The moment Will left, Patrick sank onto the bed.

This was so stupid. So stupid. How could he have let it get this far?

He never should have taken on someone that he was attracted to, no matter how well he was going to play his part in the con. He never should have spent so much time with Will. He never should have taken him out to dinner or let Will kiss him in the alley.

This was his own fault. He never should have let it get this far. Will was all alone, his friends all in jail, of course he was going to latch onto the first person to show him true kindness. Of course he would think that it was… that this was something other than just…

Patrick punched a pillow. God dammit. This was supposed to be about finally getting revenge for Aunt Laura. He couldn’t allow himself to get distracted now, not when they were so close—when he, he was so close to his goal.

That was what he had to focus on. Aunt Laura was the only family he’d ever had. She was the only person he’d ever let get that close. He couldn’t let her down by getting distracted, not now. He owed it to her. She’d have done the same for him, he knew, if their situations had been reversed.

Patrick lay down on the bed, covering his eyes with his hand. What would Aunt Laura say about Will? What would she think of him?

What would she think of Patrick? What would she think of his behavior?

He could remember when he’d gotten his first boyfriend. Well, not boyfriend, really. He’d never been in one place long enough to have a serious relationship. He’d been sixteen, and Aunt Laura had known right away that something was up.

“Who is he?” She’d asked.

Patrick had been terribly nervous. He’d never wanted to be in someone else’s presence so badly. The boy’s name was Charles, and he insisted on it being Charles, not Charlie or Chuck or any other nickname. He was serious, and loved studying languages. Charles had been the one who’d taught Patrick Japanese. Fitting, considering he was the son of a powerful Japanese crime lord that Laura did a few jobs for.

For two weeks, he’d all but followed Charles around like a puppy dog. They had talked about going to Ireland to visit Charles’s mother, who was Irish and the one who’d named him (after her own father) and who had divorced Charles’s father and since then had nothing to do with her son. They’d fumbled around with each other underneath the trees in the orchard, and Patrick had tasted Charles on his tongue for hours afterwards.

Aunt Laura had been ecstatic for him. “Young love is just what you need,” she’d said. “You’re far too pent-up, Pat, you need someone who will help you relax and help you have fun.”

He thought she’d have liked Will, then.

He’d said goodbye to Charles, and had never seen or spoken to him again. That was how it went most of the time. In their world, the criminal world, you simultaneously knew everyone and yet never saw anyone or spoke to anyone ever. Everyone kept tabs on everyone else, but there were circles within circles, and people could disappear and reappear, and just because you knew every big player in South America didn’t mean you knew shit about who was who in Africa.

Charles had been serious. So had Martin, and Guillermo, and Piotr. Patrick was a serious person and he tended to be drawn to people who were equally as serious. Will was nothing like any of them. He was always ready with a joke and a wink.

Patrick rolled over onto his side and closed his eyes. If he imagined hard enough, he could pretend that Aunt Laura was standing in the bathroom, door open, while she washed her face for the night.

“What would you do,” he whispered into the darkness. “What would you do if you were me?”

That was easy. She would go after Will. She wouldn’t let anything get in her way, but that was how she’d gotten killed.

“All right, forget that. What would you tell me to do, if you were here and I was asking you for advice?”

The Aunt Laura in his mind’s eye paused, looking at him through the mirror. She’d say something… something about…

Life being short, something about that. That’s what she was always telling him. “Your parents were gone in the blink of an eye, and now all I can do is wish that I’d called your mom more often,” Aunt Laura would say.

Life was a joyride for Aunt Laura. Every moment was an opportunity to squeeze more joy and love out of it.

But what if he did try this out with Will and it blew up in their faces? Not just in the obvious way of being caught by Keene, but in the ‘we’re not really compatible and we hate each other’ kind of way? Could he survive that? He’d heard of a few couples in the business who ended up that way. They couldn’t even stand to work together. The idea of going from smiling at Will to hating him, or—even worse—to go from Will wanting to hold his hand and kiss him to Will not wanting to have anything to do with him… the idea hurt, more than Patrick thought that it would. He didn’t want to hate Will and he didn’t want Will to hate him.

He’ll hate you if you don’t get your ass in gear, the Aunt Laura of his imagination informed him.

“Oh, shut up,” Patrick said out loud, and then realized how stupid he was sounding, having a conversation with himself, pretending that someone who was long dead was still there. What was he, a child?

He rolled over and forced himself to go to sleep.