“What’s wrong with you?” I demanded.
My friend Emry was slouched in his chair, rubbing both eyes with the heels of his hands.
“Is everything all right with Sacha? The family?”
I’d come here so Emry could tell me I was right and I could finally put all thoughts of Sloane to rest.
“The symphony was wonderful. Sacha is wonderful. My family is wonderful. You, my migraine-inducing friend, are what’s wrong with me,” he said, picking up his glasses and polishing them violently.
“I don’t think a therapist is supposed to talk to his patients like that. Especially not ones whose fees helped buy that beach house you’re so fond of,” I reminded him.
“You can lead a horse to water, but some animals are so dense you have to half drown them before they’ll drink.”
“That’s not how that particular metaphor goes. Am I the horse or are you?”
“You’re the man whose identity is so tightly bound to how he sees his father that you sabotage your own chances for happiness. He didn’t deserve to be happy, so by default, neither do you.”
“I don’t have the time for happiness.” Or the capacity, I added silently.
“Lucian, you love her,” he said simply.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I scoffed even as my gut twisted sharply.
“You love this girl turned woman who placed herself between you and your abuser. Who fought the injustice you faced because of it. Yet you keep pushing her away, pretending that you’re some kind of emotionless artificial intelligence distracted by eradicating the world of abusers of power and she’s just another enemy, when in reality, you feel unworthy of her. But you’re never going to feel worthy until you stop pushing love away. The second you get anything good in your life, you do your damnedest to rid yourself of it. So you keep engaging in this profoundly annoying self-destruct cycle.”
I sat there for a beat. “How long have you been holding that in?”
Emry rose abruptly and rounded his desk. He jerked open the bottom drawer and produced a bottle of scotch. “Too long.” He poured two glasses and handed one to me before flopping back down in his chair.
“This has nothing to do with me feeling worthy.”
He cracked a smile, then shook his head. “The infuriating part is you know this. Yet you keep making the same choices. Well, I’ve got news for you, Lucian. No one feels worthy. Everyone feels like an imposter. It doesn’t matter what family you come from, your net worth, or how many powerful friends owe you favors. None of that is going to make you feel like you deserve to be here.”
“Everyone? I find that hard to believe.”
“The ones who don’t? The ones who think they deserve it all? Those are the ones you have to watch out for. Those are the ones who inflict the real damage. They’re the ones who don’t spend years in therapy trying to better themselves. They’re the ones who don’t bother asking themselves if they’re the good guy or the bad guy.”
I wasn’t a good guy worried about being a bad guy. I was a self-aware villain. There was a distinct difference.
“Let’s change the subject,” Emry suggested. “You seem to be playing the field quite aggressively.”
I sighed. Frankly, I was exhausted. Between redoubling my efforts to nail Hugo to the wall, I now had to carve time out of my packed schedule to go out to dinner and parties I didn’t want to go to with women I had no interest in.
If Hugo had targeted Sloane because of me, he was going to get the message loud and clear. Sloane Walton meant nothing to me. She was just one woman in a long line of meaningless conquests.
“It’s not what it looks like,” I admitted. “Hugo is looking a little too closely at me. I’m doing what I can to confuse him.”
I automatically flipped my phone over and checked for new messages. There were none from her. Not that I would expect it. I’d had to burn that bridge to keep us both safe. But now that I’d had her, now that I knew how my name sounded from that mouth when she came, this surgical excision of me from her life was driving me insane.
She couldn’t just cut me out completely. Not when we shared our small circle of friends and a property line. Not that I wanted anything to do with her, I reminded myself.
“I worry about you, Lucian,” Emry announced.
I looked up, baffled. “Why?”
“I worry that you prioritize winning over happiness, and I don’t know if you’ll be satisfied with winning at the expense of everything else.”