Cale takes a deep breath and looks around. At the big top. At the wagons. Down at me. His eyes run over my face, and his voice becomes a warm murmur. “This is where I’ve been the happiest. These past months is when I’ve been the happiest, too.”
Ask him why. Go on, ask him.
He’s close enough that looking into his face make me feel bashful, but I determinedly hold his gaze. He’s being open and honest with me, like an equal. He’s not treating me like an innocent porcelain doll who can’t have conversations about murder.
Slowly, as if we’re in a dream, Cale touches a forefinger to a sequin on the shoulder of my costume. The merest of touches, but my body reacts like he’s just planted a slow kiss behind my ear.
Speaking softly, he says, “You look good in this catsuit, sparkle.”
I keep gazing into his dark eyes. Against my ribs, I can feel that his heart has picked up speed. “Can I tell you a secret?”
He rests his hand on my shoulder, neither pulling me closer nor pushing me away.
The words rise up from the ache in the center of my chest, an unstoppable force. “Every time you touch me, it feels like the world is ending. Just in a really good way.”
I wait for him to speak, but he just goes on looking at me with his somber eyes.
“When you take my hand. When you hug me. I don’t know if it’s because no one touched me in a long, long time.” I take a deep breath. “Or if it’s you.”
I didn’t know I was so hungry for affection till I met Cale. Every morsel he’s given me I soak up like a dying plant in the desert, and instead of slaking my thirst, I want more and more.
“Cale, can you…” My mouth goes dry. Can’t he see my need for him shining out of my eyes? And if he can see it, must be seeing it, is the reason he’s not doing anything because he doesn’t want me?
“Can I what?”
I moisten my lips, searching for the courage that was spurring me on just a moment ago. “Can you—can you practice our act with me?”
Disappointment plunges through me. That’s not what I want from him, but it’s the only way I know how to connect with him. He studies me for a long time, his black eyes unreadable under the night sky. Then his hand drops from my shoulder. “Sure. We can do that.”
When his back is to me, I squeeze my eyes shut. Not only am I pathetically needy, I’m a coward, as well. Wouldn’t it be easier to just get it over with, ask for what I want so he can reject me and be done with it? Or maybe that would be worse, because then I’d not even have hope to sustain me.
Hope that one day he might look at me and think, her. This is the woman I want.
I trail after him into the tent and take my place at the board. We run through our act, his knives biting into the wood. Usually this grounds me, the meditative experience of keeping still, breathing evenly, feeling myself wrapped safe and warm at the very center of Cale’s focus.
Tonight I only feel desperately sad and frustrated. It annoys me suddenly, watching him put the sixth knife back, again and again. Always restraining himself. Always holding himself apart from me.
“Throw the last knife,” I call.
He shakes his head, not looking at me. “No, not tonight.”
“Cale. Throw it.”
He looks up at the demand in my voice, and his eyes narrow. I stare back, defiant. Maybe he doesn’t like to be pushed, but I’m not going to let this go. When have I ever pushed him and it’s not been a good idea for us?
Cale doesn’t even argue with me. He just turns away and heads for the t
ent flap. I take long strides and follow him, as fast as I can on my shorter legs and in my high-heeled boots. I end up having to jog to catch him in time.
I turn him around to face me. “Nothing bad’s going to happen. Just throw it, can’t you?”
It comes out angrier than I intended, but I am angry all of a sudden. We’re alive. We’re together. We should be doing everything we can to live.
“I said no.”
“Stop being such a goddamn coward! What are you really afraid of?”
Fury flares in Cale’s eyes, and he yanks his arm from my grip. “Don’t tell me how to do my own act.”