Heartbeat Repeating - E.M. Lindsey Page 0,52

had come from his own chest.

“Brain cancer,” he says, because he doesn’t want to recount the proper words for what killed her, even though it was drilled into him by specialist after specialist until he was forced to sit down and accept she wasn’t going to survive it. “It was fast.”

He waits for Avery to say something. I’m sorry, most likely, because that’s what they all say. They want to hug him but don’t—and he’s grateful for it. But they always get kind of wobbly and teary and say I’m sorry, and he knows they’re thinking of their kids or of kids they love. How unimaginable it is. And he gets it, but it makes him angry because they probably won’t ever have to live it.

But it feels oddly softer now.

And Avery doesn’t apologize.

He does set a hand on Alejandro’s side, though, and guides him to a chair. Alejandro feels his knees give out as he sits, and Avery steps in close, wrapping fingers around the back of his neck and holding him tight. Alejandro feels small, suddenly, and possessed. Avery steps in even closer, and Alejandro can smell his cologne and soap. After that, he can’t stop himself from wrapping his long arms around Avery’s slender waist and burying his face in the soft flesh of his belly.

He doesn’t cry, though he waits for it. But he doesn’t feel particularly sad. Just a little empty, like he always does, and he takes a moment to wonder why he let himself go this long without opening up to someone.

Turning his face to the side, he taps his rhythm out on Avery’s side, and he hears Avery whisper the count under his breath. Something in him jolts—hard—then settles into place because it means Avery has paid attention. He licks his lips and turns his head, pressing his other cheek to Avery’s stomach. Something feels heavy in his chest, so his eyes search out blue.

A book. A pen on the desk. The corner of a painting. Two more things and I won’t have to let this go.

A paperclip inside a jar. A thumbtack.

He shivers a little bit, and he hates himself for feeling like this even though he can’t help it. His brain is just wired this way and active coping is so much more exhausting because he’s tired of being panicked all the time. He’s tired of running against the current.

“What was her name?”

It feels like hours since anyone’s spoken, though only minutes have passed. Alejandro doesn’t lean away, which is just as well because Avery’s holding him so tight, he probably couldn’t sit back if he tried.

“Gabrielle.”

Gabrielle Elise Santos. Her name was like lyrics to a lullaby, and he remembers making up songs for her as he walked her up and down the halls in her months of endless colicky screams.

He remembers being hateful that she wouldn’t sleep. He remembers feeling regret at choosing parenting. And he remembers three years later, sitting on the floor of his bedroom with his knees pressed to his chest, sobbing and asking Connor if he caused this because he had wanted a reprieve when she was being so much.

Connor’s words meant nothing at the time. Nothing could soothe him. His insides were a live-wire, volatile and dangerous, and they burnt his marriage from the inside out. Though, he acknowledges again, it was already starting to char long before Gabrielle arrived.

“We were married almost twenty years before we got a surrogate,” he tells Avery. He turns his face and rubs his nose in the younger man’s soft shirt before breathing in the scent of him. “Neither of us wanted to admit it, but we were trying to save our marriage.”

Avery brushes fingers through his hair, a slow drag that catches on his scalp a little, but it feels good. No one has ever touched him like that, he thinks. Not his parents, not Connor. Not random lovers who came before. He wants to stretch up into it like a cat, and he barely restrains himself.

“Did you love him?” Avery asks. “He was really hot.”

Alejandro lets out a noise that could be a laugh, but he doesn’t trust himself enough to be sure. “I did. We were neither one of us our first choice, but we made sense. He’s very kind.”

“Do you hate him?”

“I did,” Alejandro confesses. “But I hated everyone and everything after it happened.”

I still do. The three words hang silent between them, but he knows he doesn’t have to say them aloud. There’s