Page 114 of Cadence
I want to be relieved she’s here, but she might as well be a statue with all the life in her. I step closer, not sure what I’ll say, only knowing I need to be near her, need to try.
“Paige.” Reaching out, I come up short before I can touch her.
She flinches, her shoulders bunching beneath her leather jacket briefly, before she rolls them back, standing taller. Hands flexing around her sticks, she keeps her back to me as she says, “Don’t.”
Beau shoots me an awkward look as Eli fidgets uncomfortably. The crew waves us toward the stage, and she moves like a machine, focused and steady, and we have no choice but to follow.
The crowd explodes as we step into the spotlights, their cries deafening and euphoric, but none of it touches me. Not the sound, not the scale of people here. Not even the thought that this is our last show before our break, and that somewhere out there, a label exec is watching.
Beau grabs the mic and screams out into the stadium, the standard intro in a new city. I glance at Paige, twirling her sticks and smiling wide, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. She lifts her chin, nods to Eli, and just like that, we’re live.
Our first track hits hard, the usual opener, and the fans eat it up. We move through our set like we always have: tight, in sync, feeding off the noise. We’re flawless, a band without cracks, no one beyond this stage can feel all the fractured frequencies that are playing behind the curtain.
But we do.
Every time I look at her, she dodges me. She tracks Beau, glances at Eli, angles herself so I can’t catch her eyes. The music’s solid, the performance is clean, but the heartbeat is gone. She doesn’t miss a beat, of course she doesn’t. Paige could play with her eyes closed. But there’s no soul in it. Just cold, technical precision.
And it guts me.
Halfway through the fourth or fifth song—I’m not even sure which—I miss a note. It’s minor, probably goes unnoticed. Except Beau sends me a worried glance from across the stage, and my gaze darts to Paige. She doesn’t even react, not a single blink.
Where she used to grin at me from behind the cymbals, mouth along with the lyrics, all that’s gone now.
I keep waiting for her to flash that smile, to throw something uniquely Paige into the fill to catch me off guard, but she doesn’t. All I get is the cold line of her jaw and the distant thud of someone who used to mean every smack of the drum.
We close the set, the final chords ringing loud and sharp, the crowd screaming long after we’re offstage. I shove past the curtain into the wings, scanning for her, desperate to find her.
“Great show, Mr. Knox,” a stagehand says, taking my guitar and handing me water.
I hardly register it, my eyes sweeping backstage, hunting for the one person I need to see.
“Paige?” I call out, my voice barely cutting through the noise.
I push past people clapping me on the back, yelling praise I don’t hear. Breaking into a jog, I weave through the hallway toward her dressing room. The door’s ajar, and I shove it open, stumbling when I find it empty.
No bag. No shoes. No clothes.
No Paige.
My chest tightens, the logical side of me strong enough to push through the panic. She didn’t come here before the show; she arrived literally right before we went on. Which means…
“Mad.” Eli appears in the doorway, Beau right behind him.
I spin, checking over his shoulder. “Have you seen—”
“She’s gone,” Beau says, his tattoo-covered arm flexing as he rubs at the back of his neck.
I turn to Eli, needing confirmation. He’s staring at his phone, thumbs flying across the screen, eyebrows drawn low. A moment later, he winces and turns it toward me.
One text. One line.
Got the red-eye back to LAX.
I stare at the words, my brain refusing to catch up with what my heart already knows.
She left.
And this time, I don’t know if she’s coming back.
