I cup the cold glass with one hand, keeping my thighs covered with the other. He watches me attentively, and I try to speak my questions through my eyes:
did we have sex?
I don’t think I can say the words aloud.
He has to be reading me right. “You blacked out,” he finally concludes. “At what point?”
“I remember bits and pieces after we left Hex.”
His jaw hardens. “Drink,” he tells me. “You’ll feel better.”
Wait? He’s not going to tell me if we had sex or not? This is killing me. “Did we have sex?!” I accidentally shout it.
Fuck my life.
“No,” he tells me without a smile. Without humor. His seriousness pounds my heart.
“Did we kiss?” I ask softly.
“No, not really.” He picks up a blue plastic AE water bottle off his dresser. “I helped you change into that shirt after you said a wire was hurting you, but I knew you were more intoxicated than me. I wouldn’t take advantage of you, Thora.”
I finally let out a breath.
He gestures to the green slush. “Hurry up and drink that. We’re leaving in ten minutes.”
My eyes grow. “What? Where?”
“The gym. Your training starts today.”
“Today?” My head throbs still, a splitting migraine that jackhammers my temple. I shouldn’t be anywhere near an apparatus.
He sits on the edge of the bed, really close to me. “I have rules.”
Of course he has rules. I lean my shoulders against the black headboard.
“No complaining.”
“I wasn’t complaining,” I mutter, sipping the green drink. It’s vile. I gag at first, but his look of
suck it up, little mouse
forces me to drink more of it without flinching. I remember the nickname, and I can only guess he gave it to me for my height compared to his. I also remember his strict anger at the auditions, and I wouldn’t expect anything less from him now. Clearly, he takes work seriously.
“If I call you with a free hour, you’ll stop whatever you’re doing and train. Except if you’re working at Phantom.”
“Okay.”
I can do that.
“No drugs,” he says.
“That won’t be a problem,” I mumble into my next sip. I’ve never even smoked pot. The call of narcotics isn’t strong for me.
He adds, “Don’t show up to training drunk.”
I hesitate mid-gulp and then wipe my mouth slowly with the back of my hand. “Problem…I’m slightly drunk right now.”
His facial muscles never even flinch from their no-nonsense, stern position. “Don’t arrive late to training. You waste my time, we’re done.”
“Fair enough,” I say softly. He’s doing this out of kindness, no other reason.
“No boyfriends.”
My lips part, and my heart jumps. “What?”
“It’s a distraction,” he explains, “and if you’re not one-hundred percent committed to becoming an artist, then you’re wasting my time again.” His eyes smolder hot. “And if you do end up with a boyfriend, I don’t want to know about it. I don’t want to hear it. That stays out of the gym. Understand?”
I digest all of his words with a heavy frown. I don’t think I misinterpreted the attraction between us last night—but maybe that’s all it was, a drunken night. And I hate myself for fixating on
him
like
that
when he’s giving me a handout that I’ve desperately needed.
“You’re glaring,” he says. “I didn’t realize your love life was more important to you than your career—”
“It’s not,” I retort; my pulse speeds the longer we discuss this. I feel like puking.
He lifts my chin with two fingers, his hard gaze pushing through me. That stare—it’s so intrusive. So intimate. That it might as well be a form of sex. Eye sex. Eye
fucking.
I understand it now. And he says lowly, “Then no boyfriends.”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” I breathe.
A knock sounds on the main door, the noise dull in this room but audible. Between his siblings and cousins at The Masquerade, I’m surprised there aren’t more knocks.
“Is that all the rules?” I ask as he stands.
“Unless I think of more later,” he tells me, basically declaring that he can amend the rules at any time. He holds all the power—as he should.
He’s doing you a giant favor, Thora.
I’m so grateful that I can’t complain, even if it wasn’t on his list of rules.
“I left Advil on the bathroom counter for you,” he tells me on his way to the door, the knocking louder. When he leaves to answer it, I scan the room for my bag. A couple seconds pass before I remember that my suitcase is at Camila’s—along with a change of clothes, underwear and my shoes.
I exhale, my stomach still queasy. I’m not sure the green juice is helping any. Camila is most likely busy dealing with her extended family, and I don’t want to complicate her day with my baggage—literally. I smile weakly at the pun, and then quickly frown when I realize it has not solved my problems.
