The Woman in the Cage – Season 1, Part 2

Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is a lie.

It started slipping the moment Beck started noticing things she wasn’t meant to. She still smiled at me like I was her safe place, but her eyes grew restless. Maybe it was the way Peach’s death haunted her, or the way Dr. Nicky’s voice started sounding more comforting than mine. Maybe it was the book she couldn’t finish, or the truths she didn’t want to admit—that the world she lived in, the people she trusted, were disappearing. I tried to hold her tighter. But Beck was beginning to pull away, and when people pull away from me, I pull harder.

She asked questions about Benji. About Peach. About how I always seemed to be there. I gave her gentle lies, soothing ones. I read her old journal entries, the ones she didn’t even remember writing, and I knew—I knew her better than anyone. I knew she wanted to be saved, but I also knew she didn’t know how to ask for it.

Still, I could feel it. The distance. She started locking her phone. Whispering in the hallway. Laughing with Dr. Nicky in that way she used to laugh with me. It wasn’t jealousy. It was betrayal. I’d sacrificed for her. I’d killed for her. And she was hiding from me.

One night, while she was at a reading, I went into her apartment. I needed reassurance, needed to feel close to her again. But what I found felt like knives—messages to friends saying she felt trapped, notes about therapy, even suspicions that someone had been in her home. My name, in the margin of a notebook, with a question mark. Joe?

I went back to the shop and sat in the cage below, where I'd kept Benji and Peach’s secrets. The same place where I had written letters to Beck in my mind, poems she would never read. I felt something twist in me. If she truly knew everything I did and didn’t understand—then maybe she never loved me at all.

But she did love me. She just didn’t know it yet.

The confrontation came on a Tuesday. She came into the store unannounced. Her face pale. Her hands shaking. She’d found something—an item I’d missed, a box under my floorboards. It had her old phone, Benji’s watch, Peach’s sunglasses. She held the box like it was a grenade. I tried to explain, to tell her the truth in a way that didn’t sound like madness. But she screamed. She ran.

I couldn’t let her go.

I don’t remember grabbing her. I don’t remember the exact moment I locked the basement door. I just remember her voice—sharp and breaking—as she begged me to let her go.

“You don’t love me, Joe. You just want to own me.”

“No,” I whispered. “I want to protect you.”

She cried for hours. Slept on the floor. Wrote a story on the typewriter I gave her. I fed her. Watched her. Waited. I believed that if I gave her enough time, she’d see things clearly.

And for a while, it looked like she had.

She softened. Read to me from her story. Called it fiction, but it wasn’t. It was our story—her words wrapped in forgiveness. She told me she understood now. That she saw how much I had given for her. That she wanted to start over. She kissed me through the cage.

I wanted to believe her.

I unlocked the cage.

She asked to use the bathroom. I smiled, trusting her. She slipped out the door like smoke. I realized too late.

I found her upstairs, her hands on the phone, dialing 911. I tackled her. We fell. She hit me. Bit me. Screamed.

I didn’t mean to grab the scarf so tight.

But when I let go, she didn’t move.

I stared at her on the floor, her eyes wide in horror, her mouth open in silence.

The woman I loved was gone.

I buried her beneath the bookstore. Wrote her obituary. Finished her manuscript. Made her a legend.

They said she had been lost in grief. That her therapist, Dr. Nicky, had manipulated her. That she’d written a confession before vanishing. I printed the book myself. The city mourned her. Called her a voice of her generation. Candlelight vigils. Book signings. Interviews.

I stood quietly at the back of every event, watching strangers cry over the story of a woman they never knew.

And Dr. Nicky?

He went to prison.

It wasn’t hard. I’d watched him long enough. Collected just enough dirt. Faked enough texts. The authorities believed everything. No one looked twice at me. The loving boyfriend. The grieving owner of a small bookstore.

For a while, I felt… empty. Not because I lost her. But because I had done everything right and still lost. I saved her from the people who hurt her. I gave her everything she said she wanted. And she still ran.

But that’s the thing about love.

It’s not a choice. It’s a need.

I moved on. Packed up. Left New York.

I told myself I’d learned my lesson. That the next time, I’d do better. Be better.

I told myself I would never fall like that again.

But then… I saw her.

Standing outside a bakery in the Los Angeles sun. Hair tucked behind one ear. Reading a recipe card with a smile like poetry.

Her name was Love Quinn. And just like that, I forgot everything I promised myself. Because when you see her, you know. You don’t choose it. You don’t even want it.

You just say, “Hello, You.”