Heartbeat Repeating - E.M. Lindsey Page 0,25

after that. He’d done him a disservice by being such a shit husband, but Connor is clearly very loved now, and it does something to soften the blow.

“What are their names? Your boys?” The words come out like a breath because it still hurts, but oddly less than he expects. He realizes it’s the anticipation of pain has been worse all this time, and something in him breathes a little easier.

“My oldest is Elis. He’s six,” he says, and Alejandro bites the inside of his cheek and nods. “Dylan is turning four next week.”

Alejandro sucks in his breath though he doesn’t mean to, and he dares himself to look at his ex-husband. “Are you scared?”

It might be the first real, honest thing he’s asked Connor since it all happened. He watches Connor swallow, watches his gaze turn down toward his feet. Watches as his hands clench and his knuckles go very white.

“I’m petrified,” he says after a while. His words are nearly a whisper, barely audible over the wind, but Alejandro feels them deep in his bones. “Every time either of them trip and fall or get a headache…” He shakes his head and doesn’t look up, and for the first time in eight years, Alejandro can barely resist reaching out and putting his arms around him. “The chances of it happening again are so slim, it’s…it’s nothing. But I can’t…it’s so hard to…”

Connor is close enough that Alejandro can spread his legs a little wider, and his knee bumps into his shoulder. When Connor doesn’t pull away, he leaves it there. It’s a small concession—a small comfort, but Connor’s lips turn up just slightly, and Alejandro feels like he’s done something right for the first time in years.

“You’re braver than I am,” he says.

Connor scoffs. “I don’t think bravery has anything to do with it. I was hiding for years. I wanted to feel anything except that ache that made me want to rip my own throat out. I couldn’t cry anymore, but tears were the only thing that relieved the pressure.”

Alejandro can’t relate. It wasn’t like that for him. But he still gets it. “What did you do?”

“I went to clubs and let people use me. Then I caught an STI. It scared the fuck out of me, and for six months, I barely left the house. I met Aron at a club a few months before that—he was one of the people I took home. He showed up a ways into my spiral. It was pretty disgusting.”

Alejandro knew that Connor had moved into a flat in Cardiff after the divorce, but hadn’t given the address to anyone, and Alejandro fled to the States and never bothered to look for him. Now he feels like maybe he did something wrong, even if that mistake set up something good for Connor.

“He didn’t judge me. He stuck around even when I was at my worst.” He swallows thickly and lets out a tense laugh, dragging his hand through his hair. “He cleaned the place whilst I showered, and he moved one of Gabby’s drawings I’d put up on the fridge. I…I lost it. I threw a mug at him, and I couldn’t stop screaming. I tried to swing a fist at him but I missed and landed in the shards. Ended up needing seventeen stitches.” He holds up his hand, and Alejandro can see a long scar going up the outside of his pinky. “He waited three weeks to come back—brought pizza. I didn’t talk about her with him though, not until after Elis was born.” He stops and glances around, and Alejandro knows what he means.

“Did it help?”

“No,” Connor answers, his tone brittle. “It made it worse at first—just like therapy did. It made it raw again—made it feel new. Like it was going to start all over. But then, over time, I realized it didn’t.”

Alejandro hoards the idea that in spite of all this, the one thing he and Connor will always have is their years with her. No one can take them, or share them, or dim them. That time is theirs to keep, even if the memories fade.

“Have you told yours?”

Alejandro blinks, then he stares down at his phone screen and shakes his head. “He doesn’t know.” He doesn’t deny that Avery is his though—because it’s true in more ways than one.

“There’s a rumor that he’s your,” Connor doesn’t say the words but he lifts a brow and Alejandro shrugs.

“We don’t fuck. I just give him