Playing it Kale (The McCain Saga Book 4) (23 page)

CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE

“And just…wow…thank you, so, so much,” I
breathe again.
 
There’s a huge smile on
my face, threatening to blind everyone in this giant room.
 
The lights beat down on me so intensely that
I can’t really even see the faces in the crowd.
 
But I know they’re all out there.
 
Smiling back at me.

I hold the award that I was just handed
up into the air, its crystal gleaming brightly under the lights.
 
Everyone breaks out in claps and cheers.

Best new artist of the
year.
 
And not ten
minutes ago, I won best single of the year for “Angel
On
Your Shoulder.”

An escort helps me down off the stage,
and I make my way back to my seat.
 
I’m
still freaking out over the fact that I’m sitting between Jessica Dawn and Anthony
Hawkins.
 
Holy.
 
Freaking.
 
Amazing.

They both congratulate me as I sit back
down, the awards on the table in front of me.

I start to zone out the announcer as he
continues rattling off nominees for various music awards.
 
I look at my own and marvel how we got
here.
 
How I got here.

The album went platinum in the first
week of being on sale.
 
The single of
“Angel
On
Your Shoulder” was played on every radio
station around the country within a week of its release, sending the album
skyrocketing up the pre-order charts.
 
Within a day of the album’s release, the first five shows of the tour
sold out.

And then there was the actual tour.

Show after show.
 
Bus rides, airplanes.
 
Blinding lights and screaming crowds.

Every night I’d get scared that I’d
screw something up.
 
And I wasn’t
perfect.
 
There was a time I totally
tripped while walking on stage.
 
There
was another that I ran right into one of the backup dancers during the middle
of “Glow.”
 
Another
that my voice randomly cracked when I was talking to the crowd.

But for some reason, the crowds loved it
when I did that stuff.
 
They’d laugh and
then cheer and the next day the internet was exploding with that “adorably
relatable” thing I’d done.
 
For some
reason, the world loved my quirkiness.

And the tour went better than any of us
could have hoped for.
 
We finished the US
leg with all sold-out shows.
 
While in
the air headed to London, we got word that the show in Sydney was sold out, as
well.

Before we even landed, Elysium was
asking for the titles of the rest of the second album.
 
I already had five songs.
 
They wanted another nine.

Now, twelve weeks after the tour, my
second full-length album is finished.
 
It’s set to release in two months.
 
Pre-orders are rocking the charts once again.

And here I am.
 
At the music awards show.
 
Winning things.
 
Having people look at me like I belong
here.
 
Being happy for
me and cheering.
 
They’re talking
about collaboration for movie soundtracks, and other artists are begging me to
write songs for them.
 
Or sing with them.
 
Or do music videos with them.

I’m constantly surrounded by people.

And yet, I’m alone.

The lead singer of Suit goes up on stage
for the award of best rock song of the year.
 
And I’m trying to pay attention to his acceptance speech.
 
But his hair looks so much like Kale’s.
 
And I just can’t help it.

It’s been nearly five months since I
left Kale’s hospital room.
 
Five months
since he said he didn’t love me.
 
Five
months since his life exploded.
 
And five
months since my heart felt anything.

For the first week, I tried calling
him.
 
Texting him.
 
I talked to Kaylee, and Sage, and even Riley
once.
 
But they all said the same
thing.
 
He just needed time to heal.

So I decided to give him that.
 
It was going to be four weeks before he got
out of the hospital, so I decided to wait five until I tried again.
 
To see if maybe he’d changed his mind.
 
That he figured out that what we had was
real.
 
That even though
we were young, we still knew exactly what love was.

Four weeks.
 
That put us to the end of the tour.

I tried calling him.
 
And in one heart stabbing, all soul crushing
moment, I got his voicemail.

“Hey, you’ve reached Kale.
 
Do your thing after the beep.
 
And if this is Whit, you don’t need to call
again.
 
Just, let it be.”

And that was that.
 
We were done.

I’d made Robert McCain a promise.
 
He’d said that Kale needed me to be there
when he came back.
 
But Kale had made it
crystal clear that he wasn’t coming back.
 
So where did that leave me?

Hadley, Elysium, even Calvin ran
publicity.
 
During the tour, they all
tried to cover up what was happening.
 
Word was kept under hard, hard wraps about Kale’s accident and
Shurrock
letting him go.
 
And the record label kept it quiet that we were less than perfectly
together and in love.

But now I’ve been home from tour for
months.
 
And not once have he and I been
spotted together.
 
The tabloids are
talking.
 
There are entire blogs and
Tumblrs
dedicated to our relationship.
 
They’ve all been speculating.

And five weeks ago, word finally got out
about what happened to Kale.

Things were said.
 
Harsh things.
 
Things that paint me to look like a horrible
person, who stopped loving the man I love—loved—I don’t know, because he was no
longer perfect and world famous.

