Page 37 of Two For the Show (Trapped On The Tightrope Duet #2)

I unroll the strip of leather with my throwing knives sheathed in it, feeling nervous for the first time in a while.

Not because of the injury I caused Quinton. He’s all healed up now, I’m not blindfolded, the lights aren’t off, and I’m not worrying about syncing to music. The last time I missed a throw like this was when I first started throwing knives.

But my Omega is strapped to the target, spinning slowly, her eyes squeezed shut in fear.

“You don’t have to do this, Alex,” I remind her for the fifth time. “We can come up with another way for you to be in the act.”

“No,” she says through gritted teeth. “This makes the most sense. Shock and awe is the name of the game, right?”

The plan is for the lights to go out with Alex strapped to the target, and for Quinton to take her place before they come back up. When the first knife lands in the target and the lights flash on, she’ll seem like she got away from me .

To do that, I need to practice. I have to get her used to the feeling of having knives thrown at her, and then we have to practice. And practice. And practice.

Once we’ve both overcome our fear, we’ll bring Edmund in and sync it to music. And then we’ll try with the lights off.

Well, halfway off.

Baby steps.

“Okay, I’m going to throw it now,” I tell her. I pull out one of the knives and breathe deeply before letting it fly. It makes a ‘thunk’ as it embeds itself into the wood two inches above her hand.

She screams.

“You’re okay, you’re okay,” I tell her, running forward and stopping the wheel. “It didn’t come close.”

“Fuck, that sound is terrifying. I feel bad making fun of Jude for it during truth or dare now.” She takes a deep breath and shakes her head. “Let’s go again.”

“No, I think we need another routine. Maybe I can do some rope suspension with you instead.”

Her eyes light up. “That sounds fun.”

I nod encouragingly. “It’s beautiful, too. The audience will love it.”

She sighs and shakes her head. “No. We need to show everyone how safe I am with you. But I do have a suspension idea, too.”

Alex curls into Jude’s side on her couch as I cook dinner for us all. This has become routine for us .

The whole pack in one trailer is a little tight, but none of us wants to spend dinner alone. Dexter and Dario are at the table working on Alex’s puzzle, and Quinton is taking a shower.

Jude brushes Alex’s still-wet hair from her forehead as he tells her about getting sober. I know that he did, but I never knew exactly why or what the catalyst was.

“I knew I had a problem,” he’s saying, looking into her eyes. “I was getting drunk before shows, hiding bottles in my trailer. When I slipped out to bars, I would, without a doubt, find a way to goad someone into a fight.”

“Was there any particular reason why?” she asks without judgment. “I mean, I’m not saying you need a why. I know addiction doesn’t always have a cause.”

I slide the half cookie sheet into the tiny oven, set the timer, and then get to work peeling the potatoes as I listen in. I’m not eavesdropping. Jude hasn’t even lowered his voice.

We all know he’s sober, and we all know what he was like while he was drunk. But this is an intimate look into it that we’ve never gotten before. I know Dexter and Dario are listening, even if they’re not looking at our Prime Alpha and Omega curled up on the couch.

“Not really, at first. It was only drinking and partying. There was a culture of it. The circus used to be a lot rowdier than it is now. We’d get trashed after a show, and it was fun.

And I just kept moving the time we started drinking up, and when people didn’t want to join me, I would go to bars.

We moved around so much that I never cared about how I acted.

I’d never see any of them again. I wasn’t embarrassed when I got drunk and loud.

I’d pick a fight over anything. If someone accidentally bumped into me, I’d retaliate with a punch to the face. ”

It’s hard to reconcile the Jude I know now with the one who’d start bar fights. He seemed like a fun drunk, for the most part, when he was around the rest of us. Loud and in your face, sure, but not violent.

“Anyway, I had a wake-up call when I was at a bar and met an older Alpha who was clearly in liver failure, but was still drinking like a fish. He was telling me about how he lost his pack, his job, and was about to lose his life to the drink. It slapped me in the face. I didn’t want to hit that level of rock bottom.

I knew I had to change. So, I pushed my drink away and walked out. ”

Alex takes his cheek in her hand. “Wow, that’s incredible. One conversation and you got sober? I’m impressed.”

