“I’m fine.”
“You had surgery a week ago.”
“And I’m fine. It was laparoscopic. I should be moving around like normal by now.” I don’t move. “Tell me what happened.”
The silence stretches. Wyatt grips the railing behind him, knuckles white. The morning sun catches the exhaustion carved into his face, and I have to fight the urge to go to him. To touch.
“Chris and I...” He stops. Starts again. “Things got intense. After you went to sleep. We were—” He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It clearly does.” I keep my voice gentle despite the dread climbing my spine. “You look like you haven’t slept. He’s gone. Something happened, and I need to know what.”
His gaze slides away from mine. Down to the railing, out to the yard, anywhere but my face. Whatever happened, he’s not just withholding; he’s ashamed. And underneath that, his hands are trembling.
“He left. I don’t know where he went.”
“When?”
“Last night. Late.”
I run the timeline. We got home around nine. I took my meds, said goodnight, crashed hard after letting Nikita out. The two of them were still in the living room talking when I turned out my light. If Chris left late, that means hours passed first. Hours where something built and broke.
“Was he upset when he left?”
Wyatt’s throat works beneath the turtleneck. Another micro-flinch. “Yeah.”
“Upset how? Angry? Scared?”
“Both. Neither.” His voice is fraying at the edges. “Things were good, and then I said something and he just... went somewhere else. Even before he left. Like he’d already disappeared.”
The dread crystallizes into certainty. I know what he’s describing. I’ve seen it in client files, in crisis consultations. The thousand-yard stare of someone who’s dissociated from themselves.
“So you just—what? Let him drive off in the middle of the night without telling anyone?”
“I told him to leave.” The words come out cracked. “I made him go.”
His face crumples for just a second before he pulls it back together. But that second is enough. I close the distance between us and wrap my arms around him.
He goes rigid. Then breaks, and he’s clutching me back, his face pressed into my hair, his whole body shaking.
“I didn’t know what to do.” The words come out muffled, ragged. “I could tell something changed and I didn’t stop us. And then he looked at me like he didn’t know who I was. Like he didn’t know who he was. And I just—I told him to go. I couldn’t look at him.”
“Okay.” I hold him tighter, one hand finding the back of his neck. “Okay. It’s okay.”
“It’s not.” He pulls back just enough to look at me, and his eyes are wet, devastated. “Nina, I fucked up. I fucked up so badly, and now he’s gone, and I don’t know how to fix it.”
“I need you to tell me everything.” I take his face in my hands. “Let’s go inside and sit down.”
A shuddering breath. Then he nods.
“Yeah. Okay.”
I pour two mugs of coffee and set one in front of him. He wraps his hands around it but doesn’t drink. I take the chair beside him and angle it to face him, our knees almost touching.
“Before you tell me what happened,” I say, “I need to tell you something first.”
He looks up.
“Last night, at the fire pit. Sadie told me something about Chris.” I keep my voice steady, though my hands want to shake. “She assumed I already knew. That we all knew.”
