PROLOGUE – NOVA
The smell hits first when I push through the trailer door—stale beer, his cologne, the metallic tang of grease from the generators humming behind the lot. Same smell as every night for the last twelve years. It makes me nauseous.
“Take it off.”
Roman's already inside. Of course he is. His boots are up on the table I scrub down every morning, the neck of a beer bottle clenched in his greasy fingers. I wonder if he's imagining it's my neck instead.
“Let me get out of the costume first, baby.” I keep my voice light, pretending I don't smell the danger in the air. “The crowd was good tonight. You see the take?”
“I saw the take.” He brings the bottle to his lips. “I also saw the guys in the front row drooling over your costume.”
I can't help myself—I roll my eyes. I just make sure he can't see it. “They were high-school kids, Roman.”
“And you were fifteen when I—” He cuts himself off. Drinks. I swallow down bile.
I unclasp my choker, then unlace my corset, my fingers nimble because I've literally done this a thousand times. I kickoff my boots. The padlocks come off my belt and clatter onto the vanity, one after another. I used to like the sound my costume makes. Now I dread taking it off after a performance.
“You danced for them,” Roman accuses. Same old song.
I hold back my sigh. “I danced for the show.”
“You arched your back. On the spike board. Like a fucking?—”
“It's the act.” Finally, I turn, facing him. “Roman. It's the act. Same act I've done since I was seventeen. Same act you taught me.”
I realize I shouldn't have said that before the last word leaves my mouth.
He stands up slowly. He's always slow when it's about to be bad.
“That's right,” he hisses. “I taught you.”
I bring my hands up, trying to placate him. “Roman?—”
“I taught you, and now you do it for them.”
“Baby.” I step back. The trailer's twelve feet long. There isn't much to step back into. “I do it for us. For the carnival. You know that.”
He crosses the floor in two strides and throws the bottle into the wall behind my head, and it explodes into the cabinet where I keep my picks. There's glass in my hair and beer running down my neck, but I don't complain. I'm used to it, and complaining just makes it worse.
Worried the hatred I feel for him is showing in my eyes, I look away, taking deep, even breaths. But he won't have that.
“Look at me when I'm talking to you,” he growls.
I look at him. My husband. He's gray at the temples now. I used to think he was so handsome, with eyes like a thunderstorm and a sexy smirk. He was thirty-two when he found me at the truck stop outside Wichita, but he's forty-four now. Still strong. Still bigger than me by a foot and about seventy pounds.
His hand closes around my throat, not squeezing. Not yet.
“You're mine, Nova.” The words are quiet, but somehow they still seem to echo in my ears like a prison sentence.
“I know.”
It's the only right answer.
“Say it,” he demands, bringing his red face even closer.
“I'm yours,” I repeat, louder this time. I know what he wants.
“Then why—” his thumb digs in under my jaw, “—do you keep making me do this?”