Nikolai left the door ajar, and I hear voices escalate in the living room, enough that curiosity propels me there. I edge near the wooden frame.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” the familiar male voice says. “It’s just that I don’t trust you.” I imagine John Ruiz’s surly, unapologetic face.
“That makes perfect sense,” Nikolai replies. “What am I going to do with Thora’s clothes? Steal them? Wear them for myself?”
My clothes. I’m opening the door in a flash, too pleased with the slant of the universe, dipping on my side. My solution just walked into Nikolai’s suite with my suitcase. I creep into the living room, my toes throbbing from the torture I put them through last night.
It isn’t until John sees me that I notice my mistake. His eyes travel down the length of my body, clad in a black button-down. Nikolai’s shirt. And nothing else.
The universe giveth and taketh away.
“I can explain,” I say quickly. “We didn’t…” I motion between Nikolai and me. He stays quiet, domineering, not helping at all. “Do anything—we didn’t do anything. I just didn’t have a change of clothes.” It’s the best excuse there is. Maybe because it’s true.
“It’s not my business,” he says, my hefty suitcase by his side. “But either way you’re still certifiably insane.” He lets out a dry laugh. “You really would rather stay with
him
than go to a hotel or a hostel. Honestly, Thora, I pegged you as a degree above stupid.”
A degree above stupid must be a fairly good compliment from John.
Nikolai’s biceps flex, a sign that he’s ticked off. “And what’d I do to you?”
John never backs down. Not even shrinking in place. Even if Nikolai is taller, broader, and a year older—John is angrier, moodier, and tapping into the
I hate this fucking world
vibe with expertise.
“For starters,” John begins, “you turn a perfectly good club into an idiot fest every Saturday night. And the rest of you Kotovas are all the same. Thinking you’re above the rules. Your little brother practically pisses everywhere he goes—”
“You can leave,” Nikolai interrupts, his jaw hardened severely. His muscles coiled, on offense.
They have some sort of staring match that I can’t make sense of. John unflinchingly stays his course, as though he expected that type of reaction from Nikolai. He breaks the eye contact first, not in defeat really. He just hands my suitcase off to me, and I grab the handle.
“Camila told me to tell you not to ditch her just because you’re not crashing at her place anymore,” he says. “She doesn’t have many friends who stick around here.”
I nod, my heart swelling that she’d even want to stay in touch. “I’ll text her. Thanks for this.”
He shrugs. “Camila made me do it. Don’t think I’m a nice guy.”
“That’d be impossible,” Nikolai says, his voice deep and threatening.
John rolls his eyes dramatically before giving me a half-wave and exiting out the main door. When he shuts it behind him, Nikolai spins back to me. As if nothing happened, he says, “Get dressed. We have practice.”
Right.
Practice with the God of Russia.
I wonder if I’m about to see why he’s called that.
Act Fifteen
Aerial Ethereal’s gym within the hotel & casino seems different now that I’m no longer auditioning. I still feel like an interloper, but not quite as much as before. Sunday morning, only a few coaches and choreographers linger by the glass office doors. Barely any artists practice now, and I have a feeling their main source of training comes from ten live shows a week.
Nikolai has spent the past fifteen minutes giving me a tutorial on circus equipment, probably waiting for my hangover to subside. I stumbled into his body
three
times, still slightly intoxicated. I’ve never been that black-out drunk before, so this is all new to me.
I’m just proud of myself for not vomiting.
He places his hands on my shoulders, rotating me towards the apparatus. I’ve been staring at the wall for two minutes. Dear God. He gestures to the red aerial silk that’s rigged on the eighty-foot ceiling.
“I know this one,” I tell him. “I had a makeshift silk in my garage.” My dad helped me rig it when I was fourteen. At the time, I think he believed it’d stay a hobby. If he thought it’d turn into a career aspiration, I wonder if he’d still lend a hand or allow it.
Nikolai pinches my chin and turns my head to face him. “That’s dangerous, Thora.”
“It was secure,” I defend as he releases his grip, my attention now his. It’s harder to capture when I’m hungover, and I can tell it’s frustrating him. “I never got hurt.”
