Page 34

Backstage, the halogen lights overhead flicker once—just long enough to make me flinch. I don’t have time for flickering lights. Or a lighting tech who hasn’t shown up. Or a prima donna performer who suddenly thinks spinning her fan clockwise somehow stifles her right to creative integrity. I especially don’t have time for the giant pit in my stomach that refuses to go away. Malachi hasn’t returned the bracelet someone anonymously sent me yesterday. I checked with Tonya to see if it was her, since she gave me the first one, after all. But she hadn’t, and neither had any of the other ladies from the club.

“Why the hell are the emerald feather bustles still missing?” I snap, voice sharper than I meant it. The stagehand nearest me startles hard enough to fumble a shoebox, scattering half a dozen rhinestone fishnets across the gleaming floor.

“Sorry, I thought they were moved to?—”

“Don’t think. Know. Find them and check the rest of the costume rack while you’re there.”

I already hate myself for it, but I don’t have the time or energy to soften the blow. The correction isn’t about her. It’s about me. About the way my whole body feels like a scratched record, stuck in this skipping loop of motion, motion, motion—because the moment I stop, I’m afraid I’ll crack. I swear some of them can see right through me, their doubt about my competence as the stage producer barely veiled. No one has said anything directly, but it’s hard not to feel like the outcast. The former stripper in charge of stage dancers who have degrees in the arts.

The buzz of voices in the main rehearsal space is too much. Music filters in through the closed door, a sweeping string solo that isn’t scheduled for tech until tomorrow. Someone’s jumped the queue again. To my right, Perry is talking to one of the stagehands, clipped and precise, and I can feel it through the air—the way he keeps glancing at me. It’s the same look I’ve been catching all day. Not concern, exactly. But something close. The kind of look you give a tower of dishware rattling its way toward a cliff.

I clutch the clipboard tighter, the pen loop already broken from how often I’ve snapped it in and out. My notes are half legible, mostly scribbles and panicked arrows because one of the spotlight fixtures decided to die with four days left until opening night.

“Blake.” Perry’s voice is soft at my shoulder. I don’t flinch, but it’s close. “Can we chat for a sec?”

Crap on a cracker. A talk from my boss is the last thing I need right now. Every second of self-doubt I’ve had since accepting this position combines into a nasty hydra in my stomach.

“I’m really in the middle of something,” I manage, moving toward the mannequin stand draped in two different corsets and no name labels.

He gently herds me to the side, lowering his voice. “You’re zoning out. You’ve snapped at three different techs, and none of the dancers will ask you direct questions anymore. Even Carla said you didn’t hear her ask if you wanted lunch.”

I give him a half shrug. “I’m just focused. Opening night is less than four days from now, and there’s so much to fix.”

Perry’s one of the most mild-mannered people I know, but the look he gives me right now is all patient exasperation. “I know stressed. This isn’t stressed. This is about to burst a blood vessel.”

I want to argue. Maybe even bark something clever like, Then go get a mop for the mess that used to be my sanity. But instead, I bite the inside of my cheek. I haven’t slept. Not really. Not since?—

No. Not going there.

I can keep moving. Stay pressed to the task. Keep the momentum and ride the wave of pressure until we open this damn show and I cross the finish line standing.

Before I can fire off another excuse, I pivot?—

And run straight into a six-foot-two wall of sexy vampire.

My clipboard falls with a slap that echoes, absurdly loud.

Of course.Of course,it’s Malachi.

He doesn’t say anything, not at first. He just stares at me with that quiet, unreadable intensity that makes my skin feel too tight. My heart trips, skips, forgets its job entirely. He looks like he always does—pressed, precise, powerful. But there’s something different about his eyes today. They’re hidden behind his usual contacts, but I can still see it. The sharp crimson lurking at the edge of his pupils. He smells like cold citrus and the low, dark green of cypress trees. Like forbidden woods and candlelit oaths and that one terrible, perfect night I’ve tried to forget with every fiber of my being.

My throat tightens. I hate the way I gravitate toward him, like a bug to those dang zappers.

“I—sorry. I didn’t see you.”

He doesn’t blink. His eyes flick to Perry behind me, who quickly ducks back toward the front stage like he’s been caught trespassing.

Malachi kneels—don’t think about the last time I saw him kneel—and picks up the clipboard I dropped. When he offers it back, I don’t take it. Because if our fingers touch, I might drown. He doesn’t push. He just straightens and waits. Waiting with Malachi is like standing at the edge of something ancient. An altar, maybe. Or a precipice. Or a human-sized blender. Definitely the blender.

His gaze travels over my face, hungry and furious and restrained. The void in my stomach only deepens.

We said one night. That’s what we decided on, right? Because I can’t stop reliving it, and he’s looking at me like?—

No. No.

I square my shoulders and take the clipboard with fingers that don’t tremble. Not on the outside, anyway.

“We need to call the electrician to fix the stage lights,” I say, too quiet.