Robin
I’Mplagued by constant rain flooding my apartment, yet I can’t fill up my watering-can from the gushing water that reaches my knees. I know I haven't checked on my plants in days, but every time I peer into one of my pots, they’re swept from my hands by the water leading out under my front door. The gap isn’t big enough for me to escape my watery doom and it only just occurs to me that I’m probably causing water damage to the floor below.
Grunting, I sit up in an unfamiliar bed, but the scent of him and the warmth of Wren’s body brings me back to reality. Grey light filters into the bedroom, but it’s still dark outside–dawn barely breaks, so it must be incredibly early. There’s no patter of rain against the window and that means the storm must have stopped. Hopefully when the day starts, sunshine can break through and it may resemble summer once more.
It means we might be finally able to leave.
My tongue feels like sandpaper against the roof of my mouth causing me to wince, suddenly incredibly thirsty, but I can’t see a drink from my position in bed. Wren is fast asleep, his leanbody pressed into the mattress, so all I can see is the slow rise of his tattooed back. The ink there is black and grey, like the rest of his body. He truly is a work of art; a London creative in its finest form.
Slipping out from under the covers, I dodge the discarded towels on the floor and silently thank him for putting clothes on me whilst I passed out from the best orgasm of my life. Should I be worried I felt so safe with him, allowing him to get me ready for bed when we’ve only known each other maybe a week? Probably, but the way he speaks to me, the words he uses, and the way he looks at me like I’m everything, melts my well-constructed walls down for him. I want this, and he clearly does too.
Quietly entering the bathroom, I don’t turn on any lights but locate a cup on the sink and ease the tap slowly to fill it up. After drinking two glasses of water, I feel better and decide against using the toilet because I really don’t want to wake him. Inching the door closed, I’m swimming with pride in myself for being so quiet, when my foot makes contact with the luggage I haphazardly took out of his case last night and I stumble onto my knees. Cursing under my breath, I wait to see if Wren stirs, but he must be in a deep sleep because his breathing never changes. Sighing to myself, I rub my knee and start on returning his clothes to the suitcase. I made the mess; I should at least be the one to straighten the place up. Shaking out a pair of his trousers, I turn them the right way to fold, when a long strip of paper falls out onto the floor.
My entire world shifts, eyes shooting to his body on the bed as I drop the jeans and retrieve the paper. This can’t be what I think it is, but mentally I loop the final thread on my murder board and I remember that we had found a hand-written secret for Wren.
How have I been so stupid and forgotten?
My mouth is dry again and with shaky fingers, a trembling bottom lip, I peel it open and read.
Mr Wilson isn’t the noble friend we all think. He’s been accepting bribes from Mr Buchanan, covering up for Daisy after a little OD accident at his London apartment.
If I had any actual food in me, I’d be sick. In fact, my body tries to expel all traces of him from my body as I feel bile rise, and I try to silently dry-heave into my palm. The tears come fast and they burn, panic licking up my spine. It was right there in front of me.
He’s lying!
When I mentioned the theory about someone writing second secrets, he’d agreed, but kept the heat off himself because I never mentioned he was included in that list. It meant he’d have two secrets, but he also kept from me that he’d already found his second.
I think of his hatred for Corbin, his fist hitting his face, his curiosity in me–which was relentless, and I saw his disdain whenever another male came near me right from the start of the weekend. Could he have hurt Corbin to keep this a secret? Phin would have never forgiven him for getting involved with his brother. Jesus, both him and Lily could be in so much trouble if this came out.
How had any of this been kept out of the press? The Claythorne pockets went deep, connections too, but if Wren had taken the fall, why wasn't it plastered over news outlets?
My mind swims as my world turns on its axis and I just need to get out of this room before I’m suffocated. I don’t want him to wake up because I can’t speak to him right now, my illusion of safety shattered.
I don’t grab anything as I leave and I’m not being as quiet as before, I just need out of this room. With less light in the corridor, a few lamps cast shadows on the wall, but I’m dumped into darkness outside his door because the lamp here hasn't been fixed. Everything is deadly silent as I tip-toe down the corridor, my bare feet making no noise against the carpet. My mind is in overtime trying to talk myself out of what I just found, the secret still clutched in my palm.
