Crazy Love - Krista & Chase (2 page)

“Oh my God! I can’t believe it’s really you!” the exuberant fan squealed as she jumped up and down.

Her tall friend sucked in a shaky breath as tears pooled in her large brown eyes. “I think I might pass out.”

“If you could stand here…” Tully, Chase’s assistant, placed one girl to his right before turning to the other and motioning to his left. “And then you are right here.”

Chase smiled as he stood between two girls and posed for a picture. Their energy was palpable, radiating off of them like heat from the sun. He loved meeting fans and appreciated the fact that he was where he was because of them. It was just odd sometimes to have all that fanatical energy focused solely on him.

Onstage, it was a different story. It didn’t matter if he were playing for ten people or ten thousand—when he was performing, it was like a relationship. It felt intimate. Like an equal exchange of energy where he was giving something to them and they were giving something to him.

It had taken him several years to get used to the attention he received offstage. He still wasn’t one hundred percent comfortable with it, and he wasn’t sure if he ever would be. It wasn’t a natural phenomenon. It was strange and unusual. To have people not just say that they love you, but mean it. To burst into tears when you walk into a room, pass out, jump up and down, basically lose their minds by your mere presence, was not something a person, at least not something that he, could ever really justify in his mind.

“Can you sign this?” the brunette to his left asked breathlessly.

“Of course,” he agreed and took the CD from her hand. “What’s your name?”

“Ariel,” she replied.

He smiled and signed the CD, thanking the two girls for coming to his show as his assistant escorted his next fan in line up to the photo op.

“Hi, I love you so much! I know all of your songs by heart! My favorite is ‘Saving Me’. I think I’ve listened to it like a million times! Look, I even got this,” the girl spoke rapidly as she lifted her shirt to reveal that she had a line of the lyrics of the song tattooed down the side of her body with music notes at each end.

“That’s amazing. It’s beautiful.” Chase read the lyrics and tried to block out the memories, to push down the emotion that rose up in him every time he saw it. He’d written that song when he was fifteen after one of the worst nights of his life.

“Saving Me” was Midnight Rush’s biggest hit to date. That was the song the band won their first Grammy for. It had been optioned for a movie soundtrack as well, for which they’d received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song.

The ironic thing about that was that Chase had never meant to release it. He’d never meant for anyone except for Krista, the person he’d written it for, to hear it. KC, one of his band members, had seen the music and lyrics scribbled down in one of his notebooks on their first tour, when they had all been packed like smelly sardines into the van, with no privacy whatsoever. He’d tried to refuse to record it. But since early on the four members had agreed that everything band related would be put to a vote, they did just that. Needless to say, he’d been outvoted and “Saving Me” was the first song they’d recorded for their sophomore release. As their first single, its popularity had spread like wildfire, and really, the song had taken on a life of its own.

Without that song, who knew if they’d have reached the success they’d been able to reach. Who knew if he’d be where he was. Those words he had written at fifteen were true then and they were just as true now. The lyrics to “Saving Me” had been like a prophecy. Krista was still saving him.

Chase spent the next forty-five minutes meeting fans, taking pictures, signing everything from body parts to CDs, posters to mementos. The strangest personal item he put his John Hancock on had to be an inhaler. That was a first—he’d never signed medication before. He fielded all of the same questions he’d been getting since he’d announced his solo project and some he’d been getting for years before that.

“When is your next album coming out?”

“When are you announcing tour dates?”

“Why did you leave Midnight Rush?”

“Is Midnight Rush ever going to get back together?”

“Are you dating anyone?”

There were also the occasional offers to carry his baby, and of course there were proposals, both marriage and indecent. He tried to be in the moment. Be present. He’d found that it was a trick to not let the outpouring of affection overwhelm him. Also, he honestly believed that each fan deserved his individual attention.

Normally during meet and greets, he was able to do exactly that. But tonight, after seeing the lyrics he’d written as a private love letter permanently inked on a stranger’s body, all he could think about was the girl he’d written them about. There wasn’t a second that Krista Sloan wasn’t on his mind. The only question was whether or not she was dominating his thoughts or hanging out in the background.

As the photographer snapped the final picture with the last person in the small conference room, Chase knew he needed to get his head in the game. He only had a couple of hours until showtime and he needed to use that time to refocus his energy on the second love of his life. Music.

“Let’s get you back to the green room,” Tully said, as he motioned for the two men his management had hired as bodyguards to follow them through the back halls of the venue to the room designated for talent.

Chase hated having security. Even though on some rational level he knew it was for his own safety, especially since he’d had a few close calls with some fans who were not mentally stable. Still, it bothered him that as a grown man, he had to have other grown men walk him through a building.

“Marcus called and he wants you to sign off on the dates for the tour,” Tully said, rapidly relaying messages as he scrolled through his iPad. “You have a photo shoot for the cover of
Hits
on Friday and an interview for the magazine the following day. We need to confirm location.”

Chase stopped mid-stride. “Who approved that?”

Interviews were the last thing he wanted to do right now, and a photo shoot ran a close second.

Tully’s shaggy hair fell in his face as he looked down at the iPad. His finger swiped across the screen several times before he looked back up and turned the device so that Chase could read it. “You did. Back in March. It was supposed to coincide with your tour.”

