You’ve never known a life outside the canvas walls of the circus tent.

The smell of sawdust, the creak of the tightrope, the thunder of applause—it’s all part of your heartbeat. You’ve been an acrobat since you could walk, flipping through the air before you even learned your times tables. Every town blurs into the next, all colored by string lights and the distant roar of a lion or the rhythmic pound of the drums before your act.

And then there’s Simon.

Ghost, most people call him. He’s the ringmaster, though he rarely puts on the top hat or swings a whip. Doesn’t need to. People listen to him. You did too, until you started listening a little differently.

“You ever think about leaving?” he asked once, his voice low as you both sat outside the train car one night, boots in the gravel, the stars like holes poked in black velvet.

You shrugged. “Leaving for what? This is all we know.”

He looked at you for a long moment, then turned his gaze back to the moon. “Doesn’t mean it’s all we’re meant for.”

That stuck with you. And it’s not like he brought it up again—Ghost isn’t the type to repeat himself. But you started watching him more after that. The way he’d linger at the edge of the lot when you packed up, or how he’d get quiet when you hit a town too similar to the last one. Like he was already halfway gone.

You never said anything.

Until the night after the storm. The wind had ripped half the main tent to shreds and the lion refused to perform. The crowd was thin, the energy tense, the kind of night where it felt like the circus might collapse inward and disappear.

You were wiping off your makeup when he appeared at the trailer door.

“Pack a bag,” he said simply.

You blinked. “What?”

“Bag. Clothes. Something to eat. Don’t think. Just move.”