Playing it Kale (The McCain Saga Book 4) (26 page)

My phone dings, a message from
Ming.
 
Can we talk when you’re done with the tour?

We’ve slowly been working our way up to
this.
 
There was the fight and then life
was so busy, and everyone and everything from my old life just kind of got
forgotten about.

Of
course
, I text back.

Tony shifts, bumping my shoulder, and I
accidently send our text string shooting back.
 
And there’s that picture she sent me of Kale and I, back when this all
began.

I look so shocked, holding that stupid
plate of pancakes.
 
Kale looks
ticked.
 
And mostly
naked.
 
And I remember how much he
wanted to protect and help me in those first days.
 
How we ran away together to a little island,
and how we went to the beach and everything that followed after that.

I go to my photo album and start
scrolling through other pictures of us that I couldn’t bring myself to
delete.
 

Emotion bites at the back of my
eyes.
 
I bite my thumb as I scroll
through them.
 

We look happy.
 
We look in love.
 
We
were
happy and we
were
in love.

I’m still in love.

The phone is pressed to my ear and I’m hearing
a dial tone before I can think about this logically.

Four times it rings.
 
And then a voice recording comes on.

“Hey, you’ve reached Kale.
 
If you’re calling for an interview, I have
nothing to say.
 
If you’re calling about
my application, please leave a message.
 
And if this is Whit, I screwed it up, but I’m keeping those two promises
I made.”

I stare down at my phone, forgetting to
end the call.

Was that real?
 
Did I really just hear Kale say my name?

I’m
keeping those two promises I made.

My mind reels.
 
What promises did Kale make me?

But they hit me, clear as day.

Just before my first real show, the
private launch one:
 
I promise.
 
I’m going to be right
here the entire time.

And one more.
 
In a makeup trailer.
 
As we talked about me going on tour and how
hard it was going to be to be apart.

I’ll
be right here when you get back, that’s a promise.

What does this mean?

I’ll be here the entire time?

I’ll be here when you get back?

When did he record this?
 
I’ve been on tour for eighteen weeks and played
thirty-six shows so far.
 
Was he at one
of the shows?
 
When?
 
Where?

My heart breaks out into a sprint, hard
and wild.

“Kale,” I whisper.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN

“I don’t know, I just need to find him,”
I yell at Hadley as we walk down the hall of the hotel.

I’m on my phone, scrolling through
contacts.
 
Sage didn’t answer, neither
did Kaylee.

“Be very, very careful, Whitney,” Hadley
says as she jogs to keep up with me.
 
I
have long legs.
 
“Yeah, you called him
last night and heard what he said, but there’s this thing called caller
ID.
 
He will have seen that you
called.
 
And he hasn’t called you back.”

My step falters for just a moment.
 
I hadn’t thought about that.

“It doesn’t matter,” I say, as I
continue down the hall.
 
“I just need
some answers.”

Finally, I find Lake’s number.
 
I press call.

“Hello?” he answers.

“Lake!”
I say, surprised when someone finally answers.
 
“Hi, how are you?”

“I’m good,” he says, confusion in his
voice.
 
“I’m sorry, who is this?”

“Oh, sorry, this is Whitney.”

“Oh, hi,” he says and it’s pretty
obvious that I am the last person he expected.
 
“Are you
back
in the States yet?”

“Yeah,” I say.
 
My voice is picking up in excitement.
 
Hadley looks at me with worry in her
eyes.
 
“I just got in a few hours ago.
 
Tonight’s the last show of the tour.”

“Congratulations,” he says.
 
I hear Callie start crying in the
background.
 
Then there’s Riley’s voice,
soft and gentle.
 
“It’s awesome to see
you doing so great.”

“Thanks,” I say, meaning it.
 
Lake saying this really counts for
something.
 
“Hey, the reason I’m calling
is going to seem kind of random and out of the blue but…”

“What is it?” he encourages when I
stall.

“I feel weird asking, since it’s been
all this time,” I stutter.
 
