The Savior’s Trap

Chapter Eighteen – Stakes

Backstage had its own climate. Warmer than the floor outside, heavy with cologne and hairspray, the faint metallic heat of lamps brought to a simmer before the curtain rose. The ceiling was low, the paint scuffed by years of costume racks wheeled too fast around corners. A fan somewhere clicked on the same bent blade with each rotation. Music from the main room leaked through the walls as a second heartbeat—muffled kick drum, bass line prowling the cinder block.

Vincent sat on the arm of a cracked leather sofa, one boot hooked over the other, the top buttons of his shirt undone. The bottle of water in his hand might as well have been a prop—he took small sips and let the rest run over his tongue for show, cooling a mouth that didn’t need it. He watched himself in the mirror opposite: the clean jawline, the unhurried gaze, the way his chest rose and fell as if he were already dancing. He lifted a hand and slid it through his hair, not to fix anything but to remember the feeling of control, fingertips confirming the world he was about to step into.

Jerry Williams came off stage with applause still clinging to him like static, towel around his neck, breath high but easy. He dropped onto the sofa with a groan that was more performance than pain and grinned at Vincent.

“Two bachelorettes, one corporate table, and a woman who could’ve eaten me for breakfast,” Jerry said, wiping his face. “You’re up in ten, Fireman. Crowd’s a live wire.”

Vincent tilted the bottle, swallowed, smiled. “Then let’s not waste it.”

Jerry’s grin shifted into curiosity. “Word is you actually invited someone tonight.” He dragged the towel down his chest, peering at Vincent the way people examine rare animals, half expecting the myth to blink. “To watch.”

“Word travels,” Vincent said lightly.

“In this place? Like perfume.” Jerry leaned back, ankle over knee. “I’ve known you six years and I’ve never seen you bring anyone in. Not once. You don’t blur the glass. That’s your thing.”

Vincent rolled the cool bottle between his palms. “Sometimes glass needs a fingerprint.”

Jerry laughed. “What’s her story? One of the faces in the dark who screamed the loudest last week?”

“She hasn’t screamed for me yet.” Vincent’s mouth curved. “She’s new to the room. Eager. Young enough to let wonder happen to her, old enough to believe she’s steering.” He let the smile widen by a fraction. “Chloe.”

“Chloe, huh?” Jerry’s brows lifted. “That’s a name for trouble. Since when are you chasing fresh? I thought you liked your women with archives.”

“Archives are useful,” Vincent said, almost reflective. “But beginners write fast. You can still see the ink dry.” He shrugged. “One doesn’t cancel the other.”

Jerry shook his head, amused. “So we’re diversifying the portfolio.”

“Exactly.”

“Management’ll be thrilled.” Jerry jerked his chin toward the corridor where a clipboard and a headset made the owner’s gospel. “More fans who come for the same guy.”

Vincent’s gaze flicked to the curtain line, then back. “I’m not building a fan club.”

“No?” Jerry teased. “Could’ve fooled me. They’ll be on your stage in a month. Climbing. Security will have to peel them off like postage stamps.”

“The stage is the least interesting place in the building,” Vincent said, and meant it.

Jerry swung his legs, feigning offended piety. “Blasphemy.”

“Think about it,” Vincent said, voice softening into lecture. “The stage is air quotes: consent. They paid for noise and heat and what they already decided to feel. I give them the beat, they give me the bills, everyone leaves with the story they bought. Easy. Harmless.”

“Harmless?” Jerry laughed. “Tell that to the bra that hit me in the eye.”

Vincent’s smile edged sharper. “Harmless for me. The work is elsewhere.”

Jerry tossed the towel onto the floor. “There it is. The capital-W Work.” He made a conducting motion. “Please, maestro.”

“The work,” Vincent said, unbothered by the mockery, “is getting inside the scaffolding. Not the skin. The story. Making someone step into the fire and think the flame was their idea. That’s the only seduction that counts.”

Jerry studied him for a beat—the way he always did when the conversation took this turn, that blend of admiration and a caution he didn’t quite name. “And tonight’s volunteer?”

