Page 29 of Caged Bird

They still held kindness.

I got into bed and pulled the covers up over my head.

I didn’t want to consider that Zane wasn’t like his brother. Because if I did, my heart would break. It was bad enough Eddie had Otis and me stuck here. I wouldn’t wish this fate on another person.

Suddenly the gentleness in Zane’s eyes was all I could see. The soft grip on my wrist all I could feel. The ridges of his bare chest and the strong set of his biceps all I could remember.

That tingle between my legs that had gone unsatisfied in the shower returned, and I tossed and turned, trying not to think about it. But it was like an itch I wasn’t allowed to scratch, and the more I ignored it, the more I wanted to do something about it.

I hadn’t wanted to touch myself in the entire time I’d lived in this house. And then Zane turned up, and twice in one day, I found my fingers rubbing against my clit.

But just like earlier, the frustration inside me only grew, rather than released. Sweat beaded across my skin, and the longshirt I wore to bed stuck to my breasts unpleasantly, until I wanted to rip it off.

Except I didn’t dare.

I flipped over onto my belly, pressing my knees into the mattress and riding my fingers from that angle, but it didn’t help.

I stifled groans of need into the crook of my arm until they turned into sobs of frustration I cried into my pillow.

Eddie had taken so much from me already. It was a bitter pill to find something new he’d robbed me of.

Angry tears fell down my face, and I rolled onto my side, punishing my clit in a way that hurt more than helped. What did it matter now? All I knew was pain.

A creak on the landing outside my door froze my muscles. The door opened silently, and I desperately yanked at the blankets, praying it was Otis and not Eddie.

But the man who slipped inside the room wasn’t either.

9

ZANE

Ididn’t know what I was doing.

Fawn stared at me, clutching the blanket to her chin defensively, and I couldn’t blame her.

I’d walked right into her bedroom without even knocking, clearly still too fucking drunk to be thinking straight.

Or maybe too angry. I’d gone to bed exhausted but unable to sleep for the rage swirling inside my head, all of it aimed at my brother. And then I’d lain there, on the other side of a thin wall, and listened to Fawn cry until I couldn’t take it a second longer.

My feet had walked me in there before my brain had caught up.

I should have turned around and walked back out.

But I didn’t want to.

I rounded the bed to the side Fawn was huddled on. And then dropped to my knees at her feet.

She stared at me in the darkness, her face cast with shadows, her eyes almost black in the dim light.

“You shouldn’t be in here,” she whispered.

“I know.” But I didn’t move.

“Then why are you?”

“I don’t know.”

Except I did. And I think she did too. Her breath hitched in her chest, stuttering on the exhale. Her fingers shook, clenched in the blankets. They were messed up, untucked, half sideways, covering her torso but not her legs.

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