PACKING THE BAGS

Blackwater Hall was quieter than I’d ever heard. It was not peaceful, but hollow. The kind of silence that hangs after a scream.

The Polaroids had followed me into my dreams, flickering like broken film reels: Hanna’s eyes, wide and knowing; the smiles from all those girls happy to finally meet their hero; the careful pen strokes beneath each name. I woke up gasping, my heart sprinting through my ribs, the memory of Julian’s voice still echoing:

“You weren’t supposed to see that.”

He’d stood beside me that night, not trying to stop me just watching as I fell apart. When I dropped to my knees, he crouched next to me like a mourner at a grave, wordless, shaking. I’d thought maybe that was guilt, or pity, or both. Now, I wasn’t sure it even mattered.

The sky was a bruised gray. My suitcase sat open on the bed, half-packed ; jeans, notebooks, charger cables, the contract I hadn’t signed all the way through. I stared at it until I could almost hear my mother’s voice saying ; 

Ava, you always know when to leave, but never how to stay.

I pulled another sweater from the dresser, folded it badly, and shoved it in. The house sighed around me, wood stretching in the damp. I hated that it sounded alive. 

Claire’s voice rang in my head, all clipped and professional: 

Charm him, provoke him, something. But get him talking.

I’d gotten him talking, all right  just not the way she’d wanted. I zipped the bag, grabbed my coat, and slipped into the hallway. My boots made soft sounds on the marble, like apologies.

The staircase loomed below, coiled and elegant like a serpent carved from oak. The ocean’s roar crept through the glass, steady, punishing.

Noah wasn’t at breakfast. The kitchen smelled faintly of burnt toast and whiskey. One of the housekeepers’ carts stood abandoned in the corridor, a half-folded towel draped over the side. Everyone had vanished.

I should’ve been relieved.

I wasn’t.

When I stepped into the main hall, he was already there.

Julian Vale.

Shirt half-buttoned. He looked like he’d probably been awake all night which wasn’t unusual for him but this time, he looked sickly. He leaned against the banister he looked like a ghost that refused to disappear.

“So that’s it?” His voice was hoarse. “You’re leaving?”

I froze at the base of the stairs, fingers tight on the suitcase handle.

“You make it sound like treason.”

“It feels like it.” 

“You think I owe you my presence?” 

“I think you owe yourself something better than running.”

That made me laugh, sharp and humorless.

“I think I saw enough yesterday to be repulsed by this place. I’m sorry If my first instinct is to run away from this house”

He winced.

“So when it gets hard, you just give up?”

“You gave up on those girls long ago Julian, by protecting your monster of a brother.”

I was spitting venom.

“You’re right,” he said quietly. “And I don’t want to make the same mistake again.”

“What a change of heart, Mr. Vale.”

The words slipped out before I could stop them, and the way his face shifted, that quiet stunned hurt made me hate myself a little for being right. He rubbed a hand over his mouth, eyes glinting in the watery light.

“You should know something,” he said finally. “Berlin…”

“Berlin! There’s always more with you, isn’t there? Another secret, another excuse.” I was ready to leave but my curiosity won.

He pushed away from the railing, closing the distance between us with slow, deliberate steps.

“You saw the attic. You think you know everything. You don’t.”

“Then enlighten me. What about Berlin? It’s not like I don’t know you lied to everyone, including yourself.” I gripped the suitcase tighter. “But make it quick. I’ve got a train to catch.”

That earned the faintest twitch of a smile more pain than humor.

“You won’t make it to the train,” he said softly.

“Try me.”

He looked down, took a shaky breath. When he spoke again, his voice sounded stripped raw.

“Berlin,” he said quietly. “After the last show.”

My pulse throbbed in my throat.

“You know the myth: overdose, tragedy, rockstar dies alone in a hotel bathroom. Clean. Simple. Marketable.” He shook his head. “But nothing that night was clean.”

“Then what really happened?”

He laughed low, bitter. “He wasn’t alone. There was a girl Emilia. Fifteen. Maybe sixteen. One of those bright-eyed backstage kids everyone pretended were eighteen so they didn’t have to feel sick watching how sick the world can be.”

His jaw flexed.

“I saw Levi take her to his room. I knew his patterns. I knew that look. I walked in and she was backed into a corner, shaking. And he…” His voice cracked. “He had that fucking smirk he got when he knew he could ruin someone.”

He looked at the wall, as if the memory was projected there.

“I grabbed him and told him to stop. He shoved me. Called me all sorts of names, told me I was jealous because girls actually wanted him. Then he grabbed her wrist and said…”

Julian’s voice dropped to a whisper.

“She came here to meet a star, that’s what she’s getting.”

I felt the blood drain from my face.

“I got her out,” he said. “Took her down the hallway. She was sobbing so hard she couldn’t breathe. I told her to wait by the elevators. I gave her my jacket. I told her I’d walk her out when I was sure he wouldn’t follow.”