Chase stared at the bright screen that shone like a flashlight in the dim hallway of the old music hall. Sure enough, his initials were on the scanned contract agreeing to both the interview and photo shoot for
Hits
Magazine.

“Fine.” Chase began moving again, walking even faster towards the room where he’d have a few moments of peace to himself.

Shit.
An interview. The first interview he’d ever done without the band surrounding him as a buffer.

Even when the band had been together, as the lead singer, a lot of the questions had naturally been asked to him specifically. But if anything had ever gotten too personal, it was an unspoken agreement that one of his bandmates would redirect the attention and focus. It had worked like a charm for eight years.

This time, he was on his own.

“Move out of the way.” His security team cleared a path through the narrow hall that was crowded with screaming fans.

As he navigated his way safely into the room, he felt like the walls were closing in on him as he shut the door behind him. He hated shutting out people who had been waiting to see him, but the reason they wanted to see him was because of what he did onstage. He couldn’t do what he needed to do onstage without taking time to prepare.

The bottoms of Chase’s boots squeaked as he moved across the hardwood floor. After sitting down on the tattered brown couch that sat against the far wall, Chase picked up his guitar, resting it on his leg. As his fingers gently pressed down on the nylon strings pulled taut against the spine, his thumb strummed the opening chord to “Crazy Love”.

He’d written several songs specifically for Krista, but somehow this song was the one he automatically played when she was all he could think about.

“
I can hear her heartbeat for a thousand miles

And the heavens open every time she smiles

And when I come to her, that’s where I belong

Yet I’m running to her like a river’s song.
”

As he sang the lyrics and closed his eyes, he could practically feel the heat of the sunrays hitting his face from that warm summer day on the river in Harper’s Crossing. The day he’d set up a picnic after staying up all night learning
their
song on his guitar. He could hear the river flowing beside them, and in his mind’s eye, he could see her golden-red hair shining in the sun. Her green eyes filling with tears as she sat on the blanket, holding her knees to her chest as he sang to her. His girl.

A loud knock sounded on the wooden green room door, pulling him from his memories. Chase opened his eyes to find himself sitting in a totally dark room. The door swung open and Tully stepped inside, the only light source coming from a window down the hall. His assistant looked more than a little frazzled as he stated the obvious.

“We have a problem.”

P
ulling up to the rundown house on Crescent Drive, Krista decided to once again approach the subject of painting the exterior with Abby. She hadn’t been open to it in the past, but since Krista’s persistence was almost at legendary status, she wasn’t giving up. Not only was the paint chipping on the sides and front of the house, it was almost nonexistent on the trim. Krista also noticed that the roof seemed to be in disrepair.

As she made her way up the walkway, she typed a reminder into her phone to ask her dad, who was an appraiser, which roofing company she should call. Sure, it was almost a hundred degrees outside at seven in the evening, but they were smack dab in the middle of August. Illinois winters were unforgiving, to say the least. She was no roofing expert, but from the looks of those split and missing shingles, one good hard rain or snow and Mother Nature would be visiting Abby in the living room and kitchen.

Last year, Abby had finally allowed Krista to get some plumbing that the eighty-year-old house had desperately needed done after the pipes had frozen over a dozen times between October and February. Abby hadn’t been happy about it, but Krista had convinced her. It was strange how stubborn and strong-willed Chase’s mom could be on one hand and then how fragile and scared she was on the other.

Krista had observed the same type of behavior in some of the women who were at the shelter. It broke her heart. She wished she could do more, that she knew a better way to help, but so far, all she had come up with was showing up and being there.

As she got closer to the door, loud barking sounded from inside the house.

“Hey, Bear,” Krista called through the front door as she knocked.

She heard desperate scratching on the wooden surface as the barking continued. Reaching up, she ran her fingers along the edge of the door’s frame. She felt metal below her fingertips and pulled out the key. Ringing the doorbell, she continued speaking to Bear while she waited to see if Abby was going to come to the door.

After several minutes of ringing and knocking, Krista decided to use the spare key and go in. There had been a handful of times over the past few years that this same scenario had played out. Every time it had, she’d found Abby huddled under the covers in her bed, sometimes crying, other times awake but nonresponsive.

A worried feeling washed over Krista as she turned the key in the lock. Abby had been doing so much better since she’d started on her antidepressants. If she’d had another episode, maybe it just meant that she needed to adjust her medication.

“Hey, Abby. It’s Krista!” she called out as she pushed the front door open.

Bear jumped on her excitedly in greeting. She rubbed the dog under his ears as a smell that almost made her gag hit her like a brick wall.

“Oh my God.” Krista pulled a tissue out of her purse and covered her face as she shut the door behind her.

Stepping into the living room, she saw the source of the vile smell. It looked like Bear had had a wicked case of upset stomach and the evidence was spread out across the carpeting.

“Poor baby.” Krista reached down to pet his head. “Do you need to go out?”

Bear barked agreement, but instead of running to the back door to go outside, he galloped into the hall that led to Abby’s room. Krista felt like she was on the show
Lassie
.

She felt like she should ask, “
What is it, boy? Is Timmy in the well
?” but she didn’t think that Bear would appreciate it.

Following Bear’s lead down the dark hallway, Krista found him sitting at the end of Abby’s bed, whining as he stared straight ahead.

As she came around the corner, she saw Abby’s lifeless body sprawled across her bed.

“Abby!” Fear gripped Krista as she ran to her side. “Abby!”