“Among the people.”
Christ, that makes it sound like I need to go outside and touch grass. We can’t keep her locked up here.
We should…What?
Socialize her?
Yeah, no. That sounds wrong. Like I’m about to clip a leash on her and take her for a walk.
…although.
My mind immediately betrays me.
Silk. Leather. Her beneath me, wrecked and soft, a collar at her throat, a leash in my hand.
Then it flips.
Me on my knees. Naked. Collar tight.
…what the fuck.
Am I into that?
Jesus. Focus.
Stop getting distracted, you fucking idiot.
Right.
Right—are we just trading one cage for another?
There it is.
Fucking hell, that took a minute.
Because I know what this looks like.
I know what it feels like.
A gilded cage is still a cage.
It doesn’t matter how beautiful the bars are.
Poetic.
Poignant…
Heat crawls up my spine, slow and venomous, as the full weight of her life settles over me again—not just what Gideon did, not just the violence or the theft or the cruelty, but the years before that, the quiet theft of choice, of autonomy, of breath, the systematic stripping away of a girl’s right to exist freely in her own skin until she no longer recognized the shape of freedom even when it stood in front of her.
We can do more for her.
My jaw tightens.
I refuse to be another man who takes from her.
I refuse to be another man who cages her and calls it love.
Across the room, Chace shifts, and when I look at him, I find his eyes already on me, already knowing, because he has always known me in a way few people ever will, and he doesn’t need words to understand the war happening behind my ribs.