“Volunteer?” Vincent’s laugh was soft. “We don’t recruit volunteers. We light a door and let them walk through it.”

Jerry spread his hands. “So we’re lighting a door for Chloe.”

Vincent’s eyes warmed, distant and precise. “For Chloe, the door looks like a neon promise she can clap for. But she’s not the challenging part.”

“The challenging part?” Jerry echoed.

“Is the one who thinks she’s holding the keys.” The smile dimmed into a secret. “Older. Beautiful like restraint. Spine made of rules. She wears authority like a coat and doesn’t notice when it rains through the seams.” He didn’t say Elena’s name. He didn’t need to. The shape of the word lived behind his teeth.

Jerry let out a low whistle. “There it is. I knew this sudden charity for the youth had a chaperone.”

Vincent didn’t deny it. He let the silence nod for him.

“Man,” Jerry said, settling deeper. “You really are twisted. Any other guy would take the crowd, the quick hit, the money, the after-party, and say amen. You want… homework.”

“I want stakes,” Vincent said. “Dollars are applause. Stakes are scars.”

“Poetry now,” Jerry said, amused.

“Accounting,” Vincent returned. “Debits and credits. Who owes what to whom by the end.”

A dancer called Maceo passed, already in costume—half surgeon, half fantasy—with a fist bump for Jerry and a wary glance for Vincent. Everyone liked Vincent; fewer claimed to know him. That was fine. He didn’t need equals in the room where he was about to be a god.

From the main floor came a swell—the DJ testing a bass drop, a cluster of women shrieking preemptively for nothing in particular. The manager, a narrow man with an expensive watch, appeared in the doorway.

“Vince—two out, you’re on third,” he said, tapping the watch face as if time would apologize. “We’ve got a bridal tribe at table five and a company card at seven. Go big, go wet.”

“Noted,” Vincent said.

The manager squinted. “You look… pleased.”

“I am,” Vincent said simply.

“Don’t bring your hobbies onto the payroll,” the manager warned without heat, already halfway down the hall.

“Hobbies,” Jerry repeated, delighted. “That’s one word for it.”

“How’d the floor feel?” Vincent asked, practical again.

“Good,” Jerry said. “Slick corner stage left—rain machine overspray. Watch your turn. The bridal table is already drunk enough to propose to each other. Corporate at seven is the kind that tips to impress their own reflections. And there’s a pair by the rail—blowout hair, big eyes—that look like they came to believe.”

“Which pair?” Vincent asked.

“Blonde and brunette,” Jerry said. “Brunette’s nails are bit to the quick; she’ll throw money to prove she isn’t anxious. Blonde has the look of a girl who thinks she’s the main character in the city tonight.”

Vincent filed the information away without caring. He wasn’t fishing there. His cast wasn’t the rail.

Jerry watched him take all that in and then not use it. “So this Chloe… what’s the plan? Pull her up? Stage kiss? Make a fuss so she feels seen? Or do you let her sit in the dark and think she’s invisible while you still dance for her?”

Vincent turned the bottle cap between thumb and forefinger, feeling the little ridges. “I don’t need to touch her. The room will touch her for me. The trick is to make the lights say her name.”

“Creepy,” Jerry said cheerfully. “Also effective.”

“She wants permission to want,” Vincent went on, as if he were talking to himself. “All I have to do is demonstrate that permission exists. She’ll do the rest.”

“And the older one?” Jerry asked, grin crooked. “The spine of rules.”

Vincent’s eyes flicked up. A slow smile. “She’ll come because she thinks she’s a chaperone.”

Jerry barked a laugh. “You’re betting the therapist breaks her own boundary just to keep the kid safe.”

“I’m not betting,” Vincent said. “I’m arranging.”

“You think you can arrange her?” Jerry’s skepticism had a soft edge; he’d seen Vincent do impossible things with nothing but patience and a smile. “She looked like a fortress when I saw her from the floor last week.”

“All fortresses have gates,” Vincent said. “They’re called values. You don’t scale the wall. You convince the guard you’re the reason they built it.”

