Blue Moon by Skye Warren EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Skye Warren
- Language: English
- Genre: Romance Collections & Anthologies
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Luna
My heart slows down in the moments before a performance.
Every second seems to last an hour.
I feel the energy coming off the crowd as they clap and stomp for the
tiger who’s performing on stage right now. I’ve seen the same act so many
times, so many years of my life that even from backstage, I can see him in
my mind standing on his hind feet.
I can see him bouncing a ball.
I can see him jumping through a hoop lit on fire.
There’s still a patch of rough skin on his left paw where it caught once
during a performance. I can still smell the singed fur and hear the screams
of people in the audience.
That won’t happen tonight because for the most part, we don’t make
mistakes.
It’s not really professional pride or pleasure at the audience’s delight that
drives us.
It’s my father. He’s cruel, merciless.
Mistakes get eliminated, which means they end up rolled into a river
somewhere between one town and another as the circus moves along.
So we all learn to do our parts, to play them well.
We learn to smile so hard that no one in the audience ever guesses that
we’re terrified.
I lean down to stretch my hamstrings, forcing my nose all the way
between my legs. When I go out there I need to be limber. But we still have
five minutes.
Every drum from the band, every gasp from the audience, they’re all
choreographed.
They’re all a familiar countdown.
One I’ve played night after night for most of my life.
Maybe for some people the circus is a job.
I’ve heard distantly that it can even be a dream.
For me, it’s only ever been duty.
Duty that I was raised to perform since I was a baby. As a toddler my
father taught me to walk on a tightrope. He put down padding when he
taught me, but only because bruises are not conducive to performances. I
still got them though, bruises. I fell so many times that the bruises started
forming on my feet. My skin would crack open and my father would pick
me back up and put me on the tightrope even as blood dripped down onto
the mats. That’s how I learned balance.
After stretching forward, I stand up straight and then lean backwards
and backwards and backwards. Flexibility. Sometimes people come up to
me after a show and marvel over how my body is so flexible. Am I doublejointed? they ask. Was I just built this way? No. My body started off like
everyone else’s, but I pushed harder than I should have, harder than is safe,
and even then my father stepped in and pushed harder.
Flexibility was the only way that I could escape the injury he inflicted
on me.
So I learned it.
Standing with my feet planted firmly on the ground, I bend backwards
until I can reach my ankles, then I come back up again and freeze because
someone is there—a man.
He has dark hair, a little glossy with a surprising amount of volume.
One part falls rakishly over his eye.
Dashing, that’s the word that comes to mind.
He looks dashing.
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