Heart in Wire: A by a Thread Companion Novel (24 page)

As she walked up the stairs, Cooper followed, bounding up to where Patrick stood, his hands shoved in his pockets. Patrick pulled his hand out of his pocket and rubbed Cooper’s back. El stood in front of him, but wouldn’t look at him. He snaked his arms around her waist and pulled her to him, but El shook her way free from his grip. Letting her take a step back, he leaned in to kiss her. She shook her head imperceptibly and Patrick stilled. His entire world incinerated right before his eyes. All the hope he’d had a few seconds ago dissipated like a puff of smoke.

“El?”
Why was she here if she wasn’t choosing him?
Patrick grabbed her hands to make sure she was real and this wasn’t a nightmare.

“I can’t,” she barely whispered. If they hadn’t been only inches apart, he wouldn’t have heard her.

“What?” His voice betrayed him, evidencing his heartache. He willed his eyes not to follow suit.

“I’m…going to George’s.” Her voice was clipped and she wouldn’t meet his eyes.

Silence.

He didn’t know what to say, then a tear slipped from her eye and it enraged him. She was the one doing this—she didn’t get to cry about it.

“Tell me you don’t love me.” His voice shook with the emotion he was trying to control. She wouldn’t look at him.

“Fucking look at me!” His voice rose. “El!” he yelled and she flinched away from him, trying to get her hands out of his grasp. “Oh, you think I’m going to make it that easy? Just let you come here and say ‘I can’t’? Tell me you don’t love me, El.” Patrick jerked her forward, causing her body to crash into his. “TELL ME!” He was going to lose her; he couldn’t lose her. She was his everything, his beginning and end. He was nothing without her. The realization caused his legs to buckle and he fell to his knees. “Look at me and fucking tell me you don’t feel it. Feel this thing, this pull between me and you. I love you, El, and I’m pretty fucking sure you love me too.”

She continued to cry. “I-I can’t,” she stammered.

“You can’t what?” His voice shook with indignation. “You can’t what?!” He was yelling now. “El. You can’t what?!”

Finally, she looked at him. She tentatively reached toward him, but then pulled her hand back. “I can’t tell you that I don’t love you, Patrick.”

What the fuck? She loves me but she’s still leaving me for George? How is this possible?

“Then come home,” he pleaded. “Come to our room. I already bought a new bed and new sheets.” He put his palms on her hips; he wanted to be inside her right now, she had to know this is where she needed to be.

“Patrick, I love George too.”

He felt all the air escape his body like she’d punched him in the fucking gut, or the dick, but worse, it felt like something he would never come back from. Patrick’s head dropped and his shoulders slumped. “Please, El, don’t do this,” he begged.

“I do love you,” she whispered. El stepped back, but Patrick grabbed her by her thighs, not letting her go. He buried his face in her stomach and let her shirt soak up his tears.

“Stay with me…”
Please
. “Love me…trust me,” he urged into her. “El, please…”
I can’t do this without you.

El began sobbing and tears flooded down her face. She lowered herself to her knees so they were face to face. Patrick wanted to kiss her, but she started shaking.

“You told me nothing would change, Patrick.” She barely got the words out, and they were weighed down with regret. “You better not have lied to me again.”

Patrick shook his head in disbelief. She gently put both of her hands on the back of his head and sighed, letting the tears flow.
Please just kiss me
. All of sudden, like a switch had been flipped, she froze and began to frantically untangle herself from him.

“I have to go.” El ran down to her car, away from him. “Cooper!” she yelled, and Cooper, who had been circling them both, made a break for El’s car.

Patrick was on his knees, tears forming and falling without any resistance from him. His future just walked away from him. It didn’t matter how many breaths he took, he couldn’t breathe. He put his hands down on the front porch and fought to hold everything in. He’d just watched the love of his life drive off to the man she loved.