“But, has
Kale been around lately?”

It takes Lake half a beat to
answer.
 
This wasn’t what he was
expecting.
 
“Uh, no,
not for a while.”

“Can you please clarify?” I ask, feeling
super awkward.
 
But my heart is beating
faster and faster.

“Well, he was in New York for a long
time,” he says, and I hear a little grunting and a sigh, like Callie was just
laid in his arms.
 
“But then he sold his
apartment there and never came home, despite what the media has been
saying.
 
I haven’t seen him in probably…five
months.”

Holy crap.

Do I dare speculate?

I’ve been on tour for nearly five
months.

Could he…?
 
Possibly…?

“You still there,
Whitney?”
Lake asks.
 

“Yeah, sorry,” I snap back to the
conversation.
 
“Thank you.
 
I just…yeah.
 
How is Callie doing?”
 
Change of conversation.
 
Cause I don’t know what else to say.

“She’s great.”
 
The pride is instantly in his voice.
 
“Riley just got back from a ride with
her.
 
They go out almost every day.
 
I think Riley already has her in love with
horses.”

“That’s adorable,” I say, feeling a
fuzzy feeling in my heart.
 
“I wish I
could see her. I bet she’s grown so much since I saw her last.”

“Stop by any time when you make it back
this way.”
 
And his tone, I can tell he
really means it.

“I’d love that,” I say.
 
“Plan on it.”

“Looking forward to it,” he says with a
chuckle.
 
“I’ve got to go now, but it was
great talking to you.”

“You, too,” I say, surprised how much I
mean it.
 
“Tell the rest of the family hi
for me, okay?”

“Will do.
 
Bye, Whitney.”

“Bye.”

I hang up and slide my phone into my
back pocket.
 
Hadley looks at me, complete
uncertainty on her face.

“I’ll see you at the show tonight,” I
say to her as I step past her and head into my room.

Feeling scared as all can be.
 
Because right now, I’m remembering that
promise I made to Robert.
 
That Kale
would eventually come out of the dark and that I would be here waiting for
him.
 
But I’m also super pissed, because
Kale dropped me like a brick of ice into the frigid ocean.
 

And I have no idea how I’m going to
react if I see him again.

My hands shake, and I pace back and forth
as everything
gets
finished with the set up.
 
I can hear the hum of thousands of people out
there, just waiting for me.
 
My hands
sweat and slip on the microphone I’m gripping tightly.
 
I catch it just before it hits the ground.

Five minutes until I go on.

There are twenty-five thousand people
out there, just waiting for me to
come
sing for them.

But there’s only one person that I’m
thinking about.

Is Kale out there?

My heart races, faster and faster.
 
I swear I’m not actually even seeing
anything.
 
I’m all up in my head,
thinking things way overboard.
 
I rub my
free hand on my skirt.
 
Sniff, tempted to rub at my nose, because it itches, but knowing
the makeup crew will kill me if I do.

My intro music kicks up.
 
My heart sprints now.
 

“Sixty seconds,” one of the stage hands
says.
 
They literally count down.
 

So before I can go into
hyperventilation, I close my eyes.
 
I
take two deep breaths.
 
My hand
involuntarily rises up to my locket and closes around it.

I don’t know if Kale is out in that
crowd tonight, but maybe he is.
 

Once upon a time, he said that I could
just go up on stage because I already knew the person I was most scared of knew
I was amazing.
 
I don’t know that
anymore.
 
I don’t know what Kale thinks
of me.
 

So tonight, I will go out on that stage,
and regardless of what Kale might think of me now, I’m going to prove to
me
that I love myself.
 
I will be me.
 
I’ll enjoy this amazing life I’ve been given.
 
I’m going to be happy.

“Three, two, one.”

“Hello, New York!” I yell as I run onto
the stage and wave.
 
The spotlight feels
like an old friend and the crowd that goes completely crazy is a mother
welcoming me home after a long day at school.

The music to “Just a Girl
Named Whitney” starts up, the trumpets blaring from the live band behind me.
 
