Chapter 6
chapter six
NOT-KADE
The mask goes on, and “Kade Arden” ceases to exist. Saint Shade steps into the light.
Normally, this is the calmest part of my day.
Backstage, I run through the rituals that keep me from becoming a skin sack of bone shards: hands chalked, wrists wrapped, silks tested, rigging checked.
I slide the black fabric over my mouth and nose, pull the black and gold mask into place, and it clicks. The persona. The anonymity.
Tonight, though? Tonight, my whole brain and every one of my nerves is totally and absolutely fucked. Because she’s here.
Front row. Dead center. In a dress that should be illegal under Nevada law.
I only caught the briefest glimpse before Marco dragged me back to get ready, but it was enough to brand itself on my brain.
Black silk, bare legs, and those damn heels…
She’s the reason my pulse is sky-rocketing like I’m about to free-climb the Hoover Dam without a harness.
And my dick, the unhelpful bastard, has decided tonight’s the night. She’s here, and I want her.
“You good?” my aerial captain, Beth, asks as she cinches my safety strap.
“Peachy,” I lie.
Beth arches an eyebrow at me. But the next second, I’m getting the countdown. I let out a nervous breath.
Nervous? What the hell? I haven’t been nervous for a show since my first week as the headliner.
But still, I walk out onto my mark. My flyer aerialists head to their positions as well.
The music surges throughout the theater.
Adrenaline spikes in my blood. I let out one slow breath, and then it’s time.
The curtain sweeps open, and the roar hits me.
Sold-out house. Five thousand bodies pressed into velvet seats, every one of them craning for a glimpse of Saint Shade.
My music surges—low, dangerous, with enough bass to rattle bones—and I stride forward like I own the world.
That’s the thing: on stage, I do.
Cards flare between my fingers, then vanish in flame.
A levitating sphere hovers over my palm, then explodes into silver glitter that rains down like starlight.
Silks drop from the rafters, and I leap, catching one in each hand, twisting up, up, higher until the ground is just a black void.
My crew lines the catwalks, ready to reel or catch me if something goes wrong. But nothing goes wrong.
Unless you count the raging erection I’m currently trying to do acrobatics with.
Dammit. I shift, trying to hide the bulge in my pants, but where is there to go? Every time the spotlight lands on me, which is all the fucking time, I feel myself dying a little with embarrassment.
Yet, every five seconds, my eyes flick back to Willow. Willow in that damn dress. In those damn shoes. Looking at me with those damn blue eyes.
I flip. I twist. I land in a split on the silks and spin down in a perfect corkscrew. The crowd screams, the lights flare, and all I can think is: does Willow like what she sees?
She’s looking at me like she does.
Oh, she’s trying to hide it. Arms folded, lips pursed, like she’s unimpressed. But her pupils are blown wide, and she keeps biting her lip, and holy hell, she’s killing me.
Focus, you thirsty bastard. You’re dangling upside down thirty feet above a very solid and hard surface. This is not the time for horny brain.
But Willow’s eyes are on me, and I just feel them. My pulse spikes. My brain goes static. My cock—traitorous bastard—won’t calm the hell down.
And my costume is not helping me out. It’s custom-made, form-fitting black slacks with just enough stretch to let me hang upside down from a silk ribbon. Which means there’s nowhere to hide this.
I flip again, catch the rope, let momentum swing me in a wide arc.
And then it happens.
A slip. Tiny. Barely visible to anyone but the people running rigging. My hand doesn’t grip quite right because my palm is sweaty, because my brain is busy imagining what Willow would sound like if I pulled that lip out from between her teeth with my own.
The world tilts. My body swings wider than I meant. My crew gasps. My stomach lurches.
I catch myself—barely—sliding down the silk with enough force to burn a red line across my palm. The audience thinks it’s part of the act. They scream like I planned it. The spotlight follows me, glitter cannons fire, and I plaster on Saint Shade’s coy tilt of the mask.
Inside, I’m one bad grip away from death and/or public humiliation by boner.
My earpiece crackles, and Marco’s voice is there one second later. “Uh, boss? You… okay?”
I grit my teeth. “Define okay.”
There’s half a beat of awkward silence. “You’re, um, very… confident tonight.”
Oh, fuck. So, everyone can indeed see my very enthusiastic sideshow tonight.
“Stage presence, Marco,” I cover.
“Uh huh.”
The show barrels forward. Fire eats cards and spits them into doves.
Silks wrap my body in impossible knots, only for me to unravel in a single drop.
