Infini (Aerial Ethereal #2)(8)

Now we have new choreography where I may actually work with her.

Now she’s living in my suite.

I shake my head to myself but I say aloud, “I didn’t mentally prepare for her to live with me.”

“Good because she’s not,” Dimitri says with certainty. Off my confusion, his brows knit and he makes a face like he’s about to disown me. “Don’t tell me you forgot she has an older brother.”

“Fuck,” I say.

Fuck.

My whole face drops. I never put the pieces together. When I see those initials, my mind cements on Bay.

Not the obvious answer…

Brenden Wright.





Act Three

4 ? Years Ago – New York City Luka Kotova




My knees bounce.

Restless, I rub my sweaty palms on my gym shorts. I’ve never ventured this far into Aerial Ethereal’s Manhattan corporate offices. Large, black-framed show posters hang on the waiting room’s periwinkle walls, and fresh lilies sit in a ceramic vase.

On any other occasion, this place would seem inviting, but today, I’ll meet Marc Duval for the first time. Any kindness will vanish as soon as I step into his office.

“Apologize and then stay quiet,” my older brother coaches in his stern voice, darker and more severe than ever. “Let me do the talking.”

He towers above me, not able to sit, and his broad arms won’t uncross. Nikolai Kotova is intimidating in almost every circumstance, but now I can barely even meet his gaze, which carries forty-tons of parental disappointment.

As my legal guardian, my failings reflect poorly on him, and this wasn’t a tiny hiccup. In his words: “this is a colossal fuck-up, Luka.”

I know.

I slump forward, hands cupped together, my stomach coiling in vicious knots. I’m not sure what I should say to anyone. There’s no denying that I broke a rule.

A rule that’s been cemented into the foundation of this company.

A rule that’s been upheld by every Kotova that ever existed.

I broke this rule every day, but I was caught only once. And that’s all it takes.

Just one moment for everything to change.

Next to me, Dimitri Kotova pinches the bridge of his nose, and in all the years I’ve known him, he’s never looked this distraught. Briefly, he glances at me, and a flash of remorse ignites his ocean-blue eyes.

“This is serious,” Nik tells me, his voice low—even if we’re the only three in the waiting room. Long pieces of his damp hair hang over a rolled bandana, tied around his forehead. Sweat stains the neckline of his gray shirt.

Corporate pulled all three of us out of practice today.

It’s not like my older brother and cousin are cheering for “free time” off work. Most of us stress if we lose gym time, if we’re not stretching enough or not rehearsing our acts. I screwed that up for them too.

Nik waits for me to acknowledge my mistake.

“I know it’s serious,” I say beneath my breath, blinking through my rampant thoughts and feelings. What more can I say? While I sit, my body bows forward. My emotions are teetering on a precipice, and I’m a second from falling off and puking.

“Do you?” Nikolai says, his muscles flexed. As tense as I feel. “Every single artist who has ever broken this rule has been fired from Aerial Ethereal. Not transferred to another show. Gone. Do you understand that? I can’t help you.” His face is full of brutal gravity.

And I think, fired.

The word still distorts in my head. A word with no meaning. With no context. I struggle to flip it over and make sense of it. I know the history of this rule.

I knew the inferno I was running through. Now that I’m burned, I try to sit numb instead of screaming in pain. “There are other troupes,” I say with no emotion. “High Flyers Company and Emblem & Fitz—”

“Aren’t your family,” Nik interjects. “Aerial Ethereal is the only troupe with your family, Luk—and it’s the best.”

He says it like I still deserve the best, but I don’t. An immeasurable amount of guilt fists my bare bones. Trying to shatter me. Trying to crush every limb. I’m not sure I can ever be absolved, and at the heart of it: I only regret being caught.

I don’t regret one day of breaking that rule. Because it’d mean regretting every moment that I spent with Baylee.

And I don’t. I just don’t. I can’t.

It feels like betrayal. Like a knife in the heart—and I’d rather gather her in my arms and shield her from this incoming misery than never feel what we felt together. Than never live as happily as we lived.

I stare at my cupped hands.

Fired.

I can barely picture losing my family. If AE sacks me, that’s what’ll happen. None of us have much time for people outside of the circus. And without this job, I won’t be able to afford room & board at the Masquerade. I won’t spend hours of every day working beside Timo and Katya. I won’t be tutored with them. I’ll need to go to public school—I’ve never even been inside a normal high school.

I’ll be on the outside looking in.

I’ll miss their lives, and they won’t really be a part of mine. To go from being in each other’s company daily, hourly, to being ripped out of their world—it kills me.