Playing it Kale (The McCain Saga Book 4) (27 page)

And my eyes sting as I start the last
verse.
 

There’s the broad,
strong shoulders
.
 
The muscled arms.
 
The chiseled jawline.
 
The perfect hair.
 
The scar rising from the
collar of his shirt up to his cheek.

Kale.

The words to the song come out shaky and
unstable as he keeps walking toward the stage.
 

His eyes are intense.
 
They’re unsure and scared.
 
But they burn with intensity.

He stops in front of the stage, and I
can sense the thousands of eyes that are locked on him.

My eyes water and well as I near the end
of the chorus.
 
My fingers slip on a
string, sounding out incorrect and loud.
 
But no one boos. Everyone is dead silent, watching the two of us.

“But I’ve nothing to fear, cause you’re
the angel on my own shoulder.”

I sing out the last line.
 
And everything is perfectly silent.

Kale stands there, only twenty feet
away, staring at me.
 
His chest rises and
falls fast and hard.

I take one shallow and shaky
breath.
 
And swing my guitar around onto
my back.
 
One small, scared and terrified
step at a time, I walk over to the stairs.
 
One by one, I go down them.

I keep waiting for Kale to run.
 
To turn and walk away.
 
To do anything but
stand
there.
 
But he doesn’t move a muscle.

My heart can’t still be beating when I
stop in front of him, our bodies only two feet away.
 
Cause I am completely still inside.

I can smell him, that scent that used to
make me crazy, and still does.
 
His eyes
bore into mine in that crazy intense way of his.
 
His lips are parted just slightly, like he
has something on the tip of his tongue, but it’s too scared to come out.

The cameras are pointed right at us,
every eye is on us.
 
But I don’t notice
any of it.

It’s just me and him.

A smile starts to grow on my face.
 

The right side of
his
own
lips starts to pull up.

And that’s all I can take.

I rush forward and take his lips like I
own them.

Kale’s hands crush me into him.

And the crowd goes insane.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT

“Let’s move it,” Tony shouts at the two
of us.
 
The crowd is going nuts, and not
in just the pumped up, crazy excited way.
 
They’re trying to push through the security line.
 
They’re jumping over people, trying to get to
us.
 
They’re screaming Kale’s name.
 
Screaming my name.
 
Screaming that weird mashup
of our names, Whale.

Tony grabs my hand, I grab Kale’s, and
we are dragged back up on stage, and then off stage.
 
“Get us out of here,” I say to Tony.
 
He simply nods and keeps on barreling his way
for the back doors.
 
Hadley and the rest
of the crew give Kale and I startled looks as we rush past.

A driver is waiting outside, and we all
plow into the car before the crazy crowds can mob us.
 
Tony slams the door behind us all and the
driver takes off.

“You’re here,” I say as we speed to the
hotel.

“Yeah,” Kale breathes.
 
His eyes are wide, shocked even.
 
His lips are red from my lipstick.

“How many of them?”
I ask.

“All of them.”

I swallow hard.
 
And I don’t have any more words right now.

All of them.
 
Kale has been at
all
of my shows.
 
All
eighteen weeks of them.

And this starts the war of Whitney’s
emotions.

Elation.
 
Fear.
 
Anger.
 
Longing.
 
It’s all surging up inside of me, waiting to
crash down in a tidal wave.

The car rolls up to the back entrance to
the hotel, and Tony follows Kale and I inside and up the elevator.
 
It lets us out, and I unlock the door.

“You want me in there?” Tony asks,
holding my eyes with depth and seriousness.
 
He’s protective, and I love him for it.

“Not tonight,” I say, shaking my
head.
 
I grab his hand for just a second,
squeezing it tight.
 
“But please don’t
leave.
 
Just in case.”

“I promise,” he says as he squeezes my
hand in return.
 
And I just know
,
he’s going to camp out right in front of my door, ready to
save me at any minute, just like he always does.

I give him a nervous smile as I let the
door close between us.

It takes me somewhere around fifty-three
seconds to turn around and face Kale.

In the moment, back at the concert,
everything seemed grand and perfect and exactly like a fairy tale.
 
We have this beautiful reunion and everyone
gets to witness our happily ever after.

But this is reality.
 
Right here, right now.
 
This is the real world.

And now we have to talk.
 
And I have no idea how the hell I’m feeling.

I turn and meet Kale’s eyes.

He looks so scared.
 
His eyes are still wide.
 
Neither of us can really believe we’re
here.
 
Together.
 
But it’s real and here we are, and there’s
him, and here’s me.

My eyes search him over.
 
I might have expected him to lose some
weight, some muscle mass since he no longer had to stand in front of the
camera.
 
But he’s noticeably more
built.
 
His biceps strain against his
jacket.
 
His forearms, which are exposed,
the sleeves pushed up, are defined and ripped.
 
His facial features are sharper. His legs look all the stronger, even
under jeans.
 
He’s inching toward Lake
territory
.
 

And there’s that scar, stretching up
from under the collar of his shirt, up his neck, and just onto his cheek.

He’s scarred.
 
But he’s still beautiful.

And I’m angry at myself.
 
I don’t want to think of him as
beautiful.
 
I want to see him for the
person who dropped me and shattered my fragile heart into a billion, glittery
pieces.

We just look at each other for a solid
minute that seems like an eternity and the blink of an eye at the same time.

“I’m sorry,” he says.
 
And his voice startles me back into the
moment.

But I still don’t have anything to
say.
 
So I just stand there looking at
him.

“I am so sorry, Whitney, and I can never
make up my mistakes to you,” he starts, his eyes haunted.
 
He takes one step toward me, a hand slightly
extended.
 
On instinct, a survival one, I
take the same step back.
 