El had hurt him more than anyone had ever hurt him. He hadn’t felt this crushed since that day in Georgia when his entire family’s life changed. He sat back on his heels and stared at the road. She picked George. His El had picked George. Even after everything he’d done for her, she’d picked fucking George.
Bitch
. His head hung in devastation.

Billy cracked the door and looked out at Patrick on his knees. “Hey, man. Where’s El?”

Patrick shook his head, not saying anything. He couldn’t speak, worried if he did, he’d lose his shit.

“I brought you a beer.” Billy stepped out and handed Patrick a beer. “I believe tonight calls for getting you drunk and getting you laid.”

“I just want to get drunk.”

“That’s the easiest request that’s ever been made.” Billy walked back in the house, leaving Patrick on the porch guzzling beer on his knees.

Patrick looked one more time at the road.
El.
She’d fucked him multiple times this past week and was going back to George. She told Patrick she loved him, but drove away from him after ripping his fucking heart out.

He closed his eyes and saw another set of taillights leaving. He’d been fifteen when his father left him, his sister, brother, and mother. Katrina had clung to his father’s leg as he walked out of their house for the last time. She’d cried and begged, but Patrick was stoic and stone-faced—his father wouldn’t see how his leaving affected him. His father would never know that leaving his family while they were in chaos caused Patrick to shut down and not let anyone in. His father would never know anything about the man he became.

When he opened his eyes, the street was empty and he shook the memories of the two people he loved leaving him away. He pushed himself off the ground and walked into the house. Arrogantly or stupidly, he’d been so sure that El was coming back to him that he’d talked Billy into redoing the entire front of the house so as not to remind El of that night. Overconfident, he’d already ordered and had a new bed delivered. He’d called and ordered it while they were at the beach.

He had planned for them to have a fresh start. Together.

Stunned with his new reality, he stood in the kitchen numbly, not really knowing what to do with himself. “She…”

Billy put two beers on the counter. “Stop. Before we talk about El, we’re going to drink four beers each.” Billy opened his beer and drank half of it. “Go,” he said, pointing at the beer.

Patrick took the beer and chugged it. Billy put two more on the counter. He continued this process until they both downed their fourth beers.

Patrick wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “So…she’s going back to George.”

“Do you think George will take her back?” Billy placed two more beers on the counter. “I mean, she left him and had sex with you all week.”

Patrick took a gulp of beer. “I doubt she’s going to tell him that we fucked all week.”

“You don’t think he’ll find out?”

“Well, the only people that know are you, me, and her, and I think it’s pretty clear we can keep secrets,” he admitted with a smirk.

“True,” Billy said, clicking his beer bottle with Patrick’s. He cleared his throat. “You okay?”

“I’m pretty sure no.”

“So what’s the plan?”

“I’m leaving,” Patrick said as he walked to the fridge and grabbed two more beers.

“Leaving?” Billy asked, surprised.

“Yep, I put in for a transfer a few weeks ago. I’ll let them know tomorrow I’m going to take it.”

“Holy shit, dude.” Billy set his beer down on the counter, hard, not caring that it foamed up and over the top. “Where?”

“Atlanta.” He walked over to the den and sat down. “I’ll be in the field more than on the desk. I need to get my mind occupied with things not El.”

“Okay.” Billy sat down, looking a little dazed. “When do you think you’ll leave?”

“Two weeks. They told me I had the transfer if I wanted and the date a while back, I just didn’t know if I would take it until now.”

“Nothing like a heartbreak to get you to move from DC.”

“Heartbreak seems like a stupid thing to call what I feel. You can fix a break. I feel like she shredded my fucking chest. I mean, my chest actually hurts.”

“Dude. I’m sorry.”

“It is what it is.” Patrick drained his beer and got up to get another. “I plan on getting so fucking drunk I won’t remember what happened on that porch today. That’s my fucking plan.”

