Caged Bird | ✔

Chapter Twenty Two

You spend enough time hearing that you are to be blamed, that you are the reason that someone is dead, that if it weren't for you he would not be buried six feet under ground and that he would still have the option of walking into his office at Cross records on any weekday

You start to believe it.

Of course, I knew that I had not physically done it, but it did not mean that I did not feel guilty for the role I played in his death. Because as much as I would have liked to pretend I had no involvement, I did; If he had not come to see me that night, he would still be here

Which made his death more my fault than anyone else's

I stopped counting the days I spent holed up in my room, stopped peering through the lace curtain that covered the front windows of the house to see if the seemingly growing crowd had cleared.

I Stopped checking In hopes that when I eventually did look through the glass again, the people who were camped outside in their folded lawn chairs with cameras resting in their laps as they waited for me to make an appearance, - they would have finally moved on to a better muse, a more exiting story instead of mine

However, there was no such luck

And the fact that heat on me had not dissipated, meant that the police still had not found Damien's killer, and even though I had an airtight alibi, my story checked out, and I was free to do or go wherever I might please, - at least according to the state police. it did not mean that people were willing to let it go whether I were innocent or not

I was the bad person here

I was the one who fucked a married man, a man who was very much successful and was one of the most influential men in the state. A man I had slept with for years, which meant he had been cheating on his dying wife for years. Moreover, because of the affair; his family had not even seen him before he passed because he had been with me; Whispering sweet nothings into my ear and making me cum in every way imaginable before he would walk out of that resort and be shot in the head.

I had spent so long inside the house, that I was beginning to forget what I had done prior to hiding inside the house, filling my day with household duties and chores as if I were a housewife with nothing else to do but maintain the house

It felt as if I were slowly losing sight of who I was, and I had no idea on how to get back to that person

These facts scared me, and it was precisely that fear that drove me to my next great Idea;

A trip

Not a work trip funded by my boss, or a trip that I had been roped into going along with by my high school friends

Just a trip of my own

I wish I could say that the trip was inspired by the time I was losing, or the fact that Sue was 5 months pregnant now and the last time I had seen her she was barely 2 months along. Nor the fact that my body had become a regular canvas for dads belt, and when it wasn't the leather whipping at my skin, it was the rope of my skipping rope

Instead, I was taking this trip because I was so shallow that I could not remember myself prior to Damien

I pulled out my phone to call Cassie

''What do you think of going somewhere fun?'' I ask, the words tumbling out in a jumbler, the moment the phone stopped ringing, the words had spilt out of my mouth not even slightly coerced into wanting to wait for Cassie to at least greet me before informing her of my thoughts and plans

''What do I think of going somewhere?'' Cassie repeats back to me slowly

''yeah like a getaway'' I inserted