Page 22 of Knife Thrower

“How did you know?”

“I recognize the look.” She tilts her head, her brown eyes softening with empathy. “The haunting. You watch doors the same way he used to. Like you expect your abuser to step through at any moment.”

I trace the condensation on my bottle. The fortress I built around my past has never cracked for anyone. But sitting across from a woman who loves a broken man, a woman who understands the shape of survival, the mortar crumbles.

“My stepfather.” The words scrape out, jagged and rusty.

I keep June locked away. I can’t speak her name. I’m not ready for that. But I give Wren the rest of it. Or rather the start of it.

“That’s why I was destroying Jonah’s heavy bag this morning.” I stare at the wet ring my bottle leaves on the table. “The feelings are getting worse. More violent.”

Wren hums a low note of understanding. She takes a sip of her drink. “It feels like you’re holding on to it, carrying the weight.”

I pull a deep breath into my lungs and release it in a slow shrug. The alcohol is already spinning through my bloodstream, fuzzing the sharp edges of my panic. I haven’t eaten since early afternoon, too preoccupied with the opening show of my new act.

A long, loud gurgle erupts from my abdomen.

Wren blinks, then lets out a surprised laugh. “You sound exactly like Brutus when Rowe is late with the salmon.”

She stands, pulls open a cabinet, and drops a massive bag of tortilla chips onto the table, followed by a plastic tub of salsa from the fridge.

I pop the lid off the salsa. For the next hour, the tension dissipates. We eat chips. We drink the rest of our beers. We talk about the humidity, the bizarre logistics of moving a circus across state lines, the amount of hairspray they go through for the acrobats. It is the first time in years I have sat across from another woman and simply existed.

The trailer door handle clicks, and the metal swings open. Rowe steps inside, bringing the scent of raw earth and animal musk with him. He freezes when he spots me at the table. His tall, broad frame blocks the exit. The elevated, shiny scar tissue on his forearms catches the overhead light.

Then his gaze slides to Wren.

The air in the small room changes instantly. It becomes dense. Visceral. His eyes darken, turning predatory as he tracks the line of her throat.

I push my chair back, and the scrape of wood on linoleum shatters the heavy silence.

“I should get back.”

Wren looks up, her cheeks flushed again, her eyes already miles away. “Goodnight, Sloane.”

I slip past Rowe, stepping out into the frigid night air. The cold hits my skin, but it isn’t enough. I head straight for my trailer, desperate for that shower.

9

COLE

Three days. Two more shows.

The electricity in that ring is going to short out my heart. Every time she catches a blade, her icy blue eyes lock onto mine, and the air turns to gasoline. I spend the entire act hard enough to crack stone. But the second the spotlight dies, she vanishes. She strips off the leather and velvet, slips out the door, and turns into a ghost before I can even wipe the sweat off my forehead.

I don’t know how to approach her. My entire playbook relies on proximity. A hand on the waist, the brush of a thumb against a jaw, a smirk in the dark. I operate on physical gravity.

Sloane flinches at touch. She builds fortresses.

I know a thing or two about fortresses. I just spent a lifetime watching one of my brothers live inside one.

I head down the path toward Rowe’s trailer. I stop a few feet short of the metal steps, my boots crunching loudly in the quiet lot. I wear a trench in the gravel, pacing back and forth, turning the problem over in my head. How do you woo a woman who looks at a flying knife like a mild inconvenience but treats a grazed palm like a death sentence? How do I even begin explaining why I’m here?

The metal door swings open with a harsh groan.

Rowe stands in the doorway. He holds a dish towel in his large hands, twisting the fabric. One golden-brown eyebrow ticks upward, his eyes tracking my path in the dirt.

“This feels familiar.”