Patrick braced himself in the shower, his arms on either side of the showerhead. He was drunk, like he and Billy had consumed an entire case of beer and a fifth of whiskey drunk. They’d been drinking for seven hours straight. His head was swimming with his reality. He’d murdered his friend for the woman he loved and she’d left him. She’d looked him in the eyes and picked someone else.
Jamie. El. Jamie. El
. His brain pounded with alcohol, loss, and pain. The wire that squeezed his heart was painful on a normal day, but he’d punctured it and now he was bleeding the fuck out.

He watched, mesmerized as the water ran down his back and over his head, which hung low between his shoulders, falling between his feet and circling the drain. He’d never felt so wrecked. Not wrecked in the manner that he could be repaired, but wrecked as in totaled. Patrick needed to cut his losses and move on. He’d emailed Kevin that he was taking the transfer when he was only six beers in. Kevin responded that he’d start in Atlanta in two weeks. His new assignment would have him in the field instead of sitting behind a desk, thinking of her. It was the best he could do right now.

He’d done what he’d told her he’d do, he’d protected her. She’d be dead if it weren’t for him. Patrick hadn’t allowed himself to feel emotions since his dad left, and now he felt like he couldn’t keep any emotions in. In the privacy of the shower, he let out all of the pent up everything he had in his chest, his brain, and his heart. Sobs wracked through his body as he let them all out. The tears mixing with the water were washed away along with the hope he’d ever feel the happiness he’d felt the past few days again.

He couldn’t do this again. He wouldn’t cry for her again.

Chapter Twenty-One

WHY THE LIES?

Patrick lowered the door on the moving truck and locked it, made sure his beloved Audi was secured on the trailer, and took a look back at the house. He had to leave, it was the only way he could be okay, but he couldn’t help the sadness at leaving that house, where he had so many good memories, and this city, where his best friend lived and where he’d built his own life.

Billy closed the door behind him and locked it. “We ready?” he asked, hopping down the stairs. Billy’s sloppy blondish hair was hidden by his dark grey wool cap, which was pulled down to his brown eyes, framed by his Clark Kent glasses. He looked annoyingly cheerful for a long road trip.

“Don’t act so excited to get rid of me,” Patrick joked. He took his baseball hat off and wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his red Georgia Bulldog hoodie.

“Man, I’d say anything to make you stay,” Billy face was sincere, “but I know you gotta go. I understand.”

“It’s a promotion,” Patrick said noncommittally.

“Or something,” Billy added. Billy slid his sunglasses on, pocketing his other glasses, and hopped in the passenger seat of the moving truck. “Stop by Del Ray coffee shop and I’ll run in and grab some coffee before we hit it.”

“Okay,” Patrick agreed. It would be a long ten-hour drive to Atlanta in the moving truck and they’d been up late last night packing. He was one step from needing a caffeine drip.

Patrick accepted a new job with the ATF as soon as El left him on his knees on the front porch. It would be more field work than he’d been doing in the last few years, but he was up for it. He knew this was the only option for him, even though he felt like he had to remind himself of it constantly. He had to leave, had to get away from the only woman he’d ever truly been in love with.

He thought he’d been in love before. He wished like hell he would’ve fallen in love with Millie, but he didn’t. And he’d tried. After the beach with El, he knew that he’d never been in real love before. What he felt when he finally opened up and allowed himself to feel what El meant to him was all-consuming, shake-you-to-the-core love. It was as if El had embedded herself into his body; she was everywhere. He looked down at his fingers and remembered touching her, putting his fingers in her. It was madness; he’d lost his fucking mind.

His phone rang, it was El. He ignored it. She left a message. He ignored it.

Patrick had to put her out of his mind. He remembered everything about her—her touch, her smell, her taste. His favorite thing was her laugh, if you could even consider it a laugh. It wasn’t a laugh, but a burst of sound that fell out of her mouth when something was really funny. He could always tell the difference between her fake laugh and when she actually thought something was extremely funny. He lived for those moments. Now, he’d never be able to hear it again.