I love him. I married him. But since the day I dropped the tracking chip I cut out of Bunny’s neck onto the kitchen table still covered in her blood, Sebastian hasn’t been the same. He barely sleeps, spending all night watching me like he thinks I’m a mirage and that one day he’ll reach for me and realize I’m just a figment of his imagination. He graduated from Kingsacre University this spring, but instead of throwing himself into his role in his family’s company, he’s been glued to my side all summer, rarely spending more than a few hours away from me.
I’m used to his controlling nature, but since our house was finished and we moved into our first real home together, he’s become frantically consumed with summer coming to an endand me returning to school without him. Perhaps I should have expected his escalating insane behavior, but stupidly, I figured he’d just get over it, not escalate to Plan: Batshit Crazy.
Parting my lips, I plan to reassure him, the same way I’ve been doing since I threatened him that one day he might wake up and find me gone. But instead, I can’t help the scoff that falls from my mouth. “If I decided to leave, you wouldn’t even know where to start to look for me. I’d be long gone, and all traces of me would have disappeared before you even realized I was missing,” I taunt.
Feral anger burns to life in his eyes as he snaps his hand out, collaring my throat with his fingers. His hold is tighter than usual, the hint of pain a threat and a warning. I can see the real and genuine fear of losing me etched across his entire body, but when he speaks, his voice is laced with arrogant spite. “Oh, Little Bird, you talk such a big game, but your threats are empty. You love the golden cage I built for you. You love the cold metal bars that I press you against when I fuck you. You like the lock I put on your door and the chains I’ve wrapped around your wings. You love knowing that the only freedom you get is the kind I allow you. You need the cage I bound you in to survive, because you’re so fucking conditioned to want this life I’ve created for you that without it and me, you’d fall from the sky and plummet to the ground.”
His words are angry and mean, and each one is a reminder of his control. A jab intended to remind me that no matter how much I’ve learned, he’s still in charge. But I can hear the anxiety in his bravado. He wants to believe what he’s saying, but I’m not sure that he does.
Despite the way I’m sure this conversation would look to the outside world, I love this man with all my heart. I love his threats, his control, his anger and craziness and obsession. I love our life and our marriage and the way I don’t think he’ll ever stopbeing insane. I love provoking him and watching him plot how to bring me in line, but since the tiny tracker hit the top of the wooden kitchen table, I’ve watched him spiral.
His behavior has gradually escalated, and now there’s a team of suit-wearing ninjas outside. This isn’t the time to aggravate or remind him of what I’m capable of. So, I force my shoulders to slump, and I relax into his fingers, which are still curled tightly around my throat. Softening my voice, I lock my gaze with him. “I love you too much to leave.”
Instead of reassuring him like I intended, my words seem to make him angrier. His jaw twitches as his hold on my throat tightens while his free arm locks around my back, keeping me in place. “Every time you try to get a rise out of me, it makes me want to close the bars even tighter around you, Little Bird.” Leaning forward until his lips are pressed against my ear, he whispers, “I’ll clip your wings before I ever let you fly away.”
I brace for his kiss, for his punishing lips reminding me where I belong and who’s in control. But instead of claiming me, he releases me, his hands falling to his sides as he takes a step back, emotionless steel forming shutters in his usually expressive eyes. “Either your security team goes to school with you, or you don’t go to school.”
Shock ricochets through me. I thought he’d relent. I thought he’d counteroffer something else he’d already planned, knowing that I’ll agree to it, given the alternative. I thought the threat of a visible security team was his play to get me to relent to something else. But he’s not smirking. He’s not offering me a flame with one hand and a painful burn with the other. “I’m not walking around campus surrounded by dudes in suits, it’s ridiculous,” I spit, unable to hide the outrage in my words.
Expression never softening or changing, Sebastian nods, pulls his cell from his pocket, taps the screen, then brings it tohis ear. Turning, he walks away, leaving me alone, confused, and angry.
Squeezing my fingers into fists, I inhale, close my eyes, and exhale furiously, then spin away and head for the mudroom to grab my backpack and car keys. I never learned to drive as a teenager because Cassidy and I didn’t have the money for a car or insurance.
