The whole process sent a rush of adrenaline through me. These days, it was the closest thing I had to feeling happy. Any sense of real happiness was a thing of the past, but at least when I was up on stage and heard people cheering and singing, I felt like I could get out of myself and focus on something else. This tour was the only thing I had going for me in life, so I wanted to give everything to it. I poured myself out to every show and tried to make the experience as good as possible for the people who filled the seats.
That was why even after our set was over and the headlining band took the stage, I didn’t head immediately into the green room the way the rest of the band did. They wanted to kick back and relax, and even take advantage of the spoils of the tour. That changed somewhat depending on our location, but it usually consisted of food, alcohol, and women. There was always an abundance of all of them, offered up to us to enjoy after our shows. The other guys, particularly Mark and Carter, took advantage of these offerings as much as they possibly could. But not me. As soon as we finished playing, I went backstage and put myself in the prime position to watch the rest of the show.
Having the vantage point of being backstage didn’t just give me the opportunity to listen to the music and enjoy the performance in front of me. I saw it as a learning opportunity, the chance to elevate my performance quality at every show. There was a reason The Monsters were already popular, and their popularity was growing with every show. I wanted the type of star quality they had and the ability to fill arenas like they did. That meant watching their performances and trying to pick up hints on how to improve how I played, how I interacted with the audience, and anything else I could discover.
It was working. I could already tell a difference between the way I performed at the beginning of the tour and now. The third song of the headlining set was just getting good when I felt someone come up behind me. I looked to my side and saw Carter. There was something urgent in his eyes, and he leaned close to my ear to talk to me.
“I need to tell you something,” he said.
“After the show,” I told him.
Carter shook his head. “Now. It’s important. Back to the green room where it’s quieter.”
Even in the loud sound of the backstage, I could tell there was something serious in his voice, so I nodded. I followed him to the green room and immediately noticed the small swarm of women Mark had assembled. He hadn’t taken much time that night. It was almost impressive if it hadn’t also been somewhat depressing.
“All right. All of you out,” Carter instructed. “Thank you for visiting. Feel free to wait outside the building. Tickets may be available to future shows. Come see us again.”
He stood by the door, gesturing like he was trying to sweep the women out of the room.
“Hey!” Mark shouted from the couch where he was sitting with his arms around two women. “What the hell?”
“You heard me. They need to go,” Carter said. “They are welcome to come do the Roman orgy thing some other time, but for right now, I need them gone.”
The women stood and threw Carter nasty looks as they sashayed out of the room. Mark jumped to his feet and approached Carter angrily.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing? This isn’t just your room, you know. And those women came here to see me.”
Carter shook his head incredulously, then opened the door he had just closed.
“You know what, Mark? You’re right. They were kind enough to follow you in here. The least you can do is go with them,” he said.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Luke hide a laugh as Carter shoved Mark out of the room and closed the door behind him. For a second I was sure Mark was going to burst back in and we’d have a brawl on our hands, but the door stayed shut and Carter came farther into the room.
“What is this all about?” I asked.
Carter paced back and forth across the room for a second like he was trying to build himself up to tell me something. Finally, he took a step closer to me.
“All right. Listen. After the set, I went out in the hall. Mark was already building up his harem in here, and I didn’t feel like dealing with that shit right now. So I went out there to cool off a bit,” he said.
“Probably chugging down some booze to lower your body temperature,” Luke interjected with a laugh.
“Shut up,” Carter snapped. “I don’t see you leading the temperance parade, either.”
Luke looked at the bottle of beer in his hand, shrugged, and took another swig of it. I could see this conversation was already going off the rails. If I had any chance of getting back into the wing to listen to the rest of the set, I needed to help it along.
“Okay, so you were in the hall. So, what? Why did you need to bring me back here to tell me that?” I asked.
“It’s not that I was in the hall. It’s what I saw in the hall,” he said. “I was just standing there, and I looked up and saw this woman coming toward the exit. At first, I didn’t think anything of it. I figured she was lost trying to find her way out or something, but then I realized her face looked familiar.”
“Who was it?” I asked.
“It took me a second, but then it hit me. I did know her. It was that girl you used to hang out with. Leah,” Carter said.
Bright flashes of color burst in front of my eyes, and I felt like the world was spinning around me. Heat burned on my neck and face, and it was like someone had punched a hole in the center of my chest. I blinked a few times, trying to process what he just said.
“Leah?” I asked. “You saw Leah?”
“Yep,” Carter said with a nod.”
“You’re telling me Leah is here? At the arena? She came to see the show?” I asked.
“She was definitely here, and she said she watched the show. As a matter of fact, she said we sounded great.”
I launched at Carter, grabbing him by the front of his shirt so he had to look at me.
“You have to bring me to her. Did you see where she was headed? Did she mention where her seats were? I need you to bring me to her,” I said again.
Carter shook his head.
“I can’t. She’s long gone.”
