Georgia's POV
Josiah surrounds himself with power calculators, men who speak in acquisitions and mergers.
Their laughter precisely timed, compliments measured in ounces.
With them, I become taxidermy. Preserved, positioned, admired for stillness.
My role crystalline. Smile, nod, laugh on cue, remain silent.
Even alone, conversation is transactional. Efficient, purposeful, desiccated.
I've conditioned myself to find solace in predictability, like a prisoner forgetting the taste of rain.
Carlisle is oxygen in a vacuum.
His voice carries the cadence of someone who savors words, rolls them across his tongue before releasing them into the world.
Laugh lines cartograph his face, evidence of measuring joy, not assets.
His hands, slightly calloused from turning pages instead of profits, choreograph thoughts in the air.
Every sentence unfurls like slow-burning paper. An invitation to feel, to exist.
Outside, rain intensifies, each drop a tiny suicide against pavement.
The café lights flicker, momentarily casting his face in shadow before illuminating compassion that threatens to unravel my carefully woven lies.
Carlisle shakes his head slightly, smile rueful as autumn.
"You don't have to confess it, Georgia. Not to me."
His gaze flutters to my wedding ring, diamond catching light like a warning flare.
"But don't deceive yourself."
A stone forms in my throat.
I've spent eternities pretending. To be content, that loneliness is ephemeral, that abandoned dreams don't haunt me while Josiah sleeps soundly beside me, galaxies away despite inches between our skin.
The weight suffocates. Expectations, compromise, erosion of self from loving someone who holds me at arm's length.
Displaying me like a trophy but never truly witnessing me.
And Carlisle makes me feel weightless.
Like inhaling fully after years of shallow breaths. Like sunlight after interminable winter.
Terrifying in its perfection.
I swallow hard, forcing a smile brittle as burnt sugar.
"It's late."
My voice comes out a traitorous whisper.
My hands tremble reaching for my purse, sparrows caught in invisible nets.
He doesn't press. His restraint feels like another form of intimacy.
Understanding boundaries in ways Josiah never had, never would.
He nods, but as I reach for my coat, his voice halts me.
"Just promise me one thing, Georgia."
I turn, breath uneven, wool abrasive against hypersensitive skin.
The café quieter still, as if the universe holds its breath in anticipation.
"Don't spend the remainder of your life convincing yourself that loneliness is love."
His words suspend, heavy with truth and dangerous possibility.
My chest constricts. Language abandons me.
An elderly couple rises to leave, the man assisting his wife with tenderness that cleaves my heart.
A simple gesture I can't recall experiencing in years. Perhaps ever.
Reality intrudes when clock hands betray the hour.
Josiah will call soon, voice warm in the mechanical way only habit can produce.
Guilt pricks, but dully. Dulled blade against thickened skin, not sharp enough to make me regret this transgression.
I meet Carlisle's eyes and witness something infinitely more dangerous than desire.
Recognition. Knowing.
Knowing beyond physical attraction. The kind of knowing that penetrates the polished veneer, past the façade, into the uglier, more authentic creature beneath.
The part entombed so deep I'd nearly forgotten its existence.
"You don't have to return."
His voice comes low, almost hypnotic.
I freeze, heart contorting like wounded prey.
I yearn to remain suspended in this moment, in this bubble where anything seems possible.
Where I can envision versions of myself I haven't dared to dream into existence.
But wanting has always been the simplest part of me.
-----
I STOOD, CLUTCHING my coat like a shield, and walked out. The door sealed behind me, but the space he had claimed inside me persisted, a beautiful infection.
Outside, rain continued its relentless percussion. Each step away felt heavier, as if my body comprehended what my mind refused to acknowledge.
The evening air should have cleared my thoughts, but clarity wasn't my desire. I needed oblivion. My heart fluttered like a bird against window glass. Rain-dampened pavement mingled with espresso—the fragrance of beautiful catastrophe, a trail I couldn't outpace.
I halted, inhaling jasmine and exhaust, neither conquering the other. Streetlamps ignited, casting amber pools that mocked my indecision. A merciless spotlight. Night air sliced through me, brutal compared to the café's embrace. But it wasn't merely the café I was abandoning. It was the first honest exchange in years. The first time someone had truly witnessed me, and not averted their gaze.
My heel wedged between cobblestones. I stumbled, steadying myself against a bench, metal shocking my flesh. Or perhaps the shock originated elsewhere entirely.
A car horn wrenched me back to present reality. I had been standing immobile, lost in labyrinthine memory. Heat bloomed in my cheeks, but no one perceived—they never do during internal apocalypse. His words haunted me, refusing burial.
I embraced myself against a chill unrelated to temperature. I should have been horrified by how profoundly his words had lacerated me. Instead, I craved more incisions—more moments where I wasn't Georgia Mason, wife of Josiah Mason, flawless accessory to power.
Just Georgia.
And Carlisle saw her.
It's been so fucking long since anyone has even looked.
At my car, doubt infiltrated like poisonous fog. The handle briefly anchored me to reality. This was perilous—not yet in ways that would ripple through country club whispers, but in my marrow, where awareness had awakened. This hunger for something I'd convinced myself I no longer required for survival.
In my reflection, I observed the perfect society wife—designer armor, precision-cut hair, success by matrimonial proxy. But behind my eyes lurked the woman Carlisle recognized, starving for depth amid beautiful emptiness.
I glanced back, expecting—hoping?—to see him watching. I felt his presence like phantom fingerprints, too visceral to disregard. The café lights cast golden rectangles on the darkening street. I couldn't see him, but I felt him. His gaze still lingered, a magnetic force between heartbeats.
