Guilt overwhelmed me. Regardless of how hard I tried, I couldn’t be everywhere.
And, God, did I try.
“Okay, how many are left out there?” I asked, trying to get my head on straight.
“At least a dozen more kids. Then their siblings, and parents…as well as a handful of doctors and their families, nurses—”
“Okay, okay. I got it.” I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose.
“Levee,” Stewart breathed, walking up behind me and squeezing my shoulder. “I’ll tell them. Maybe I can set up something for next month. You can come back, specifically for those you missed. We’ll block out an entire day.”
A month.
Lizzy hadn’t lasted a month.
How many won’t be here when I get back?
I shook his hand off. “I can’t leave. I’m sorry.”
He groaned behind me as I started to open the door. I froze when an idea hit me.
“Hey! What about Henry?” I twisted to face him.
“What about him?”
“He’s in town. If I can get him to go over to the venue first, it will buy me some extra time here, and it will be like a double treat for the VIPs. Everyone loves Henry!”
Stewart didn’t. So he rolled his eyes. “It’s not a good idea, Levee.”
I rushed to my bag in the corner and pulled my cell phone out. “Bullshit. It’s a fantastic idea.”
Another groan came from Stewart’s direction, but I was too busy dialing Henry’s number to pay it any attention.
He answered on the first ring. “There she is! What’s up, beautiful?”
“I need a favor.” There was no reason to bother with pleasantries. Not with Henry.
“Mmmm, I like the sound of this. What kind of favor?”
I could envision his flirty smile as he patted his purposely messy blond hair. “I have a meet-and-greet for my VIPs in an hour.”
“Okaaay?” he drawled.
“You’re in town, right?” I chewed at my freshly manicured nails.
“Levee,” he warned.
This wouldn’t be the first time I’d asked Henry for a favor. He wasn’t exactly shy about asking me for them, either. And he always had the same answer I had for him.
I lowered my voice and said softly, “I’m at the children’s hospital.”
“Jesus, babe,” he breathed.
I love him.
“There’s still a line. I can’t leave. But I’m supposed to be at the arena in an hour.”
“I’ll go,” he said, quickly answering the unspoken question.
And he loves me.
Henry Alexander was the biggest name in music. Well…besides mine. He’d started off songwriting, the same way I had, which was how we’d initially met. We’d become fast friends. He helped me with the music, and I helped him with the lyrics. We brainstormed, jammed, and eventually moved in together. We sold more songs than any two twenty-one-year-old kids could have fathomed. But it wasn’t enough. Selling songs was one thing. Selling yourself as the singer was something totally different.
But we both had dreams.
Huge ones.
Thanks to YouTube, we had accrued a massive following. We wanted to be individual artists but realized quickly that cross promotion and appearing in each other’s videos every few weeks earned us the most views. People loved Levee and Henry together, but his gruff, sultry R&B voice didn’t mesh well with my soulful-pop feel. A duo was out, but our fans began to expect us as a team. So we did what we always did: We got creative.
At twenty-three years old, we released our dual debut album. Fans went nuts. We threw our hearts and souls into that project, spending day and night in the studio to make it cohesive but different enough that people saw us as solo artists. Dichotomy ended up being six of his songs, six of mine, and two together. But, oddly enough, those weren’t what people fell in love with.