He snorts. “Oh, no. I caved like a week later and got so fucking drunk that I missed a show. Rex stepped in for me, and after that, he slapped some sense into me. He said if I wanted to kill myself, he knew better ways to do it, and otherwise, I needed to get my shit together because the entire circus was depending on me. They all had nowhere else to go and needed me to keep the show running so they weren’t out on their asses. ”

It’s hard to imagine Rex, the leggy contortionist, pushing Jude around. But I’m glad he did. I don’t know how the rest of us didn’t notice him deteriorating.

“He kept me accountable. It’s been six years now, and I know I’ll always be an alcoholic, but I’m proud of myself. I’m proud of what I built here.”

“We’re proud of you, too,” Quinton says, startling me. I didn’t know he’d gotten out of the shower.

Dario nods solemnly as he looks up from the puzzle. “I know it couldn’t have been easy, but I’m glad you did it.”

“I never much liked drinking anyway,” Alex says casually. “It’s no big deal for me to give it up. ”

Jude looks at her, stricken. “You don’t need to give it up for me.”

“I know.” She stands up and crosses to the kitchen, opening the fridge and pulling out a half-full bottle of wine. She raises her eyebrow at Dexter, and he nods. Our Omega unscrews the top and pours it down the sink.

I toss the potatoes into the boiling water on the stove and rest my back against the counter. “Jude, we’re a pack. What’s good for one of us is good for all of us.”

After a beat, Dexter bursts out laughing in such an uncharacteristic way that all of our eyes land on him. After he calms down, he shakes his head. “Sorry, sorry. I never realized I wasn’t the only fucked up one. That’s on me. I had my eyes closed to everything around me.”

“Were you under the impression that we were all normal people?” Quinton says with a snort. “Normal people don’t join the circus and get knives thrown at them, dude. Matteo is the only one who’s not got a ton of baggage, and even he has some.”

Alex heads back to the couch and sits down next to Jude. “What’s your baggage, Matteo? We may as well get it all out in the open.”

“My girlfriend died. Her name was Paula.”

The grief isn’t fresh anymore, but I still miss her. She was my friend first and foremost, and it sucks that she never got to meet Quinton or Alex.

“It wasn’t serious, romantically, I mean.

We both knew it wasn’t forever. But she never had her chance to find that forever, and I did.

” I didn’t realize how much guilt I was retaining from that.

“I wasn’t with anyone else until I met Quinton.

She was my friend, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I stole happiness from her by being with her. I was miserable, unable to move on. ”

Quinton wraps his arm around my waist and rests his head on mine. “She’d be so happy for you, Teo.”

“Oh, I know. Jealous, too.” My heart lightens a little as I unburden myself.

“I think a lot of what made me miserable is that I wasn’t more upset over her passing.

I was upset, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t the devastation you feel from losing a lover.

I lost my friend. I’m not diminishing the grief of that, but it’s a different kind, you know? ”

Jude hums and nods his head in agreement. Alex smiles at me encouragingly as she climbs onto the big guy’s lap.

“Tell me more about your friend,” she says softly, resting her head on Jude’s chest.

So I do.

I tell all of them about Paula. About her infectious personality, the way she could beat anyone at a game of poker. I tell them about how she convinced me to go skydiving, and left me behind when I couldn’t jump. I stayed on the plane as we landed, freaking out with worry that she didn’t make it.

Of course, she was laughing at me and never let me live it down that I didn’t jump with her.

As I finish making dinner, we all start to share our traumas.

Dario tells us about a fire he took part in, and Dexter shares stories about their dad.

Quinton talks about dealing with the depression that preceded his Rot and his theory that they were connected.

And Alex shares more stories about her pack before us. About the time they stomped on her and broke her collarbone, and she lied to her colleagues in the ER that she had gotten in a car wreck.

We grow closer as we eat together and open up our hearts to one another. When the topics lighten and our dark stories turn humorous, a feeling of pure contentment hits me straight in the chest.

It’s not mine, though I’m feeling the same.

My Omega is happy. More than happy.

She feels safe.

It’s all I could possibly want for her.