I walk a tightrope across the stage blindfolded while knives spin around me.
Every move is rehearsed to perfection. Every beat is designed to make the crowd lose their collective shit.
But tonight? Every move feels like it’s for her.
When I balance upside down on one hand, she leans forward like she’s hypnotized.
When I disappear into smoke and reappear on the balcony, her mouth drops open, just slightly, like she forgot to breathe.
And when I slide down the rope to land in a crouch, dead center stage, I feel her gaze like heat on my bare skin.
I’m performing for five thousand people. But I only want one of them to scream.
The finale comes. I climb the silks again, higher, higher, until the spotlights make me a ghost against the rafters. I invert, twist, and drop—fast, reckless, like gravity owes me a favor. At the last second, the silks catch, spiraling me to the ground in a cyclone of black fabric and smoke.
The crowd explodes.
And me? I’m drenched in sweat, chest heaving, every muscle trembling from exertion. The mask hides my grin, but inside I’m laughing like a lunatic. Because I just risked death, and all I can think about is how Willow Vale is looking at me like she wants to bite me in half.
Which, considering I saw her murder a man, might not be a metaphor.
But to polish the show off, because it’s how I end every show, I hook my thumb under the lower part of my mask and lift.
The unhinged, feral, maybe slightly cocky smile on my lips has never been easier to conjure.
I swipe my tongue across my teeth, the crowd losing their damn minds at the tease.
And then the mask snaps back into place.
The curtain slams shut, the lights cut, and the roar of the crowd muffles like someone stuffed cotton in my ears. For a second, I just stand there, chest heaving, sweat pouring down my back, trying not to collapse like a puppet whose strings got cut.
Then the mask comes off.
My crew swarms around me—Jessie with a towel, Anton with a bottle of water, one of the riggers hollering, “Nice save up there, boss!” because apparently they all noticed how close I came to redecorating the stage with my skull.
“Just keeping things interesting,” I huff, out of breath, forcing Saint Shade’s smirk even though my ribs ache and my palm burns.
“Well, that was interesting…” Marco growls with slitted eyes.
I’m too fucking embarrassed to even respond right now.
I head straight back to my dressing room, and it feels wrong when I reach it. Too quiet, too dead, too alone. I close the door, though I don’t lock it, and suddenly, all the adrenaline and all the anticipation I’ve been feeling all night don’t know where to go or what to do.
I peel off my performance pants and pull on some gray sweatpants. I’d really love to take a quick shower, but with what I planned, there’s no time.
I’ve stripped my performance shirt off and am just about to pull a t-shirt on when the door swings open.
And in she walks.
Good fucking night.
That dress. Those damn heels. The hair, the painted lips. It’s like she was trying to torture me tonight, and maybe I deserve it after being so damn brash and arrogant to give her a ticket to my own show.
But I don’t miss it. Not a second of it. Willow walked in, and I don’t have a shirt on. She’s thirsted over my shirtless body dozens of times, no shame in her comments. But seeing it with my own eyes? The way she’s studying me like she’d like to lick every inch of my naked torso?
I just about bust in my pants.
What are you, thirteen? I internally chide.
But I’m not the only one affected. Willow blushes. Hard. All the way down to her chest.
I pull my shirt down over my head because something embarrassing is going to happen if I keep letting her watch me.
“Nice show,” she says, casual as hell. Like she didn’t just watch me nearly fall to my death because I was too busy staring at her legs.
I straighten my shirt and run a hand through my hair, buying a second to steady myself. “Glad you enjoyed the entertainment. You looked… invested.”
Her eyebrow arches. “You looked distracted.”
Touché.
For a beat, we just watch each other. The silence isn’t empty though—it’s full. Tense. I can almost hear both our hearts hammering.
Finally, she breaks the pregnant quiet. “You’re really not going to turn me in?” Her voice is soft and surprisingly wary.
Just like I was terrified that she’d expose me and blow up my whole life, she’s scared too. And it doesn’t fit. A lioness like Willow is a stranger to fear. “No,” I answer her simply.
“Just like that?”
“Not just like that.” I drop into the chair in the corner of the room, holding her gaze so she can see I mean it. “I looked into him. Travis Bell. That was his name, right? Partner at Harper, Bell & Klein, HR’s favorite predator factory?”
Her lips part in surprise.
I shrug. “I wanted to know if you were just… unhinged. Or if you had reasons. Turns out, you had more than reasons. You had a whole fleet of them, women who the system ignored.”