Page 2 of Animal Tamer
“Thank you,” I tell her.
She chatters once and looks away.
Cleopatra is next. The zebra has a gentle disposition that would surprise most people. She lets me run a hand along her neck, checking the muscle for road tension. Then I check her legs for swelling from the hours of standing. Her emotional support pony is in the enclosure next to her, also just fine.
Done here, I hop out and head to Rome's trailer just as Lucy hops out of the truck's cab. Rome likes her, so she's usually the one driving him between locations.
“How's he doing?” I ask her when she smiles at me. She keeps a careful distance—everyone except my brothers does.
“Just fine,” she says, wiping her palms over her worn jeans. “I'm gonna find a cold drink. You got this, yeah?”
“Yeah,” I reply, already moving to the back. I don't like anyone else taking care of my menagerie.
Rome gets his own trailer because Rome does not share space. He's fifty-two years old, half-blind in one eye, and has opinions about everything. When he hears me unhook the access panel, his trunk lifts and swings in my direction. He makes a sound so low it vibrates in my chest.
“I know,” I say. “Me too.”
He reaches his trunk through the safety gap and touches my wrist, brushing against my scars. If it were anyone but one of my animals, I'd protest.
I stay until the elephant’s breathing settles. Until I can feel my jaw unclench. Thistlewood is outside this trailer. And Samuel Harlan is somewhere in this small town right now. He doesn't know we're here yet. By the time he does, it'll be too late.
I check Rome's water. Then go back and check Cleopatra's hay net. Count Peanut's food pellets by weight, because he has a tendency to cache them and then eatthem all at once and make himself sick, and that can't happen now. I examine the pads of Caesar's paws, inspect the faint scratch on Brutus's left shoulder where he caught himself on the trailer gate yesterday, apply ointment.
The opening show is tonight.
I've never needed the crowd. The lights and the applause and the collective intake of breath when Caesar walks into the ring... All of that is for them, the audience. What I need is the work. The routine. The small acts of care that my animals trust, that ground me in the present.
I leave the trailer door open, letting the afternoon air move through.
Logan is waiting for me with two cups of coffee from the staff area. He holds one out without speaking. His eyes move over my face the way they've done since we were boys.
“I'm alright,” I tell him. I'm not sure if I mean it.
“I don't think any of us will ever be alright, brother,” he murmurs, uncharacteristically pensive. Logan's default setting tends to be chaotic violence.
I take a sip of my coffee, pondering. “Do you think what we're doing will help? The night terrors, the…” I don't finish. I don't have to—he knows I'm talking about the way I can't stand to be touched.
Logan grunts. “Fuck if I know. But it sure isn't hurting.” He rolls his lips together, hesitating before he speaks. “Want me to find a woman tonight? So you can watch?”
My hand clenches around the mug, and I can feel my cheeks flushing. Even though my brothers have been doing this for me since we discovered willing women—fucking in front of me so I can jerk off and release some tension, involved, but not touching—it still makes me feel defective.
“Maybe,” I say noncommittally. “I'll see how I feel after the show.”
Logan gives me the illusion of privacy by looking at Cole throw knives at Jonah's feet while the bigger man carries heavy boxes out of the equipment trailer. “Fair enough,” he replies after a moment. “Find me if you decide. I'll be where the pussy is at, and I don't mean Caesar.”
I snort. “You're an idiot.”
But he'smyidiot.
2
WREN
The puppy on my exam table looks like a pincushion that grew legs.
“Sweetheart, what were you thinking?” I murmur, parting the soft fur around his muzzle with the tweezers. Another quill comes loose. He whimpers and tries to lick my wrist, tail thumping against the stainless steel.
“He wasn't thinking. That's the problem.” Paige leans against the counter, arms folded, scrubs covered in cat hair from her last patient. “Porcupines are not a chew toy, my dude.”
