Page 40 of All of You

After another twenty minutes of lists and rules and schedules, none of which I fully absorbed because the insanity of what I was about to do dawned on me, Jeremy and Nikki both left. Whit showed them out—clearly more for Jeremy’s sake than Nikki’s, and once the door closed, she sank back against it and gave me a wan smile.

“He’s great, but I end up with the biggest headache after I meet with him.” She then pushed off the door and walked straight over to me. The smile grew on her face as she got closer. “Hi.”

I looked down at her now since she stood so close. Rather than resisting the urge, I held out my arms, and she kept walking until she was pressed up against me.

“Hi,” I said back, hugging her tight before letting go, and experiencing the very real sensation that I wanted to keep my arm around her, keep touching her.

“Sorry about the information overload. Do you have questions?” She smiled, her eyes full of concern and care.

The only question now was how I’d keep on resisting her.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Ben

“Thank you, everyone! See you again soon, Boston!”

Whit yelled, then came barreling off the stage, a ball of energy so bright, she was impossible to miss in the dark backstage. The stage techs pulled her guitar from her shoulders and handed her a towel. They ushered her past me, and I was pretty sure she had no idea I stood there, but then she turned to look around.

The crowd was still raging, and I couldn’t get to her—people were packed around her, fixing her costume, wiping her face, Amanda swiping on more gloss, and about a hundred other things I couldn’t see. The crowd roared at a deafening volume out in the stadium, and the lights stayed low.

Ah, of course. The encore.

Another burst of activity, and then she stood right at the side of the stage until the music changed, then strolled back on, and the crowd, though I wouldn’t have thought possible, got louder.

One of the stage-hands pulled me up closer to the side so I had a perfect view of her profile. She smiled widely, a burning flame on stage, and wow, she’d changed clothes in those hurried moments backstage. Now she wore a startlingly short white dress covered with something that reflected off her like little mirrors. Her boots were black this time, her hair down and wavy under the white cowboy hat on her head. She strummed her black guitar, the beginning notes of one of her most famous songs from her first album, the one that had won her first Grammy, filling the venue.

I’d been glued to her the entire concert. She’d played months ago at Fort Campbell, but I hadn’t known her then. I was still piecing together who Whit Grantham actually was, but knowing even the barest details about her made me like her even more. Being close to her in any kind of way was like a punch to the gut leaving me breathless and a little achy.

Being physically close to her during these moments where she literally pulled in energy and excitement like they were owed to her—not in a self-righteous way, but simply because she was so damned luminous and charismatic on stage and people loved her—threw her brilliance and stardom into a new and unignorable light.

And she was good. My God, was she good at this.

Her stage presence, yes. But her voice—her talent eclipsed anything I’d seen in real life. She sounded as good as, if not somehow better than, her recorded music. She proved gut-wrenching in the slow songs.

She ended the encore, and the now-familiar tingling sensation gathered in my spine, the sweet anticipation of seeing her up close and talking to her racing through me. She was greeted by the same flurry of helpers pulling and guiding, and before I realized it, she’d been ushered off stage right and somewhere else.

Someone grabbed my wrist and pointed the way to go. This Boston concert was the third show of the mini-tour and my first, so I hadn’t learned what to do or where to go.

Whit had gotten extremely sick and had missed eleven tour dates on her summer tour. They’d rescheduled the concerts for these few weeks over the holidays and into the beginning of the new year.

I hurried after the crowd following her and watched as she was dusted with powder, patted, and her chest rose and fell in that dress. I caught her eye from where she sat and shook my head lightly, the gesture the only way I could think to wordlessly show her how amazing she was.

She winked at me, the first time we’d made eye contact, and just that action made my stomach drop. But too soon, she gave her attention to someone else right in front of her, chatting away. Once they’d finished the madness, she was ushered into the next room where a small crowd of people waited.

A few members of the press peppered her with quick questions, one after another, while others asked for radio sound bites. She’d be visiting a few TV and radio outlets tomorrow in person, and they’d get what they wanted from her one on one then, but for those who didn’t rate a visit, they apparently got post-concert access for a few minutes.

She was handed item after item from people asking for her autograph, and these weren’t even technically fans. After fifteen minutes, she was hustled out the door, out the long route through the back doors, and dumped into a car that drove off immediately.

I came to the doorway and stopped, watching Ru speed away like he was driving the president.

“We’ll take the next one,” Amanda said. “She’ll probably be pissed they didn’t have you in there with her.”

“I don’t mind. I’m just along for the ride.” And I meant it.

“Well… that’s adorable. And probably one more reason she’ll be pissed you weren’t with her in the first place.”

Just shy of an hour later, Amanda, Damon, and I arrived at The Four Seasons Boston Hotel, and Amanda led the way into Reception—she’d told me she’d take care of check in. That was a relief since I hadn’t been given any information about my room or how to check in. Would the room be under my name? Somehow, we hadn’t covered that, nor had the twenty-page packet from the tour manager.

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