Fight for you

Part 19

Part 19

As Ryan told me the story of what happened I found it harder and harder to breathe. I didn't know what to think or feel, I felt nothing, numbness. As if someone had just sucked my soul out with a vacum cleaner. 

When he finished the story I began to process it slowly and come to terms with how I felt. When he said the part about when he saw my picture he knew he liked me that made me feel happy, when he told me he agreed to go with Caleb and was such a pushover I felt angry. When he told me they chased my brother and punched him I felt upset and hurt and when Ryan told me what Shauns last words were I felt loved. Shaun loved me and I knew it but every part of Ryan story made me feel different but anger soon became the most prominant feeling. 

"Zoe, please say something" Ryan said shaking me. His hand was on my shoulder, the same hand that must have stabbed my brother to death.

"Get off me" I said.

"What?"

"I said get your filthy hands off me!" I screamed before running off in the opposite direction. My head was in so many different places. I started to fall for the guy who murdered my only brother? I kissed the guy that stabbed my brother to death? It was all too much to handle. 

Part of me couldn't believe it was that simple. There had to be more to the story, there was no way it was just a simpe drug related murder and Shaun couldn't have been on drugs. I knew there was more and I had to find out. 

I ran up the stairs and into Shauns room before shutting the door behind me. I must have slammed the door harder than I thought because it caused the room to shake and the photo frame containing a picture of Shaun and I fell to the ground near my feet. I picked it up and looked at the face of my late brother, but it was different now. I looked into his eyes and all I saw was secrets that he was hiding, pain that he was trying to cover up and a whole other identity that we knew nothing about. 

I started searching the room frantically, there had to be something in the room that I hadn't seen. I lifted the bed up, I looked through all of the books on the shelf and I opened all of the drawers and I found nothing. This was impossible. I found the bag of his stuff on the bed that the police had given back to us after examining it for evidence, but when they found nothing they gave us his phone and wallet back. We'd already seen them a few times, but I looked again, as if I was looking through a pair of fresh eyes. 

I looked through the wallet and it was empty, I shook it anyway, to be sure and a picture fell out. It was small, passport size and it was of me and another picture of Shaun and a girl. His girlfriend, Tanya. I had met her a few times but she wasn't around much, I had no idea that they were even serious, apparently there was a lot I didn't know about him. 

Tanya might know something about all of this. I found her number from Jays phone, surprisingly it still worked. I put the number in my phone and called her. It rang 3 times before she answered. 

"Hello?" 

"Hi Tanya, Its Zoe" I replied nervously. 

She paused. "Zoe? Sh..Shaun's sister?" 

"Yes" 

I heard her sniffle on the phone, she was still effected by it. "How are you?" 

"I've been better, how are you?" I asked

"I'm okay. Is everything okay?" 

"No, not really" I replied honestly. "Can we meet up please? I need to talk to you" 

"Yeah absolutely. Meet me at Jamie's in half an hour?" She asked. I agreed and we both hung up. I took my phone and purse and got in my car and drove to Jamie's, a coffee shop that was a half an hour drive away from me. I arrived at the place to find Tanya already sitting there. She looked exactly the same but she's lost some weight, she was very pretty and had really long, brown and curly hair. She stood up when she saw me. 

"Hey Zoe" She put her arms out and gave me a hug. I hugged her back before we sat down at opposite ends of a circular table. "You look so grown up now" 

I smiled politely. I never really knew what to say when someone said that. 

"So what's up?" Tanya asked. 

"I wanted to talk to you about Shaun's death and the night it happened." 

Tanya was quiet. She looked at me. "I told the police everything" 

"Yes but I want to know what you told them and if you remember anything else. Please, its very important to me." I was almost begging. 

Tanya took a deep breath. "Shaun was coming home early that night to surprise you, he was so excited" She smiled, tears welled up in my eyes as I started to reconsider, did I really want to know? She continued to speak "He was going to see me the day after, I hadn't seen him in one year and I was so excited to see him and I was telling him about it on the phone. I heard someone say something in the background and Shaun told me to wait while he continued his conversation. It was very muffled so I couldn't hear him properly. Then I heard shouting, angry voices and then it just went quiet, the phone disconnected. I tried calling back lots of times but I heard nothing, the next thing I know, your mum calls me and tells me he's dead." 

Tanya was crying now. I wanted to cry too. That was completely useless. I knew all of that already. I had more questions to ask. I took my phone out and brought up a picture of Ryan that was on his facebook page. 

"Have you ever seen this guy?" I asked Tanya, showing her the picture. 

"Yeah, Calebs brother, how do you know him?!" 

"How do you know Caleb?" 

Tanya avoided making eye contact with me. "He's my ex..." 

This made no sense. Surely Shaun wouldn't be drug partners with his girlfirends ex boyfriennd? She still looked like she wanted to say something. 

"And?" I asked. 

"He is also the father to my son."

Son? She had a son? With Caleb. Even more reason for me to believe that Caleb was lying about this. 

"Is Ryan better now?" Tanya asked. 

"Better? What's wrong with him?" I asked. 

"Ryan had a mental health disorder, he was always on medication" Tanya said. "It was weird, his memory was always fucked up and he had blank spots all the time." 

This was all so weird, Ryan was always on meds that made him forgetful, Caleb was the father of Shaun's girlfirends son and my brother was apparently drug dealing with them? 

"Was Shaun on drugs?" I asked Tanya. 

"Drugs? No way!" Tanya said. "Sweetie, Shaun would never be involved with drugs." 

"What about Caleb?" 

"I'm not sure, I tried to avoid talking to him as much as possible, he was involved in some pretty dodgy stuff, one of them could have been drugs" 

I figured I should leave it there. I don't think she knew anything else, but I told her that I would be in touch anyway. I was just saying goodbye when my phone started to ring. It was Jay, his phone number and face started flashing on my phone. 

"How do you know Jay too?" Tanya asked. I looked at her in awe. Jay was involved too. 

"He's a friend, how do you know him?" 

"He's Ryan and Calebs' step brother" 

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