Heartbeat Repeating - E.M. Lindsey Page 0,14
He also pitches his voice to be heard over both the engine and the space between them, so Alejandro considers for a long moment pretending like he can’t understand him. “Mamá would love to meet him.”
Alejandro turns in his seat and gives him a flat look. “Oh, absolutely. It’s good to see you, Mamá. May I introduce the man I’m paying an absurd amount of money to…” He doesn’t finish, and Louis snorts a laugh.
He’s very much the younger brother, and Alejandro envies him so much he aches with it. Louis is effortless, and he’s charming. He has a golden touch that shows in his business dealings, and in the way he keeps his home, and how their parents still dote on him. He’s single now, but it shows in the way he chooses his partners—all of them beautiful and cunning and perfect, just like Louis.
All of the things that make him the man he is also shows in the two children he has with his college sweetheart. Their dark hair and dark eyes and round cheeks and infectious laughs are a reflection of their father. And god, Alejandro loves them, but being around them is still too hard.
It’s why they’re not on the plane. It’s why Louis left his children behind to accompany him on this trip like he’s done for the last eight years—alone and mostly quiet. Giving him shit about anything and everything except Gabrielle and Connor.
He bites the inside of his cheek, and he releases the little orca, laying his hands on the arms of his chair as Louis slides into the seat across from him. He doesn’t offer a drink because he knows that while Alejandro wants it—desperately—he won’t take it.
“How long are you going to keep doing this?” his brother asks, leaning over his thighs to catch his gaze.
“What this?” He raises his brow, baiting Louis. “Oh, you mean how long am I going to keep paying Avery to suck my…”
“I know you’re not fucking him—in any capacity,” he interrupts sounding impatient. “I’ve seen the poor bastard more than once, and he’s miserable. No one getting a good dicking has any right to look that unhappy, Andro.”
Alejandro feels his wince on a visceral level, and he turns his gaze out toward the sky. “Avery knew what he was signing up for.”
“Of course he did. He was a broke college kid who got paid a thousand dollars to wash your Bentley with Dawn dish soap.”
“Seven hundred,” he corrects absently, because he knows down to the very cent how much he’s spent on Avery. Not that it matters, but somewhere in his head he thinks maybe if he can reach the magic number that feels right—something would…something would give.
“And probably hundreds of thousands more now,” Louis says, but he doesn’t sound judgmental. He never sounded judgmental, and that’s one of the reasons Alejandro both loves and hates his brother. “But I’m talking about Gabri…”
“Don’t,” he snaps, because he’s still too raw. Eight years later and he’s raw because he can’t let go. Because maybe, if he’d just been able to do things differently…if he hadn’t been so bloody, shitting busy with work, he might have noticed the headaches or the way she started limping, or how her face sagged a little bit on the left side a little bit sooner. He might have seen it before her body started to fail, before they had to rush her into A&E—and maybe the words zero percent chance of survival wouldn’t have come out of the doctor’s mouth.
Louis holds up his hands and sits back. “Is Connor going to be there?”
Connor, yes. Connor who has a new husband and new children. Of course he’s going to be there. He’s there every year. He’s spent the last six years pushing for Alejandro to stop mourning her so hard and start celebrating the few short years they got to have her—but he can’t let go. And it proves what a good man Connor is that he indulges him in this. He shows up every year and allows himself to become a sort of verbal punching-bag because Alejandro’s pain has nowhere to go most of the year, and Connor has always been more resilient than him.
And Alejandro wants to hate him for it, but that’s only jealousy because his stupid fucking brain just will not allow him to let go, and Connor has never been burdened like that. He’d only been burdened by those three little letters of Alejandro’s disorder when he