And Kale sees
that, and his expression shows what it does to him on the inside.
 

“I made the world’s biggest mistake in
history,” he continues, his voice strained.
 
“And I spend every second wishing I could take it back.”

The back of my eyes
sting.
 
But I won’t
let myself cry.
 
I won’t.
 

I won’t.

“I was screwed up when everything
happened,” he says.
 
He’s still
wide-eyed.
 
And I realize he’s waiting
for me to yell at him.
 
Or maybe
cry.
 
Or do something explosive.
 
But I’m just frozen.

“I said some things that were complete
lies and the most untrue things I could have ever said,” he continues.
 
His eyes soften and there’s just sadness and
regret in them.
 
“I was lying to
myself.
 
I was feeling miserable, and I
just wanted to sink myself to the very bottom of depression.
 
So I threw away everything that ever kept me
afloat.
 
And that included you, Whit.”

Him saying my name.
 
That finally snaps me and this frozen state
I’ve been in.

Tears well in my eyes.
 
But I hold them like they are too precious to
share.

“What you did was cowardly,” I say.
 
My voice quivers, filled with anger, and
hurt, and a million other painful things.
 
“We were all there for you.
 
Your family.
 
Calvin.
 
But
especially me.
 
We all loved you,
and you kicked us to the curb.”

“I know,” he says.
 
His face is sheet white.
 
His eyes look tired.
 
His entire body is tight and wound like a
spring.

“You…” I
suck
in a shaky breath, holding back the angry tears.
 
“You broke me, Kale.
 
I tried being myself after you let me
go.
 
I tried being who I was, to keep
doing it all.
 
But every time I was
myself, it just made my heart hurt.
 
Because…”
 
I have to take another
breath.
 
The tears well
hard in my eyes.
 
I look up at the
ceiling and sniff.
 
I won’t cry.
 
“Because everything about being myself made
me think of you.
 
And I just couldn’t
move on.”

Finally, my eyes fall back to Kale.
 
And he looks ready to die.
 
“I made your dad a promise before he
died.
 
He told me that it was going to
take some time for you to get over everything, but he said that you’d be
back.
 
He told me that you were going to
need me to be there when you came back.
 
And I tried doing that, Kale.
 
I
did.
 
And I just…”

Everything seeps out of me.
 
And I’m not angry anymore.
 
I’m not sad or broken.
 
I’m just empty.
 
So I sink onto the bed.

The room is dead silent.
 
Except for the whisper.
 
“I’m sorry.”

I look up at him.
 
Kale’s eyes are red and there is moisture clinging
to
his own
eyelashes.

“I loved you before, Whitney,” he
whispers.
 
“I did.
 
I really did.
 
But I’ve learned some lessons the hardest freaking way ever the last
eleven months and twelve days.”

He takes a step forward and sinks down
onto his knees in front of me.
 
I feel
his breath on my chest.
 
Smell his
shampoo.
 
Feel the heat coming off of
him.

“Love is letting someone in all the
time,” he says, holding my eyes like it’s his lifeline to reality.
 
“I never thought I had a problem letting
people in.
 
But that was just because my
life was too damn perfect to be real.
 
As
soon as any of that was shaken, stripped away, I couldn’t keep that door
open.
 
I shut down.”

A tear leaks out onto his cheek and his
face falls down toward the floor.
 
He
takes a strangled breath.
 
He presses two
fingers into his eyes, and shakes his head.

He sniffs, takes a deep breath, and
finally looks back up at me.

“Love is letting someone see you.
 
All of you.
 
Even when you’re not perfect,” he says as he
reaches forward and takes my hand in his.

His touch.
 
It’s air.
 
It’s
water after being left out in the desert
to die.
 

I thought I’d yank my hand away, to gain
back that distance between us.

But Kale’s touch…?

I.
 
Am.
 
Alive.

“It’s taking the risk that they’ll still
love you, still want you when you’re broken and human.
 
It’s not having
to
be the perfect giant that is always up and above everything.”

I place my other hand on his cheek,
feeling as if I’m taking another deep, gasping breath.
 
Kale’s eyes slide closed, and he presses his
face harder into my hand.
 
He turns his
face for a
second,
pressing a gentle, light kiss to my
palm.

That brick exterior I’ve been holding
myself together with for the last eleven months and twelve days starts to
crack.
 
Pieces crumble off.

Look out below.

“Love is putting yourself in someone else’s
hands when you’re falling apart and hoping that they’re willing to carry you
every once in a while,” he says as his eyes lock with mine again.
 
“And I didn’t have a clue, Whitney.
 
I loved you before.
 
I swear I did, with everything in me.
 
But I had no damn clue what love actually
was.”

Another tear rolls onto his face and he
rests his forehead on my legs.
 
My hands
shaking, I place one on the back of his head and gently stroke my fingers
through his hair.

“It took me about four months to realize
what an idiot I’d been,” Kale says into my lap.
 
“I just realized that no one has a perfect relationship and that
everyone goes through trial by fire.
 
And
I had just failed miserably.
 
I wanted
you
back,
Whitney, but I didn’t deserve you anymore.”

“That’s such bullshit, Kale,” I finally
speak.

I think he might actually laugh once,
but it’s hard to tell since his face is pressed into my legs.

“It’s not,” he says with a heavy
sigh.
 
And finally, he looks up at
me.
 
His face is weighed, his skin tired
and gray.
 
“I’ve been there for every
show on this tour, angel.
 
I haven’t
missed a single one.
 
But I couldn’t say
anything, because I wasn’t in any form of the universe worthy of you anymore.
 
I didn’t want to cause you any more pain.”

I place a hand on either side of his
face, maybe so he won’t ever be able to get away.
 
Maybe just so I can feel that he is
real.
 
And we’re here.