Page 14 of Love is a Dance Step
He shook his head. With thoughts of Leah still in his mind, he couldn’t step onto that stage as if nothing had happened. He couldn’t dance. “I’m doing this one alone.”
Confusion wound through the group, but he left them to stand next to one of the techs looking out at the dark stage.
“We told them the concert would start again once Noah Clarke was ready.”
Noah wasn’t supposed to go on for another forty-five minutes. It wasn’t his time yet.
“Hey, mate.” Noah joined him. “I’m all set. How’s Leah?”
“I don’t know.” He stared at the stage and the crowd beyond, trying to force himself to do as Leah asked. Finish the concert. He owed it to the fans. “I’m going back on.”
Noah grinned. “You’re bloody right you are.”
Reaching to the box at his waist, Drew flipped his mic on before stepping onto the stage. The crowd wouldn’t be able to see who he was, not yet.
He retrieved a stool and set it center stage before taking a seat. He wasn’t one to serenade a crowd. That was his friend, Ben. Drew always believed that to play slow songs—to strip everything down—it required a guitar he didn’t play. While Ben, Noah, and their friend Dax spent their younger years learning new chords on their guitars, Drew was at the ice rink.
His youth left him wholly unprepared for life as a rock star.
Every time he’d tried to learn guitar since, his frustration ended the lessons.
And now, with no dancers distracting the audience from his lack of other skills, he had only his voice.
The moment he sang the first note, the crowd roared their approval. A spotlight found him as he picked up the chorus of a song he usually sang much faster than this. But now, with no band, no dancers, he stripped himself to the core, letting the words rather than the spectacle tell the story.
Sweat dotted his brow, and the nerves had his breath hitching, the thought rolling over and over in his mind.Can I pull this off?
Emotion poured out of him. Throughout Amalie Arena, fans lifted their lit phones in the air and swayed. A smile pulled at his lips because for the first time, he felt like maybe they didn’t only want the energy of his concerts, they wanted him.
His gaze fell to where his sisters and his dad stood next to the girl he’d noticed before as she danced. Her and Nora had their arms around each other. Who was she?
There was no time to stare as the song ended, and he took a breath. “Thank you for welcoming something different from me.” He wiped sweaty palms on his jeans. “Leah Baker has been my lead dancer for five years, but she’s also my best friend. Seeing her get hurt was a shock, but I believe wholeheartedly she will be okay. She made me come back out here because you all deserve it. Now, I know she was right. You heal my frazzled nerves. This next song is from my newest album. Sing along if you know it.”
He launched into another recent hit, trying to pretend he was just laying down a track in the recording studio, just him and his voice. Before long, he forgot about the empty stage surrounding him, or that for the first time in his career, he was out here completely alone.
Well, not alone
He had his fans.
They sang the words, remembering them just as well as he did.
Each song brought him closer to the people who supported him, the ones who’d made this life possible. His mind never left Leah, but she was right. He’d needed to step back onto the stage for them.
As he sang his final notes many songs later, he stood. “You guys have been the best. Thank you for welcoming me home.” His eyes scanned the arena all the way to the rafters. “Prepare yourselves because Noah Clarke and Jo Jackson are up next.”
The crowd cheered for that announcement, and he grinned. Only months ago, the world thought he was at war with Noah because of a Twitter battle they’d done just for fun. Their shared publicist, Melanie, almost had a heart attack about it.
Drew fist-bumped Noah on his way off-stage, making a beeline to where Piper waited for him. “Update?”
“Leah is at the hospital. They’re checking her out. Amy is booked on the red-eye out of L.A. tonight. And you were incredible.”
He ignored the last part. “I thought you weren’t going to leave her alone? What are you still doing here?”
Piper didn’t bristle at his tone. She knew him well enough by now to know he was just worried. “Drew, calm down. Leah isn’t alone. Your mom came backstage before the ambulance got here. She volunteered to ride with her.”
His mom. He breathed a sigh of relief. Of course it was his mom. She loved Leah, and she’d have known how much Drew needed his mom’s help. She always did. “Okay. I need to get over there.”
“First, how about you change?” She urged him toward his dressing room. “We have to be strategic. Drew Stone can’t just show up at the hospital. Also, the guys want to talk to you.”
