Chapter 48
Nina
Chris moves first. He crosses the room and pulls me into his arms hard enough to drive the breath from my lungs. Like he’s checking that I’m real. Solid. Here.
“I’m sorry,” he says into my hair. “I’m so fucking sorry. I should have been there.”
“You’re here now.” I let myself sink into him for a moment. He smells like stale sweat and cheap motel soap, nothing like his usual clean scent, but underneath it he’s still Chris. Still the man I’ve been terrified was dead in a ditch for four days.
Wyatt keeps his distance. I don’t blame him.
I pull back from Chris, just enough to see his face. “What happened to you?”
“Doesn’t matter right now.”
“It does to me.”
His jaw works. He doesn’t answer.
“He’s not a threat,” I say, shifting gears. “Adán—whatever his real name is. He wasn’t there to hurt me.”
“Rafael Marcano,” Chris says flatly. “That’s who was in your office. We’ve been tracking him for weeks. Adán Pareto was one of his aliases.”
Rafael. The ghost. And he walked right into my office.
“I was in that room with him. Twenty minutes. He wasn’t there to hurt me or anyone else.”
“Then why the fake identity? Why approach you at the café weeks ago?” Chris’s voice is hard. “Why run when Darius came through the door?”
I blink. “Wait. How do you know about the café?”
Chris’s jaw tightens.
“I never told anyone about that.” I stare at him. “I gave some guy my card while I was waiting for a latte. How do you—” The pieces click into place. “You were watching me.”
“Surveilling,” Chris says, like the word choice matters.
“You were stalking me.”
Chris doesn’t deny it. His jaw tightens, a flicker of embarrassment crosses his face, or maybe guilt.
“I didn’t know who he was,” he says finally. “Some guy chatting you up, getting your number—”
“He wasn’t getting my number. I gave him my card. For therapy.” I shake my head. “Oh my god. You were jealous.”
Wyatt makes a sound that might be a suppressed laugh. Chris shoots him a look.
“You’re unbelievable,” I say, but there’s no real heat behind it.
After everything else, the disappearance, the bruises, the secrets, finding out he was watching me from the shadows before we reconnected barely registers.
It’s almost comforting, in a fucked-up way. At least some things are consistent.
“Can we get back to the part where there’s an active threat on your life?” Chris says flatly.
“Fine. But we’re revisiting this later.”
“Looking forward to it.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “So what’s the connection? If he’s not the assassin, what does he want with you?”
“He came to me because he couldn’t get to Vicente any other way.”
Both men go still.
“What do you mean, ‘get to Vicente’?” Chris’s voice drops.
I take a breath. This is the part I’ve been carrying since Darius kicked the door in.
“He’s Vicente’s son.”
Chris blinks. “What?”
I hesitate to share the details Vicente and Arturo told me in session. But then I remember: they signed a contract. The Agency has recordings of every session. Chris and Wyatt have probably heard all of this already, even if the details didn’t stick.
“His mother is Lola’s sister, Selena. She came up from Mexico for a family visit back in ‘95, when things between Vicente and Arturo were already falling apart.” I keep my voice steady, clinical.
Deliver the information like a case summary, not a bomb.
“Vicente left the next morning. Apparently not before sleeping with Selena.”
Lola. The woman Vicente and Arturo both loved, whose murder drove them apart for thirty years. Her sister.
“Vicente doesn’t know Rafael exists. Rafael came here to warn him about the contract. He has intel we don’t. That the Yakuza sent one of their own to assassinate Vicente and Arturo.” I pause, let that sink in. “He couldn’t get past Vicente’s security, couldn’t get anyone to listen. So he found me.”
Wyatt shifts his weight. “He told you all this? In twenty minutes?”
“He told me enough.” I meet his eyes. “I’ve spent years learning to read people. He wasn’t faking. He was desperate and exhausted and gambling everything on a stranger. That’s not the profile of an assassin. That’s the profile of a son trying to save his father’s life.”
“Or it’s the profile of someone very good at manipulation.” Chris’s voice is hard, but I can hear the crack underneath. “You don’t know what people are capable of when they want something badly enough.”
“I know exactly what people are capable of.” The words come out sharper than I intended.
“I also know that you chased off the one person who knows the assassin’s identity.
He was about to tell me when Darius kicked down the door.
So maybe, instead of arguing about whether I can read a room, we should figure out what to do next. ”
Chris scrubs a hand through his hair. For a moment, the exhaustion shows through. Not just physical, but deeper. The weight of too many secrets held too long.
“Fine,” he says. “We’ll loop in the principals. Let them decide if they want to meet their long-lost relative.” He moves toward the kitchen. “I need coffee. Anyone else—”
“Chris.”
He stops. Turns.
I don’t know what I’m going to say until I’m saying it. “I can’t do this.”
“Do what?”
“This.” I gesture between the three of us.
“The careful distance. The not-talking. Watching you two circle each other like you’re both waiting for the other one to detonate.
” My voice cracks, and I hate it. “I’ve spent four days terrified you were dead.
Sitting across from Wyatt every morning, both of us pretending I couldn’t see the bruises on his throat.
Trying to figure out how we went from us to. .. this.”
Chris’s jaw tightens. He doesn’t move.
“I know what happened Thanksgiving night. Wyatt told me.” I look at Wyatt, who’s watching me, his expression raw.
“And I know about Vicente. Sadie let it slip when we were talking. I still can’t believe I spent most of the night smiling across the courtyard at a man who—” I stop.
Breathe. “I’m not angry about the past. I’m angry that neither of you trusted me enough to tell me. ”
“It wasn’t about trust,” Chris says quietly.
“Then what was it about?”
He can’t meet my eyes.
The tears come before I can stop them. Not the delicate kind. The ugly, frustrated kind that blur my vision and make my voice thick.