I'm not ready to relinquish this feeling. This awakening.
I'm not prepared to abandon the woman I glimpsed in his eyes.
And the most dangerous truth?
I'm not certain I ever will be.
The key turned, engine purring beneath racing thoughts. As I pulled away, jasmine pursued—a sweet, venomous reminder of possibilities blooming in darkness. Night enfolded me like a lover's embrace, whispering futures I hadn't dared imagine until this moment.
I knew, with absolute certainty, what remained unspoken. What I refused to voice.
It wouldn't be the last time.
It couldn't be.
I had tasted freedom—dark and heady, a poison laced with promise—
and now, I was addicted to the burn.
-----
The drive home felt different. Pasadena's streets remained unchanged—the familiar hum of tires whispering across asphalt, the familiar glow of streetlights casting their jaundiced halo overhead—but the air pressed against my skin like a shroud, suffocating and thick. My knuckles bleached alabaster against the steering wheel as I navigated toward the mausoleum I called home—though it had never truly been mine.
I pulled into the circular driveway and realized I was barely breathing. The modernized Victorian mansion loomed before me, pristine white trim gleaming under the harsh security lights like bones bleached in desert sun. Beautiful. Immaculate. The kind of house people slowed to admire, murmuring in reverent tones, That's what success looks like.
I stopped before the grand double doors, Atlas's burden settling upon my shoulders.
A gilded cage is still a cage.
Inside, silence wrapped around me like a straitjacket, cinching tighter with each labored breath. I could almost feel it constricting, pressing mercilessly against my ribs until they threatened to splinter. My heels struck the marble floors—a prisoner's metronome—as I moved through the foyer, past roses arranged by phantom hands, past mirrors reflecting a stranger wearing my skin. A woman who'd walked into that café as Josiah Mason's obedient wife and emerged as something unrecognizable.
Perhaps it was how Carlisle had looked at me—not as possession but as person. Perhaps it was how his words had excavated the truth I'd buried so deep within myself that even I could no longer hear its muffled screams.
Don't spend the rest of your life convincing yourself that loneliness is love.
The words ricocheted within my skull, their edges scraping raw against the bone. I paused at the foot of the grand staircase, fingers drifting across the mahogany banister—smooth as river stone, cold as indifference. The antique grandfather clock in the study—a wedding gift from Josiah's parents—counted heartbeats I couldn't spare, measuring out my life in ruthless increments while I stood frozen, anchored by leaden truths.
I ascended the stairs to my bedroom, each step a funeral march toward inevitable reckoning. This house—this pristine sepulcher—stood as monument to someone else's ambitions. No faded photographs from my childhood. No dog-eared books with margin confessions. No evidence of the girl I once was. Just the life Josiah had constructed around me, a life so meticulously curated that he never bothered to peer inside, to witness the woman entombed beneath all that polish.
His cologne—sandalwood and cedar—hung thick in the air, a suffocating fog. I flung open a window, inviting in night air kissed with jasmine from the garden below. My garden, though I'd never plunged fingers into its soil. Everything here was selected, chosen, according to Josiah's exacting standards—myself included.
At the vanity, I laid down my jewelry with the same mechanical precision I'd perfected over years. My fingertips grazed our wedding photo, Josiah standing tall and handsome in his bespoke suit, his hand resting possessively on my waist—a hawk's talons disguised as protection. I studied my reflection, the carefully practiced smile, searching for anything authentic beneath the porcelain veneer. I scrutinized his eyes for something genuine—something that might have once glimmered there—something beyond duty, beyond survival.
Nothing but absence.
I turned toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, and moonlight transformed the manicured gardens below into a silver-dipped necropolis. My reflection hovered there, a specter caught between worlds, a phantom trapped in perfect, sterile beauty. My wedding ring caught the light, diamond scattering prisms across the room, but its weight had become unbearable, like a manacle chaining me to promises I'd made before I understood their cost.
This house has always been beautiful. Tonight, I see the bars.
I sank onto my king-sized bed, silk duvet cool beneath my fingertips like a lover's indifference. The mattress barely acknowledged my presence—firm, unyielding, just like Josiah. Just like everything here. The walls. The furniture. The life he sculpted.
I closed my eyes and summoned the warmth in Carlisle's gaze, how his voice had softened when he spoke of passion, of life unrestrained. How he'd looked at me and actually seen me.
My heartbeat thundered in my ears, stronger now, more insistent. The rhythm of someone waking from prolonged hibernation. In the vanity mirror, I glimpsed someone I'd abandoned—the girl who existed before Mrs. Josiah Mason consumed her. A girl who once dared to dream of something wild, untamed. Something entirely her own.
I moved toward the closet, past designer clothing carefully selected to complement Josiah's vision of wifely perfection. Each piece a declaration of who I was supposed to be, who I was meant to represent. I reached past silk blouses and evening gowns worth more than most people's quarterly income, until my fingers closed around an old, familiar shoebox.
Inside lay remnants of another existence—sepia-toned photographs, ink-faded letters, and a dog-eared copy of Jane Eyre, margins crowded with my maiden name, a remembrance of a girl not yet devoured whole. I opened to a passage underlined years ago:
"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will."
The words scorched my throat as I whispered them into the perfect, hollow house. The walls seemed to contract around me, and something stirred inside—something dormant for so long I'd forgotten its existence.
Hope.
Dangerous. Terrifying. Exhilarating hope.
I've seen the bars now, and I'm not sure I can ever look away again.