Heartbeat Repeating - E.M. Lindsey Page 0,74

nose, the sound broken and ragged, and he sits with his back to the bed. “I’m wallowing.”

Louis says nothing, but he raises a brow.

“He left,” Alejandro finishes. “He…he’s just. He’s gone.”

At that, Louis drags one of the sitting chairs from the window and perches at the edge of it, staring down at the pathetic mess Alejandro has become. “So what? You were going to end it,” he points out.

Alejandro vaguely remembers telling his brother, right before he got on the plane. He remembers Louis scoffing and telling him he’d be better off changing the terms of his agreement so he can fuck some of his frustration away. The words hadn’t hurt then, but now he knows what Avery feels like under him. He knows what it’s like to push inside him, to hold him, to possess him. He knows what Avery’s fingers feel like as they draw soothing lines over his skin.

He will never, ever forget how right and perfect Avery felt as he curled into Alejandro’s arms like he never wanted to be anywhere else in the world.

And thanks to his fat mouth, he’s lost it. “I love him,” he says miserably, and Louis rolls his eyes.

“No shit.”

Alejandro’s jaw tenses, and he pushes himself up farther. “He walked out. I was on the phone to Connor and…”

His words are cut off when Louis laughs, and he narrows his eyes, so his brother throws up his hands like he’s the world’s biggest idiot. “You were in the middle of a love fest, and you rang your ex?”

Alejandro’s cheeks pink, and he glances away. “Don’t be stupid. Avery and I were having dinner. It had been…” It had been a good day, a perfect day, but there are no words to describe it. “We’d had a nice time, and I wanted to tell Connor that I was sorry for being such a pathetic shit for all this time. He rang me, so I took the call into my office.” He licks his lips and rolls his eyes up toward the ceiling. “He must have heard me, and he didn’t want to have to look at me when he broke it off.”

At that, Louis softens. He slides from the chair and scoots closer to Alejandro. He doesn’t touch, because he knows that Alejandro can’t stand it—but it’s odd because in this moment, it’s all he wants. But Louis is just the wrong man to offer it.

“It’s not like I blame him,” he says after Louis’ continued silence. “I’m a bloody mess, and Avery has so much potential. I wouldn’t have wanted me either.”

“You had every right to fall apart,” he says after a beat. “You lost your daughter.”

Alejandro flinches, but only a little. “Eight years ago,” he says very quietly. “I didn’t try hard enough to break the grief cycle. It was too easy to stay in it. It was too easy to let that be who I was.”

“Everyone knows it’s harder for you than for a lot of people,” he starts, and Alejandro lifts his gaze, and it quiets his brother.

“For the first time, someone made me want to be happy again. The moment I met him, cracks started to form in my routines. And my cycles got worse, because everything was different—but,” he stops, not quite sure how to explain it to a man who will never understand what it’s like to exist in a constant spinning carousel of compulsions that require a leap and a painful landing to stop them. And that’s only to know that in a few minutes, or hours—days, if he’s lucky—he’ll be right back on. But god, Avery made all the spinning and all the hard landings worth it. It will never end, but for the first time in his life, there are arms waiting to catch him—to help brace his fall.

“Have you phoned him?” Louis asks, and Alejandro gives him a flat look because he’s a disaster, but he knows how to function like a bloody adult. His brother puts up his hands in surrender. “Fine, obviously you phoned him. Where is he?”

“With his parents, I reckon,” Alejandro says, closing his eyes and dropping his head back against the bed.

“And you don’t know exactly why he left?”

Alejandro makes a frustrated noise. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? We were fine. The day had been lovely. He must have known how I felt, even earlier in the day—he had to. It’s probably why he panicked when he heard me speaking to Connor.”

Louis stops him with a gentle