“I want to help you. Both of you. That’s literally what I do, and I’m good at it, and I love you, and I can’t—” I press the heels of my hands against my eyes.
“I can’t fix this if you won’t let me in.
I can’t even leave you alone to sort it out yourselves because I’m terrified of what happens if I do. ”
“Nina.” Wyatt takes a step toward me. “We’re not going to—”
“Not you.” I drop my hands, look at Chris. “I’m afraid of what you’ll do. To yourself. Because I know Wyatt told you to leave that night, and instead of coming to me, right across the hall, you went somewhere and did this to yourself.” I gesture at his battered face. “That’s what terrifies me.”
Chris flinches like I’ve hit him.
“Jesus, Chris.” The anger drains out of me, leaving something worse. “You look like you’ve been in a cage fight.”
His eyes cut away. His jaw tightens.
“Are you kidding me?” My voice goes up. “You actually—that’s what you’ve been doing for four days? Getting the shit beaten out of you for sport?”
He exhales through his nose, still not looking at me. His shoulders hunch slightly, caught.
“You dissociated. You had a trauma response. That’s not—it doesn’t make you a monster. It makes you someone who went through something terrible and hasn’t processed it yet.”
“I hurt him.” Chris’s voice is barely audible. “I could have killed him.”
“But you didn’t.” Wyatt, quiet and steady. “I’m right here. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. I saw your throat.”
“Bruises heal.” Wyatt moves closer, and Chris tracks the movement.
“Yeah, you scared me. But you know what scared me more? What I did after. You came back to yourself, terrified, and my first instinct was to tell you to get out.” He spreads his hands in front of him.
“I said the thing that triggered you. Then I sent you away instead of staying and facing it with you.” His voice roughens.
“I’ve spent four days wishing I’d grabbed you and held on.
So don’t tell me you’re the one who should feel guilty here.
” He takes another step. “Nina’s right. Let us in. ”
Chris’s face shifts. The wall behind his eyes that he’s been bracing against since we walked in cracks.
He turns toward the window. Not rigid this time. Defeated. His hands uncurl at his sides.
“I can’t control it,” he says quietly. “That’s the part I can’t—” He stops.
Starts again. “Wyatt, when I’m with you, it’s like every wire in my brain gets crossed.
I want you so badly I can’t think straight, and then something shifts and I’m back there, and I can’t tell if I’m touching you or hurting you or—” His voice breaks.
“I almost killed the man I love because I can’t keep my fucking head on straight. ”
The silence is absolute.
Wyatt’s gone completely still. I don’t think he’s breathing.
“Yeah.” Chris laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “I love you.” He looks at Wyatt first. “The night of Callie’s wedding, the way you touched me, no one had ever made love to me like that. I didn’t know a man could. I haven’t been able to forget it.”
Chris’s eyes shift to me. “And you. I’ve loved you since before I had any right to.
Since you were the girl next door trailing after Callie.
Then that kid my family took in when your dad couldn’t cope after you lost your mom.
The rest didn’t start until your graduation, but you’ve been under my skin for as long as I can remember. ”
“Chris—” Wyatt starts.
“Don’t.” Chris turns, and I see the shattered look in his eyes. But it’s different now. Softer. He heard Wyatt. “I hear you. And I believe you—about your part in it. But don’t tell me it’s okay. I had my hands around your throat and I liked it until I realized what I was doing.”
“You didn’t like hurting me,” Wyatt says quietly. “You liked being in control. There’s a difference.”
Chris exhales. The tension in his shoulders eases, just barely. “Maybe. But that doesn’t erase what I did. I still went somewhere you couldn’t reach me. I have to own that.”
“This is exactly what we need to talk about,” I say. “What Vicente did to you—how he conditioned you—”
“I know what he did.” Chris’s voice is raw.
“I’ve had six months to dissect every fucked-up way he rewired my brain.
Six months to undo five years. That doesn’t make it easier to control.
Do you know what the last two weeks have been like?
Being that close to you and not being able to touch you?
Watching you heal and knowing I had to wait, that I couldn’t—” He stops, breathes.
“I was crawling out of my skin by Thanksgiving. And then Wyatt offered himself up and I just—I couldn’t hold it together anymore.
All that restraint, all that need, and it just—”
He breaks off. Runs both hands through his hair, turns to Wyatt.
“I don’t know how to be with you without becoming what he made me,” he says finally. “And I don’t know how to stay away. So I just keep—” He gestures at his battered face. “At least when I’m getting hit, I’m not hurting anyone else.”
My heart is pounding. Not from fear. From something else entirely.
Eleven days. It’s been eleven days since my procedure. The doctor said ten to fourteen for the recovery window. I’m right on the edge of being cleared.
And I’m looking at Chris, cracked open, finally letting us see what’s underneath, and I realize with sudden clarity that what he needs isn’t more words. More processing. More careful therapeutic distance.
What he needs is to know he’s not alone in this.
“Chris.” My voice comes out softer than I expected. “Look at me.”
He does. His eyes are wet.
I close the distance between us. Slowly. I reach up and take his face in my hands, careful around the bruises, and hold him there.
“I’m not fragile,” I say quietly. “I’m not recovering anymore. And I’m right here.”
I press my lips to his. Gently. Not demanding anything. Just—here. I’m here. We’re here.
He’s still for a moment. Then his breath shudders out against my mouth and his forehead drops to mine. His hands find my waist, tentative, like I might break.
I kiss him again, in a way that I hope shows I’m ready to give him whatever he needs to take, and feel the moment the kiss shifts—from tender to hungry, from healing to need. His hands tighten. My breath catches.
Chris makes a sound against my mouth—relief, desperation—and then his hands are in my hair and he’s kissing me back like he’s drowning and I’m air.