Chapter 37 Chris
Chris
When Wyatt knocks, I’m still on the couch, laptop open, Vicente’s voice filling the empty room. I don’t move to answer. Just call out: “It’s open.”
He comes in, takes one look at me, at the laptop, and goes still.
“How long have you been listening to those?”
“Since yesterday.”
“Chris—”
“I thought if I heard it enough...” I close the laptop. “Make it just noise. Background static.”
“Is it working?”
I laugh, bitter and sharp. “What do you think?”
Wyatt crosses to the couch, sits on the coffee table facing me. Giving me space while making it clear he’s not leaving.
“Talk to me,” he says.
“About what?”
“Whatever’s eating you alive right now.”
Everything. Nothing. The weight of Thursday pressing down like atmospheric pressure. The memory of Vicente’s hands. The way my body still remembers things my mind is trying to forget.
“I don’t know if I can sit across from him,” I say. “Make small talk. Pretend I’m just Nina’s boyfriend meeting her clients. He knows, Wyatt. He knows exactly who I am, what I did, what we—”
I stop. Can’t finish.
“What you were to each other,” Wyatt finishes carefully.
“What he made me.”
The distinction matters. Has to matter. Because if I was that person willingly, if I chose any of it—
“He didn’t make you do anything,” Wyatt says. “You were undercover. Playing a role.”
“It wasn’t a role.” The words come out strangled. “Or it was, but it stopped being just a role somewhere along the way and I don’t know where that line is anymore. Don’t know which parts were Cal and which parts were me.”
Wyatt leans forward, elbows on his knees. “Tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“Whatever you can’t stop thinking about when you listen to his voice.”
I should deflect. Change the subject. Use the briefing prep as an excuse to shift into professional mode.
But I’m so fucking tired of carrying this alone.
“It wasn’t just sex,” I say finally. “I mean it was, but that’s not—” I stop, try again. “He was training me. For the work. The interrogations.”
Wyatt’s expression doesn’t change, but something tightens around his eyes.
“He’d want me to hurt him. During sex. Started small—just rough, you know. But it kept escalating. Harder, more violent. And afterward he’d be tender. Grateful. Like I’d given him exactly what he needed.”
My hands are shaking now. I grip my knees to stop it.
“Then he’d send me to get information from someone.
And I was good at it. Better than Gustavo, more efficient.
And afterward—after I’d hurt them, broken them down—I’d come back hard.
Aroused. Hating myself for it but my body didn’t care.
” I can’t look at him. “And he’d be waiting. Always waiting. He knew.”
The shame is physically painful. Like swallowing broken glass.
“We’d have sex and it would be violent and I’d hate myself but I needed—I couldn’t not—” I break off. “It kept happening. Every time. And I started wanting it. Not wanting, but—fuck, I can’t explain it.”
“He conditioned you.” Wyatt’s voice is low, anger underneath, carefully controlled. “He used sex to train you to associate violence with arousal. That’s not consent, Chris. That’s manipulation.”
“I could have said no.”
“Could you? Really? Without blowing your cover, without risking years of work?”
“I don’t know.” Honest. Raw. “I don’t know what I could have done differently.
I just know what I became. And I can’t—” My voice breaks.
“I can’t be in control like that again. Can’t top you or anyone because I don’t know if I’ll see a person or if I’ll see a target. Don’t know what I’ll need after.”
The confession hangs between us, ugly and true.
Wyatt’s quiet for a long moment. Then he reaches out, covers my shaking hands with his own.
“You’re not that person anymore.”
“How do you know?”
“Because that person was surviving. You’re not in survival mode now. You know the difference between me and an interrogation target. Between Nina and someone to manipulate. You know neither of us are him.”
“My body doesn’t know that. It just knows what it learned.”
“So we teach it something different.”
The simplicity of it almost makes me laugh. “It’s not that easy.”
“I know.” He squeezes my hands. “But you’re not alone in this. That’s what matters.”
I want to believe him. Want to think that love or trust or whatever this is between the three of us can override years of psychological conditioning.
But I remember too clearly what it felt like to come back from breaking someone, arousal and shame tangled together, Vicente’s hands on me like absolution and damnation at once.
“Thursday’s going to be bad,” I say.
“I know.”
“I might not hold it together.”
“Then I’ll be there to help pick up the pieces.”
After a while, Wyatt says, “We should prep the briefing.”
Professional distance. Giving me an out.
I take it. Pull my hands back, open the laptop, start pulling together the summary for McIntyre.
But the recording is still there. Still paused. And Vicente’s voice echoes in my head long after Wyatt and I finish running through operational logistics.
