Don't Tell Him

POV: Matteo

"We'd like to run a full evaluation," the healer's assistant said, flipping through her notes at the foot of Rhys's bed, a young woman I didn't recognize, brisk and thorough in a way that made my stomach drop before she'd even finished the sentence. "Map the extent of what he's lost. It would help us understand the recovery timeline better."

"What does that involve," I asked, keeping my voice light, casual, the same tone I'd used for two years managing things I had no business managing.

"Extended memory mapping," she said. "Cognitive testing. A few sessions over the coming week, more intensive than what we've done so far."

Rhys sat quiet in the bed, watching this conversation happen around him the way he'd watched everything since he woke, patient, deferring, waiting to be told what came next in a life he couldn't remember living.

"Is that necessary," I said. "He's already improved so much in the last few days. Remembering small things. Details about our life together."

The assistant glanced at her notes again. "Improvement in personal recall doesn't always reflect the full picture. Sometimes patients recover surface details while deeper trauma responses stay hidden. It's better to know the full extent early."

"He seems stronger every day," I said, and heard the words leave my mouth with a smoothness that unsettled me even as I said them. "I'd hate to put him through something intensive if his own recovery is already doing the work."

I felt it the moment I said it. Not a lie exactly. Nothing I could point to and call outright false. Just a careful shading of the truth in the direction I needed it to go, the same instinct I'd used all afternoon yesterday, curating a marriage for him one gentle omission at a time.

The assistant hesitated, weighing my words against her own notes. "We could hold off another week. See how his natural recovery progresses first."

"I think that's wise," I said, too quickly, relief already flooding through me before I'd earned the right to feel it.

"If you're sure," she said, still uncertain, but writing something down regardless, the decision made, the door I'd needed closed now quietly shut.

"I'm sure," I said.

She left a few minutes later with a promise to check back the following week, and I stood there in the sudden quiet of the room, my heart pounding harder than the moment warranted, guilt already crawling up my spine like something with too many legs.

What did I just do, I thought, watching the door close behind her. I just talked a healer out of finding out how deep this actually goes. I did that. Not an accident. Not an omission I could explain away later. A choice.

"You didn't have to do that," Rhys said, quiet, watching me from the bed with an expression I couldn't quite read.

"Do what."

"Argue with her," he said. "On my behalf. I could have spoken for myself."

"I just thought you'd had enough poking and prodding this week," I said, the excuse coming easier than it should have.

He studied me a moment longer, something searching in his gaze, before he let it go, the way this gentler version of him let most things go when I didn't offer more.

I left the room not long after, telling him I needed air, and found Dave standing near the end of the corridor, arms crossed, watching me approach with an expression I'd learned to be wary of since our very first meeting in that courtyard.

"That was smart," he said, before I'd said a word. "Talking her out of the full evaluation."

My whole body went still. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I think you do," he said, pushing off the wall, unhurried, closing the distance between us with the same unbothered calm he always carried, the kind that made my skin crawl even when he wasn't saying anything threatening at all. "I was in the hallway. I heard the whole thing."

"He's tired," I said, my voice tighter than I wanted it to be. "I didn't think another round of testing would help him."

"Is that really why," Dave said, and something in his tone made the excuse curdle in my mouth before I'd even finished offering it.

I didn't answer that. I couldn't, not without admitting something I wasn't ready to say out loud, not to him, not to anyone, maybe not even to myself.

"You're keeping something from him," Dave said, quiet, no accusation in his voice, almost gentle in a way that felt worse than anger would have. "I don't know what it is exactly. But I know what it looks like when someone's protecting a version of the truth instead of telling it."

"That's not—"

"I'm not judging you for it," he said, cutting me off, something almost sympathetic crossing his face for one brief second before it smoothed back into careful neutrality. "I understand better than you'd think."

"What does that mean," I said, my pulse loud in my own ears now, the corridor suddenly feeling too narrow, too close.

He didn't answer directly. He just looked at me for a long moment, something calculating behind his eyes, weighing whether to say more.

"You and I are keeping the same kind of secret, aren't we," he said finally, almost gently, like we were suddenly conspirators instead of strangers who'd never once trusted each other. "I wonder what you'd do to protect yours."