It all came down to a single word at the end of the day: consent. A researcher watched and recorded, collected personal information and studied data, but they did so with the knowledge and consent of their study participant. That was the truth that Matthew had allowed himself to forget when he’d run off to chase fairy tales. Greed for this newfound knowledge had pushed aside his oath to always put his patients needs first.
He’d been raised with the belief that anything that resulted in a need to lie to a loved one—and his mother had always said that the omission of a known verity is as much a lie as an outright fib—was bad news. Not only had he not told his parents that he’d taken a new ‘job,’ he hadn’t even told him that he’d moved. He hadn’t told them about Gavin, with or without the ad