He rubbed his forehead hard, as if trying to scrub the memory away.

“I thought I’d scared him sober. But when I went back in… he was loading up again. Pills, liquor anything he could get his hands on. He looked at me and said”

Julian swallowed.

“You ruined my life, you made me that way.’”

The words seemed to hang in the air like smoke.

“We fought. Really fought. He punched me in the mouth. I slammed him into the dresser. He laughed while he bled. Told me the band didn’t need a conscience. And I…”

His eyes glistened.

“I snapped.”

He took a shuddering breath.

“I poured him another drink and slipped the rest of the pills in. I told myself it would knock him out for a few hours long enough to get Emilia out of the building”

His voice faltered.

“I miscalculated.”

He stared down at his trembling hands.

“He started convulsing. I froze. I told myself I’d call when he passed out. But he didn’t pass out. He stopped breathing. Maybe I could’ve save him right here and there but I just saw all the faces of the people he hurt and deep inside I knew what I was about to do… And I think he knew too.”

He shut his eyes tight.

“He looked at me as he went with this grin I will never forget” Julian’s voice became a broken thing.

“‘Funny… I always thought I’d kill me, not you.’”

The room felt suddenly thin, like the air itself was grieving.

“So you…”

“I staged it,” he whispered. “Put him in the bathroom. Cleaned the glass. Wiped everything. I left around one-thirty. Maybe later. Everything after that is a smear.”

He finally met my eyes: hollow.

“That’s why no one heard anything. He died quietly. Slid off the toilet. No thud. No scream. By the time I left, the room was silent.”

My voice felt like glass.

“The report said the door was locked from the inside.”

He nodded weakly.

“Hotel doors can do that if you shut them hard enough. I knew it would look like he’d locked himself in.”

He inhaled shakily.

“The maid found him at three forty-seven. Her scream is the one the world heard. Not mine. Not his.”

His jaw trembled.

“I let him die. And I let everyone believe it was fate, or addiction, or God’s punishment anything but me.”

I felt something inside me crack.

“You let him die,” I whispered.

“Yes.”

“And Emilia?”

A weak, fragile breath.

“I got her to a taxi. She kept asking if he’d follow her.”

He bowed his head.

“And I told her he never would again.”

“Our eyes locked, there was an understanding between us ; it was silent, raw but sweet. 

His eyes closed, and when he opened them again, they were wet.

“ I thought I was saving her” He finally said. “And all the others. I thought I was redeeming myself… It was my ticket out of this mess.”

The sound that escaped me was half laugh, half sob.

“You killed your brother to stop him from becoming worse?”

“I killed my brother because I was too much of a coward to do anything else,” he said quietly. “I thought one death would end it. I thought silence could save the living.”

I took a step back.

“You should’ve gone to prison.”

“I know.”

“You should’ve confessed years ago.”

“I tried,” he said. “Nobody believed me they all thought I went psychotic after his death. The paparazzi pictures didn’t help”

I felt my throat close.

“And now you want me to write the real one?”

He didn’t move.

“You’re the only one who can. At first I thought the memoir would be another charade, but then I met you and I saw something. Light.”

I shook my head.

“You think this is redemption? Letting a stranger absolve you on paper?”

“No,” he said. “It’s punishment. I want it on record. All of it.”

The suitcase handle slipped from my grasp. It hit the marble with a dull, final thud.

He took another slow step forward, close enough that I could see the tear tracks on his face, the trembling at the corner of his mouth.

“If you walk out that door,” he said softly, “you’ll spend the rest of your life wondering. And I’ll keep rotting quietly. Maybe I deserve that but not you. But if you stay just long enough to write it, you can end this story right.”

My hands shook. I wanted to believe him. I wanted to hate him more. Both feelings burned at once.

“You don’t get to ask that of me,” I said.

“I’m not asking. I’m confessing.”

We stood there, breathing the same ruined air. The storm outside hit the glass like applause for a tragedy.

Finally, I whispered,

“You’re a murderer and a coward.”

He nodded. “Yes.” He said in a whisper.

“And yet I still don’t know if I should leave.”

“That’s because you see the man I was,” he said. “Not the one I became after.”

I stared at him the wreck of a rock god, the man who’d burned his own brother’s shadow just to stop it from falling on someone else.

“I’m not staying for you,” I said at last.

“I know.”

“I’m staying for them, the girls.”

His mouth twitched not quite a smile, not quite defeat.

“That’s good enough.”

When I turned to go back up the stairs, his voice followed me, quiet, breaking apart:

“I just wanna out of this mess…”

I didn’t look back. But later, when I closed my bedroom door and pressed my forehead to the wood, I realized the suitcase was still downstairs.

And for the first time since I’d come to Blackwater Hall, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever really leave.