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Stepping outside the next morning, I’m heading straight for the tent after realizing that I woke up late. Twenty minutes late, to be exact, and I have no one else to blame but Kyrin and Killian. Bastards.
I push through the doors, dragging my hair into a high pony and tossing my bottle of water to the ground. I had no time to change into something that would get me into the vibe of dancing, so I settled for tight bike shorts and a sports bra, and by settle, I mean I literally had no other time to put anything else on. Brisbane is warm, and I heard on the radio that they’re just coming out of summer. So fucking weird. They’re literally the land down under.
“Saskia…” Delila stutters from the corner of the center ring. God, it’s good to be back inside the tent. To smell the worn rubber, the damp grass, and the faint smell of gasoline.
“Yes?” I blink rapidly. “Sorry, I had a disrupted sleep.” My eyes cut to Killian briefly, who is bent over the stage with no shirt on and grease rubbed all over his chest. You will not stare. I try to ignore the way his ta
“Okay, well that’s alright then. You be late whenever you need to be…” Delila has been extra fucking cranky lately and her sarcasm was not lost on me. She was never like this before. She was smooth and collected and—dare I say it—sophisticated. Now she’s a mess. No longer wearing perfectly tailored suits and primed hair styled to the nines. Now her suits have wrinkles in them and her hair—though I should blame the Australian humidity—is frazzled.
“Sorry, Delila,” I murmur before slowly making my way onto the stage where Perse is glaring at me. I give her a small smile, ignoring Callan and winking at Kenan.
“Alright.” Delila claps, lighting a smoke and bringing it between her cracked lips. “Now that the showstopper is here, let’s continue, shall we?” She moves to the front of the stage. “Did you all decide what you’re doing for the tour? If you’re doing the same choreography and songs at every location?”
Perse nods. “Yes, we did. I have our group dance and show, my solo, the duet with Sass and Kenan, and—” She sucks in a breath, turning to face me. Her eyes say I’m sorry, but I get the feeling that she is not. “I would like Saskia to have her own solo act.”
Everyone silences.
“What?” Callan chokes. “Why?”
“Yeah! Why?” I glare at Perse.
Perse squeezes my hand before going back to Delila. “Listen, on New Year’s Eve, we were playing around with the fire batons and—well, the fire equipment in general and she” —Perse turns to face me—“can motherfucking dance with them! Drunk. On Jager bombs.”
“Ahhh…” I raise my finger. I’m in trouble already this morning, I don’t want to give Delila another reason to be angry at me. “I can explain.” Well, I actually can’t, but I’m hoping to think up something quick while everyone is silent.
Delila glares at me. “Saskia, you playing with toys is not going to get you in trouble. I don’t give a shit about your safety.” She blows out a cloud of smoke. “Is what Perse is saying true? Do you breathe it too? Correctly, because fire breathing is one of the most dangerous circus acts known to man…”
I gulp. “Yes. But, but I don’t know how I know.”
Killian snickers in the back.
I ignore him.
Delila is staring with newfound interest. That’s the thing with her, if you don’t bring something to the table that sets you apart from the rest, you are disposable. “Tell me, my Little Showstopper, are you a pyromaniac?”
“No.” I shake my head. “I just—well, I don’t know. I understand how they work and what to do, as if I’ve been doing it all my life.”
I watch as her face flashes with something, but before I can decipher it, it’s gone and replaced with her scowl. “Hmmm. Show me later. I would like you to work on that today.”
I nod, and after she has yelled the rest of her orders to everyone, me and Perse’s crew start warming up. I need to get my head into the game. Into music. Music can drown out even the loudest of screams.
Three hours later and we’re done for the day. The routine that Perse has me and Kenan doing is probably one of my favorites. I recognize the song from a movie, but never would have thought that Perse would have us dance to such a hypnotic and entrancing slow tune. Kenan uses my body as his own personal tool, and I him. It’s intimate and heart crushing and takes a lot of stamina to keep up with.
I’m taking a sip of water when we hear the bikes fire up in the back. The Brothers ride in, in a loud rumble of smoke.
Maya bumps me with her hip. “I need to see your fire routine.”
I swipe my mouth. I never know how to take Maya since I know she and Killian are so close. “Sure.”
“You know…” she begins to say, and my eyes follow hers to Killian. But before she can say any more, I interfere.
“Oh, he is that bad…”
“What?” she asks, confused, but with a smile on her face.
“You were going to say that Killian is not that bad of a person?”
Maya pauses, her eyebrows shooting up, and then a loud laugh breaks out of her. “Oh no, he is definitely bad. In fact, he’s the worst. He thinks that flashing that pretty smile will deter the fact that he’s evil.” She turns around as she walks away, but not before saying, “Don’t mistake those sinfully good looks for a good man, Showstopper. The glistening teeth that sit behind that grin are the very same that rips flesh from bone…”
I massage my temples and watch as she bounces toward Killian, stepping up into his wheel. “STARGAZING” by Travis Scott is playing loudly over the bikes, and once again, Killian is watching me. Even as Maya passes him and hops onto her swing, his eyes are on me. Finally, he revs his engine and rides it up the plank and onto the wheel. I exhale and scurry out of the tent through the main entrance. Usually we enter and exit through the back because the main entrance is basically another tent, only half the size of the main one. In this one, there’s a bar, a food stall where you can buy candied corn, hot food and such, and then a small alleyway that leads to the bathrooms. I continue through to the main entrance, passing a couple of the Six Demons. We’re set up in some secluded area behind suburbia, trees line the paddock, which lead to our buses that are hidden behind the tents. I guess we are granted with some sort of road access while we travel, allowing our vehicles and trailers into whatever country we’re in.
I make my way to our bus and push open the door, needing a quick shower before I go back to the tent and figure out what the hell I’m going to do about this fire routine.
Once I’m out of the shower, I open up my camera, clutching the towel in my hand and open Instagram. I flip it onto selfie mode and snap a photo of me purposely rolling my eyes. Moving it to my stories, I write the words PLAYING WITH FIRE over top of it and throw on a filter. Scrolling through my newsfeed, I click on a photo of Perse and King that she took. He’s grumpy as shit and she’s smiling with her teeth on full display. Her arm is hooked around his neck and her hands are around his cheeks, trying to get him to smile like you would a kid.