“For the last time, I’m not—”
“I know, I know. You’re going to waste your God-given, once-in-a-generation talent to go to work for your family’s company making toilet bowl cleaner.”
After I go to Cambridge. After four more years of school. I can’t bloody do it…
“Hey,” Wolfe said, his hand gentle on my shoulder. “Now I’m being an arsehole. Talk to me.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said, waving off my self-pitying thoughts. “It’s just that she had a very large problem that I tried to fix with my very large bank account, and she didn’t like that, and I don’t know why.”
Wolfe arched a brow. “You don’t know why,” he deadpanned.
“Is there some big crime in wanting to take care of the girl you…care about?”
“There is if you trample all over her pride and make her feel like asex worker in the process.”
“That isnotwhat happened,” I said. “The sex worker part, I mean. But maybe the pride part, yes. She has a lot of that. An excessive amount, really. Harp—this girl’s a fighter. It’s why I…”
“Careabout her?” Wolfe said pointedly.
I scrubbed my hands over my tired eyes. “But I don’t know what else to do. She was wrecked and I couldn’t stand it.” I looked up at him. “If I see something I can fix, I want to fix it.”
Wolfe heaved a sigh. “Relationships with women aren’t my forte, but from what I know of the fairer sex, they often don’t want you tofixanything. It’s enough that you’re merelythere. Present. That they feel seen and heard. Isn’t that what anyone wants? To feel seen? Understood? And that doesn’t take anydoing. It only takesbeing.”
I nodded, remembering Harper had said as much, but what did I have to offer besides my name, a few jokes, and a broken brain that would eventually betray me?
What if Rhett was right?
Wolfe’s X-ray vision eyes seemed to see right into my soul.
“Do you fear you aren’t enough for her as you are?” he asked gently. More gently than I’d ever heard him speak.
“I’ve always feared I’m not enough as I am,” I said, shocked to say it out loud. Shocked that I let the words out from down in the depths.
“Why is that, Orion?”
“Because…” I shook my head. And that’s when I felt it. Something else trying to follow those words out of me. A swell of emotion. Pain. Grief. Years’ worth.
That’s just because of what Rhett said. I’m not going to let him get to me. Fuck him. Fuck. Him.
“We should get on with the lesson.” My voice sounded rough. Thick. It was hard to swallow. I turned back to the Bach with shaking hands, but Wolfe took the sheet music away.
“Warm-up is over. You’re supposed to compose something for the spring concert,” he said in a low voice. “Have you put anythingdown?”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t,” I said, my voice cracking and rising.
“Can’t…?”
“I can’t fucking write.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said,” I cried, practically shouting now. “I can’t write. The words don’t make it from my brain to my hand. They have holes in them.”
“Words have holes?”