I sing the opening verse, and when it gets to
the chorus, the part with the clapping, the crowd claps along and goes
crazy.
 
They sing back at me at the top
of their lungs.

And I feel good.
 
I feel like I’m doing what I should.
 
I dance awkwardly around the stage, weaving in
between my back up dancers and doing my thing.
 

“Glow.”
 
“Red Eyes.”
 
“Distance.”
 
“This Is The Edge.”
 
I sing them all their favorites.

Cameras float in and out of my view,
capturing every angle.
 
The band blares
from behind me during the live songs.
 
The speakers beat through each of our bodies.
 
Sweat builds up on my body.
 
This is a moment.
 
This is me and the crowd and this infinite
moment where we are one and the same with music.

Eighteen songs for
eighteen weeks.
 
That’s how many songs we buzz through.
 
When we’re supposed to stop for a short intermission, I hold up my
microphone to my lips.
 
“Come on
everybody, let’s keep this rolling.
 
Play
on!”

The crowd went insane, and everyone kept
going with twice the energy.

“Kisses
On The
Concrete”
is gaining popularity, and it’s the second to last song.
 
The girls in the crowd go crazy, and by the
end of the last verse, I’m hearing “Whale” shouted out above all the noise.

And then we’re at the last song.
 
“Angel
On
Your Shoulder”
is supposed to be what’s next.
 
I step up
to the microphone, my guitar hanging off of my shoulder.
 
The crowd settles down, holding their breath,
waiting for me to let mine out.

I look out over them.
 
It’s impossible to make out individual
faces,
the lights are too bright for that.

A soft beat picks up with the drums,
slow and steady.

“This may sound different tonight,” I
say to the crowd.
 
“We recorded “Angel”
to make you get up and dance and fall in love under the lights at prom.
 
But that’s not the way I originally wrote
it.”

I pluck at the strings, going into the
introduction, slow and gentle.
 
“I wrote
this song on the spot for someone who asked me to sing for them.
 
You see, music is a hard thing for me to
explain.
 
Because the words that come out
of my mouth when I’m just talking and the words that come out when I’m singing,
they’re like to completely different languages, and I feel like I’m better
understood when I’m singing.

“So that night, I couldn’t really
explain how I was feeling with just plain, simple words.
 
So I sang.
 
I opened my mouth and this is what just came out.
 
It’s a love song, you all know that,” I say.
 
My heart starts beating faster.
 
I’m so nervous to say what I want to say, and
I kind of just want to rewind it and just sing the damn song, but this is the
most honest I’ve been in nearly a year, and I really don’t want to stop now.

“You all know that my heart has kind of
taken a pounding the last while.
 
And
you’d think that I’d either be really bitter now or that I’d have just moved on.”
 
I swallow hard, my fingers still plucking out
the long, looping version of the intro.
 
Because
holy shit, this is the honest damn truth, even if I don’t want it to be.
 
But it is and that’s just the way it is.
 
“But it’s still a love song.
 
And it’s still meant for the same person.”

The audience is dead silent, holding
onto my every word.

And I start to sing.

Slow and gentle.
 
Intimate.
 
From the soul.

This is the way I sang “Angel” to Kale
that first night.
 
Late
at night, at a cabin on a small, remote island.
 
When I tried to express how I felt for him,
how I was falling for him.
 
How I knew I
was going to love him for forever.
 
It
had been only a few days then, when I wrote the first shaky words.
 
But they’re as true today as they were then.

It’s after only the first verse that I
see someone out in the crowd walking toward the stage.
 
They come from the middle seats, dead center
in the closer section.
 

I squint through the bright lights, my
voice never faltering on the verse.
 
The
figure makes it half way up the aisle when security rushes them.
 
I make out Tony’s shaven head jogging toward
them all.

And my heart goes insane as I start the
chorus.

My eyes don’t leave the small crowd that
is gaining a lot of attention.
 
The
security people flake off, watching closely.
 
But that solitary figure starts back toward the stage.