All Chapters of My Brother’s Love Is a Cage(Not Brothers): Chapter 1 - Chapter 7

Two Sugars POV: Bash "You're making it too sweet again." Rhys didn't look up from his phone when he said it, but he didn't have to. He knew the exact number of sugar spoons before the metal even hit the ceramic. That's how it always went in this kitchen — him narrating my life back to me like I hadn't lived it myself, like I was a guest checking in and he was the one holding the reservation book. "Maybe I like it sweet," I said, stirring anyway, just to have something to do with my hands. "You don't. You like it bitter, and you pretend you don't because it makes you feel like less of a mess." He finally looked up. "Drink it your way if you want. I'm just telling you what's true." The grinder kicked on again behind him, filling the small kitchen with a low mechanical hum that vibrated up through the floor tile and into the soles of my feet. Our kitchen wasn't big — it had never needed to be, just the two of us — but some morning, it felt like the walls had crept in an inch overni

Unforced POV: Bash "You've been staring at that silverware like it's about to move." Julian didn't say it like a challenge. He was just leaning back against the diner booth, half-smiling, holding a sandwich in one hand like the world wasn't a tightrope we were all trying not to fall off of. "Sorry," I said, setting the fork down like it had personally offended me. "Long morning." "You said that yesterday too." "Long week, then." He laughed, easy, and didn't push. I waited for the follow-up question, the one that always came next in every conversation I'd had for the past two years — long how, tired why, what happened, who upset you — some version of concern that always somehow circled back to whether I'd been careful enough with myself. It didn't come. He just took another bite of his sandwich and asked if I'd tried the soup, because apparently the soup here was worth writing home about. My shoulders were still locked somewhere up near my ears. I could feel it, the tension sit

The Collar ButtonPOV: Bash"Third time you've retied those laces, Bash."I didn't look up from the edge of the mattress. My fingers frozen on the black cord. Rhys was leaning against the doorframe, his shoulder blocking half the light from the hallway, his voice entirely devoid of inflexion."They keep coming loose," I said, which wasn't true, not really. I just needed something to do with my hands that wasn't checking the clock for the fourth time in two minutes.I stood up, smoothed down the front of my shirt, and caught myself doing the collar button thing again — undo, redo, undo, redo, three times exactly, because three felt safe and two felt unfinished and four felt like I was drawing attention to the fact that I was doing it at all. I checked my sleeves next, cuffs even, cuffs even, a habit that had nothing to do with fashion and everything to do with needing my hands to land on something solid before my brain could spiral any further.The shirt was new. Well, not new, just un

Unlabeled POV: Bash "You're rubbing your neck again." I dropped my hand from my throat so fast my knuckle hit the edge of the kitchen table with a dull crack. Rhys was standing by the sink, rinsing a glass, his back to me, but he didn't need eyes to catch every tiny glitch in my skin. "It's nothing," I said, which wasn't true, but it was the only word small enough to hand him without handing him everything else underneath it. My coffee had gone cold in the mug in front of me, a thin skin forming on top that I kept meaning to stir away and kept forgetting to. I traced the collar of my shirt instead, the seam scratching faintly against a spot on my throat that felt more sensitive than it had any logical reason to feel. Four stitches along that seam. Five. I counted them without meaning to, the same way I always did when my brain needed somewhere quiet to put itself instead of where it actually wanted to go. I wasn't going to think about his hand. I wasn't going to think about the