Heartbeat Repeating - E.M. Lindsey Page 0,24

know this day is hard on them too. Your mam…” He doesn’t finish the sentence because all these years later, the one blow that doesn’t soften is knowing that other people lost Gabrielle too.

“She does her own thing,” Alejandro says. He knows he should try and be there for her, but he and his mother had never seen eye to eye on how he coped with all of this, and he just doesn’t have the strength to give it a go.

He taps out his comforting rhythm on his phone with his nails.

One, two, three…tap tap tap. Four, five six…tap tap tap. Seven eight nine…tap tap tap.

Ten… tap

He knows Connor’s watching him, but he doesn’t care. He’d tried to hide his quirks back in the early days of their relationship, even when Connor swore he was okay with the man that he was. But it doesn’t matter now. There’s no point in caring what he thinks.

“I need to talk to you,” Connor says after a beat. He’s watching the swing, not Alejandro. The breeze has picked up, and it’s rocking gently in the wind. He imagines Gabrielle in it, but the image of her in his head is starting to fade. “My husband wants to be there tomorrow.”

He stiffens. Angry, acidic words dance on his tongue. That man has no place, no right, no business…

“I told him I’d talk to you. And I can see your face, Andro, I know what you’re thinking.” Connor sounds frustrated—and rightfully so. “He shares my grief and loss every day. And he’s…he’s her family too.”

He wants to rage and hit something. He wants to splash his hot tea right in Connor’s face. He wants to fall to his knees and dig his nails in the frozen earth and scream. The change is too much. It’s drawing him further and further away from his grief which has grounded him in ways it probably wasn’t supposed to. And it feels like Connor is robbing him of the one thing that’s keeping his head above water.

He swallows. He doesn’t do any of those things

Instead, he flicks on his phone screen and then startles because it opens right up to Avery’s photo. His eyes instantly lock on Avery’s grin, at the cheeky way his face is turned and the way his delicate fingers dig into his hip.

“Is he your…?”

“He’s nobody,” he says, and he swears he tastes blood in his mouth from the sharp lie he allowed his tongue to form. He’s not nobody. He’s damn-near everything.

“And how badly would he hate you for saying something like that?” Connor challenges, and at that, he really wants to snap, because Connor has no idea.

Alejandro strokes the phone screen with his thumb even though it’s off now. The image is still burned into his mind and will be for a while. It’s a temptation—a promise of things he’s allowed to have if he only reaches out to take them. And Avery is hurt because he knows Alejandro never will.

“It’s complicated,” he finally says, “and none of your business.”

Connor breathes out a sigh, then shrugs. “I’m bringing him with me. Telling you was a courtesy.”

It was only a matter of time before Connor cut the last string between them and let everything that was clinging to his edges fall into the void—including Alejandro. But the freefall was less terrifying than he was expecting.

“Tell me his name again,” Alejandro says. He knows it, but his brain is a bit like a scrambled egg right then. Everything around him seems too bright and too loud, and his mouth tastes like copper.

“Aron,” Connor says, with something like reverence. “He’s a professor. He’s teaching the boys Welsh.”

That makes him laugh—just a quiet, huffing thing because he remembers the first time he met Connor—a proper Welsh lad who had grown up in Gwynedd, and he expected him to know all the words. He remembered Connor pretending like he could speak it—then getting caught in the lie. They’d borrowed a language dictionary from the university library and learned for a week before they got bored and gave up.

In his periphery, he sees Connor smile and shrug. “You’d like him.”

Alejandro knows that’s a lie because he doesn’t like anyone. He never really had—but people had intrigued him and that had been the closest he’d ever gotten to friendship, even when he was young. And with Connor, it had come with tossing off in supply cupboards, and eventually sex in Connor’s little flat—and marriage had just seemed to make sense