“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.”
