***Trigger Warning***

⭐️ Ensnared,
in a fiery cage
of my own making.

It's suffocating.

This thing I call love.

I'd burn for it
a thousand times over.
Painfully numb
and gloriously scorched.

For all I have left
in the dying embers
and waking shadows

Is you.

—by Aravis-Brightspell⭐️

I take the drive home like I'm an 80 year old woman in the fast lane (they should never be there, but it's always where they end up). There is not a single part of me that wants to talk to Jeremiah right now, but lucky for me we live together. I can't avoid him. I have nowhere else to go. My parents live millions of miles away in Australia and I'm stuck in scorching hot Arizona. I have no real friends here, they're also all in Australia. I'm alone expect for Jeremiah.

I love and miss Australia. It was all I knew. It's the only place that's ever felt like a home to me. I lost everything when I moved here, even my accent is mostly gone. Only on rare occasions does my accent come out to play. You can only hear it when I get super angry.

I have to question my IQ sometimes. How could I be so stupid? Love makes you do the most moronic things. It bugs me that all the movies and romance stories promote this fairytale love. It teaches young kids that love is this incredible thing that everyone should strive for. What happens after the credits roll, huh? My relationship would've looked like one of those romance movies in the beginning, now look at us. I left my family, my friends, my home. All for what? For some beach boy who runs a strip club and tries to control every aspect of my life. Not that I have a life to control anymore.

I'm not proud to be dating the owner of a strip club, it just sort of happened. One night, some of my friends and I got drunk and ended up stumbling into Jeremiah's strip club. It was fun at first. I've only been to one strip club, but the energy there was unmatched.

Everything changed when a cute guy with curly blonde hair and brown eyes tapped me on the shoulder and offered me a free drink. I knew better, but I didn't think anything would happen with my friends there so I didn't see any harm in taking a drink from an attractive man.

That night was incredible. He took me to a back room so we could get to know each other better. At first, I was skeptical. I figured all he wanted was a one night stand, but he proved me so wrong. He was such a gentleman the whole time, he never so much as touched me. We just talked...and talked....and talked. It was the first time I'd had a genuine conversation with a man and I was on cloud nine. When my friends came to find me, he begged for my number, saying nobody he's met has ever even come close to matching our connection. Like a stupid starstruck teenager (embarrassing since I was in my twenties at this point) I believed him and gave him my number. That night he FaceTimed me and we talked all night until we fell asleep.

I was flattered at first, the constant calls, flower deliveries and well thought out dates made me feel special. Then, it became suffocating. All I did was talk to him, it's all I had time for. When I wasn't with him, he was telling me to check in every twenty minutes with a picture so he didn't worry. Now, I'm not one for being controlled, so this got old quick. I asked him politely to give me space. He apologized and agreed to loosen his reigns.

Naive me wanted to trust that he'd change, despite what my gut was screaming at me. He was perfect, everything I'd been waiting for in a man. I would've done anything for him. So, when he told me that he'd gotten into some legal trouble and needed to get out of Australia right away, I didn't even question it. I followed him blindly. He promised it was temporary until he 'figured things out.' Well, the piece of crap never did figure himself out. He refused to tell me why the law was chasing him, all he'd say is that it was all some big misunderstanding that his sorry self got drug into.

Me, being the curious person I've always been, decided to check his phone one night while he was in the shower. I know, I'm toxic or whatever but hey if you can't beat them, join them and beat them at their own game. You can imagine my shock when I found a message from some random guy with a dumb code name (like J Dawg or something like that) saying, 'you better watch your girl, I'll kill her and her entire family.' Like a normal person, I freaked out and asked him what was going on. Like the weirdo his is, he made up this elaborate story that he sued a guy for assaulting one of his strippers. Apparently J Dawg was mad at Jeremiah because it ruined his reputation as a big shot lawyer. This was strange because I later found out that he himself had sex with the majority of his strippers.

All I know for sure is that some wannabe gangster wants to kill my family and I. I stayed in Arizona for my family's protection. The further they are from me, the safer they are. Jeremiah and I have been working together to keep J Dawg away from our loved ones ever since. It's the only thing we have in common these days.

The most unfortunate thing about all of this is I fell in love in with him. I know he's not a good person and I still can't leave him. Yeah, yeah, I know it's pathetic. Don't worry, I'm not like nice to him or anything. I make his life just as miserable as he makes mine, but the heart wants what it wants.

Brought out of my past by the loud sound of my car pulling into the driveway, I can no longer procrastinate seeing him. I sigh and turn off the car. Time to rip the bandage off.

He's standing in the kitchen when I come home, eating cereal. "Good morning Lyra."

I roll my eyes. "Look Jeremiah, I'm way too tired for this conversation right now. Can we drop it?"

He sits his bowl down. "I protect you, I pay for you to have nice things, I love you, and I can't get you to do one small thing for me? All I ask is that you don't have male patients. But no, that's too much to ask from Princess Lyra."

Okay, so we're having this conversation while I'm tired and cranky. That's his bad. "First of all, I make more than you. If anything I buy you nice things. Second of all, I know it's hard for you to comprehend that there's other people on this planet besides you, but half of the population is men. I can't refuse to care for half of the population because it makes my dramatic boyfriend uncomfortable."

His jaw clenches in anger, a look I've grown accustomed to. "Did you see him naked?"

I burst out laughing. "Do you even hear yourself? No, I didn't see him naked Jeremiah. You have reason to be insecure though, when you're as small as little Jeremy down there is everything looks large in comparison." I look him up and down to drive my point home.

He moves in on me. "This isn't funny!"

"I wish I was kidding." I shrug. "How do you even know that I had a male patient? That's weird."

He crosses his arms over his muscular chest. "I asked a coworker of yours."

Unreal. "Fantastic, you're sleeping with one of my coworkers now too. Do you ever work?" I sigh. "Can I go to bed now?"

Jeremiah follows me into the bedroom. "I didn't sleep with anyone, I swear. I'm just protective of you."

I slam the bathroom door and start getting ready for bed. "That line got old after the thousandth time you said it."

"Babe, males are dangerous in your line of work. If one of these guys skips there meds, you could get seriously hurt."

How does someone with mental illness not sympathize with people who have mental illness? "I'm trained and they have security guards. You know I can defend myself." He doesn't need to know how little the security guards make me feel protected. It didn't matter, I make myself feel safe.

He is sitting on the edge of the bed when I come out of the bathroom. He's wearing nothing but his favorite black boxers. I guess he's tired from his long night of harassing me. "Are you off tomorrow?"

I sit next to him. "Yeah, I have no plans on going back there."

He smiles, which to my annoyance makes my heart soften. "That means you're all mine tomorrow." He kisses my cheek. "And the rest of today."

I laugh. "Don't you realize I'm annoyed with you?"

He kisses the top of my head. "I have a surprise for you."

I hate surprises, especially his brand of surprise. "Oh no, what did you do?"

He grabs my hand. "I bought us tickets to Australia to visit your parents. "

My mouth drops. "You what?! When? How?" I couldn't believe my ears.