Page 55 of Being Lost

“What do you mean? You’re the president of this club and I know enough about bikers to know that means everyone here has faith in you. They must have voted you in.”

He shrugs. “I’ve known from the start that they shouldn’t have. Even tried to tell them that, but they still wanted me at the head of the table. Fuck knows why.”

I’m puzzled. He seems so in control, so confident. Now he’s showing me another side, his vulnerability. I frown. Should I take heed of his warning? As far as I can see, he’s the only one I can call on to help. While I’d love to return to Colorado, I can’t do anything that might put Beth in danger, she’s already been through too much. Has Lost really left a raft of failures in his wake? Is he cautioning me with good reason? If he really is prone to making mistakes, then perhaps I’m wrong to hitch my hopes to his wagon. Yet, I think, staring at him, I might not know him well, but, disregarding his strange behaviour yesterday, so far, he’s not led me wrong. He rescued me from a stalker, and has extended his club’s protection to me and Dan. If I judge by results and actions, I’m not wrong to have faith in this man.

On the other hand, maybe I’m blinded by my attraction to him. Maybe I’m clutching at straws. Yesterday I wanted to explore what could be between us, but today, my sensible head says I’m not sure.

But if he’s the only man capable of providing me with the assistance I need, what he’s telling me doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence. Why does he expect everything to go south? I need to dig deeper.

“Lost, tell me, please. Why don’t you trust yourself?”

He turns back to me and those piercing eyes meet mine. “Because I fuck things up. It’s what I do, Patsy. I can’t change my nature. I ruin people’s lives.”

“Whose lives?” I’m both curious and worried.

“You really want to know?”

Chapter Eighteen

Lost

“You really want to know?” I ask her, my words coming out a little harsher than I intended. I’ve no problem with telling her about my past, it’s no secret, just something I don’t often bring up. I do know, however, once I tell her, if I haven’t already blown it by my behaviour yesterday, I’ll definitely lose any chance I might have had to explore this attraction between us.

When she nods, I take a deep breath. She needs to know, needs to understand that she should run a mile rather than trust my judgement.

I stand and start to pace, exposing my soul easier if I keep moving. Once I start, my whole damn fucked-up life spills out. “I left college with a degree in computer science and a head full of ideas. I went to several conferences and teamed up with some people who were developing a PDA, remember those? Personal Data Assistants. They were a revelation when they came in. Long before smart phones, for the first time you could carry your data with you in a handheld device. They had word processing functions, spreadsheets, a microphone and speakers. It was the new thing. Exciting.” I pause to shake my head.How stupid had I been?

I see Patsy’s listening intently, so I continue. “After I graduated, I got talking to those same people again. They liked my ideas and wanted to run with them. Well, I knew best, didn’t I? I knew from their interest that I was onto a winner. I was in a good place financially, my grandfather had died and left me a bit of money—that had come as a surprise, he’d never shared it when he was alive. So I decided to put my windfall into starting up my own company. I employed a couple of programmers and we began developing applications which would run on those PDAs. I was bringing in a lot of money and became ambitious as the future looked bright. To keep up with demand, I had to employ more people. I ended up with a staff of twenty-five—fifteen developers and programmers, the rest were sales and administration.” I close my eyes, my lips curving slightly as I remember the good old days. I like to think I was a good boss and had built a great team. One big happy family.

“The problem was, I’d banked everything on one platform, one technology. The big companies were pandering to the public who were clamouring for more and had far more money to invest in research than I had myself. The world didn’t want to carry a phoneanda PDA with them. Smarter people than I saw which way the wind was blowing and combined the two technologies. It culminated in things like the iPhone which was eventually launched in 2007.”

“Your company couldn’t keep up?”

I raise my chin and lower it. “I went bust because I’d failed to make the right decisions. So tied up in making the best applications I could for one device, I lacked the foresight to keep up with the rest. The platform we were using wasn’t popular anymore. We tried to change, but not only had I left it too late, I was a small fuckin’ fish in a pond which was dominated by big players. I borrowed money, put everything I owned into the business, but it all went belly-up and I had to let my staff go. Twenty-five people out of employment because I’d made wrong decisions.” There had been Bob, Jonathan, Anthony, Sylvia… the list goes on. All people depending on me, who’d fought beside me to pull us back up, but in the end, I let them all down.

“I had to sell my house to pay back the loan.” I glance her way, trying to judge her expression. “My wife, of course, left me.”

She goes still. “Your wife left you?”

My shoulders rise and fall. “I’d failed her too. We could no longer keep our heads above water. I could no longer support her. I had barely anything left at all. I managed to keep back enough to set her up with a small apartment, but she’d lost her house.”

“What did you do?” she asks tersely, her jaw clenched. “Where did you live?”

Yeah. I had expected how this would go. Not a good track record, a man who couldn’t provide for his family, who let down everyone who depended on him, including his wife.

“That’s when the old prez, Snake, well, he was VP then, but it was he who found me. Brought me here as a prospect as I had nowhere else to go, and nothing to my name except an old motorbike which had next to no gas in the tank. I went from a man with dreams to a man with no home, no money in my wallet. Snake told me I was lost, and that’s how I picked up my road name.” I don’t tell her how Snake found me, or that he’d effectively saved my life.

Patsy stands. I know she’s going to walk out and leave now she understands what a fuck up I am. Instead, she walks over to me. I notice there are twin spots of red on her cheeks.

“You gave what you had to a wife who walked out because your business failed? Did you have kids?”

“No, no children.”

“Did she work?”

I bark a short laugh. “No. Things got so dire I had to ask her to find something, but obviously she wasn’t happy about it.”

Her jaw clenches tight. “She complained when she had to get a job?”

---