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*** *** ***
Theo waited for her, one day, two days. Waited for the knock. Rap, rap, rap.
He wanted her to come back. He needed her to come back, but she stayed away, three days, four days, five days. A week. He’d thought her fearless, but she wasn’t fearless after all, only reckless and stupid the way so many young women were. Or maybe he had been reckless and stupid in chasing her away so cruelly.
He feared her. She was a spinning tornado, out of control. He had called her dutiful and graceless, and she was. But she was still a ball of intensity, and she called to him somehow. He’d despoiled every inch of her nubile young flesh, stroked and pinched velvet skin over hard muscle. He could still remember the feel of her body, the energy that emanated from her. Minya had been so fragile, a wisp that had slipped, literally, from his fingers. This girl, Kelsey...she was strong and stubborn as an ox. He wanted to feast on her life force. Drink her down and get intoxicated. Kelsey. Kel-sey. Kelz-zeee... He repeated her name over and over like a mantra, testing the foreign syllables on his tongue.
Theo had to sober up. He had to go find her. He had to apologize and explain everything he was dealing with. Minya, his confidence, his life’s work that couldn’t possibly be at an end. The world didn’t make sense anymore, but he knew one thing absolutely. He wanted to fly with her. He’d told her she couldn’t do it, but he knew she could. He could take tight and dutiful and twist it in undulating silk ropes until she was flowing like water. Baptism, for him and for her.
How long since he’d worked with aerial silks? He’d dreamed for three nights now of binding her wrists with the silk, binding her so tightly she couldn’t fall and she couldn’t let go no matter how hard she tried. Climbs, wraps, foot locks, dramatic drops, red silk against pale skin and white-blonde hair fluttering as she flew. Or perhaps black silk. Silver. New colors crowded his subconscious. Light hair, red lips. White straight teeth, ocean-blue eyes, and the rose flush of skin in ecstasy. Red welts and lavender bruises...
No, he wouldn’t hurt her. She would bulldoze him long before he could cause her any real harm.
On the tenth day he showered and shaved. He dressed and walked to the Cirque headquarters to request a meeting with Michel Lemaitre.
Reckless. Stupid. Kelsey. Kelz-zeee.
Heal my bad hands.
*** *** ***
Kelsey hugged her knees during a training break, watching the other acrobats and performers. She had three sugar straws clutched in her right fist, no matter that Jason would lecture her about it. She needed them. She tore the end off the orange one and tipped it back. She winced and made a face as the tart candy locked up her jaw for a moment.
“What hurts?” Jason asked, hurrying over.
“Nothing. Sour candy.” She waved the remaining two straws and got the expected frown.
“Sugar during practice?”
“Just a little. Everything in moderation.”
Her coach couldn’t argue with that, so he took a seat beside her and joined in watching the other performers.
“Jason,” she said after a moment, “is my tumbling...dutiful?”
“Dutiful? I would answer you if I knew what the hell you meant by that.”
“Am I good at performing? Am I stiff? Do I have personality and presence during the show?”
Jason paused, which didn’t reassure her. Then he shrugged. “You’re doing fine. That stuff comes in time, and you’re relatively new. Why are you asking me this? Has someone complained?”
“I got a summons to Mr. Lemaitre’s office. To a meeting later today.”
Jason looked surprised by that. “No one told me. I doubt it’s performance related, or they would have talked to me first.”
“Maybe it’s not about my physical ability. Maybe I’m just generally not up to snuff.”
“Stop doubting yourself. And give me those damn things.” He grabbed the last straw as she upended the second one. “The meeting is most likely about your unhealthy addiction to Licky Stix.”
“Happy candy for happy circus performers. Give it back.” Kelsey held her hand outstretched until her coach surrendered the candy straw. “Better than being addicted to meth or crack.”
Jason cringed and shook his head with a chuckle. “What kind of crowd have you fallen in with here in Paris? Everything okay?”
He couched the question in a joke, but Kelsey sensed he’d wanted to ask it. In the two weeks since she’d left Theo’s house, she’d felt like she was swimming through a sea of conflict and emotion that hadn’t troubled her before. She was two different people now, split down the middle by competing desires.
One side of her still wanted Theo, and still daydreamed about the intensity of sharing his bed and the pleasure of his rough hands on her. That side was shouted down by the side of her that recognized him as a mentally unstable and downright dangerous influence. Then there was her new self-doubting side. That made three people all together. Thanks, Theo, for that.
Kelsey sighed and downed the last sugar straw. “Everything’s fine, as long as I don’t get fired this afternoon.”
“Would you feel better if I was at the meeting?”
“Could you stop them if they wanted to fire me?”
“I don’t think they’re going to fire you, but if they tried, sure, I’d do my best to stop them.”
At five o’clock, during the down time between practice and the show, Kelsey made her way through the maze of headquarters to the mysterious upper sanctum of Michel Lemaitre. His office was appropriately large and filled with a variety of circus art and artifacts. She took them in with a quick glance and then became aware of the five faces at the table. Lemaitre, Jason, another man and woman she didn’t know, and Theo Zamora, sober, groomed, and coolly composed.
Oh my God, they were really going to fire her. She felt blood rush to her cheeks as she wondered what Theo had told them. He looked different in real clothes rather than training sweats. She couldn’t take her eyes off the mole on his clavicle, visible through the open collar of his pristine white button-down shirt. It took her back to that moment when he’d pressed her against the wall by his door. Choose wisely, girl.
She’d always prided herself on making responsible choices in life. And now, just when it seemed that her dreams might be coming true, here she was, facing five people across a table. Not one of them wearing a smile.
Jason’s frown scared her most of all. Whatever they were going to do, Jason wasn’t happy about it, and since he was on her side, it didn’t bode well for her.
“Please join us, Mademoiselle Martin,” said Mr. Lemaitre with a crisp French accent. He indicated the lone chair on the opposite side of the conference table. Something about the assessing way he looked at her unsettled her. He looked at all the performers that way, like useful objects rather than people. If he didn’t like someone’s act--if they were no longer useful--they were cut.
If he cut her... Kelsey couldn’t handle failure. She’d always been a perfectionist, always been the one the coach praised and told others to emulate. She’d never failed at anything. Hell, she didn’t know how to fail.
She couldn’t look at Theo, although she felt him watching her. She couldn’t look at Jason either because of the dark look on his face. Instead she smiled at the strangers. The one in the middle, the woman, held her hand out to Kelsey.
“Miss Martin. I’ve heard a lot about you. It was brave of you to fill in during the aftermath of the recent tragedy.”
Kelsey sensed Theo shift slightly to her right. On her left, Mr. Lemaitre steepled his hands together and leaned forward. She’d never seen him so up close and personal before. Michel Lemaitre had piercing blue eyes, a beaked nose, and wavy black hair he pushed back behind his ears. His skin was slightly florid, his stature more compact than she remembered when he was judging her audition.
“You know, the circus is, by nature, a fluid thing,” Lemaitre said. “In this company we are always growing, always changing. Acts come and acts go, and I have always thought, you know, the most important thing is the audience. What do they feel? Are they entertained?”
Kelsey could barely understand his lilting accent, the panic in her head was so loud. “Mr. Lemaitre,” she burst out. “I know I’m new. I’m going to learn to do better, I swear. It’s just a matter of transitioning from the world of gymnastics to the world of Cirque du Monde--”