“You could have,” he refutes. “You’ll work on this equipment. Don’t go to a different gym or build your own apparatuses.” I catch the concern in his voice, and I guess his paranoia comes somewhere fresh. Tatyana, his old partner, was injured for reasons unsaid.
Honestly, I’m too nervous to ask why. He’s been more than generous, and I’d rather not scare him off with my insensitive curiosity.
“This way.” He rests a hand on the small of my back, guiding me across the gym to a new apparatus, the aerial silk already out of view. We barely spent any time there, but maybe it’s awkward. It’s the discipline I lost out to Elena. It’s the one they’re using together, not me.
After showing me around the Russian swing, a large apparatus that oscillates front to back, allowing the flyer greater height, he brings me to a new kind of structure. Something built specifically for a show. It looks like a metal jungle gym, or metal cubes stacked together, bars and bars. And a teeterboard lies underneath.
“
That’s
dangerous,” I point out. I imagine someone jumping on the end of the teeterboard, catapulting an artist at the other end, like a springy seesaw. If they’re off, even a degree, they could smack into a metal bar. Hit their head. Land wrong on one—this is a death trap.
“It appears that way,” he says, “but there’s enough room for a triple layout. Every movement has to be precise and calculated, but that’s with anything here.” He takes a few steps to the side and watches me. “When you stare at this, what do you see?”
I take a deep breath and inspect the bars from afar. “A jungle gym?” I’m not sure if this is the right answer.
“What do you feel?” he asks.
I open my mouth, unsure of what I’ll even say. But I hesitate as he sits on the blue mats, his forearms resting on his knees. “Show me,” he says, about ten feet from the apparatus.
I look at him uncertainly and he nods in encouragement. Okay. I try to smother drunken, hungover Thora James as I approach the metal structure. Up close, it dwarfs me, looming like the bare bones of a futuristic house. I rub some chalk on my palms and grip one of the cold bars, a vertical beam.
Nikolai says a few Russian words to someone by the glass office, and they slip back inside. Melodic, sweet sounds fill the cavernous gym, the main speakers playing a familiar song that simultaneously soothes and quickens my pulse. I recognize it as “
One Day I’ll Fly Away
” from Moulin Rouge.
What do I feel?
I exhale another breath and use my upper-body strength to lift my torso horizontal. I concentrate on the angle and then reach out for another beam, this one like monkey bars. I jump onto it and then swing my body out, gaining more momentum.
There’s another bar in sight.
I think I can reach that and do a handstand or a double (unlikely).
“Drop down,” Nikolai suddenly says, the music cutting off. I obey his command instantly, my feet hitting the mat.
He’s beside me in seconds, his hand on the bar above my head. “That’s what you feel?” He says it like I might as well have been a soulless ghost.
“I’ve never been on this apparatus before…” I throw out an excuse.
He shouts a few Russian words at the lady near the office again. The song replays, and I watch him closely. He breathes as though he’s inhaling intangible things. Love. Magic and beauty. And then he climbs up one of the vertical beams with ease, standing on the top of the structure.
He saunters across it like a tightrope, and his gaze—it never leaves my body. As though he’s performing for me. As though the music is mine.
And then he drops straight down, my stomach plummets like he just fell from a forty-foot-height, but he catches one of the bars, channeling the power to do a double between the rungs. It’s effortless, like he’s slicing through air. He comes to an abrupt stop on top of a bar, squatting.
He slowly stands, power radiating in this one action, and his stormy eyes bear down. He walks closer on the bar. So swiftly, he drops again. He clasps another beam, and I soak in his dominant, precise movements—that fill with life and…something greater.
When he finally lands on his feet, beside me, the song is near its end. He’s trounced my mind with carnal, euphoric things. He pulls me strongly to his chest. Like whiplash, my head floats off my body. My lips part, and his hands cup the back of my head, his muscular body welding against my small frame.
I melt in ways I never have before. Beneath that look.
Beneath his passion.
“That,” he says lowly, his eyes dancing across me, “is what
I
feel.” As soon as the music shuts off, he drops his hands from me, steps back. Demonstration over. He just balled my emotions and fucked them, hard.