“What are you doing?” I scolded. “You could have hurt yourself if I wasn’t here.” My anger was misplaced, and I knew it. I wasn’t angry with her. I was angry with myself for letting this woman make a dent in the wall I had erected around myself.
“One could ask you the same thing,” she fired back.
She pushed my hands off her, righting her position.
My head cocked to the side, but I didn’t speak. I just appraised her.
“You can’t touch me like that. . . ”
“I thought you wanted me to touch you . . .” I drawled out. Hints of seduction lingered in my voice.
“You thought wrong.”
“I must be confused,” I smirked. I didn’t need to bring up the ploy. There was no point seeing as we both knew how that turned out. I won. I always did.
“If you must know, I was trying to help that bird.”
“Bird?”
“The one stuck in the shrubs.”
I moved past her, looking in that direction. “Where?”
“Shh, be quiet so you can hear.”
Peering into the high shrubbery, I saw a flash of blue.
A blue finch was caught in the tightness of the leaves. Instinctively, I reached in, the backs of my hands were scratched as I forced them within the thin branches. Cupping the bird in my palm, I gently eased it out from the bushy twigs and held it out at chest level. It lay still in my hands, unmoving, the beat of its heart rapid against my fingers.
Anya came closer. “Is it hurt?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What should we do?”
Without a second thought, my hands fell open, and the bird seemed to think about its chance at freedom for a few seconds. It sprang into the air with a fluttering of wings as it took flight, up and out of the maze, flying toward the dark sky.
“You let it go?” she said wistfully.
I looked at her. “A beautiful creature should never be caged.”
The realization struck us both at the same time—our eyes fixed on each other’s as the moment settled into something more, something unfathomable.
She turned her back on me, reaching for my hand, and I waited, considering whether to take it. Whether to let her have this be what she wanted it to be.
It was nothing, really. Me guiding her out. Doing the right thing for a nanosecond before I could go back to the plan.
Remember the fucking plan.
I reiterated this thought as I wove my fingers through hers. Her touch was an annoying simmer beneath mine. A low current absorbed into my skin and deeper still into my tendons until it thrummed in the bones of my hand.
Anya and I walked out of the maze and I led us back toward the house, not willing to let her go just yet.
Just me protecting my asset.
That was what I told myself because anything else would be irrevocable.
Anya
Maybe I was thinking too much into this, that Cassius had stared straight into my eyes as he’d let that bird fly free. Because I was still here, even after he’d made that romantic statement about creatures not being caged. This, his place, was the ultimate in captivity.
In fact, lately, he was hardly ever here.
It was too quiet.
What was worse, the days melded together. It felt like I was living in an alternate universe. One where the day just kept repeating itself. But the worst part was that there was nothing for me to do.
I was bored.
And lonely.
A troubling thought that I didn’t want to acknowledge was that I wished Cassius was here.
Even if he drove me crazy, at least I would have someone to talk to.
When I first got here, Cassius was around more, making sure I didn’t get into trouble, but recently, probably because he had started to trust that I wouldn’t do anything rash, he was more inclined to leave me alone in his house.
Well, not really alone.
I couldn’t call this alone when there was security. I knew they weren’t meant to hover, and they didn’t. They did a great job of melding into the background, but the thing was, I grew up in a cage, so I knew where my jail keepers lurked.
The sound of my feet on marble echoed loudly. I was afraid I would alert someone, and they’d ban me to another part of the house. Being here wasn’t that different than being in my parents’ home. I was still invisible, and ever since Cassius had pulled back, more so.
With no clear direction in sight, I found my usual place in the kitchen. Without anyone being there, it felt eerily quiet.
My heart tugged in my chest as I remembered one of the few happy memories of a time before. Growing up, I never really had anyone, Archie sometimes, but more often than not, I was alone. The only person who spoke to me other than my homeschool teachers was the cook.