Alex exhales. “Quiet. Broody. Shut down. The kind that makes the room feel colder.”
“That’s not unusual for him,” I say.
“No,” Mark agrees. “But this was different. He wasn’t chasing anything. He wasn’t looking for distraction.”
Alex picks it up. “He kept saying he didn’t want… this.”
“This,” I repeat.
“Feelings,” Alex says. “The real kind. The kind that come with expectations.”
I don’t respond.
Mark continues. “He said he’d spent his whole life avoiding exactly that. And then suddenly—there you were.”
My chest tightens. I hate that it does.
“He wasn’t looking for it,” Alex says. “And that’s what scared him.”
“So you took him clubbing to get him out of the house,” I say flatly.
“Yes,” Mark admits. “Because we’re idiots.”
Alex snorts. “Because we thought he needed noise. Something familiar.”
“And instead,” Mark says, “he drank.”
“How much,” I ask.
Alex grimaces. “More than I’ve ever seen. He doesn’t do that.”
I shake my head. “No. I can't imagine he does." Not a man who thrives on control.
“He left,” Mark says. “Drove.”
That snaps my attention back hard. “After drinking like that?”
“Yes,” Alex says. “Reckless. Out of character. Stupid.”
My jaw tightens. “Go on.”
“He went home with someone,” Mark says. “Did what he did.”
There it is. Why couldn't he just tell me that?
“And hated himself for it,” Alex adds immediately. “Not in a performative way. In a real one.”
I scoff. “That’s convenient.”
“I know how that sounds,” Alex says. “But he wasn’t proud. He wasn’t detached. He wasn’t even really present.”
“Then why do it,” I ask.
Mark meets my eyes. “Because it was the fastest way he knew to shut everything down, to act like himself again.”
I look away. “That’s pathetic.”
“Yes,” Alex agrees. “And a little disgusting.”