Jerry whistled again, low. “Man. Don’t you ever get tired?”

“Constantly,” Vincent said, and smiled like a knife. “Then I rest on stage.”

The prep routine began without asking him—hands checking buckles, thumbs testing the spring on suspenders, boots tightened down. He brushed glycerin along his shoulders so the lights had something to worship. He slid the helmet under his arm, the axe prop resting against the wall like a well-fed dog.

Jerry watched him with the professional affection only peers carried. “You know,” he said, “sometimes I worry about you.”

“Don’t,” Vincent said.

“I mean it,” Jerry persisted. “There’s a line between a game and a… thing. A hole you dig. You bend people, man. And sometimes—” He stopped, shrugged. “Sometimes metal doesn’t spring back.”

Vincent glanced at him, something like gratitude almost flickering. Almost. “You say that every year.”

“And one year I’ll be right,” Jerry muttered.

“Maybe,” Vincent allowed. “But not tonight.”

From the other side of the curtain, the emcee’s voice rolled big and honeyed: “Ladies—” (a chorus of whoops) “—and ladies—” (louder)—“Elysium is proud to present…”

Jerry stood, slapped Vincent’s shoulder once, a brother’s benediction. “Play nice.”

“I never do,” Vincent said, already moving.

He paused at the edge of the curtain, peering through the seam the way sailors check weather. The room blurred into a field of light and expectation. A dozen tables, the runway of the stage, small storms of attention swirling where laughter spiked. He scanned not for faces but for energy. There—a pocket of eager silence near the middle, two women pressed side by side, bodies angled as if the chair backs were too limiting to hold them. Blonde and brunette. Not Chloe. He moved on.

The bridal table—a tiara lifted like a torch, a sash declaring poor intentions. The corporate card—men with loosened ties making a religion of their generosity. The rail—eager hands, flash of a phone that security would shut down in a minute.

And then, at the corner near the bar, he felt it before he saw it: attention held very still. A young woman with hair tucked behind one ear, eyes wide and already wet with light. Next to her, a figure like a closed book on a crowded shelf—a woman sitting very straight, hands folded, head slightly bowed the way people sit in theaters when they’re pretending to be unimpressed. His mouth curved. Chloe. And the fortress.

Good, he thought, the word a purr. Come in, doctor. Come supervise the wind.

The emcee hit his cue: “—our very own Vincent.”

Heat rolled toward him. He stepped into it.

The first bars landed—low, relentless. He didn’t rush. He never rushed. He let the walk be a promise, each step measured, eyes moving like a metronome across the room. He dropped the helmet to the stage edge and let it spin once on its rim. He hooked his thumbs under the suspenders and watched the room inhale. It always did. He could have done the next minute with his eyes closed.

He didn’t close them. He found Chloe with his gaze and didn’t hold it—just brushed, like the first shock of rain. He let his attention rake the bridal table, reward the corporate card with a grin that would add a zero to somebody’s tab, and then he let his body answer the drum.

Backstage, Jerry leaned against the jamb and watched the shape of the night rearrange itself around Vincent, as it always did. He glanced once at the corner table by the bar he couldn’t quite see and felt the hair rise at the back of his neck—not fear, exactly, but a draft from a door someone had left open to weather.

Stakes, Jerry thought, not entirely mocking. One day he’ll go too far to come back the same.

On stage, under the rain that wasn’t rain, Vincent rolled his shoulders and let the water find the new lines he had carved that year. The crowd surged and softened to the choreography only he could hear. He turned, slow, deliberate, giving them the back they wanted and the promise he would turn again.

He liked the silence between screams most of all—the half-second where people decided who they were about to be. He could feel two of those half-seconds glowing from the corner table like coals, one bright with wanting to want, one bright with refusing to be moved.

He would tend both. He had all night. He had all the nights he needed.

From the wings, Jerry’s laugh drifted soft as a warning no one on the floor could hear. Vincent didn’t need to. He already knew the terms. The stage would make the room easy. The real game would begin when the lights went down and the music gave the air back to speech.

He smiled into the blaze and let the tempo climb.