Chapter 43 Nina
Nina
I surface slowly, dragged up from the heavy, dreamless dark of medicated sleep.
Five years in Vicente’s bed.
The words are waiting for me. Like they burrowed in while I was unconscious and made themselves at home, and now they’re the first thing I see when I open my eyes.
I stare at the ceiling, letting the knowledge settle into my waking mind.
Chris was undercover with Vicente Amador for five years.
I knew the undercover part. Learned the other day that Vicente was his target.
That wasn’t surprising either, all things considered.
Chris was “hurt” during that assignment.
I knew that too. What I didn’t know, what no one told me, was that the hurt was intimate.
Sexual. That Vicente didn’t just break Chris down psychologically.
He owned him. Used him. Shaped him into something that served Vicente’s needs.
And I sat across the table from that man yesterday, smiling and making conversation, while Chris pretended everything was fine three seats away.
The ache of it spreads through my chest. For Chris, who carried this alone. For Wyatt, who knew and couldn’t tell me. For myself, walking blind into a room with the architect of my boyfriend’s trauma.
I could have helped. If he’d trusted me, I could have helped him.
The bedroom door is closed. Nikita’s warm weight is curled against my hip, purring softly. The house is quiet in a way that tells me at least one of the men is awake. There’s a faint smell of coffee drifting from somewhere.
I check my phone. 8:47 AM. No messages.
The meds did their job: I slept hard and deep, the kind of unconsciousness that leaves you disoriented when you surface. But the quiet feels wrong. Too still. Too careful. And underneath the grogginess, the hair on the back of my neck is prickling.
I push myself upright. Nikita chirps in protest but doesn’t move.
“I know,” I murmur, scratching behind her ears. “But I need to check on them.”
On him. The singular slips through before I can stop it. Because the ache in my chest isn’t just about what I learned last night. It’s about the look on Chris’s face when we got in the car, the way he was already retreating somewhere I couldn’t follow.
I need to see that he’s okay.
The living room is empty. So is the kitchen, though there’s a half-full pot of coffee on the counter and a single mug beside it. I follow the faint sound of movement to the back patio and slide open the glass door.
The morning hits me in layers: the bright slant of November sun, the surprising warmth already building toward what will probably be an eighty-degree day.
Past the hedge that borders the patio, the hillside drops away toward the city.
The view isn’t as dramatic as from the Flores compound, but still enough to make you pause.
The recent rains have done their work: the scrubby browns of summer have softened into shades of green, more alive.
Even the air smells different, cleaner, like the basin finally exhaled.
The little citrus tree in the corner catches my eye. I’ve been assuming it was a lime for months, but the fruit is starting to turn, blushing orange at the edges. Tangerines. I’ve been living here since October and I’m only now noticing.
Wyatt is standing at the railing, staring at none of it.
He’s wearing a turtleneck.
It’s seventy-two degrees outside.
My stomach drops. I catalog the details automatically: the rigid set of his shoulders, the way he’s gripping the railing like it’s the only thing holding him upright. The circles under his eyes visible even in profile. He hasn’t slept.
“Morning,” I say, and watch him flinch before he turns.
“Hey.” His voice is rough. Scraped raw. “Didn’t hear you get up. How are you feeling?”
He looks wrecked. Not just tired—hollowed out, the way you look after a night spent staring into an abyss.
But he’s holding himself like a man bracing for impact, and I’ve been a therapist long enough to know that sometimes comfort feels like an attack when you’re that wound up.
“Where’s Chris?”
Wyatt’s jaw tightens. His shoulders climb half an inch toward his ears.
I study him. The careful distance he’s maintaining. The turtleneck pulled up to his chin in weather that doesn’t warrant it. The way his hand drifts toward his throat and then stops, like he’s catching himself.
“Wyatt.”
“Nina—”
I step closer and he takes a half-step back. My chest constricts. He’s never retreated from me before. “Something happened last night. After I went to bed.”
“You were exhausted. You needed rest.”
“That’s not an answer.”
He looks away. His throat works beneath the fabric, and I catch the slightest wince. There and gone.
“We should go inside,” he says. “You shouldn’t be standing this long.”
“I’m fine.”
“You had surgery a week ago.”
“And I’m fine. It was laparoscopic. I should be moving around like normal by now.” I don’t move. “Tell me what happened.”
The silence stretches. Wyatt grips the railing behind him, knuckles white. The morning sun catches the exhaustion carved into his face, and I have to fight the urge to go to him. To touch.
“Chris and I...” He stops. Starts again. “Things got intense. After you went to sleep. We were—” He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It clearly does.” I keep my voice gentle despite the dread climbing my spine. “You look like you haven’t slept. He’s gone. Something happened, and I need to know what.”
His gaze slides away from mine. Down to the railing, out to the yard, anywhere but my face. Whatever happened, he’s not just withholding; he’s ashamed. And underneath that, his hands are trembling.
“He left. I don’t know where he went.”
“When?”
“Last night. Late.”
