Chapter 21 Wren #3
Phin is so still I think briefly his mind has shut down, or maybe we all need to jump behind the furniture because he’s about to lose his shit. He just stares at her with pale, empty eyes, unblinking as I see him completely deflate.
“So many secrets,” he says barely above a whisper, rubbing at his chin and looking down at his crossed legs. “You thought my boyfriend—ex-boyfriend, killed my brother and you didn’t say anything? You both–ugh.” He rocks forward, pointing a shaky finger between the two of us.
She takes his hands and he doesn't fight off her taut grip. “Phin, we obviously were going to tell you. I wanted to make sure my suspicions were right and that we had solid evidence to give to Detective Starling.”
“And in the meantime, it was fine for me to share a bed with him, try to patch up a broken relationship, whilst you potentially found proof for him to go to prison.” His tone starts to harden.
“Mate, we didn’t say anything in case we were completely wrong. What if we accused him of murder and he was innocent?” I step forward, but it only seems to piss him off more.
“Well, he didn’t do it! Merle might be a liar and a fucking cheat, but he wouldn’t kill my Brother.” He shouts. I try to approach him slowly, hovering over where Robin sits on the edge, but he shakes out of her hold and jabs a finger into the air. “This is so fucked, and you know it.”
“Phin, we’re sorry.”
“Objectively, Detective Starling said it has to be one of the guests. He was the only one we caught out in a lie and had more than one reason to have an altercation with Corbin,” she defends, swallowing thickly, and Phin allowed her to place her tiny hand on his knee. “I’m so sorry.”
Whilst I still received a glare from him, he softened for her.
“What do we do? We can't hide away in our rooms and wait for it to all blow over.
Someone's locked the gates, smashed the cars—no one even batted an eye.
I asked the detectives about our phones, he made me feel like I was wasting police time.
Now magically they found them, Jay's been murdered, whilst we've all been inside the hotel.” Willow crosses her arms, reminding us all of the bigger picture and she's right.
Due to the rain, it meant every guest over the course of two days stayed in the house.
My heart sank for the loss of my friend, but also his family that wouldn't be able to even get here when they were told of their son's death.
Even if they got through the closed bridge and serious flooding, how could anyone get through the gate?
“We could go around the lake and into the forest, find a way out?” Cardinal proposed, looking back out at the window at the dying light and thick droplets.
A knock on the door has all our heads snapping in the same direction. No one even breathes, until I remembered it’s my room, so I better be the one to open it.
Signaling for everyone but Robin to quietly go into the bathroom, I wait to hear the lock click, then I open the room door.
Detective Starling stands there with one hand tucked into his grey work trousers, the other clutching a phone that I’m half tempted to steal.
The longer we’re here, the more I worry about the guys, who probably would be losing their minds that both Bran and I didn’t return from our weekend away.
It’s not the first time one of us had disappeared for some space without naming a location, but we’d planned for a meeting to discuss the autumn tour this week, which obviously we’d missed.
Would the press class us as missing if they found out no one could get in contact?
So focused on the phone, I miss Lily standing behind him, hands clutched to her chest with eyes red-rimmed. She looks past me to Robin.
“Oh darling, have you heard? It’s so terrible.”
Starling clears his throat and shoots her a look over his shoulder.
“I thought it would be best if you knew we have cautioned your bandmate, Mr Redfern. We suspect he is involved in the murder of Jay Marshall. After giving me the secrets you found this morning, we will be taking him to the station.”
I blinked a couple of times, outrage wanting to bubble its way out of my body, but I’m just so fucking tired. All I want to do is go to bed and wake up when it's no longer flooding and Theo can whisk me the fuck out of here.
“You’re arresting Bran? Where’s his Brother?” Surely Merle could do something about this, stop them from taking him, I don't fucking know.
“Due to the weather and the storm coming, we’ve had to restrain him in his room. No one is going to interfere. Once the bridge is open and the roads clear, we’ll be taking him.”
“I know he was mad with Mavis last night, but finding out she was having an affair with his best friend must have pushed him over the edge.” Lily sniffles, the noise irritating.
Robin wedges herself next to me, widening the door.
Her presence grounds me enough to stop myself from biting at her friend, so I focused that annoyance on him instead.
“She wasn’t having an affair with Jay. You need to speak to Bran if you haven’t already. It’s not my place to say, but he’ll explain everything.” I defend.
“Protecting your friend right now isn’t the right thing to do. We found the secret, it said their characters were sleeping together.” She snaps, waving her hands in front of my face. “Hence, yes, they were having an affair.”
“Lil…” Roo sighs, but she sticks the same hand up and it pissed me the fuck off.
“No, don't defend him. He can’t protect all his friends from everything. We both saw the secret.”
She couldn’t know…could she? I begged myself to just slam the door in their faces.
It never occurred to me that Lily might be privy to any of her brother's secrets, not referring to the sibling stuffed in the ensuite. A satisfied smirk pulls at her features and it's unsettling. She thinks she’s gotten the upper hand and because I’m frozen with anxiety over what else could leave her lips, the only thing I can do is bite my nails into the door frame, until I feel anguished pain shoot down my nerve endings.
There’s a long list of things I have done in the past for Phoenix; things I’m not proud of and helped fuel my self-destructive media alter-ego when I couldn’t deal with the loss of Mum.
I never turned to drink, didn’t touch drugs, so I needed a vice that could be as hurtful to myself.
I hid it all under the guise of helping a friend, which wasn’t an actual lie because there wasn’t anything in the world I wouldn’t do for him.
He’s been my best friend through everything, so if the media wanted a bad boy, a true rockstar to villainize, why not give them that without tainting my soul.
The thing is, I didn’t just stop with Phoenix.
His sister's eyes glint with the power trip she could decimate me with, anf I believe she knows the extent of my lies.
I’d been waiting for this moment, hadn’t I? I’d been stricken with anxiety from the moment he’d called to say I had to attend this weekend. If Robin found out what I did, I’d lose her before we’d even begun.