STOLEN SMILE

CATERINA

"Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time."

-Maya Angelou

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HEARTBEATS ARE FICKLE THINGS. BEATING one moment and then stopping the next. Raging a storm and then lying as still as a tranquil sea. But what I didn't know is that they change. They glow and warm and expand in a chest. They ache and yearn for a reason to beep.

My heartbeats had a fondness for the romantic.

They began to skip, to multiply, to fill with a contentment as thick as honey and as warm as the sun. They did it all as my skin grew cold and while I stared at the ceiling and tried to ignore them.

I couldn't fall in love with this woman.

I would rather never fall in love at all than to experience it unrequited. I'd seen it enough times to despise the possibility.

I couldn't love someone who treated me like a commodity, or even worse—a pretty bird in a cage, and not like a wife. If there was anything I knew with a certainty about Made People, it was that they couldn't grasp the concept of fidelity. Those heartbeats tied into a knot, a strangling, uncomfortable ball in the back of my throat.

I smelled like her. She was all over me, and I'd asked her nicely for it. Someone needed to save me from myself before I got on my knees and professed my inevitable love to her. Might as well make it right after she finished screwing another.

Bitterness cut through my chest, and I moved to get up and leave but an iron grip wrapped around my wrist.

Slowly, I glanced at the woman who lay like a freshly fucked king next to me. I bet her heartbeats were satisfied that she'd finally laid her easy fiancée. But as soon as I looked at her, the resentment faded into a different kind of ache. When had she become so beautiful it hurt? I fought not to rub at the pang in my chest.

She didn't say a word, just watched me with a lazy stare while inhaling rough breaths. It'd been only moments since we'd had sex again. But in my head, it'd felt like an eternity as the seconds mocked me with the inevitable that she would soon hold another like she had me.

I was ruining a moment I'd wanted badly enough it felt like a need. But now I couldn't stop myself from analyzing everything—the possibilities and outcomes—and it didn't look to be in my favor.

When the eye contact began to burn, I tried to pull my wrist away, but she wouldn't let me go. Her expression didn't show a hint of emotion, as though she could hold me here effortlessly. As though she might hold me here forever.

A moment later, her grip slid from my wrist, releasing me. Something dipped in my chest, though I pushed it away before I could analyze it. I got off the bed and, as I took a step toward the door, something dug into the bottom of my foot. I halted and glanced down. The ring sat there, forgotten, like the sweet girl who'd given it to me. My stomach twisted.

Without a thought, I picked it up. A wave of tension brushed my back, evoking a prickling sensation that ran down my spine. The silence was an antagonistic one, the kind that doesn't contain words but says everything.

Jenn hated this ring, and I could only ascertain she knew it was connected to a woman or—believed it was. Nobody knew about the ring but Audrey, and even then, the only thing I'd told her about the incident was that she'd given it to me.

My promise remained with or without the fifty-cent piece of jewelry, but.....I hesitated.

I would never be with another woman but the one in this room. We both knew it, and that removed any type of advantage I would've had in the Outside world. If a woman knew you'd give it up to her and no one else and that you couldn't even leave her, what would ever encourage her to be faithful?