Page 4 of Two For the Show (Trapped On The Tightrope Duet #2)

ONE MONTH LATER

I wince at the steam that shoots out of the awkwardly placed spout as I attempt, and fail, to make another latte.

“Lexi!” the owner, Sylvia, gently scolds me. “Be careful! I know you’re still new at this, but you’ve gotta tighten up. I can’t have you getting injured.”

My hands shake, and I curse to myself. “I’m sorry. I’ll get better.” It’s only been a week since I started picking up shifts at Brewtiful Mornings, a kitschy little coffee food truck that travels around to various suburbs and neighborhoods in a small but wealthy town. “I’ve never done this before.”

“I know that, but I can’t be spending all day worrying about you. I need help, not to be a babysitter.”

A week ago, three weeks after running from Cirque de Mordu, I found myself standing in line to grab a café con leche at the truck.

I’ve been trying not to spend money on unnecessary things, but I had a heat spike the night before and needed a little treat to get through the aftermath of it on my own.

Suffering through it alone in a cheap motel was no fucking fun. I had to stuff towels under my door after pushing the dresser in front of it and lock myself in the bathroom in fear of my pheromones attracting an Alpha.

And then I ached, and cried, and begged for my pack for hours.

I’ve been able to go back on suppressants, but I have to use the over-the-counter ones that only minimize my scent, so it’s not offensive in public, and reduces the severity of my heats, not eliminate them.

It’s probably better this way for my Foresaken Omega Syndome, but I hate that I’m having to spend some of my limited funds on descenting products.

Sylvia handed me the café con leche, and I’m not sure what came over me when I asked if she was hiring.

She squinted at me and then told me to step to the side and she’d talk to me later.

I sat down on the curb and sipped my drink as I watched her handle the morning rush all on her own.

By the end of it, her curly red hair, streaked with shiny silver, was sticking to her face with sweat, and she looked a little run-down.

It didn’t take much to convince her to let me join her, especially when I said she could pay me under the table. I didn’t ask for much - enough to cover my weekly rate at the hotel, and then an extra fifty dollars for food.

Three hundred dollars a week.

I work four shifts, from five in the morning until one in the afternoon on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.

It’s nowhere near what I’m used to being paid, but with clever budgeting, this should be able to tide me over until I find a more permanent solution.

The pay is surprisingly good for the job, so I’m not complaining.

I just have to figure out this damn milk steamer.

By the end of my fifth shift, I feel a bit more confident using it .

It’s one, and Sylvia is locking up the truck in the carport outside her house, where I meet her every day. Luckily, it’s within walking distance of my hotel.

I think she knows something is up. The Beta is perceptive, but she hasn’t pushed for information from me. I wonder if I have an “Omega on the run” look. A sign on my head that says, “Wanted by dangerous men and also probably not so dangerous men that I don’t want to expose to the dangerous men.”

It would be a large, crowded sign.

I’m grateful that so far she hasn’t seemed compelled to ask questions, because I don’t feel comfortable laying my trauma out there for her to see. The feeling to hide that I am hurt is as ingrained in me as the one to hide my underwear under my clothes at the gyno.

There’s no reason to do it, since everyone wears them, but something in our subconscious minds says we’re supposed to.

“Are you ever going to tell me why the news is plastering your face everywhere, claiming you’re kidnapped?” she asks, breeching the subject I was hoping she’d never mention. “I mean, your hair is different now, but I can tell it’s you.”

Speaking of, I need to touch up my hair. I dyed it black and cut bangs when I first ran away, as much for a fresh start as a disguise. It’s nearly faded to my natural dirty blonde.

I wince and busy myself by taking a long sip of my coffee. She takes me gently by the elbow and begins to lead me into her home.

“Come on. We have a lot to talk about if you’re going to keep working for me.”

I follow the older woman into her small but cozy home, wishing a crater would open up on her welcome mat and swallow me whole.

No such luck. The mat remains a mat and not a portal to another dimension.

She’s not going to want me to keep working for her. Maybe I can convince her not to call the tip line that Rich and the guys set up about me, and let me get out of town.

“So, Dr. Alex Shields. Lexi Black.” She pulls a chair out from the round table in her kitchen. “Sit.”

I sink into one of her mismatched chairs, holding the to-go cup in my hands like a security blanket. “Yeah?” The word comes out as a squeak.

“You’re running from that doctor who says you’re sick and not in your right mind.” Not a question. Just pure certainty in her tone as she stares directly into my soul.

Over the past three months, since I first ran away, news articles have continued to crop up.

Rich and the guys are doing radio and television interviews, and my face is all but on a milk carton at this point.

I’m surprised this is the first time I’ve been recognized, but it’s why I chose a small town several states away from my old home.

“Yeah,” I say, this time not as a question. “He’s not a good man.”

“I assume not, if you’re willing to work for me for so little when you’re supposedly a hotshot doctor.” She begins to bustle around, opening her fridge, pulling out glass containers, and turning on her oven. “Where are you staying?”

“At the Nest Garden Inn,” I say softly.

“That seedy place? You’re not safe there!” she exclaims.

