Fuck.
“Well, you’re wrong,” he said lightly, trying desperately to think of something else to talk about. “How’s the condo at the beach? You and Win get a chance to go there often?”
“Jesus. Has anyone told you you’re terrible at deflecting?” On top of the table, Elliot’s hand curled into a fist. “What’s going on with you? I feel like you’re slipping away from us.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m here, aren’t I?” He gulped his drink and pulled the bottle from the ice bucket to pour another. “Let’s have a drink.”
He felt stripped raw, bloodied and vulnerable. Maybe it was the parole hearing the previous day and seeing his father for the first time in over twenty years. Hearing the litany of his horrendous crimes had devastated him.
“Wolf. Please.” Worried blue eyes searched his, and he could see the love and concern in them, which only tormented him further. Shit, he was as fucked up as his father—not as a predator, but in his inability to tell the truth.
“He wanted to kiss me, and more, and I didn’t want that. I didn’t want him to touch me.”
Shocked, Elliot gaped at him. “Did he try to force himself on you?”
“Not really. I just wanted him to go away.” He drank the second glass down faster than the first.
“Guess he wasn’t the right guy for you. But that shouldn’t stop you from trying.”
God knew he loved Elliot, but he wished he’d stop talking.
“You give so much of yourself to your work, and that’s not healthy.”
“Neither is being lectured. I’m fine.”
“No, Wolf, you’re not.”
Surprised at Elliot’s fierce response, he lazed back in his seat and quirked a brow. “Do tell. Seems you have something on your chest you want to get off, so have at it.”
“Don’t make it a joke.” Elliot’s pure nature and sweetness was the only thing keeping Wolf in his seat. Anyone else, he would’ve ended the conversation with a cutting remark and left.
“I’m not. I want to hear your psychoanalysis of me.”
“You’re my best friend, and yet I feel like I know nothing about you. Just like it was with Chess, you only let us see a tiny part of who you are.”
“I’m a pretty boring person, as you know. I go to work, and occasionally we get together. That’s about it.”
“But why? Even in school, you never made any attempt to go out, meet people…find a boyfriend. I don’t understand. You have so much to offer the right guy.”
So much to offer. A criminal father, a child sex offender. An unfaithful mother who barely knew he existed. No family—not a single relative wanted anything to do with him after his father’s conviction and his mother’s suicide. His own aunt had sent him away to boarding school so she wouldn’t have to look at him. He became fully emancipated at eighteen, with the bulk of his mother’s estate leaving him wealthy enough to do what he liked, but lonely beyond belief.
Quite the legacy.
“I’m fine as I am. I don’t have time for a relationship.”
“That’s bullshit.”
His fingers tightened around the stem of his glass. “Leave it alone, Ello. I’m not interested in talking about this anymore.”
“Fine. Then you’ll listen. Because I have things to say.”
“So I see. Damn. To think I used to call you the quiet one,” he muttered.
“You’re afraid of something and it’s gotten worse in the past few years. I think that’s what’s causing you to snap at Spencer more.”
At the mention of Spencer’s name, he turned cold. “Is that so? Tell me more about me, Dr. Hansen. I’m fascinated.”
“Oh, yeah. There he is. The big bad Wolf.” Elliot’s eyes flashed. “You can pretend all you want, but I think you’re lonely. And unhappy. Happy people don’t bury themselves in their work. They don’t allow the job to consume them. You use the work as an excuse to push everyone away, which makes you even more alone. You sit in the center of the circle with a force field you created around yourself, and no one is allowed inside that hallowed ground. I know because Win was like that when we met.”
