She spots the three of us before she’s even fully through the gate. I watch her gaze move from Chris’s hand on my back to Wyatt standing close at my other side, the geometry of us unmistakable.
“Hey, Doc.” Her grin is sharp and knowing. “Still curious, or did you figure it out?”
Heat rises to my cheeks. “I?—”
“Relax. I’m just giving you shit.” She glances at Chris, then Wyatt, then back at me with an expression that’s far too satisfied. “Looks like you figured it out.”
Marco appears behind her, offering a warm nod. “Good to see you, Nina.”
“You too.”
Sadie’s already moving toward the bar, but she throws one last look over her shoulder—approving, maybe, or just amused. I’m not sure which is worse.
“She’s not wrong,” Wyatt says mildly once Sadie’s out of earshot. His mouth curves. “You did figure it out.”
“We’re still figuring it out,” I correct. “All three of us.”
By the time Elena announces dinner, the sky has gone violet at the edges, the first stars emerging above the city lights. The heaters are glowing now, casting comfortable pools of warmth along the length of the table. Near the pool, the fire pit flickers with low gas flames, and the cluster of people chatting around it—Celeste and Maddox, Drake and Elle—rise and drift toward the table.
Twenty people plus Zoey find their seats. I end up between Callie and Marcella, safe ground, clearly strategic on someone’s part. Chris is farther down, flanked by Mason and Maddox, with a clear sightline to Vicente but enough bodies between them that direct interaction would require effort. Wyatt is across from me, next to Elle, close enough that his foot finds mine under the table and stays there.
The food comes in waves: turkey and stuffing alongside pozole and carnitas, Elena’s green chile cornbread, a sweet potato dish that Marcella apparently makes every year. The tamales make their appearance without comment, though I notice Toni pointedly not looking at Vicente when the platter passes her.
Conversation layers over itself. Elle teases Ben about a story that makes him flush. Toni and Leo have their heads together, speaking softly, reconciling after the tamale incident, maybe. Drake and Arturo debate some art acquisition while Maddox interjects with opinions that make both of them laugh.
I eat what I can, pacing myself, feeling my energy flag as the meal stretches on. But I can’t stop watching the table’s invisible architecture: who leans toward whom, who avoids eye contact, who’s faking relaxation and who actually feels it.
Chris hasn’t looked at Vicente once. Not when Vicente laughed at something Arturo said. Not when he passed the wine. Not when his voice carried across the table, that low velvet register I recognize from our sessions.
But Vicente looks at Chris.
Not constantly. Not obviously. But I catch it—a glance when Chris reaches for the salt, a slight turn of the head when Chris says something that makes Mason snort. Vicente’s attention slides over him like a hand remembering the shape of something it used to own.
Possession. That’s the word that keeps surfacing in my clinical brain. Or maybe memory. The distinction blurs when I try to examine it too closely.
I think about Vicente in session, the way he describes the people who’ve mattered to him. I don’t let go easily, he told me once. When someone belongs to me, they belong to me forever. Even if circumstances separate us.
I’d noted it as a control pattern. Attachment issues rooted in early abandonment, manifesting as possessive tendencies in adult relationships. Clinical. Containable.
But watching him watch Chris—the patience of it, the certainty—I understand what I’m seeing. This isn’t abstract. This isn’t a pattern I’m analyzing from a safe therapeutic distance.
Chris belonged to him. For years, Chris belonged to him.
And Vicente still thinks he does.
How much I wanted what he was giving me, even knowing it was poison. Chris’s voice in my memory, rough with something I’d taken for shame. Maybe it was. But shame about what, exactly? What was Vicente giving him? I want to believe it was drugs, but Chris hasn’t exhibited any signs of that kind of dependency. Then what?
Wyatt catches it too. I see his gaze sharpen, tracking the same dynamic I am. Under the table, his foot presses against mine—I see it. I’m here.
The meal winds down in the amber glow of the heaters. Zoey has made her rounds and is now asleep in Marcella’s arms. The servers arrive with dessert: tres leches cake, pumpkin pie, a flan that Elena made from her grandmother’s recipe. Coffee appears. Conversations splinter into smaller clusters.
I need air. Space. My midsection aches from sitting too long, and my head is spinning from too many observations I don’t know how to process.
“I need a minute,” I murmur to Callie. “Where can I?—”
“Fire pit.” She nods toward the seating area by the pool. “It’s lit now. Quieter over there.”
Chris half-rises when I stand, but I wave him off. “I’m fine. Just need to rest my eyes.”
