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“It was fucking unbearable, but it got so much worse weeks later, on the one night that brought it all together… the one Parker tried to warn you about.”
My stomach turned into a pit, hollowed by a sense of dread that had lingered around our relationship since the moment Parker begged me never to see Alejandro again. It wasn’t just the cautious red flags, it was the headlines, the secrets, the party that somehow tumbled into a lawsuit that entangled everyone I now knew. My mouth went dry.
“The party?”
“Another goddamn event I was pressured into, one that would’ve never happened had Natalie still been with me.”
“But why The Pierre?” I asked, already hopeless.
“It was just a venue, Gemma. With the movie in production, and my reputation on the line, it was just another motion to go through… another ridiculous request to promote an Alex Rivers film that got out of hand. I’m just a face to people, it didn’t matter what others said about me anyways.”
“It matters to me,” I said quietly. “You’re better than what others say. You’re not just a movie star that can be discarded easily for entertainment, because what I see in front of me is so much more; a living, breathing person with feelings. You aren’t this shell, Alejandro… they’re wrong about you.”
“No one’s wrong about me,” he graveled. “I am who I am. And regardless of how much I tried to distance myself that night, it doesn’t excuse that I still allowed it to happen.”
It broke my heart how his shoulders folded in, “I hate seeing you hurt.”
Alejandro shook his head. “No. Nothing could hurt me anymore, not like that night at The Pierre. I’ve already been hurt enough, starting from the moment I left the party—leaving to search for Natalie—to the moment I got back home…alone.”
I sat sheepishly still, aware of how quiet the entire theatre felt, the sound of blood rushing in my ears, interrupted by a deep chest-expanding breath.
“I don’t know if I have the courage to say it… how I came back home… how the place was empty and trashed, how little I cared,” Alejandro said from the bottom of his throat. “It was already so late, and I remember everything moving so slowly, pulling out my second pack of cigarettes that day, removing anotherTranquilloto smoke. I hadn’t even lit it when I walked into my dark bedroom, not bothering with the lights as I laid in bed…”
He caught me staring, our eyes locked, unbendable to the tears that sat there. He seemed so hesitant.
“You don’t have to tell me.” I tried to comfort, but he looked away.
“If I don’t tell you, no one ever will. Because I’m the only one who knows the truth, that Natalie came back for me… and I still don’t know if she was scared or angry, or if she wanted to apologize or cuss me out, because everything I ever wanted to ask or know was gone. I saw her, her eye caught in the flick of my lighter, split open from a punch…” Alejandro’s body leaned into mine.
“What?” I said under my breath, my eyes blinking.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like that…Shewasn’t supposed to be there. She came to my house, my party, a place where an addict should never have gone. And all I could do was whisper her name—over and over again—until I screamed it…shaking her, lifting her, begging and praying. But she never looked away, she never blinked, she just stared; her mouth filled with foam, my Dodgers cap in her hand…. a needle in her fucking arm.”
Alejandro furrowed his brow, grief torn on his face, the corner of lip twitching. I couldn’t help but swallow a sob, my face buried into his arm as I hid my tears, seared with the image he painted in my head.
I just couldn’t believe it, Natalie Brower, the girl from Instagram, the one everyone mentioned but no one could speak of, was a real person, someone who lived and breathed, who had an effect on the world and on Alejandro. And now she was gone. The secrets, the trial, the party and damages, all a mirage to what really happened. I began to feel sick.
“I’m so sorry, Alejandro.” I struggled to compose myself, feeling only a fraction of what I imagined he carried inside.
How he looked at me, how his scowl etched itself into my heart as I cried, was something I’d never forget.
“I never wanted you to see this… to know this hell, let alone relive it. It feels like I lost my mother twice,” he traced his finger across the black rose on his hand, stifling a breath I knew would break the tears in his eyes. I sat silent, mourning with him.
“Is this one for her?” I finally asked, brushing my thumb over the sorrowful black rose tattoo. It all made sense now; his knowledge on flowers, his ability to decode my dresses, their meanings held as closely to me as they were to him. It all stemmed from something more tragic.
“It is.”
“But I just don’t understand. None of this is fair…not what happened to her, to you. I don’t understand the lawsuit, I don’t understand how something so well-intended could ever go so wrong?”
“It was never about right or wrong. It was about punishment. After that moment it all just fell apart. It was me who found Natalie in my bed, it was me who called for help, but it was me who got arrested. They saw the bruises and assumed I hit her… That’s just how it’s always been. People see me a certain way… and they're right. I am violent, I am dangerous, but never to her, never to you…”
“We have to fix this. I can talk to Parker. There’s nothing here, nothing to charge you with.”
Alejandro shook his head against me.
“It’s not so simple,Preciosa. Sure, they couldn't charge me with anything, but there are other ways of making me hurt. It wasn’t until a few months later that I finally got the name that Natalie never wanted me to know. I was being sued for wrongful death, being held liable for the party that caused her accident, by Michael.” The unfathomable smirk on Alejandro’s face peeked with a disbelief that he still carried, as if this was all some sick joke. “He didn’t even attend her funeral, not that I would’ve recognized his face at the time, but I knew if I ever saw him that I’d kill him. So I stayed away, because I am my father’s disease.”
“That’s not true…” I argued. “Alejandro, you’re a good man.”
