Two Heartbeats on One Page

Chapter 20

Darcey was going to get Brett to talk to him even if it killed him.

With the job offer and the brunch prep and hanging out with Jordan, Darcey had mostly been able to put the bad things in his life out of his mind. But Brett's lack of response kept his worry simmering on the backburner, and now, with it getting on into evening, it was starting to bubble over.

Part of Darcey was angry that Brett was ignoring him, but the overwhelming majority was frantic to track him down because now he was sure Brett wasn't eating right. Darcey had no idea how long this had been going on. What if something happened to him? Darcey didn't know how much Brett restricted calories, whether or not he hydrated, how much physical activity he'd been doing and if his food intake was enough to keep up with it.

Each text slowly got more frantic, less controlled, until he was typing in run-on sentences with terrible punctuation.

Brett please call me or text me or something you're really scaring me are you okay?

It was almost 6:00, and nothing.

He still had a copy of Brett's apartment key. He'd meant to return it, but kept forgetting.

Thank god.

He grabbed his backpack and took the stairs down two at a time, despite how much everything hurt.

He grabbed Jess's car keys on his way out the door. She would know it was him. That morning she'd said he could take the car all day. He didn't have time to deal with the bus.

As he drove, his jaw was set hard, hands tensed on the steering wheel, eyes quick between the road and mirrors. Every action was quick, precise, no time or movement wasted because even one second could be the difference between everything being all right and everything falling apart.

When he got to Brett's apartment, he knocked even as he unlocked and opened the door, calling out, "Brett? You home?"

Nothing. He did a quick once over of the single room. The bed was rumpled and there was a blanket on the floor. The computer was on, humming softly even though the screen was dark.

The bathroom door was cracked. Darcey knocked. "Brett?"

Nobody answered. He peered in. It was empty, too.

The full length mirror had a bed sheet tacked over it. A sharp, cold wave of panic crashed through him and he took a step back, his hand shooting to his mouth.

"Fuck."

He'd been clinging to the hope that he was just overreacting, that it really was just stress like Brett had been insisting. But if it was bad enough for him to need to hide his mirror? He must have been in full relapse.

Where was he? He could be sick somewhere. If this had been going on long enough, he could even faint. What if he fainted while he was driving?

Darcey pulled out his phone as he headed back to Brett's computer. It wasn't password protected, so he went straight into AIM, logging Brett out and logging himself in. He scrolled through his phone to find Justin's handle as it booted up, typing him in as soon as it was online.

SincerelyMe: Justin. It's Darcey. Iffy gave me your contact information. Is Brett with you?

DominatedLoveSlave: He is, yeah. He has been most of the day. Did he tell you what happened?

Darcey swore under his breath and tried to keep his hands steady enough to keep typos to a minimum.

SincerelyMe: What? No, what happened?