What Nina said about us taking care of each other...”
“I heard her.”
“I know you did. And I watched you freeze.”
He’s quiet.
“I’m not trying to keep score.” Even as I say it, I hear myself—I’ve been doing exactly that since we sat down. “I just want to understand why it hit so hard.”
“Because when she says it like that—’you’re each other’s too’—it stops being something that just happened between us and starts being something I have to be.
” He meets my eyes. “When Nina calls you my boyfriend, it means something I spent my whole life being taught isn’t real.
That men like me don’t exist. If I name what we are, independent of her, I can’t pretend it’s just circumstance.
I can’t pretend it’s something that happened to me instead of something I am. ”
The words settle between us. He’s not deflecting. He’s digging.
“And that means it was real before Nina,” he continues quietly. “Before the op. Before everything. And I’ve been lying to myself a lot longer than five years.”
The home renovation show drones on. Someone’s installing subway tile.
“But naming it now isn’t the right time… not while my girlfriend gets her tubes tied and my—” He stops, giving me a pained look.
“Your what?”
His eyes find mine and stay. “That’s exactly the problem. I know the answer. And it scares the shit out of me.”
He sits there, leg still bouncing, carrying all that tension with nowhere to put it.
“I grew up thinking men didn’t touch,” I tell him.
“Not like we do. Not with tenderness or want or anything beyond violence or sports. My stepdad...” I pause, choosing my words carefully.
“He carried everything alone. Never let anyone close enough to help. And when the weight got too heavy, he didn’t reach out. He just... stopped.”
Chris goes still.
I don’t talk about this much. Not because it’s a secret—just because most people don’t know what to do with it. They get uncomfortable, or they try to fix something that can’t be fixed, or they treat me like I’m fragile for the next six months.
But Chris doesn’t move. Doesn’t deflect. Just waits.
“I was sixteen,” I continue, and my voice comes out rougher than I intended. “Old enough to understand what happened. Young enough to think I should’ve been able to stop it.”
My eyes burn. I don’t fight it.
That’s the thing I learned, eventually. After years of therapy, after watching my mom rebuild herself one careful day at a time. The tears aren’t the weakness. Pretending they don’t exist—that’s what kills you.
“Wyatt—” Chris starts, something cracking in his voice.
“I’m okay.” I blink, feel the dampness on my lashes.
Don’t wipe it away. “It was a long time ago. But I think about him sometimes. How different it might have been if he’d let someone in.
If he’d known he could ask for what he needed.
” I meet Chris’s eyes. “If he’d understood that wanting gentleness, wanting connection, wanting to be held—those things didn’t make him less of a man. They just made him human.”
Chris hasn’t looked away.
“Thank you,” he says quietly. “For telling me that.”
He’s quiet for a long moment before he says, “Can I say something back?”
“Yeah.”