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PartIV
Secrets, Secrets
19
Weston
“You ready for this?” Campbell asked at my side.
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
He clapped a hand on my back. “It’s just another show.”
I nodded as he wandered back to his wife. Blaire snuggled into his side as we waited for our chance to get onto The Tonight Show stage. Nerves bit into me. It was just another show. And that might have been true for the rest of the band. They’d played The Tonight Show. They’d played hella bigger shows than this.
But me? No way. No fucking way.
I’d never played anything like this. And I felt grossly out of my league.
Even though we’d had a rehearsal on the stage earlier that morning. Everything had felt surreal then, but it had been easier. No expectations. Just playing “Rooftop Nights,” like I had with the band a hundred times before this. Now, the host was onstage, the audience was waiting, and the performance would be broadcast to millions.
“Hey,” Nora said, coming to my side.
Nora at my side made sense. Made all the voices of inadequacy quiet. They might come later, but right now, she was here.
“Hey.”
“You excited?”
“Uh,” I said, looking back to the stage.
She looked around once and then touched my arm. “Hey, back to me.”
I jerked back to her face. Drowned in those big blue eyes. Let her ground me in the ocean of her eyes. “I might be out of my depth.”
She laughed softly. “No, you’re not. You’re going to be incredible. You don’t know how to be anything else.”
“I’ve never done anything like this. My first performance with Cosmere, and it’s this?”
“Yeah, and everyone will see what I see in you. That you’re talented and you deserve your spot.”
“And here I thought, we were talking about something else.”
She smacked my arm. “Let’s hope the rest of the world isn’t sleeping with you.”
I grinned down at her. “Only you have that privilege.”
She snorted. “Privilege,” she said with mock derision. “Men. Always so sure of themselves.”
“I don’t hear you complaining when you’re moaning my name into the night.”
“Give me credit,” she said. I arched an eyebrow at her. “I moan your name during the morning and afternoon, too.”
I chortled and realized what she’d done—she’d set me at ease. Now, I was thinking about having her morning, afternoon, and evening, as I had for the last two weeks. No one was any the wiser about what was happening with us, but fuck, it was amazing.
I still worried sometimes that I wasn’t giving her everything she deserved. But I couldn’t offer more. I didn’t know when I’d be yanked back to LA, and it didn’t seem fair to her to begin a relationship when it could be stolen at any moment. We weren’t Blaire and Campbell. This wouldn’t end in a happily ever after. No matter how over-the-moon happy I was to be with her.
“You’re a good distraction.”
She grinned. “Then I did my job.”
An assistant appeared in the doorway and announced the fifteen-minute warning.
“I should get ready.”
“Good luck!”
She’d headed back to the girls when my phone buzzed in my pocket. I should turn the damn thing off. Just what I needed was random vibrations in my pocket while I was onstage. Super professional, West.
I went to switch it off and saw Dad appear on the screen. I ground my teeth together. Whitt’s words were in my ear, saying that Dad wanted to congratulate me. That I should give him a chance. But damn, how many chances did he deserve? He’d messed up so many times that I wasn’t sure I could count that high. Time and time again, all he had done was screw everything up.
And yet, when I saw him calling fifteen minutes before I went onstage for the biggest show of my life, all I could think about was Dad giving me my first guitar. Mom had gotten me into keys at only five. I took to it like a swimmer to water. But Dad got me a guitar and paid for the lessons when he saw how fast I’d picked it up on my own. He paid for all the lessons. Whenever a new instrument interested me, he didn’t ask, What about the guitar I got you? or, Are you still playing the saxophone? He’d handed over the money and listened to me play when he was in town.
We had a fraught, complicated relationship. Despite giving me the instruments, I knew that he didn’t think music was a real career. Plus, he had spent more time with his “real” family in Vancouver than our fledgling family he’d hidden in Seattle. Jordan and Julian got the best of him while the rest of us got the scraps. But I’d clung to those scraps for so long that it was hard to completely ignore that call when I was already nervous and wanted to hear my dad’s words of wisdom.
“Hello?” I said when I answered the phone.
“West,” my dad said with relief in his voice.
“Hey, I don’t have a lot of time. I’m about to go on.”
“I know. Whitt told me about the performance. I’m so proud of you.”
I choked on my words. “Thanks.”
“I have the TV on already. I’m going to watch.”
