Tonight I lost him.
I scrub my hands over my face. They’re shaking. I tell them to stop. They don’t.
Get up. Clean up. Handle it.
I stand. My legs hold, barely. The en suite bathroom is five steps away and I make it there on autopilot, flipping on the light. I catch my reflection and stop.
The bruises are already blooming. A ring of red around my throat that’ll deepen to purple by morning. The shape of his hand, clear as a signature. I touch it and the pain flares immediate, sharp.
Chris doesn’t have empty eyes. Chris doesn’t say good like I’m a dog performing a trick. Whoever was behind me tonight—Cal Logan, the man Chris built to survive Vicente—I’ve never met him before.
My stomach heaves. I grip the edge of the sink and breathe through it until the Thanksgiving dinner stays down.
Washcloth. Clean up. Boxers. One task at a time.
The sheets are wrecked, but I can’t deal with that right now. I sink down onto the floor, my back against the side of the bed, facing the windows. The city glitters through the plate glass, indifferent.
Somewhere out there, Chris is driving. I should text him. Make sure he’s not hurtling his car off an overpass.
I can’t.
My throat aches every time I swallow and my body’s still tingling from the endorphin high of my orgasm. Part of my brain keeps reminding me that I liked what he did and I’d probably like it if he did it again.
A small chirp from the doorway, Nikita’s particular greeting, the one she saves for people she’s decided belong to her.
I look up, briefly panicked that Nina might’ve opened her bedroom door to let her out and heard something. But I can just see Nina’s door through the gap in mine, no light spilling out from under it. Nikita’s standing in that narrow gap, her green eyes flashing the dim light. She studies me with that unimpressed cat expression, like she’s assessing whether I’m worth the effort.
Apparently I am, because she picks her way across the floor and hops up onto the bed behind me. Settles on the edge closest to where I’m sitting. Doesn’t try to climb into my lap or demand attention—just curls up and starts purring. A low, steady rumble that fills the silence Chris left behind.
“Hey, Nik.” My voice comes out rough.
She blinks at me slowly. Cat for I’m here, idiot. Figure your shit out.
I reach up and scratch behind her ears. She leans into it, purring louder, and I exhale for what feels like the first time in an hour.
I’m not okay.
I don’t know when I will be.
The worst part is that I’m positive Chris is not okay and I probably made it worse by kicking him out, even if it wasn’t my intention.
But there’s a cat purring three feet away and Nina sleeping down the hall and tomorrow I’ll find a turtleneck and figure out what to say and how to say it. Tomorrow I’ll be steady again.
Right now I just sit on the floor and let Nikita’s purr fill the space, her soft fur distract me from all the parts of me that hurt, not the least of which is deep inside my chest.
43
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.