I run the timeline. We got home around nine. I took my meds, said goodnight, crashed hard after letting Nikita out. The two of them were still in the living room talking when I turned out my light. If Chris left late, that means hours passed first. Hours where something built and broke.
“Was he upset when he left?”
Wyatt’s throat works beneath the turtleneck. Another micro-flinch. “Yeah.”
“Upset how? Angry? Scared?”
“Both. Neither.” His voice is fraying at the edges. “Things were good, and then I said something and he just... went somewhere else. Even before he left. Like he’d already disappeared.”
The dread crystallizes into certainty. I know what he’s describing. I’ve seen it in client files, in crisis consultations. The thousand-yard stare of someone who’s dissociated from themselves.
“So you just—what? Let him drive off in the middle of the night without telling anyone?”
“I told him to leave.” The words come out cracked. “I made him go.”
His face crumples for just a second before he pulls it back together. But that second is enough. I close the distance between us and wrap my arms around him.
He goes rigid. Then breaks, and he’s clutching me back, his face pressed into my hair, his whole body shaking.
“I didn’t know what to do.” The words come out muffled, ragged. “I could tell something changed and I didn’t stop us. And then he looked at me like he didn’t know who I was. Like he didn’t know who he was. And I just—I told him to go. I couldn’t look at him.”
“Okay.” I hold him tighter, one hand finding the back of his neck. “Okay. It’s okay.”
“It’s not.” He pulls back just enough to look at me, and his eyes are wet, devastated. “Nina, I fucked up. I fucked up so badly, and now he’s gone, and I don’t know how to fix it.”
“I need you to tell me everything.” I take his face in my hands. “Let’s go inside and sit down.”
A shuddering breath. Then he nods.
“Yeah. Okay.”
I pour two mugs of coffee and set one in front of him. He wraps his hands around it but doesn’t drink. I take the chair beside him and angle it to face him, our knees almost touching.
“Before you tell me what happened,” I say, “I need to tell you something first.”
He looks up.
“Last night, at the fire pit. Sadie told me something about Chris.” I keep my voice steady, though my hands want to shake. “She assumed I already knew. That we all knew.”
Recognition flickers across his face, quickly suppressed.
“What did she say?”
“What Vicente did to Chris. During the op.” I watch the words land. Watch him not react, which tells me everything. “You already knew.”
“The agency files on the operation mentioned a relationship that was ‘sexual in nature.’“ He says the phrase like he’s quoting. “So I knew that much. But the details—what it actually meant, what Vicente did to him—that’s what Chris told me Tuesday. When I found him at his apartment.”
Chris survived something horrific. Wyatt knew.
“And neither of you thought I should know before I walked into that house? Before I sat across the table from the man who—” I stop myself.
Take a breath. Force down the surge of hurt that wants to come out as anger.
“I’ve been sitting in a room with Vicente for weeks, Wyatt.
Listening to him talk about control and ownership and the people who belong to him.
I could have been helping Chris process this if I’d known.
Instead, I sat there making small talk with Vicente while Chris white-knuckled his way through dinner. ”
“You don’t have clearance for the details of that op. And we didn’t want to influence how you handled Vicente. If you knew, it might have changed how you approached the sessions.”
“I understand that.” And I do. I do understand the impulse to protect someone’s story, to let them control their own narrative.
But understanding doesn’t erase the sting.
“What I don’t understand is why neither of you trusted me to handle it.
This is literally what I do. You both decided it was better to protect me than to let me help. ”
“It wasn’t about not trusting you—”
“Then what was it about?”
He doesn’t answer. His hand moves to his throat, an unconscious gesture, and then drops.
The turtleneck. The flinching. The way he couldn’t meet my eyes on the patio.
“Show me,” I say quietly.
“Nina—”
“The turtleneck. Take it off.”
He shakes his head, flinches again.
“Wyatt.” I reach out and take his hand, lacing my fingers through his. “Whatever it is. Whatever happened. I’m not going to break. Show me.”
For a long moment, he doesn’t move. His hand is cold in mine, trembling faintly. Then, slowly, he reaches up and pulls the fabric down.
The bruises circle his throat like a collar. Purple and red, finger-shaped, the clear impression of a hand that squeezed too hard. I’ve seen marks like this before: in case files, in emergency consultations, in the aftermath of intimate partner violence.
I’ve never seen them on someone I love.
“Jesus.” The word comes out broken. My free hand rises without permission, hovering over the marks. Not touching. I can’t bring myself to touch them. “Jesus Christ, Wyatt.”
“It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“It looks like someone tried to strangle you.”
He doesn’t deny it.
“Chris did this.” Not a question.
“He didn’t—” Wyatt’s voice breaks. “He hesitated at first. I saw it. And I let it go because I didn’t understand how deep it went.
” He swallows, and the bruises shift with the movement.
“Things got intense. I asked him to go harder. And he just... went somewhere else. Dissociated. Became someone else.”
I sink back in my chair, but I don’t let go of his hand. My other hand is shaking now too. I press it flat against my thigh to still it.
“Tell me everything.”