“What do you mean she’s long gone?”
Carter pulled free and brushed his hand down the front of his shirt like he was trying it to get rid of the feeling of me holding on to him.
“I tried to bring her back here to talk to you. I told her how messed up it was what she did to you and said she needed to come back here and talk to you about it. But she took off running toward the parking lot.”
“Fuck,” I muttered and dropped down onto the couch.
I covered my face and let out a groan of despair. How could this even happen? It had been so long. Ten months without a single word from her. The day she disappeared from my bed was it between us. I never saw her or heard from her again. Finally heading out on the tour with the band was my only saving grace, the thing that kept me distracted and prevented me from driving myself completely crazy at home without her.
Now she was suddenly resurfacing? After all this time, she was here? At one of my shows?
“I can’t believe I fucking missed her,” I said. “She was right here, at my fucking show, and I didn’t see her.”
“At least she was here,” Carter pointed out, trying to comfort me.
It didn’t have exactly the reassuring effect he wanted it to, but it did make me think.
“You know what? You’re right. She was here.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, sounding slightly confused. “That’s what I just said.”
“No, I mean, she was here.” I pointed down at the floor. “Not just at a show, but at this show. I highly doubt she just randomly decided to travel some far distance to see us play. That means she has to live around this area, right?”
“I guess that makes sense,” Carter said. “She did rush out of here pretty fast and didn’t want to see any of us. I’d think if she made a trip to see the show, she’d at least want to hang ou
t and say hi afterward. It must have just been close by and easy for her to get here.”
“Exactly,” I said.
I pulled out my old, battered laptop and started searching. I wasn’t sure what I was searching for, but I dug and dug, following every lead I could think of. It took me all the way through the concert, and the lead singer of The Monsters poked his head into the room.
“Hey guys. Great show. We’re going to go hit up some of the local bars. Want to come?” he asked.
Carter and Luke immediately agreed, but I shook my head.
“Thanks for the offer, but I can’t,” I told him, then looked at Carter. “You guys go ahead. I’m just going to pack up and go back to the hotel to keep doing this.”
“You sure?” Carter asked. “I could stay with you.”
“No. It’s fine. You go blow off some steam and have fun.”
I kept searching through the night until I couldn’t stay awake any longer. When I woke up, I went right back to the search. I narrowed it down further and further until I stumbled on an old county phone book. I looked up her last name and found only one entry. Hoping it was the right address, I jotted it down and put it through my GPS. She was nearby.
The other guys were still asleep, so I slipped out of the hotel without waking them up. I hopped into the rental car we got to help us get around during this most recent cluster of shows and headed out. By nine that morning, I was pulling up to a small, well-kept house in a rural town.
28
Leah
I didn’t know of anywhere else in the world where the paperboy knocked on every door to deliver the paper rather than just tossing it onto the front porch in the morning. But that’s the way it was in Dixon. Sometimes on the weekdays, he would go old-school and we’d start the day with the sound of the paper thudding into the middle of the door or dropping onto the sidewalk. Not on Sundays. Every week when the time to deliver the Sunday paper rolled around, Steven would walk around going door to door. He greeted each family by name and handed them their paper. It was a nice touch that I was sure earned him a lot of tips. At least one, I knew for a fact, since I was the one to give it to him.
So, when I heard the knock on the door Sunday morning, I wasn’t surprised. It was later than usual, but at least he was there and I’d have the paper for coupons for the week. I went for my purse and grabbed out his usual tip, then opened the door without bothering to check through the window. But it wasn’t Steven standing on the doorstep with his big smile and a newspaper in his hand.
It was Jayson.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Stunned by finding him outside my door, I just stood there, gripping the money and staring at him. There was really nothing else I could do. My brain had gone blank the moment I laid eyes on him, and I no longer had the ability to process cohesive thought much less put together enough of a logical progression to do anything. He looked back at me, finally cocking his head slightly to the side before he spoke.
“Hello, Leah,” he said.
Just like that. After all this time and him showing up unannounced on my porch, that was all he could come up with. “Hello, Leah.” But at least the words startled my brain back into functioning and the thoughts started flowing again.
What was he doing there? How did he even find me? What the fuck was I supposed to do now?
“Leah? Can I come inside?” Jayson asked.
I didn’t really have a choice. He was standing right there in front of me. This wasn’t a phone call I could push off or a text I could just not answer and hope it disappeared after a while. Jayson was on my front porch and wanted to come in to talk to me. This wasn’t a moment I’d ever planned on happening. Not a moment I ever wanted to happen. But it was happening now, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I just had to deal with it as it came.
And be extremely thankful my parents had already left for church. I didn’t need to get them involved in this too. Not yet. I took a deep breath and opened the door more. I reluctantly stepped out of the way and gestured for him to come inside. Jayson stepped past me, and I shut the door behind him. That brought me to the end of the list of things I could think of to do in the situation, and I stood with my back against the door, staring at him. I wondered what the chances were he would just have a few words to say to me, then leave and go about his life satisfied with the closure.