She might have been a successful author, but the money she earned was never consistent. After using the advance she received from her publishers to pay for my freshman and sophomore years at the prestigious Green Acres Academy, we struggled to pay the bills. So, I worked at a diner to top up her income and make sure that the electricity and water never got turned off.
After I moved in with my dad in Maine, it was my anxiety and panic attacks that kept me from driving. But this summer, my stepbrother and newly formed friend Evan declared that driving was a life skill and I needed to learn.
Honestly, although I have my license, I’m a terrible driver, and I try to only drive when I have no other choice. This morning when I was getting ready, I’d assumed Sebastian would drive me to school and that I could get a ride back with January or Bunny at the end of the day. But now that Sebastian and my team of ninjas have given me no other choice, I need to suck it up and drive myself the thirty minutes to campus.
Spotting my backpack on the bench, I swing it onto my shoulder, then look for the hooks mounted on the wall that hold all of the car keys. Instead of the hooks that were there yesterday, I find a black metal box with a touchpad lock on it in their place. “What the hell?” I question, searching above and below the box for the key hooks and finding nothing but empty wall.
“Sebastian, where are my car keys?” I yell, heading back to where I left him in the den. When he doesn’t respond, I shout again, “Sebastian, I’m going to be late. Where are my car keys?”
Striding toward me, his posture relaxed, his hands tucked into his pockets, he smiles a sinister smile at me. “You’re not going to be late,” he says calmly.
“My first class starts in an hour, it’s a thirty-minute drive to campus, and I want to stop and get a coffee on the way. I need my keys.”
“You should check your email, your new schedule should be there,” he says sweetly.
“What? I don’t have a new schedule.” Pulling my cell from the back pocket of my shorts, I tap my email app. My heart skips a beat when I see an email from the administration department confirming my change from in-person to online classes.
“What did you do?” I whisper, nausea rising up my throat.
“I informed you of your options, and after, you told me your decision. I simply acted,” he says slowly, his eyes bright with excitement.
Fuck. I played right into his hands. I thought I was taunting him, but the whole time he was playing me and doing a better job at it.
I’m an idiot, because even when I saw the men in the driveway, I never considered that his plan was to stop me from going to school.
But I should have guessed, because I know him. I know how much he enjoys controlling me. Since the first time he spoke to me, he’s been plotting and manipulating my life. I know that. I know him, and yet I didn’t see this coming.
Hot tears burn my eyes as I stare at this man that I love with all my heart but that some days I hate almost as much. “This isn’t okay, Sebastian. I won’t be your prisoner, no matter how beautiful the cell is,” I choke out, desperately searching for acrack in his amusement. But all I see in his eyes is triumph and power. He won this round, and for the first time since I found out he helped Hunter hurt Bunny, I wonder if I should have run instead of her.
“I offered you an alternative,” he informs me superiorly.
My lips quiver as I shake my head. “Are you honestly so scared that I’ll leave you, that you want to make me your prisoner again? Do you want me to hate you, or doesn’t it matter how I feel as long as I’m here? God, Sebastian, maybe instead of plotting to trap me here with you, you should spend some time thinking about why it is that you’re worried that you’ve broken me so fucking fully that one day you’ll wake up alone and I’ll be gone. You claimed me. You made me yours. You destroyed me and rebuilt me in your image. You made me into this person, and you made this my world. Does it really surprise you that I had an escape plan? Do you honestly think that I’m so blinded by my love for you that I’ve forgotten what you’re capable of and what you’ve done to me in the past? You dragged me into this world, and I was forced to learn how to bend the rules to a game I never wanted to play in the first place, just to survive. It’s not my fault that I’m not a frightened little bird anymore. This is who I am now, and you need to learn to accept that, or let me go, because I refuse to go backward.” Not waiting for a response, I turn and leave, running out the back door, past the pool, and through the gate onto the private stretch of beach that extends along the full length of the property we all now call home.
Kicking off my shoes the moment I hit the sand, I drop my cell, not caring where it lands as I sprint away from him, this house, and this life. Jean shorts aren’t ideal running clothes, but I don’t care. For years running was the only thing that brought me any peace, the only thing that calmed the chaotic thoughts in my head. But since Sebastian and I called a cease-fire and gotmarried, I’ve only run because I wanted to, not because I needed to.
