Heart In A Cage

47

"Tell me about your little boyfriend."

I laugh. He is not little. Anywhere.

But the humour wanes as I spot an approaching individual with auburn hair, large blue eyes, and pale skin underneath a beige blazer.

Each graceful swing of her arms and clack of her black boots towards me is slow, provocative, and irritating. She halts before me, standing robotically upright and grinning, hands folded in front of her.

"You know what, mum...I think we'll talk about him another day." I shut my phone and pocket it into my skirt, crossing my arms. "What do you want, Dalia?"

"I saw someone the other day, in another mall. The one I'd spot you in—and got you kicked out of." She snickers, and I glare at her, demanding that she gets to the point. "Well, he was quite the cute male," she waves her pearl nails around as she continues, "so we decided to converse, and one thing led to another, flirting led to an intense discussion, and I found out that he'd broken apart with a tall, bitchy woman who had left him to fuck a hot muscle man."

My temperature spikes.

"Don't look at me like that," she hisses. "You know who I'm talking about. Brown hair, skinny, pale. Maybe even paler than me." She inspects her hand. "Or not."

"You met Jasper, slept around with him—so what's that to me? I couldn't care less if you two fucked in my bed." My arms fall to my sides, and I stop myself from clenching my fists and exposing how much she sickens me.

"Be a bit more pleasant, will you. He never liked it when you were feisty." She gestures to someone in the crowd of shoppers, so I squint my eyes to find who she's after. Then I see him, and my heart drops.

He strides towards me with a wicked grin, lanky arms in the pocket of his jeans, and hair that's been cut short, to the scalp.

Jasper's hair is gone. But he's here. Existing.

"What do you want, Jasper?" I snarl the words, gritting my teeth. He's right next to Dalia. Too close to Dalia. His nose has been distorted, bent out of shape—broken. I try not to cackle.

"Your boyfriend did that to me, Isabella." A cold, villainous voice, flowing out of thin lips—lips that had once sealed over my own. Disgusting.

"My boyfriend has seen you once in his life. When he'd been kind enough to return my belongings that had been stuck in that dump of yours."

"You call him your boyfriend!" He turns to Dalia, eyes wide with hysteria. "She calls him her boyfriend and he can't even be honest with her." I lift an eyebrow. "He came to the house, Isabella. He fucked me up just because he couldn't handle a few harmless comments made to his whore."

"I don't give a fuck!" Now my fists do clench, and I focus on how much hatred I have for the piece of garbage tightening his jaw in front of me. "I don't give a fuck, Jasper. He beat the shit out of you. So what? You're too much of a pussy that you have to whine about it weeks and weeks after?"

"Oh, you're not getting my point." He clutches Dalia's hand, but not even that is enraging me. It's just him. Him and his unwanted presence. "He's bad for you. He doesn't give a single shit about you, and you think he does, you think you're in that money-loaded house of his to sit there and be his lovely partner."

"Then what the fuck am I? Please, enlighten me because you know every goddamn thing about us."

"I'll tell you what you are. But first, I think you should know that Dalia's given up her spot as co-owner of this delightful store." He lifts his gaze over the front of Aressia, examining it with...pride? He looks back at me.

"And? That's great for her and her husband. He wasn't too keen on seeing you anyway, Dalia."

"Whore," she snarls. "He won't be my husband soon; the divorce papers are signed, and, best of all..." She gives Jasper an incentive to finish her sentence with a head gesture.

"The co-ownership is mine. Half of Aressia belongs to me."

"Sorry?!" I squawk. More, more, more hatred. I want to press my thumbs into his eyes.

"You heard me. I'll be hosting meetings and discussions with your partner, and we'll be doing some stock analysis together. Have ourselves a drink while we're at it." He taps the corner of his brow, jokingly putting together an idea. "Maybe we'll design our own clothes."

"Does he know about this?" I grind my teeth together, trying to lock my jaw before irrational words are tossed out of my mouth.

"No. You're going to tell him—"

"You're a bastard bitch." Father's words.

"And you're a toy. A fucking toy." He unclutches Dalia's hand and takes a step towards me. I take one too, backwards, and my shoulders meet with the glass window of the store. "Simply something he can play around with when his dick is in the mood of a doll to fuck."

"I'm not a doll."

"Yes, you are." His face inches towards mine, forehead tensing, skin reddening with rage. That abhorrent space between us drowns out my awareness of the mall, of Dalia observing us with amusement behind him.

"Don't call me that. It's not what I am." I replay the events of this morning in my head, and they're not when Andreas had caressed my body lovingly while he let me rest and accept his treatment. Something jabs at my stomach.

"Then why are your eyes sparkling?" I swerve my attention away from Jasper and gaze emptily at the floor. The grout joints are just curvy brown lines, my vision going blurry. "I want you to stop crying. You're too pretty for it." His thumb wipes away a tear, and I flinch. So cold. His fingers are so cold.

When distance between us returns, I face him. He's an unclear display of colours—whitish skin, light brown eyes, pink lips. That melancholy from before is no longer a ripple. It's a wave rolling at the centre of my chest.

"Remember that he's not as good as I was," he whispers harshly. "Just because his intentions to take you in for himself and fuck you are wrapped around in a sweet layer of bullshit that you're too hypnotised to see through, doesn't mean they aren't there." He pulls back, calm wrath laced into features. "He's using you as a fuck toy. Just as I did. Just as he continues to do. Because that's all you are, and useless hope is convincing you otherwise."

Dalia hooks her arm through his and leads them away from me. But he's looking over his shoulder, trying to direct those remaining painful strikes at my heart before I'm left to combat them on my own.

And it's realization that gears my trembling legs and moves them back into the store where I drag myself into one of the changing rooms. I drop to the freezing floor, letting tears fall onto the arms of my folded body.