Did Jay know what he did? I’d been so distracted by him this entire time I’d barely acknowledged how Starling was starting to circle, asking more and more questions about me to everyone. Did he want to misdirect them? Keep me feeling safe and sweet when he was keeping lies from me? Wren had been reading my novel, I’d seen him, we’d spoken about it. He knew the order of the murders and could have bypassed them by the time Corbin's murder had been committed. The poisoning had been skipped, but Jay being stabbed in the stomach with a kitchen knife was straight out of my imagination. The fourth victim would drown, the last replicating a murder from years ago of someone falling from a window. It was close to home, but Phin had actually allowed me to use it and even helped write a prologue which could be straight out of a nightmare.
In my book, it was the wife, not a far cry from the pretend husband Wren had been as part of the murder mystery. Was this all a game to him? Nothing made sense right now as my brain spun. It hurt to breathe, but I was rounding the final corner to my own hotel room when I abruptly stopped outside the open door and remembered the lock had been broken. If I stayed here, he could easily get to me. I wouldn’t be protected. I need to find Phin, get us both away from him.
Turning to go to Lily’s room instead, I see the flash of a shadow move in the open doorway, but they're too quick and I'm too late to figure out it belongs to a person. Words freeze in mythroat and before I can say anything or run, an arm shoots out, grabbing me by the hair. My scalp burns as I let out a cry, but a gloved palm covers my mouth and on instinct I try to fight, but it’s no use. I scratch, claw and kick my heels into the large body, but they don’t budge. The stench of chemicals burns my eyes from the soaked cloth pressed into my face, a gloved thumb pressing over my nose as my vision starts to blur and a fog settles into my brain. It’s disgustingly sweet. Is this what being starved of oxygen feels like? It fucking sucks. Still screaming, I don’t give up trying to get away until I’m violently shaken and a wave of nausea makes everything go dark. My body hits the floor with a loud whack, but my brain doesn’t register any of the pain, just a sickening fog that is rolling in over all my senses.
Would Wren do this to me? I don’t think so, but I no longer feel safe with anyone in this hotel. I just need to find Phin, he's with Lily and then the three of us will be ok.
My brain is shutting down so fast that I don’t even have time to accept my fate. I don’t see a visual montage of my life like people assume comes with death. There’s no bright light, no ghost to take me yonder and I start to think maybe this isn’t death then. I've never given it much thought, but I’ll be pretty disappointed if after how hard life is, you just switch off and there isn’t any bliss in the afterlife.
I can slightly sense that my body is moving now, friction against my bare skin and the carpet as I’m dragged. I shout at my body to move, to grab onto something or start to fight again, but it does nothing. I can’t connect to myself anymore, but I know I’m suddenly cold, wet, and uncomfortable.
This just can’t be it, but I’m positive it is.
Chapter twenty-four
Wren
THEwords had been right there on my tongue, ready to tell Robin the truth. Instead, I had deflected as always, replacing what could have been the right moment, with a flood of guilt. I felt like such an asshole. While she has always been honest with me, wearing her heart on her sleeve; what had I done? I’ve been lying to her from the moment we met. Not only did I keep Phin's relapse a secret from everyone, but he will strangle me on her behalf when he finds out what I've kept from him too.
Right after we found what I thought was my secret, I came upstairs to find the one Corbin had planned as part of the game, snuggly placed on my pillow. It would have ruined fifteen years of friendship and if gotten out, probably my career. His own sister would have dragged me down screaming, especially without her older brother to protect her as always. This shouldn’t be my priority, but it would have ruined anything I was grasping at with Robin before it even started, so I kept it from her and tried to push her away. I really did try, but seeing how hurt she was when I rejected her—it fucking killed me. She sawthrough the bullshit and right then I doubted whether I could ever be without her.
She’d been on the right track guessing someone is seeking out their own penance by revealing worse secrets. If Corbin had known about Merle's affair, that would have been the secret we found; the debt was just a sprinkle in conversation to make sure his brother left him. Family name was everything to a man like him, so Phoenix’s behaviour wasn't acceptable. Not amongst their circles. As head of their family he couldn't step out of his perfect esteemed path, so it doesn't take a genius to figure out how he felt.
