Winter's Cage
My eighteenth birthday cake still sat on the kitchen table—frosting melting, candles long dead—while Zhang’s thumb pressed into my jaw, forcing my chin up. 'You smiled at Vincent today,' he whispered, voice velvet over broken glass. 'That smile belongs to me alone.' My parents’ voices echoed from the next room, warm and oblivious; William was teasing Ji about college apps; Candy hummed as she washed dishes. They didn’t know Zhang had smashed my phone last week—or that he’d followed Clara home just to watch her walk up her driveway. They don’t know what ‘mine’ means to him. And I haven’t told them. Not yet. Because every time I try, his hand closes around my wrist like iron, and his eyes go quiet—the kind of quiet that comes before breaking things. This isn’t love. It’s a sentence. And I’m still deciding whether to serve it… or burn the whole courthouse down.