Page 49 of Hero on the Road
I looked up at his eyes, terrified that he’d seen me, but he was looking across the audience, not stopping on anyone in particular. And his eyes were… shadowed. He looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks, and if he had, it hadn’t been good sleep. He didn’t look happy. He looked haunted.
“I know I’m supposed to end each show with a loud, rocking piece so y’all can get your money’s worth,” he said, and stopped for the crowd to cheer and laugh. “But I’ve been saving this song for a special occasion, and this feels like it might be the right night. What do you think? Do you want to hear a song only other one person in this world has ever really heard before?”
The crowd went wild, as he must have known they would, but he wasn’t done yet.
“Even if it’s slow and sappy?”
More cheering and screaming, and I could see people getting their phones out to record whatever was coming.
Connor always had known how to play to the audience. But I wondered what he was up to. Had he written something new that he hadn’t played for anyone yet? Awfully risky to play it in front of a crowd the first time if you didn’t know what their reaction would be. But it was his show, I guessed.
“Well if you’re sure….” he continued, though he must have known he already had them eating out of his hand.
When the crowd screamed again, he strummed a single chord to warm his guitar up, and a thrill ran through me.
I knew that chord.
“Like all of us here, I’m guessing, I’ve been through a lot,” he said. “My dad’s recovering from cancer, we had to sell the family farm, and I’ve lost a few trucks along the way.” He grinned at the laughter. “Worst of all, though, I found the girl I loved. I’d loved her most of my life, and when we finally got together, I thought I’d found heaven. We spent one amazing month together, out on the road in Montana. And then I lost her again. This is a little song I wrote about her, a couple months ago. It’s not new, but I’ve never played it before. I hope you’ll give it a chance.”
And with that, the chord I’d already recognized grew and became the song I’d heard him playing only once before, that day in the studio when he hadn’t known I was listening. I’d never even mentioned the song on the road and he’d never brought it up. It had obviously been too personal to him to want to play it.
But now he was up there on stage, singing it out for an entire audience to hear. And his voice was cracking at the soft parts, his fingers gentle on his guitar strings. The light had faded to a soft blue and everything was so beautifully sad and wonderful and…
And my heart was breaking.
Because I was thinking now that Connor wasn’t moving on with his life the way I’d thought he was.
If he was singing this song and looking like he was about to cry, it was because he missed me just as much as I missed him.
CHAPTER31
Connor
Iwas leaving the stage before I saw her.
I’d put down my guitar and bowed to the crowd, telling them that I appreciated them coming out to see little old me in my first appearance. I’d taken a moment to appreciate how surreal this all was, that these people had come out here to see me. No one else.
I’d taken another moment to truly feel how lonely it was to be up here on my own, rather than taking this bow with Olivia at my side. Yes, I’d been able to sing some of our songs—which she’d told Atomic she would sign over to me—but they hadn’t been the same without her. If anything, it had felt wrong to sing them without her next to me.
And then I looked up toward the bar and found myself looking right into a pair of gray/blue eyes that I knew nearly as well as I knew my own. I gasped and checked again, looking at the cheeks, nose, lips, hair.
Yes, that was Olivia Johns.
She was near the back of the room, standing on a barstool so she could see over the people in front of me. And she was looking at me with her face wide open and telling me everything she hadn’t been able to tell me before.
She was so beautiful, so unexpected, that I lost my ability to breathe for a moment. My entire body seemed to have lost its ability to do what it was supposed to. I wanted to be running to her, taking her in my arms, telling her everything I’d been thinking for the last three months, and yet I was standing on the stage staring like some dope who didn’t know how to human.
What the hell was Idoing?
I jumped off the stage right into the crowd of people and lost sight of her for a moment, but pushed toward where I’d last seen her, praying she wouldn’t move. The crowd, elated at the sight of me in their midst, soon noticed that I had eyes only for one area and started to part like the Red Sea—which was ridiculous. There were only about fifty people in here. It wasn’t like I was playing a stadium or something. But the people who were here got out of the way as soon as they realized I was on a mission.
And then she was in front of me. She hadn’t moved. She was still standing on that barstool, staring at me, and I realized she’d been able to see me during my entire trip from the stage.
She’d stood there and waited for me instead of running away.
Finally.
When I arrived in front of her, I stopped and looked up.
