The Brother She Was Meant To Love

Chapter 5

The car pulled through the gates and onto the main road, headlights sweeping over hedges Damien had known his whole life. He sat in the back with his bag at his feet, hands still, staring at nothing.

"Sir, we should be at the airstrip within the hour," the driver said, glancing at him in the mirror.

Damien didn't answer. He was thinking about the fountain outside the east gate of Newstar, the bench beside it, the note folded in his jacket pocket that he'd rewritten four times.

*I need five minutes. That's all.*

"Stop the car."

The driver's eyes flicked to the mirror again. "Sir, your father said..."

"I know what he said." Damien's voice came out steadier than he felt. "There's somewhere I need to go first. It won't take long."

The car slowed, then turned.

Jennie sat on the edge of the fountain, her legs swinging slightly, phone in her lap. The water behind her caught the streetlight in broken pieces.

*He said seven.*

She checked the time again. 7:20.

She let herself smile a little, alone in the dark. *He's going to ask me tonight. I know it.* The way he'd looked at her lately, the way his hands lingered a beat too long she wasn't imagining it. She'd rehearsed what she'd say back at least a dozen times this week, in the mirror, in her head during class, embarrassed at herself for how much she wanted it to be true.

*Please let it be true.*

She told herself it was fine. Traffic, maybe. Or his parents kept him for dinner longer than planned. She'd waited for him before, outside the library, and he'd always come.

8:00. She stood up, paced a small circle, sat back down.

*Maybe he changed his mind.*

She pulled her cardigan tighter. The night had gone cold in the way it did when the sun disappeared fully, and around her the courtyard had emptied out, other students gone home, the school's outer lights the only thing left burning.

9:00.

She stood, brushed off the back of her skirt, and didn't let herself look back at the bench again.

*He's not coming.*

She started walking toward the road where she usually caught her ride, phone gripped tight in one hand, throat tight in a way she refused to name.

The car came fast around the bend, headlights swinging wide across the road as it took the corner too sharp.

Jennie heard the engine before she saw it, looked up just as the light hit her.

She didn't have time to move.

---

Damien came through the gates on foot, having told the driver to wait at the curb, and crossed the courtyard at a near-run.

The fountain was empty.

He stood there a second, breath caught in his chest, scanning the benches, the shadows along the hedges. Nothing.

*She left. She is not here.*

He pulled his phone out, thumb already moving to call her, when he heard it a sound from the road beyond the gates, tires and metal and something underneath it that made his stomach drop before his mind caught up.

He ran.

The scene came into view in pieces. A car stopped at an angle across the road, its front end crumpled. A small crowd already forming at the edge, someone on their phone, someone else crouched low over something on the pavement.

Damien's legs kept moving before his mind agreed to it.

He pushed through the small crowd and went still.

Jennie lay on the asphalt, her cardigan torn at one shoulder, dark hair fanned out around her head, a line of blood tracking from somewhere near her hairline down the side of her face.

"Jennie." His voice didn't sound like his.

He dropped to his knees beside her, hands hovering, afraid to touch her and afraid not to.

"Someone call an ambulance," he said, then heard his own voice break and said it again, louder. "Someone call an ambulance now."

Her eyes moved beneath closed lids, a small sound escaping her, not quite words.

"I'm here," he said, taking her hand, gripping it too hard. "I'm here, I'm sorry, I'm here."

The wait for the ambulance felt endless and instant at once. He didn't remember most of what he said to her in that stretch, only that he kept saying it, low and constant, her hand in his the entire time, until paramedics pulled him back and lifted her onto a stretcher.

He rode in the ambulance. No one stopped him.

The hospital hallway was too bright, the fluorescent light flattening everything under it. Damien paced its length, hands laced behind his head, Jennie's blood still dried along his knuckles.

*My fault. If I hadn't been late. If I'd left five minutes earlier.*

A pair of double doors opened down the hall, and his mother came through them first, coat still half-buttoned, his father a step behind her, jaw set.

"Damien." His mother's voice was sharp, relief and fury tangled together. "What is going on. Your grandfather's men called saying you never arrived..."

"She's in surgery." His voice was flat, hollowed out. "I need to be here when she's out."

"You need to get in the car." His father's hand closed around his arm. "Now."

