Page 79 of Two For the Show
He holds up his fist and I pound it with mine. “Internet therapy it is.”
Chapter 31
I unrollthe strip of leather with my throwing knives sheathed in it, feeling nervous for the first time in a while.
Not because of the injury I caused Quinton. He’s all healed up now, I’m not blindfolded, the lights aren’t off, and I’m not worrying about syncing to music. The last time I missed a throw like this was when I first started throwing knives.
But my Omega is strapped to the target, spinning slowly, her eyes squeezed shut in fear.
“You don’t have to do this, Alex,” I remind her for the fifth time. “We can come up with another way for you to be in the act.”
“No,” she says through gritted teeth. “This makes the most sense. Shock and awe is the name of the game, right?”
The plan is for the lights to go out with Alex strapped to the target, and for Quinton to take her place before they come back up. When the first knife lands in the target and the lights flash on, she’ll seem like she got away from me.
To do that, I need to practice. I have to get her used to the feeling of having knives thrown at her, and then we have to practice. And practice. And practice.
Once we’ve both overcome our fear, we’ll bring Edmund in and sync it to music. And then we’ll try with the lights off.
Well, halfway off.
Baby steps.
“Okay, I’m going to throw it now,” I tell her. I pull out one of the knives and breathe deeply before letting it fly. It makes a ‘thunk’ as it embeds itself into the wood two inches above her hand.
She screams.
“You’re okay, you’re okay,” I tell her, running forward and stopping the wheel. “It didn’t come close.”
“Fuck, that sound is terrifying. I feel bad making fun of Jude for it during truth or dare now.” She takes a deep breath and shakes her head. “Let’s go again.”
“No, I think we need another routine. Maybe I can do some rope suspension with you instead.”
Her eyes light up. “That sounds fun.”
I nod encouragingly. “It’s beautiful, too. The audience will love it.”
She sighs and shakes her head. “No. We need to show everyone how safe I am with you. But I do have a suspension idea, too.”
Alex curlsinto Jude’s side on her couch as I cook dinner for us all. This has become routine for us.
The whole pack in one trailer is a little tight, but none of us wants to spend dinner alone. Dexter and Dario are at the table working on Alex’s puzzle, and Quinton is taking a shower.
Jude brushes Alex’s still-wet hair from her forehead as he tells her about getting sober. I know that he did, but I never knew exactly why or what the catalyst was.
“I knew I had a problem,” he’s saying, looking into her eyes. “I was getting drunk before shows, hiding bottles in my trailer. When I slipped out to bars, I would, without a doubt, find a way to goad someone into a fight.”
“Was there any particular reason why?” she asks without judgment. “I mean, I’m not saying you need a why. I know addiction doesn’t always have a cause.”
I slide the half cookie sheet into the tiny oven, set the timer, and then get to work peeling the potatoes as I listen in. I’m not eavesdropping. Jude hasn’t even lowered his voice.
We all know he’s sober, and we all know what he was like while he was drunk. But this is an intimate look into it that we’ve never gotten before. I know Dexter and Dario are listening, even if they’re not looking at our Prime Alpha and Omega curled up on the couch.
“Not really, at first. It was only drinking and partying. There was a culture of it. The circus used to be a lot rowdier than it is now. We’d get trashed after a show, and it was fun. And I just kept moving the time we started drinking up, and when people didn’t want to join me, I would go to bars. We moved around so much that I never cared about how I acted. I’d never see any of them again. I wasn’t embarrassed when I got drunk and loud. I’d pick a fight over anything. If someone accidentally bumped into me, I’d retaliate with a punch to the face.”
It’s hard to reconcile the Jude I know now with the one who’d start bar fights. He seemed like a fun drunk, for the most part, when he was around the rest of us. Loud and in your face, sure, but not violent.
“Anyway, I had a wake-up call when I was at a bar and met an older Alpha who was clearly in liver failure, but was still drinking like a fish. He was telling me about how he lost his pack, his job, and was about to lose his life to the drink. It slapped me in the face. I didn’t want to hit that level of rock bottom. I knew I had to change. So, I pushed my drink away and walked out.”
