I grab a t-shirt from the back of a chair and pull it on, then get a pair of beers from the fridge, pop them open, and hand one to Chris. He takes it, but doesn’t drink. Just rests the bottle against his knee and stares.
“I’d cook,” I say, eyeing the kitchen. “If there was anything to cook.”
I haven’t packed the kitchen yet. Nina already took most of her dry goods to the food bank, but one glance inside the nearest cabinet confirms it: one dusty bag of red lentils, an unopened bottle of sesame oil, and a single can of chickpeas that might’ve made the move from her last apartment.
“I’ll dig around. Maybe find a box labeled desperation.”
No smile from him. Just the same coiled silence while he watches me with a wary gaze.
I could sit. Could give him my full attention and ask the kind of questions that cut straight through. After managing some of the emotional fallout from Mason’s Zavala op, I have some inkling of the kind of trauma Chris has endured. But every question I ask is another chance for him to turn the mirror back on me, and I’m not sure I can take another hit right now.
So I move. Go back to the box I already packed—Office / Books—open the flaps again.
The binder’s near the top. Black plastic. Overstuffed. An archive of every dinner she didn’t have to think about.
“She hated cooking,” I say, flipping it open. “Said it was too much effort for results that didn’t scale. Takeout was efficient. Reliable. No dishes.”
No response. He’s staring at the binder like it might reveal everything there is to know about this version of Nina. The one I fell in love with. The one that broke when she learned he was alive all this time.
He flinches minutely, shifts his grip on the bottle.
Every detail I say out loud is another reminder. She lived. She adapted. Without him. But I’m still the idiot who let her go.
I flip toward the back, tap through a couple menus on my phone. Order enough food for two people who haven’t earned any comfort and are still ordering it anyway.
I set the binder back in the box.
Without looking at him, I say, “I can tell you more. If you want.”
And for a long moment, I don’t know if he’ll say anything at all.
“What happened?” he asks eventually. Quiet. Rough. The words cost him. “After I left.”
I take my time answering. Push the box aside gently. I want to get this right—because as much as I hate to admit it, Chris might be the most precious of all the things she left behind. Where that leaves me, I don’t know.
“I didn’t know her then,” I say. “We didn’t meet until last December. New Year’s Eve.”
His head tilts slightly. Waiting, but not impatient. Guarded.
“But I knew who you were.”
He blinks, takes a swallow of his beer, his brow furrowing like he’s already envisioning pieces of the puzzle that fit together. I let the pause stretch.
I want to make sure my awareness of him sinks in. He needs to understand this part—not because I need him to feel guilty, but because he needs to know what kind of ghost he’s been all this time. Not just hers. Mine too.
“You were already a name by the time I joined the DEA. Longo’s kid. Undercover specialist. The guy who disappeared.”
His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t interrupt, even though this might seem like a detour away from Nina.
I can tell he’s heard about his reputation before. Maybe not out loud, but behind closed doors. The legacy. The loss. The whisper of a man who made himself vanish.
“So when I met Nina at the Senator’s New Year’s Eve party, I didn’t have context. She didn’t offer any. I was just the guy who made her laugh over bad champagne. The guy tagging along with the guy her best friend couldn’t take her eyes off of.”
Chris narrows his eyes incrementally, but there’s tenderness there. The corner of his mouth shows the barest hint of a smile.
I hesitate, thinking back to the party, trying to decide how much of a picture to paint for him. I opt for honesty, more because I think he’s aching for a little reality the way you’d worry at a bad tooth.
“Nina was luminous that night. Not in a glittery way—it wasn’t the dress or the makeup. It was in the way she smiled when she witnessed other people’s joy, as if it infected her too. The fire when she drilled Mason on his intentions toward Callie. He had a fresh tattoo of his daughter’s name on his forearm. All Nina saw was another woman’s name tattooed on the man hitting on her friend.”
