Page 100 of Reckless
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Kelly
The audience went crazy, absolutely insane, as Gaged took the stage. I was still floating somewhere in that alternate reality called orgasmic bliss, my bones and every fiber I possessed loose.
“Woo hoo! Gage!” I screamed as if I were just another smitten fan. All around me as I battled my way to the front, hoots pierced my ears. I belted out another, trying to be heard above all the others.
One electric strum of Andy’s guitar and I immediately knew what was coming. Stopping, I clutched my hands to my chest. This was the song that Gage had written for me back when the world was still whole. If I closed my eyes, I could be right back then, Dad in his recliner after work, Mom in the kitchen happily humming as she cooked dinner. Stephen primping in the bathroom, his music way too loud, getting ready to hang out with his latest girlfriend at the game. All that was normal in my teenage girl life. Even me curled up in bed with cramps, mad because I was in a bad mood and because I wanted to go to the game with my dad and brother, and mad because I didn’t. That teenage angst had been such a roller coaster ride, but back then…normal.
Tears burned my eyes, but I didn’t try to blink them back, just let them fall and wash away the misplaced guilt. What happened that night I could never have changed, even if I had gotten in the car with them.
It wasn’t my fault.
It took a second for me to catch up when the band went into “You Were For Me.” The notes ushered me into the present, to the place where I felt so light that I could almost float away like a helium balloon that slipped from a child’s hand to climb higher and higher in the sky.
But Gage didn’t start singing on cue.
My eyes popped open.
Over the music, he said, “I’m sure you all know it by now, or widely publicized versions of it.” The fans laughed. “Either way, I’d like to tell you my version of my love story, if you’d like to hear it.”
The crowd screamed, and my heart stopped.
“Once upon a time,” Gage said and paused, during which Andy strummed his guitar as if this were rehearsed. “There was this beautiful teenage princess who captured my heart. The part you probably know about is how I was an ass, a successful ass, but an ass. It took losing my wonderful mother to realize that all the fame, all the fortune in the world could never replace the precious girl turned woman I’d left behind.”
The crowd stirred, but I couldn’t look at anyone but him.
“I don’t think she understands how much I love her. How she makes my life complete. How I have loved her since I was hardly more than a boy and I’ll always love her until we are so old we can’t even make it to the rocking chairs.”
“Those sound like new lyrics to me,” said Andy and strummed his guitar, making it talk with awang wang.
The crowd screamed their agreement.
“I have been trying to find the perfect way to do this, but nothing seems good enough.” Gage paused and looked out into the crowd, searching. “But I want the world to know, I want everyone to know that she is the one for me. So, Kelly Cavendish, wherever you are out there…can you please join me onstage.”
I screamed with joy at the top of my lungs, but so did everyone else. Every person around me looked so excited. But none more than me.
Wading through the crowd was like trying to walk through quicksand, I took one step forward and was pushed back past where I started.
Luckily, Gage had sent security out in the audience to look for me. A brick house of a man spotted me and grinned as he cleared a path through the crowd.
The moment I jumped onstage, time slowed. The audience’s screams faded.
There he was, the man who’d owned my heart since I was fifteen, his hair curled crazily around his face, his green eyes glinting when they met mine.
I had my mind set on wrapping my limbs around him the moment I was onstage. But when I stopped in front of him, he dropped to one knee.
He pulled a black box out of his shirt pocket next to his heart, and said, “Kelly, I want you to be my wife. Will you marry me?” The crowd gasped as one, and some cheered. He opened the box to reveal an emerald-cut diamond with a cascade of diamonds on the band.
I covered my mouth with my hands, my throat filling with too much emotion to speak.
He continued to kneel, waiting for me to get my breath.
Ben’s deep, teasing voice came over the speaker. “He’s waiting for an answer there, Kelly, but if you’re unsure, I don’t have plans tonight.”
His interruption broke the spell, and I took a deep breath.
Be brave, I told myself. Be reckless.