"I'm not leaving Dad." Damien pulled back, harder than he meant to. "Not until I know she's okay, if you both had not insisted I need discipline I would have been with her and none of this would have happened."

"Are you saying this is our fault, this is exactly the behavior your grandfather is meant to correct," his father said, voice low and furious. "A car accident is not your responsibility, Damien. You are not her family."

*Not her family.* The words landed somewhere he couldn't afford to feel yet.

"I found her mom all covered in blood," Damien said his hands and voice shaking. "I was the one who found her."

"And you'll be the one explaining to the school and to her parents why you were even there tonight, unless we handle this quietly." His mother's hand was already on his other arm now, both of them pulling. "You are not staying in this hospital overnight causing more talk than there already will be."

“But I can’t leave her,” Damien said trying to explain.

“Yes you can and you will,” his mom said pulling him away.

He looked toward the double doors one more time, the ones that had swallowed her twenty minutes ago, and let himself be pulled backward down the hall, each step further from her, until the doors were out of sight entirely.

***

Jennie surfaced slowly, the world arriving in pieces a ceiling, white and unfamiliar, a dull ache along her ribs, the beep of something steady beside her.

A shape came into focus at her bedside, leaning forward the moment her eyes opened.

"Jennie."

She blinked. "Jason?"

"Hey." He took her hand, careful, the way you'd hold something you were afraid to break. "You're okay. You're going to be okay."

Her mouth felt dry, thoughts slow to arrive. She remembered the fountain, the cold, the road. A car. Light, too bright, too fast.

"What happened," she managed.

"You were hit crossing the street." Jason's thumb moved over her knuckles. "I got there as fast as I could. Got you to the hospital myself."

Something in her chest wanted to argue with that, a detail that didn't sit right, but it slid away before she could catch it.

"Damien," she said instead, throat raw pulling her hand away from him. "Where's Damien. He was supposed to..."

Jason's expression didn't change, not even slightly. "He's not here, Jennie."

"But he found me." The memory surfaced, fragmented, a voice close to her ear, a hand gripping hers too tight, *I'm here, I'm here.* "I think he found me."

"That was me." Jason's voice was gentle, certain. He paused, like he didn't want to say the next part. "Jennie, Damien left this morning. For good. He's abroad now, Dad sent him there to complete his studies and manage the company he is setting there, I don't really know the details. He didn't tell you?"

The machine beside her beeped once, twice, steady in the silence that followed.

"No," she said quietly. "He didn't tell me anything."

*He was going to. Tonight. That's what I thought tonight was.*

Except it hadn't been that at all. He'd known he was leaving. He'd known and said nothing, let her sit at that fountain in the cold rehearsing a conversation that was never going to happen, while he was already gone.

*Maybe that's what he wanted to tell me. That he was leaving. And I was too busy imagining something else.*

Something in her chest folded in on itself, quiet and total.

"Okay," she said finally, she was feeling angry at herself for thinking he felt same way as her, she thought they were in sync and she almost died waiting for him all her fantasies was already dissolving into something small and foolish. "Okay."

Jason took her hand again and squeezed her hand once, and this time she let him hold her.

A month later, Damien found the smallest possible window a lapse in the rotation, a favor called in he’d rather not think too hard about and used it before it closed. If his grandfather found out, there would be no second chances.

He’d told himself he only needed to see her. Not speak. Just see her, know she was healing, and be back before the gap in the schedule was noticed.

The hospital corridor was quiet at that hour, most of the lights dimmed to half. He found her ward by memory alone, his hand already reaching for the door when he saw it was open a crack.

He looked through the gap.

Jennie sat up in the bed, laughing at something, her hair longer than he remembered, her hand resting easily in Jason’s. Jason said something else and she laughed again, leaning into him slightly, easy, unguarded, the kind of closeness that didn’t happen overnight.

Damien stood there and let himself watch a moment longer than he should have.

They looked happy.

She chose him.

He didn’t open the door.

He stood there another few seconds, memorizing the shape of her laugh through the gap in the doorway, and then he stepped back, quiet, careful, and walked the corridor in reverse until the ward was out of sight.

He was a gentleman. He’d made a deal. Whoever she chose, the other let go.

She had chosen.

He left the hospital the way he came, unseen, and didn’t look back at the building once.