All Chapters of My Brother’s Love Is a Cage(Not Brothers): Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

A Breach in the Perimeter POV: Rhys "Who was in the kitchen, Bash?" I set my keys on the entryway tray, not bothering to remove my coat as I stepped into the hallway. The air in the house smelled faintly of wet wool and lavender perfume — a scent that didn't belong to either of us. Bash was standing by the counter when I found him, too still, his shoulders held at an angle that told me everything before he said a word. "Aunt Denise stopped by." "While I was out." "Yeah." I hung my coat with unhurried precision, taking in the rest of the room while I did it — the dining chair pulled slightly away from the table and not pushed back in fully, a half-inch discrepancy nobody but me would have registered as significant. Two mugs on the drying rack instead of one. "You look pale," I said, crossing toward him. "What did she say to rattle you like that?" "Nothing. She just wanted to talk." "About?" "Nothing, Rhys. I'm just checking in." He wouldn't meet my eyes, his hands finding th

The Whole Picture POV: Bash "He asked me about you." I whispered the confession to the empty street, my breath blooming in pale white clouds against the autumn chill as I rounded the corner onto our block. The gravel crunched under my boots, each step matching the four-count rhythm hammering against my skull. You're terrified of him. Julian's voice kept looping on repeat, the same six words over and over, and each time they landed they hit a little harder than the last, like a hammer finding the same crack in a wall until something finally gave way. I hadn't answered him. I hadn't needed to. My whole body had answered for me. My hands had gone numb inside my jacket pockets, not from the cold, though the cold didn't help. My breath came shallow and fast, little clouds of it dissipating too quickly against the dark, and every step toward home felt less like walking toward safety and more like walking directly into something with teeth. I kept walking, forcing one foot in front of

The Weight of Hunger POV: Bash "You're not telling me to stop, Bash." His voice was barely a murmur, warm and steady against my skin, but it sounded like thunder inside the quiet kitchen. I held my breath, my mouth opened, my tongue heavy and useless behind my teeth as my thumb tapped a frantic four-count beat against my leg. One, two, three, four. I wanted to say it. The word sat right there, fully formed, stop, three letters that should have been the easiest thing in the world to produce. My throat had other plans. It always had other plans when the stakes climbed this high, sealing itself shut around the one syllable that might have saved me, leaving me standing there mute and trembling while his thumb traced slow, deliberate circles against my jaw. Everything in me was screaming two contradictory things at once, and I couldn't tell which voice was actually mine anymore. One voice said pull away, this is wrong, he's manipulated your entire life, and this is just one more thin

The Eerie Calm POV: Rhys "Tomorrow." The word drifted through the thin gap beneath Sebastian's bedroom door, delicate and tentative, carrying a soft exhaled breath that sounded sickeningly like relief. I stood motionless in the dark hallway, my hand resting flat against the cool wallpaper, listening to the quiet click of his phone ending the call. I hadn't come upstairs to eavesdrop. I'd come to check on him, the way I always did after something significant passed between us, needing to confirm with my own eyes that he'd survived the night intact. Instead, I'd found myself standing outside his door, still as stone, listening to him make plans with a boy who had no idea what he was actually competing against. I catalogued the sound of his voice through the wood the same way I catalogued everything about him — the specific pitch he used when he was trying to sound steadier than he actually felt, the small hitch right before he said the word that had brought me up here in the first

The Phantom Limb POV: Bash "1:14 a.m." I read the glowing green digits on the microwave clock aloud to the empty kitchen, my thumb pressing redial on my phone for the sixteenth time. The same hollow beep echoed in my ear before the automated prompt cut in, sharp and merciless against the dead quiet of the house. I paced the length of the living room and back, my socked feet silent against the hardwood, my thumb tapping the same frantic four-count rhythm against my thigh that had lived in my chest all night One, two, three, four. I hit redial again anyway, some irrational part of me convinced that this attempt, this exact one, might finally break through wherever he'd gone. I set the phone down on the counter and picked it back up almost immediately, unable to leave it out of reach for even the length of time it took to think. The missed attempts kept climbing, none of them landing anywhere except the same dead, mechanical voice. I typed out a text I didn't send three separate tim