Page 51 of Enticing the Elf
Jared and I exchange a startled look. “Ariwas a dick?” I ask.
“Are you sure?” Jared adds, then shakes his head. “Wow, stupid question. I just mean… Ari was the asshole? Really?”
I want to defend Eoin, but he and Jared had a rocky introduction, and even though they’re good now, Jared totally gets a pass on the whole calling-Eoin-an-asshole thing.
“I don’t know,” Felix says with heavy sarcasm. “Which one is he?”
“Long hair.” That’s probably the easiest way for him to differentiate between them.
“Then yeah, he was the asshole. Is that not normal for him?”
We both shake our heads.
“Great,” he mutters. “Guess I just bring it out in people.”
“You said he accused you of assault? Why? You don’t have to say,” I tack on, even though it hurts to do so. I’m desperately curious.
Felix leans back on his hands. “It’s not a secret. I’m sure people at your office are talking about it.”
Jared laughs. “If Dáithí doesn’t know about it, they’re not talking about it. Eoin’s his boyfriend.”
“He’s not—” I start, but he gives me a “be serious” look, and I subside.
Felix glances between us. “That was the other guy? The nicer one?”
“I’d argue that,” Jared jokes, “but yes. And yes, he’s Dáithí’s boyfriend, even if it is complicated right now.”
“That sounds like an interesting story.” Felix quirks a brow at me, not even trying to be subtle. I like him.
“I’ll trade you, your story for mine. Because Eoin’s annoyingly strict about confidentiality and won’t tell me even if I beg.” Which I won’t. It sets a bad precedent to beg outside of sex.
“Deal.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Dáithí
“Like I said,it’s not a secret,” he continues. “Fifteen years ago, I went to my ex-boyfriend’s house with my hockey stick and broke all his windows, beat the crap out of his car, and turned his mailbox into scrap metal. Unfortunately, he came out of the house and got in the way, and I accidentally hit him as well.”
Jared’s face is horrified. “Accidentally?”
“Yeah. He got between the stick and the window beside the door after I’d already started swinging, and I couldn’t pull back enough to stop it. It didn’t hit him hard, though. He got bruised, but not too badly. The assault charges were dismissed because he had one of those doorbell cameras, and the video proved it wasn’t intentional.”
That seems to appease Jared a little, but not completely. He’s a very nonviolent person, which makes his love of hockey surprising.
I, on the other hand, can totally appreciate the occasional need to smash a window. “What’d he do?”
“My ex?”
I nod, and Felix sighs. “He cheated. A lot. The whole three years we were together, it turned out. We’d agreed to be monogamous, but I’d found out that day that he’d nevereven tried.” His frown somehow manages to be both sad and angry. “If he’d said from the beginning that he wanted an open relationship, I would probably have agreed, you know? It’s not like I was thinking we’d be forever right from the outset—I was only twenty-five, and we’d only known each other a couple of months. Settling down wasn’t in my plans when we decided to be exclusive. But he never even mentioned wanting to see other people, and he was the one who brought up monogamy.”
“Bastard,” I mutter, pressing my hands harder against the ground. I need nature right now, because Felix’s story is knotting up my insides, dragging my memories of Alan back to the forefront of my mind. Eoin’s not like that—he’d never deliberately deceive me. Iknowhe’s sticking to our monogamy agreement.
“He deserved broken windows,” Jared agrees. “That kind of deliberate dishonesty doesn’t belong in relationships.”
“Right? It was the lying that hurt the most. The whole time we were together, he was lying to me, over and over.” Felix swallows hard and looks away. “When I confronted him, helaughed. It was all a joke to him. He said he’d been waiting years for me to find out and he couldn’t believe how stupid I was.”
The wordless sound that explodes from me clashes with Jared’s angry, “Fuck that!”