Despite the sweet name, the Nest Garden Inn is not a luxurious place for Omegas to lay their heads at night. It’s in a seedy part of town, next to a couple of the less reputable heat clinics, and it hasn’t been updated in decades.

“It’s what I’m comfortable paying. I don’t have a lot of money, so I need to save as much as I can of what I have. To give me enough time to figure out my next steps.” Maybe I should call my parents.

But what if they don’t believe me? What if Rich’s narrative has poisoned even them?

Sylvia puts a dish with chopped fruit in front of me and slides a fork to me.

“Eat,” she insists, and then turns her back to me, not checking to see if I listen.

I’m trying to pick at the fruit, but my stomach has been queasy a lot lately.

The watermelon seems to be a safe bet, though, and I pop a piece into my mouth.

“I don’t like the idea of an Omega like you in that place. ”

I don’t know a lot about Sylvia. She’s older than me, maybe mid to late fifties, and, though I see the glint of a silvery bonding scar on her wrist, she’s living alone. All I know is that she’s been kind to me, giving me a job and not asking a whole lot of me.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been around women outside of the hospital.

Rich had slowly isolated me from my friends and family, and I didn’t notice, but Tripp and Greg’s arrivals really put the nail in that coffin.

Any hope I had of maintaining relationships was gone.

Being around Sylvia gives me some much-needed feminine energy and has been so refreshing.

“I know that we’re little more than strangers, Lexi, but I’d like you to move in with me.

I can pay you in room and board, and let you keep any of the tips we receive, so you can start saving up.

I don’t think you’ll be able to stay here forever, but maybe I can help you get settled before you move on to the next stage, whatever that is for you. ”

My throat tightens at her generosity, and my eyes water. I’m fighting for my life to keep the tears in. When I think I’ve finally got them under control, a pang in my chest of Matteo’s worry overwhelms me, and I lose the hold I have on them.

I’m still not used to feeling his emotions alongside my own, sometimes an echo of my devastation. The guilt I feel at his concern for me makes me feel ill.

Sylvia rushes me, gathering my hands in hers. “Oh, darling, stop that. It’s no big hardship for me. I could use the company.”

“I’m so appreciative of you, but it’s not that,” I hiccup. “I have a bonded Beta I left behind. I can feel how worried he is about me, how hurt he is that I left.”

Her eyes soften even further, and she reaches up to stroke my hair back. “Well, that certainly complicates things, doesn’t it? Is he part of the pack searching for you?”

“One of them.”

After laying it all out there for Sylvia, I’m emotionally wrung out.

I told her about the abuse I suffered at the hands of Greg, Rich, and Tripp, until I got concerned they may actually kill me, which led to me packing up as much as I could and running away to join the circus.

Then, about how I met the guys, got sick, went off my suppressants accidentally, and discovered the guys were my scent matches.

I even told her the embarrassing story about how I ended up accidentally bonded to Matteo.

About the clowns and the role they played in my eventual departure from the circus.

While listening intently, with no judgment on her face at all, she drove me to the motel to turn in my key and pick up my meager belongings.

Now I’m settled in a small room with a twin bed, a closet, and a bedside table, and for the first time in a month, I feel alright.

I’m both surprised and not that I miss the Cirque de Mordu crew something fierce, but I’ve built my little nest with the things they picked out for me, and, though they’re heavily faded, I can still smell their scents on the things they gave me after my nest was destroyed if I focus hard enough.

I wonder how Quinton is. Has my departure sent his Rot back into dangerous territories? Is he too high to function, trying to chase the pain away that my leaving caused?

Does Dario still have his beaming smile? Or has he let that mask drop and shown the others how much he hurts and longs for approval?

Is Jude brooding over my departure, or has he let anger take over? Is he glad I’m gone, or does he feel like there is now a piece of the troupe missing?

Will my Beta ever forgive me for leaving him like this? Or will he always be bitter that I ran with no explanation, leaving only an echo of my emotions behind? That I was able to bond with him so intimately and go without a look back?

I’m not worried about Dexter. Not after the way he ran away from me after I took his virginity and didn’t speak to me again. Before we were together, I felt like we were making tentative progress. But nope. He’s probably smug as hell, knowing he was right not to trust me all along.

Of all of them, I think I mourn what could have been with Dexter the most, because I think I need to have someone as torn up by trauma as I am.

I know Quinton is sick and needs my pheromones, and Dario went through the same traumatic event Dexter did, but something about the way Dexter processes it and I work through my issues feels the same.

Like we could grow together, and both come out better for it.

Dario would keep me young, reminding me that I don’t have to be serious all the time.

Jude would keep me grounded and safe.

Matteo would nurture me, take care of me, whether I wanted him to or not.

And Quinton would challenge me. He’d constantly push me out of my comfort zone, and we’d have a blast while doing it.

Maybe in a different time, I could have had this pack. Maybe, in a different place, I wouldn’t have had to leave them.

But this isn’t a different time or place.

I open the gate to my meadow, the horses running free in the pasture, and allow myself to sink into it. I always had a rule that I would stay out unless I were in danger. Before now, that meant I only went in when my body was threatened.

But this time, it’s not my body at risk.

It’s my fucking heart.