Chapter 43
Forty-Three
Piper
“Piper Callahan, ladies and gentlemen.”
The crowd erupts.
I’m standing at the edge of the stage with a borrowed violin and sweat running down my back. My hair is everywhere, and my heart is beating out of my chest. Cal is looking at me like he knew exactly what he was doing when he handed me a violin in a festival field this afternoon.
My fingers ache, my bow arm is trembling, and I’ve never felt more exhilarated in my entire life.
An hour.
I played for an hour.
The members of the band are grinning like idiots behind me while someone in the front row is pounding the stage like they’re trying to break through it.
I take a bow, breathless and shaking with adrenaline. “Thank you,” I gasp, laughing.
They cheer louder. Someone shouts my name again. Someone else yells, “Violin girl forever!”
Cal pulls me into a one-armed hug at the mic and says something I can’t hear over the noise. I laugh anyway because the mood in this room is so good it’s almost tangible, like you could reach out and hold it.
I shake hands with the other band members, including the woman on bass and the other fiddle player, who spent an hour playing beside me and kept grinning every time we hit a good part, which was often.
I turn toward the wings.
Griffin is still there.
He looks like he’s been punched in the chest in the best possible way. His eyes track me like he hasn’t blinked since the first note.
“I did it!” I squeal as I practically sprint to him.
“You did it,” he says, so full of pride that I feel a lump form in my throat.
Then he grabs me and lifts me clean off the ground, arms tight around my waist, and kisses me so hard I lose the breath I had left. My fingers curl into his hair, my legs instinctively wrap around him, and the room disappears. It’s just him, his mouth, his hands, his body steady against mine.
I break the kiss on a gasp, forehead against his. “Griff?”
“Yeah?”
“Do we really have to sleep in a tent tonight?”
He laughs against my mouth. “I booked a hotel.”
I pull back just enough to see his face. “You got a what?”
“A hotel,” he repeats, proud of himself. “A bed. A shower. Walls. A door that locks.”
My entire soul lifts. “God bless you.”
He chuckles, adjusts his grip, and carries me straight out the back exit while the band keeps cheering behind us.
I don’t look back.
I don’t need to.
I’m exactly where I want to be.