Chapter 18: Concern Is Not a Relationship

Cerys told Rhys he could come by after she had rested.

She made the answer specific on purpose. Not now, while she was still standing in the passage and tired enough to agree to anything that would get her through the door. Not whenever he wanted. After she had rested. For a little while.

The knock came later, light enough that she could have ignored it. Cerys sat on the edge of the bed and listened to the silence after it.

“Come in.”

Rhys opened the door but stayed in the doorway.

“Still all right?”

“Yes.”

Only then did he enter. That should not have felt strange. Permission had never been a ceremony between them before. He had never needed to ask whether he could cross her threshold.

Now he did. Cerys hated that part of her was grateful. Rhys took the chair beside the wall instead of the one nearest the bed.

“How was it?” he asked.

“Hydroponics?”

He nodded.

“Too short.”

“That sounds like you.”

“It was long enough,” Cerys said.

He smiled, and the room almost slipped into an old shape.

Cerys knew that expression. It belonged to meals that lasted longer than they meant to, arguments that ended with one of them making the other laugh, evenings when neither of them had needed to ask whether the other was staying.

Rhys glanced at her hands. “Are you hurting more now?”

The old shape vanished.

“I’m tired.”

“I asked if you were hurting.”

“I heard you,” Cerys said.

He leaned back in the chair. “I’m not trying to manage you.”

“Good.”

“I just want to know.”

Cerys looked at him. “You don’t need to know everything.”

His mouth tightened. “I care about you.”

“I know.”

“Then why does it sound like I said something wrong?”

Because caring had once given him access to every answer. Because he had been the person she told when she was afraid, when she was angry, when she woke after Wolf Night and could barely move. Part of her still wanted to give him the truth before he finished asking.

She folded her hands together.

“You can care without getting the same answers you used to get.”

Rhys went quiet. Cerys could see that he wanted to object. She waited.

“I thought asking was what you wanted,” he said.

“Asking to visit.”

“That’s what I did.”

“And I said yes to a visit,” Cerys said.

His expression hardened, not with anger so much as frustration. “I’m sitting in a chair across the room from you.”

“That isn’t what I mean.”

“Then tell me what you mean.”

She nearly did what she had always done: make the space between them smaller by explaining until he was no longer uncomfortable. She knew how to make Rhys feel included. She had spent years doing it without noticing.

Not now.

“You asked if you could come in,” she said. “I let you. That doesn’t make you my partner again.”

He stared at her.

“I didn’t say it did.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“That’s not fair,” Rhys said.

“No. It’s different.”

The word stopped him more effectively than an accusation would have. Cerys shifted back against the wall behind the bed. Her ribs protested, and she waited until the discomfort settled. Rhys noticed. She watched him notice. He did not stand.

That, too, was different.

“I don’t know what I’m allowed to ask you,” he said.

“You’re allowed to ask whatever you want.”

“That sounds like a trap.”

“It isn’t. I’m allowed not to answer,” Cerys said.

Rhys looked down at his hands. Once, she would have reached for him. She would have broken the silence before it could turn sharp. The habit was so strong that she felt the absence of the gesture in her own body.

She kept her hands where they were.

“I heard you made it all the way down there,” he said after a while.

“I did.”

“And back.”

“Yes,” Cerys said.

“I’m glad.”

“Thank you.”

He waited, perhaps expecting more. When it did not come, he nodded.

The conversation should have been easier after that. Instead every ordinary question seemed to carry the outline of the life they no longer had. What did you eat. Did you sleep. When are you going back. Each one would have been harmless from almost anyone else.

From Rhys, they felt like doors he still knew how to open. He tried another.

“Do you want me to check on you tomorrow?”

Cerys looked toward the door. There it was. Not an order. Not an assumption that he would arrive. A question, careful enough that she could hear the effort in it.

It still asked for tomorrow.

“No,” she said.

Rhys looked at her again. “All right.”

The answer hurt more than an argument would have. He had asked correctly. She had answered honestly. Nothing about that made the result kind.

“I’m not punishing you,” she said.

“I know.”

“I need you to know that.”

“I said I know,” Rhys said.

He sounded tired now. Not angry. That made it worse. Cerys remembered what she had wanted from this visit: to find out whether they could talk without pretending the breakup had not changed anything.

They could. It was awful. Rhys sat in the chair, careful and familiar and no longer entitled to stay just because both of them wished the rules were easier.

Cerys glanced at the door again. He followed her gaze.

“Do you want me to go?”

The question landed quietly between them.

She loved him. That had not stopped being true when he left her, or when she came home bleeding, or when she learned how much relief there could be in a room where no one claimed a right to her choices.

She also wanted the visit to end.

“Yes,” she said.

Rhys stood.

“All right.”

He did not ask if she was sure. He did not say he would come back tomorrow. He moved to the doorway and stopped there.

“I’m glad you got to see the plants.”

Cerys swallowed.

“So am I.”

Then he left. The door closed softly.

For a while she listened to his footsteps fade down the passage. She could have called his name before he reached the turn. He would have heard her. She knew how quickly he would have come back.

Cerys waited for the urge to stop him. It did not come.

The room was lonelier without him in it. Missing him was not the same as wanting the old access restored.

The loneliness stayed. So did the choice.

If she wanted someone in that chair next time, she would choose the company because she wanted it—not because Rhys had once belonged there.