I was thinking the chances weren’t good.
“Carter told me you were at the show last night,” he said.
Now I knew the chances weren’t good. I wasn’t going to be able to get him out of the house fast enough for everything to fall back into place the way it had been. Everything had been carrying on just as I’d intended it to for the last ten months. But there was no way that was going to continue now.
“I was,” I told him. “A couple weeks ago the news had a bit about the tour coming this way, so I got a ticket.”
He stared at me for a second, then shook his head slightly, his eyes narrowing. “Why didn’t you try to see me?”
“I thought it would be too hard,” I admitted.
That wasn’t exactly the way I intended to say it, but at that point there was no reason to keep trying to hide it. Jayson looked at me, the weight of his gaze on me heavy. There was so much behind his eyes, and I could feel it pressing down on me.
“Why did you leave without saying a word?” he asked.
I swallowed, trying to force down the emotion that was building up in my throat and aching through my jaw.
“At the last show I went to, Luke told Piper about the band going on tour. You hadn’t said anything to me about it, and I figured that meant you might be conflicted about the whole thing, so I helped you with the decision,” I told him.
“What are you talking about?” he asked. “What decision?”
“About us. You needed to go on the tour. It was a great opportunity. And I wasn’t going to stand in the way of that. But you are the kind of guy who would think twice about it. I didn’t want you to have to, so I made the decision for you,” I explained.
“I could have done both. I could have gone on the road and continued our relationship. I hadn’t told you about the tour yet because I was trying to get all the plans into place for all the times we would be able to see each other while I was on the road. We could have stayed together and just had a long-distance relationship while I was touring,” he said.
I shook my head, closing my eyes briefly to stop the words from sinking in too deep.
“You don’t understand,” I told him. “You just don’t understand.”
Jayson took a step closer to me and grabbed me by my upper arms.
“What don’t I understand? I don’t understand that I can’t stand being away from you? I don’t understand that I’m in love with you? That I need you? That I’d give anything and do anything to have you back?”
It was all so overwhelming, so much that I couldn’t get my mind to wrap around it. I could barely breathe. I couldn’t process what he was saying or how I was supposed to respond. I never intended on telling him what was going on, but even if I was ever was going to, this definitely wasn’t the way it was supposed to play out.
Then in that moment, the option got taken away from me. Just like I’d helped Jayson make the decision about the continuation of our future, my baby girl helped me make the decision about what I was going to tell Jayson. His eyes widened when he heard her start to cry. A long breath escaped my lungs. This was it. There was no point in trying to avoid it now. I took his hand and guided him through the house to my bedroom. A little white crib set up against the wall made up the nursery, and inside it, my daughter was fussing. Our daughter.
I released Jayson’s hand and went to the side of the crib. Reaching in gently, I scooped the baby out and into my arms. She settled down as I cradled her close to my chest and turned back to face Jayson.
“This is what you don’t understand,” I told him. “I found out I was pregnant not long before I fou
nd out about the tour. I hadn’t figured out the perfect time to tell you yet, and then when I heard Luke talking about the tour, I knew I couldn’t tell you. Would you have really left on tour for a year if you knew I was having your baby?”
He looked completely shocked, but I couldn’t decipher the range of the emotions he was feeling. His expression was pure surprise, and he stayed completely silent for several long seconds, just staring at the baby in my arms. Finally, he stepped up closer and held his arms out toward me.
“Can I hold her?” he asked.
Emotion leapt inside me, and I nodded. Gently transferring our baby into Jayson’s arms, I took a step back and let him cradle his daughter. He was so careful, so loving, my heart melted. The way he gazed down at her was everything I’d always wanted to see in his face but never allowed myself to hope for.
“What’s her name?” he asked.
“Harper Grace,” I told him.
He looked down at her and the tenderness on his face was enough to weaken my knees.
“I wanted you to have your dream,” I explained. “You had worked so hard to get there, and it was finally happening for you. We were in such a good place, and I thought there could one day be a future for us, but a baby wasn’t in the plans for right then. We never even talked about how you felt about children or if you wanted any. I decided I wanted you to follow your dream, and I wasn’t going to stand in your way.”
Jayson looked up at me from staring down into Harper’s face.
“That might have been my dream, but now I have a new dream. I want a family. With you. I want to be a father to our baby,” he told me.
Harper’s eyes drifted closed, and she fell comfortably back to sleep. Jayson carried her over to the crib and gently settled her back down. I took him by his hand and guided him out of the room, closing the door behind us. I walked him back into the living room before turning to him.
“I don’t see how things could work, Jayson. You’re on the road. I have a tiny baby,” I pointed out.
“We have a tiny baby,” he corrected. “I’m going to do everything in my power to make this work.”
The Boy Next Door: A Standalone Enemies-to-Lovers Romance Page 15
