Page 118 of Heist

With a heavy sigh, she tossed the phone aside and changed into yoga pants and a tank top and washed the makeup off her face before climbing into bed again. Sleep came, but it was filled with nightmares of Patrick being found guilty and spending twenty years in prison. When she woke the next morning, she felt like she’d been in a fist fight and lost. A glance at her phone told her there had been no response from Patrick.

She stumbled into the shower and tried to relax, but the sense of dread continued to grow as she rinsed shampoo from her hair. Dressed in comfortable clothes, she made her way downstairs to see if anyone else was up. She knew Eli, Holly, Lance, and Jax had all stayed at the club last night.

As she pushed her way into the lobby, she heard a voice from the conference say, “He’s a goddamned coward. I know he’s going through a lot, but this is unacceptable, and he needs an ass kicking.”

It sounded like Dakota, so Austin stuck her head in the door. She found most of the Solitaire board, minus Patrick and Matthew, plus Holly.

“What’s going on?” she asked, her voice timid. She had a suspicion she knew who they’d been discussing by the guilty expressions on all their faces when they looked at her.

“Good morning, Austin,” Lance said. “Did you rest OK?”

She shook her head. “Not really. Have any of you heard from Patrick? He never came back last night.”

Lance looked down at his laptop screen and she noticed others avoiding eye contact as well.

Stepping further into the room, she closed the door behind her. “What aren’t you guys telling me?”

“Patrick flew back to California last night, sweetie,” Dakota said.

It felt as if a knife was being twisted in her stomach and she looked for an empty chair to sit in. There was one next to Lance, and he immediately wrapped his arm around her when she sat.

“Why would he do that without telling me?”

“Because he’s a coward,” Dakota spit. “I’m so mad at him right now, I swear I’d take a cattle prod to him if he were here.”

“That’s enough, Dakota,” Eli murmured.

Lance slid a piece of paper to her. “He sent me this to give to you and he submitted his resignation to the board.”

“He what?” she whispered as she lifted the paper to read.

Tears dripped down her face as she read his apologetic note, but she didn’t quite comprehend the words. Had he just broken up with her via e-mail? Anger mixed with the hurt she felt, and she rolled her chair away from the table to pull out her phone.

• • •

Patrick stared at his phone as he sat in his office. He hadn’t expected a call from her so quickly, and he hadn’t had time to figure out exactly what he wanted to say. The e-mail had been a shitty thing to do. Walking out had been shitty. His whole damn night last night had been shitty, but he didn’t know what else to do. After hearing Austin say the prosecutor was offering four years in prison and suggesting that he might need to think about taking it, he’d stopped listening.

Now he knew he needed to answer this call because it just kept ringing.

“Austin,” he breathed. “I’m so…”

“You’re a fucking bastard, Patrick. I’ve given you everything over the last month. All of my energy, my devotion, anything you’ve asked me for, I’ve given it to you, and this is how you break up with me?”

He winced, technically the note hadn’t been a break-up note but he could see how she would think that.

“I’m not breaking up with you, Austin. Not really. I’m laying contingency plans. I still care about you. I’m just asking you not to get attached to the idea of me staying out of prison. You said it yourself, I could go away for four years. I’m not going to pressure you into staying with me while I’m serving time.”

She laughed, but there was no humor in her tone. “That’s fucking ridiculous. You transferred my house submissive contract to Lance, and you want me to think you’re not breaking up with me? As for prison, have a little fucking faith in me. I haven’t let you down yet and I’m damn good at my job.”

“Where’s Lance?” he asked. “He’s supposed to be taking care of you.”

“I can take care of my own damn self,” she bit out. He could hear tears in her voice, and he felt like such an asshole.

“I’m sorry, baby girl,” he whispered. “I need to stay away from Solitaire until this is over. I need to know you’ll be OK without me. I need to know I’ll be OK without the club. We can talk on Monday at the hearing.”

She was openly weeping now, and he heard someone, Lance maybe, telling her to give him the phone.

“You are handling this all wrong, man. When you put this behind you, you’re going to regret these choices,” Lance said a moment later.

“Take care of her, Lance. She trusts you. Everything points to me going to prison, even though I did nothing wrong. Even if we do figure out who’s setting me up, it won’t be until after I’ve spent some amount of time in jail. You know as well as I do these things don’t happen overnight.”

Lance made a noise of exasperation. “You always have been a rash decision maker. That’s why being in business with Eli and David is good for you. They know how to rein you in and make you stop and think. I don’t know how to do that in this situation. I know you’re panicking. You have every right to panic, but you’re also hurting someone who cares a lot about you and I fucking hope you can fix it when this is done and over with.”

Patrick didn’t want to hear any of this. “I need to go. Take care of her and keep digging. Tell Jax to spend whatever he needs to. I’m good for it.”

Yes, Austin might think he was giving up on them, but what he was trying to do was take care of her. Prison terrified him, but Austin moving on while he sat in prison terrified him even more. Someone, likely his father, wanted him to suffer. Pulling away from Austin was his way of protecting her from whoever wanted him to go down. He just hoped she would forgive him.

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