My PR team came back with vengeance.

If the stories were something to read
before, they were nothing compared to what would come.

Me
painted as the saint.
 
The
story of me taking off, unreachable because I was rushing to his side.
 
Then they exposed the truth: how Kale
disconnected cold and harsh.
 
I wouldn’t
talk to anyone at the label for a week because of that.

The truth is a harsh mistress.

Maybe that should be the title of a new
song for album number three.
 
Beause
Elysium is already planning on it.

They’re going nuts over this new second
album.
 
They say it’s ten times more
heartfelt and grown up than “Angel” was.
 
They’re expecting it to go at least double platinum.
 

All the songs, except for the five I
wrote before my fantasy world exploded, are darker.
 
They’re full of angst.
 
They’re full of hurt.
 
They’re raw and honest in the most dishonest
way.
 
They’re the most real songs I’ve
written since “Angel.”

My soul is on that record.

Which is fitting, since
this album is self-titled—
Whitney Ford
.

Realizing how fleeting happiness is, how
all of this could fall apart at any second, I finished my last semester
online.
 
I now have my master’s degree in
microbiology.

Just in case.

Cause I never expected what Kale and I
had to fall apart.

Who knows if this music thing will last either?

“Thank you for joining us tonight, we’ll
see you next year,” the announcer says and the room breaks out in a round of
clapping.

Sitting here in this room, living this
life, I feel like a complete liar, living a fake life.

Later that night, when I’m in my house,
a fantastic and beautiful, and far too big thing the label bought for me while
I was on tour, I put the awards on the shelf that houses many others.
 
I stare at them, wishing there was someone to
share the excitement with.

Because who is there now?
 
My parents have kept their distance.
 
I haven’t talked to my brother in I don’t
even know how long.
 
Ming and I got into
a fight a few months ago over the fact that I’d checked out on her and we never
talked anymore.
 
And she was right.
 

So, here I am.

“Congratulations,” Tony says from behind
me.

I turn to him, my crazy beautiful, crazy
expensive dress rustling as I move.
 
“Thank you,” I say with a hollow smile.

And Tony just has sadness behind his
own.
 
But he is here.
 
And that counts for everything.

Three and a half weeks later, I’m in
front of a camera, a laughing crowd in front of me, and the funniest talk show
woman at my side.

“Come on, be honest,”
Nelle
says.
 
“Do you
do all that clumsy stuff on purpose?”

“No,” I laugh with everyone else,
shaking my head.
 
“It’s awful!
 
I swear I’m going to die up on stage one day
cause
I’m just going trip and impale myself on my guitar.”

“Please, try to be more careful,” she
says with a dramatic cringe through a smile.
 
“America and the world will die without their Relatable Girl.”

“I swear I do try to be more graceful,”
I say with a smile for the crowd.

“Well, you won over the world’s hearts
in a hurry,”
Nelle
continues, the mood instantly
growing more serious.
 
“Did you folks
know that this woman holds a master’s degree?”

Half the audience nods.
 
The other half looks blown
away.
 
People make assumptions
about you when you’re in front of them all the time, they think that the only
thing you can do is act, or sing, or look pretty.
 
But I’ve made my peace with that.

“Yeah,”
Nelle
says, looking at me in awe.
 
“In microbiology!
 
You
used to work at some
sciencey
facility, right?”

“I did,” I say with a nod.
 
“You could say that I was a true nerd.
 
I still am, really.”

“Who doesn’t love a nerd, am I right?”
she calls loudly and with excitement.
 
The crowd goes crazy with clapping and hollers.
 
“On a different note, I hate to ask it, but
we all want to know about the man who started it all.
 
How did Kale McCain come into your life, and
what happened?”

This is a beginning and an end
question.
 
Because how he came into my
life and what happened are two very different things.

It takes me too long to answer.
 
The crowd waits on baited breath.
 
They all want to know the answer.
 
Because up until now, I
have not been able to talk about any of this.
 
Everything that’s gotten out has either been
from my PR team, or it’s all been speculation.

“Kale erupted into my life at exactly
the time I needed him,” I start.
 
The
room is so silent I hear it when a cameraman scratches his elbow.
 
“And I’m not talking about needing him to
make that video or launch my career.
 
He
came into my life when I needed someone to believe in me.
 
When I needed someone to give me confidence
that I was more than just a weird, socially awkward nerd.”

“We’ve all heard that you used to have
terrible stage fright,”
Nelle
says, her eyes caring
and warm.
 
“That ended when Kale came
into the picture, didn’t it?”

My head goes back to that night of the
wedding.
 
When
everything was scary but magic.
 
“I still have terrible stage fright.
 
It’s still terrifying going up in front of people who will judge
you.
 
But yeah, Kale helped with that.”