Don't Tell My Brother

Chapter 40 - Leap of Faith

"Where is he?" Lucas searched wildly around the clearing, eyes scanning every inch, but there was no mistaking it. Damien was gone. "Mallory, where is he?"

He was panicking. Definitely, definitely panicking. His heart rate had spiked, fast enough that he could feel it stuttering in his chest as his eyes were drawn to the fence at the edge of the cliff. No. No.

Mallory seemed to have had the same thought. "He wouldn't." She said, but she didn't sound sure.

"How do you know?" Lucas bit back, surprised at how sharp the words were as they left his mouth.

Because it seemed unlikely, but if Damien had been drunk and emotional, emotional because of what Lucas had done, there was a possibility he'd try and... He couldn't even think it. He wouldn't. Right?

Lucas scrambled to the railing at the cliff's edge. Clinging on, knuckles white against the cold metal, he practically threw his upper body over the bar to look down at the cliff face below, pressing his glasses to his face to ensure they didn't fall off. Mallory appeared at his side a moment later.

"Thank god." She breathed, and they let out identical sighs of relief.

There wasn't a soul in sight at the bottom of the cliff. No crumpled, broken body either. The panic still had adrenalin coursing through his veins, and despite the fact that he knew Damien hadn't jumped Lucas still found himself examining the ground below.

"Lucas, it's fine. He didn't jump, I told you he wouldn't have. He's drunk and sad, not suicidal." Her attitude was back, but Lucas could see that her knuckles were as bone-white as his on the railing.

"You didn't know." He muttered, releasing the handrail and stepping back from the edge, taking deep breaths in the hopes it would calm his pounding heart.

"Well, now that we do know, we need to work out where he actually is." Mallory turned in a slow circle. "Where is he?"

The trees gave no answers. Not even the animals were moving about any more. No signs of life.

"I don't know." Lucas was grasping at straws, searching for a solution. The breathing hadn't worked, the panic wasn't abating. They had to find Damien. He wouldn't be able to get home from here drunk, and spending the night in the forest seemed fraught with danger. And, Lucas knew, it would be his fault if something happened.

Mallory was still talking. "Thanks. Really helpful. You know, if I'd known you'd be such a dead weight, I wouldn't—"

"Shut up." Lucas snapped, harsher than he'd meant to. The words echoed in the clearing, the only sound that could be heard. "Mallory, please. Just shut up." She opened her mouth to speak, a frown creasing her perfect face, but Lucas got there first. "Look, I get why you don't like me. And I'm sorry, because it's probably hard and unfair and makes you very upset, but that's not my fault. I'm not keeping him from you. Lashing out at me is not only going to make my life worse, which I know you don't care about, but it'll make things worse for Damien too." He took a breath. Once the words started coming, they just wouldn't stop. "I like him so, so much." Almost like something else, something much stronger, but that kind of confession wasn't for Mallory's ears. "So if I can fix things tonight, I intend to be in Damien's life for as long as he'll have me. And if his best friend is treating me like dirt, don't you think that'll put him in a really difficult position? We're going to find him, and I'm going to fix this, but it would be much easier if you weren't being so awful."

It seemed the word vomit had ended. Lucas took a step back, trying to figure out if he'd made things worse. Uncontrolled, messy, his torrent of words had spilled out across the forest floor, and Mallory was left standing knee-deep in them, looking stunned. Mouth slightly open, delicate, brush-stroke brows raised.