Heartbeat Repeating - E.M. Lindsey Page 0,73

will start again—he’ll have the final semester of his senior year to finish. He’ll have money to get it all done—enough to pay for grad school and then some. He can go anywhere he wants—be anything he wants. He can take that damned trip to Crete and bury his toes in ancient sand and lose himself in thousands upon thousands of years of history.

And some day—if he’s very, very lucky—the way he feels about Alejandro will fade into the background, and he’ll have room to love someone else just as much.

18

The Biggest Mistake

Alejandro knows what shock feels like. He spent over a year in a fog of it after Gabrielle was diagnosed. It took the first memorial of her passing to shake him awake, and then the grief hit him. As time passed, he felt like he was being shredded inside, then rebuilt, only to be shredded again. He woke up from nightmares where he was coughing up the blood of his insides for a long, long time—but he hasn’t felt anything close to that until he walked through his penthouse and realized that Avery was gone.

“It’s obvious you’re in love,” Connor had said over the phone just before everything crashed down around him. “Oh, cariad, I don’t know that I’ve ever heard you sound like this before.”

Connor wasn’t wrong. Alejandro has never, ever felt like this. He spent the day consumed with knowing that they couldn’t keep going as they were. He spent the evening watching Avery smile through his dinner and look at him with eyes wide open and wanting. And when his phone rang, and he saw Connor’s name on the screen, he knew this was his moment.

“I’m going to tell him,” he’d said just before they rang off. “I’m going to tell him everything, and I’m going to bring him home next year. For…” He stopped and swallowed around a lump. “For her birthday.”

He heard Connor choke on something like a sob, but the moment passed, and his voice was steady when he spoke. “I can’t wait.”

The empty penthouse mocks him now. Alejandro sat on the sofa and waited for nearly an hour, calling Avery over and over, texting, begging the universe to give him some kind of answer because he can’t find the line between point A and point B. He’s done something wrong, and he doesn’t know what, and there’s no bloody clues left behind.

Just Waller, who was working the lift that night and said he’d escorted a crying Avery to the lobby. And Michael at the desk, who confirmed he’d called a car for him to the airport.

All of Avery’s things are still there, though. Everything but his shoes and his phone. There’s no indication that he’s not coming back, but there’s no indication as to why he fled crying—or where the hell he was going.

The credit card company has the answer, of course. He’s booked a flight to New York. Where his parents live. He got up, and he walked out without saying anything—which says everything. He must have overheard, he thinks. He overheard Alejandro telling Connor just how much he wanted Avery to be his—properly—and Avery can’t face him to tell him the truth. To tell him it’s the last thing he wants. Avery’s kind, and he’s sweet. He won’t want to look into Alejandro’s eyes as he breaks his heart.

The sob lodged in his chest feels like it’s going to make a home there for quite a while, so he cracks open a bottle of scotch. He knows that the only way to stop feeling is to make sure he’s not awake as his grief—once again—chokes the life out of him.

Alejandro comes to a few days later. He’s been up and down, eating as much as he can choke down, showering when he can stand for long enough. Mostly though, he sleeps, and he drinks. He ignores his phone and misses meetings, and that’s when Louis shows up looking like he’s going to tie Alejandro down and beat him until some semblance of humanity returns.

Not that he cares. He’d gladly take it, because he’s waffling between numb and bleeding from the inside out, and some external pain would be more than welcome. He feels the tug on his wrist before his body hits the floor, and he swears under his breath as he climbs onto all fours and glowers up at his brother.

“You smell like actual shit,” Louis tells him. “What the bloody hell are you doing?”

Alejandro laughs through his