Wyatt leaves around eight, reluctant but not pushing. I tell him I’ll come to Nina’s tomorrow. He doesn’t believe me, but he goes anyway.
I don’t sleep. Just sit in the dark listening to recordings I’ve already memorized, waiting for them to stop hurting.
Around ten, my phone rings. Nina.
I almost don’t answer. But ignoring her feels worse than whatever conversation is coming.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” Her voice is careful. “Wyatt said you’re not coming tonight.”
I close my eyes. “It’s complicated.”
“Try me.”
“I can’t. It’s—” I search for words that won’t be a lie. “Clearance issues.”
The silence on her end is pointed. “That’s bullshit and you know it.” No heat in her voice, just certainty. “Whatever’s going on with you, your mental health matters more than clearance. You can talk to me.”
“Not about this.”
“Chris—”
“I’ll be there tomorrow. After the briefing. I promise.”
Another silence. I can almost hear her deciding whether to push harder.
“Okay,” she says finally. “Tomorrow. But we’re going to talk. Really talk.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“Get some sleep.”
“You too.”
She hangs up. I set the phone down and stare at the ceiling, knowing I won’t sleep, knowing tomorrow I have to face her and pretend I’m not falling apart.
The briefing goes as well as it can. McIntyre’s satisfied with Tatiana’s intelligence, authorizes the Thanksgiving operation, reminds me to keep my shit together and not compromise the asset relationship.
Walsh briefs the Rafael Marcano situation—fabricated identity, digital ghost, credit card activity placing him in Los Angeles for at least two weeks. No photo, no physical description. Working two angles: tracking his limited financial footprint and trying to unmask who he really is.
“The timing concerns me,” McIntyre says. “Our asset inside the Serbian network confirms a contract was activated around the same time this guy shows up in LA. That’s not a coincidence.”
“Could be one of the hitters,” Walsh says. “Positioning early, doing reconnaissance.”
“Or someone else entirely. Keep working it. I want to know who this guy is.”
“We’re pushing, but he’s careful. Could take a while to get a visual.”
The briefing moves on to operational parameters for Thanksgiving. I don’t mention the recordings. Don’t mention that I’m barely sleeping, that I can’t be alone with Vicente without risking complete psychological collapse.
Professional compartmentalization. It’s what I’m good at.
Wyatt handles the DEA coordination. We’re officially cleared for joint observation operation, intelligence gathering only, no tactical intervention unless there’s immediate threat to civilian life.
The briefing wraps by noon. Wyatt joined from Nina’s living room—I could see the edge of her couch in the frame, hear Nikita meowing in the background.
McIntyre and Walsh sign off. I close the laptop. My phone buzzes almost immediately.
WYATT: Come over.
CHRIS: Not sure that’s a good idea.
WYATT: She’s not going to push. But you can’t avoid this forever. Just come.
He’s right. I’ve been using work as an excuse to stay away, but tomorrow’s coming whether I’m ready or not.
I drive to Cheviot Hills on autopilot, mind half on the road, half still in that briefing room where I had to pretend Thursday was just another operation.
I park behind Wyatt’s car. Sit for a moment looking at Nina’s house through the windshield. Warm lights in the windows that remind me this place has people in it who give a damn whether I come back. That’s what home means, I guess. Not the place itself, but the people who notice when you’re gone.
I get out of the car. Walk to the door. Stand there for a moment with my hand raised, debating. If this is home, I shouldn’t have to knock. But three days of absence feels like forfeiting that right.
I turn the handle. It’s unlocked.
Nina’s in the kitchen when I walk in. She looks better—color back in her face, moving without the careful stiffness of early recovery. When she sees me, relief flickers across her face before hope settles in behind it.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi.”
She studies me. Reading the exhaustion, the tension, whatever I’m not hiding well enough. Then rounds the corner and comes to me, wrapping her arms around my waist. I hold her tight, breathing in the scent of her, and for a moment the knot in my chest loosens.
Wyatt moves into the kitchen, starts pulling things from the fridge. Creating normalcy through motion.
“You hungry?” he asks me.
I’m not. But I say yes anyway because that’s what you do. You sit at the table, eat food you don’t taste, pretend everything’s fine.
Nina and I part and head to the table. She sits across from me. Nikita appears from somewhere, jumps in her lap. The cat’s presence seems to give Nina something to do with her hands.
“Tomorrow,” she says. “Are we still going?”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
No. “I will be.”
Her eyes narrow slightly. She knows I’m lying. But she doesn’t push.