3…

~~Evans~~

He yanked his hand away from me like my touch was something contagious, and I let him. I had to. Anything else would’ve cracked the mask I’d spent the last few minutes perfecting.

“There’s a lot you don’t remember,” I told him, keeping my voice low, steady, the voice I used when I needed a room full of men twice his size to believe I wasn’t afraid of anything. “But you’ll see. I’ve taken care of everything.”

I watched the fear move behind his eyes before he buried it within himself. Good. Fear I could work with. Fear meant he hadn’t figured out yet that the real danger in this room wasn’t the year he’d lost. It was standing right next to his bed, holding a story together with nothing but nerve and a well-paid photo editor.

The nurse excused herself. Smart woman.

“I want my phone,” Felix said again looking at him like he was second away from strangling me, that familiar fire flaring back into his face even with half his memory missing. It almost made me smile. Even blank slate, he was still him underneath it all. Still sharp enough to know when something didn’t add up, even if he couldn’t name what yet.

“Your phone’s being replaced,” I said. “It was damaged in the accident.”

That was a lie too, but a small one, easy to swallow next to the others. His actual phone was sitting in a drawer in my office with a screen full of messages I had no intention of letting him see. Not until I’d rewritten enough of the story around him that none of it would make sense even if he read it.

“Convenient,” he muttered, eyes narrowing.

“I know how this looks.”

“Do you.” His voice was flat, dangerous in that quiet way he’d always had, the way that used to make grown men in his organization go very, very still. “Because from where I’m sitting, my worst enemy is standing in my hospital room wearing a wedding band, telling me I don’t remember marrying him, while somehow my entire security detail has vanished off the face of the earth. So no. I don’t think you know how this looks.”

I felt fear raising within, but I didn’t let it reach my face. I’d gotten good at that over the last year. Maybe too good.

“Your security detail is mine now,” I said carefully. “Our households merged when we got married. It’s standard, for people like us. You know how this works.”

He stared at me for a long moment, and I made myself hold it, made myself not blink first, even though something in me was screaming to look away before he saw straight through to the guilt sitting right under my ribs.

“I don’t know how anything works anymore,” he finally said, vulnerability almost slipped into his voice before he caught it and shut it back down. “That’s the problem.”

For a second, I almost told him but decided otherwise.

The words were right there, climbing up my throat. We weren’t married a year ago, Felix. We hated each other exactly as much as you remember… you lost everything and your whole family. This is a lie I built for you in forty eight minutes because I couldn’t stand the thought of you waking up and choosing the version of your life that didn’t have me in it.

I swallowed it back down where it belonged.

“The doctor wants to keep you one more night for observation,” I said instead. “Tomorrow I’m taking you home.”

“Home.” He said the word like it was foreign in his mouth.

“Our home.” I made myself reach out again, slower this time, and brushed a piece of hair back from his forehead before he could pull away. He let me, this time, watching me with an expression I couldn’t read, something caught between suspicion and a hunger for anything familiar in a world that had gone unrecognizable overnight. “It’s going to feel strange at first. I know that. But I promise you, Felix, everything you need to remember who we are to each other is there. I’m not going to rush you. I’m not going to push. We’ll go slow.”

“No thank you… call my parents and have them come over because in situation like this they are the only people I will believe.” He said dismissing me.

My mind went blank for a full second, then straight into overdrive.

Fuck. What do I do now.

I couldn’t tell him. Not like this, not in a hospital bed with monitors beeping beside him and a doctor’s warning still fresh in my ears about triggers and stress and what a shock like that could do to a brain already struggling to hold itself together. But I also couldn’t just say no not when his eyes had gone soft in a way I hadn’t seen since he woke up, hopeful in a way that made my stomach twist, because he still thought he had somewhere safe to land.

“Baby~~”

“Don’t.” He cut me off, voice sharpening again, like he could already feel me building up to something he didn’t want to hear. “Don’t call me baby~~ it sound fucking cringy. Just call them. I don’t care what beef you think you have with my family, I want my mom.”

I want my mom.

Christ. Even a mafia heir with blood on his hands turned into a kid asking for his mother the second his whole world stopped making sense. I hated how much it wrecked something in my chest.

“It’s not that simple,” I said, choosing each word like it might detonate if I set it down wrong.

“Why not.” He asked looking with no room in it for an excuse.

I opened my mouth and nothing useful came out. The truth sat right there, ugly and heavy: Your parents are dead, Felix. They died eight months ago, and it broke something in you that never fully healed, and if I tell you that right now with your brain barely holding together, I don’t know what it’ll do to you. The doctor’s words rang in my head on a loop. Triggers of what happened in the past year could bring his memories back. This was the opposite of what I wanted. This was a door I could not un-open once it was open.

“They’re traveling,” I said instead. The lie came out smoother than it had any right to. “Out of the country. Hard to reach on short notice.”

Felix’s eyes narrowed, and for one terrifying second I thought he saw straight through it, the way he used to see through every move I made back when seeing through me was the only advantage he had over me. “My mother doesn’t go anywhere without her phone glued to her hand. Try again.”

“Felix, I’m not lying to you about this to be cruel.” That part, at least, was true, even wrapped inside everything else that wasn’t. “There’s a lot that happened this year that the doctor doesn’t want dumped on you all at once. It’s not safe. Not for your recovery.”