Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit

3. Lila

3

LILA

“ R ivers Shine.”

The words were out of my mouth before I could stop myself, my voice a hoarse whisper, and I realized in that moment that my hands were clenching the front of his shirt, my body pressed against him like…

Like…

“Oh my God.”

I scuttled backwards so quickly that I ran right into Anna, who had stumbled through the door behind me.

Look, we weren’t, like, leaning against his door on purpose. We weren’t spying. Truthfully, I hadn’t even known it was his door. We’d arrived earlier in the afternoon and had found our room, dumped our bags, and then gone out for dinner and drinks. By the time we left the bar where we’d landed, we’d had more of the latter and not enough of the former, and getting back up the stairs in the tiny hotel had been a challenge that had resulted in us falling out of the stairwell and into a fit of giggles.

Which had then progressed as we staggered down the hall.

We’d leaned against the wall—and the door—laughing at how stupid we were being, and then that door had opened, I’d fallen forward, and had looked up to see…

Oh. My. God.

I looked up again, trying to get my brain to clear up and start paying attention. Because that was definitely Rivers Shine in front of me, all dark, spiky hair and tattoos and moody eyes. His cheekbones were even sharper in person, the scruff on his chin outlining the angle of his jaw. But his lips were fuller than I’d realized, and they looked way too kissable.

My God in heaven, where the fuck had that come from? Why was I thinking about kissing the man who was currently scowling at me like I’d just interrupted some sort of important something?

Oh God. Goddy God, did he have a girl in here? Had we walked right in on something?

My eyes flitted from him to the rest of the room, taking in a space scattered with leather jackets, boots, whiskey bottles, and several guitars.

But no girls.

“Um, hey?”

The quiet phrase brought my eyes back to Rivers, and I saw that the scowl had changed to some sort of shy smile, like he was somehow embarrassed at having caught us in his room. And I wouldn’t have believed it, but that smile freed me from whatever had grabbed me and stopped my brain up to this point.

And I remembered that I’d just barged into his room—on accident—and that I should probably at least apologize.

“Hey,” I said softly. I stuck out my hand. “Lila Potter. Sorry, we… I mean, we weren’t just out there leaning on your door or something. And even if we were, it would only be because we had too much to drink at dinner and?—”

“We were just going to our room,” Anna said with a sharp look at me. She grabbed my arm and pulled me back toward the door. “Sorry, Rivers. We didn’t mean to interrupt.”

To my shock, he also put a hand on my arm. “Wait. You don’t have to go. I mean, you’re already here and everything. You already got into the room.”

Anna’s face went from embarrassed to deeply judgmental, like she suspected Rivers had the worst possible motivation for asking us to stay in his room, and I jerked my arm away from her. She could be such a bitch. It wasn’t like he’d asked us to stay for some sort of human sacrifice or something. He’d just said we were already here and that we didn’t have to go, and I was guessing there was actually a pretty good reason for that. All you had to do was look at the guy to see he was hungry for a friend. He looked sad in a way I’d never experienced, a shadow moving behind his eyes that definitely hadn’t shown up in any of the pictures I’d ever seen of him.

He had a mouth that wanted to smile, and I was guessing he didn’t get a chance to do it often enough.

Maybe he just needed an excuse.

“Anna, be nice,” I scolded. “It’s not like he’s trying to kidnap us or something.” I turned to him with my eyebrows raised, though. “Or are you? Are you running some sort of human trafficking ring out of your hotel room? Because I’m pretty sure that would break the rules of the hotel.”

“I’m pretty sure that would break the rules of the whole government,” he agreed. “And no. I might be a lot of things, but a trafficker isn’t one of them. You’re safe…Lila?”

The way he said my name made something happen inside me, and I shivered a bit. “Yeah. And this is Anna.” I gestured vaguely to the glowering presence behind me, hoping she was at least trying to look friendly. “My best friend.”

His eyes shifted to Anna, taking their warmth with them, and I breathed out a bit. God, what was he doing to me with his eyes? Was that part of his act?

“Anna,” he said solemnly. “I’m not a kidnapper. I promise.”

“She doesn’t think you are,” I said quickly. “But just in case, how about if we go back to our room instead? It’ll make it even harder for you to kidnap us.”

He leaned in, a grin blooming on his gorgeous lips. “But what if you kidnap me, instead?”

I snorted at that and took the chance to look him up and down once. “Are you kidding? What would we do with you? You’re too big to stuff in a duffel bag and smuggle out of here.”

I gulped at the reference to his size, knowing immediately that it was a rookie thing to say, but he shocked me by laughing at my stupid joke.

“Then I guess I’ll be safe enough. As long as you don’t have any really big duffel bags hidden in there. Where’s your room?”

“Right next door.” I gave him my most charming smile—the one that had always worked when I was in trouble with anyone—and turned to see Anna looking at me like I’d lost my fucking mind.

I cocked my head and looked right back at her, daring her to challenge me on this. So what if I was asking a rock star into our room for drinks? So what if we’d just met him? We’d also dropped everything at home to follow a tour on the off chance that we’d score a contract in the deal. We were far from home and gambling everything on this chance.

We were here to put our hearts on the line and take a leap of faith.

And he was Rivers Shine. If nothing else, we’d have a good story to tell when we got home. Besides, he might also be our key to getting in with Olivia Johns and Connor Wheating. We hadn’t met them yet or even figured out how we were supposed to audition for them, so having someone to ask sounded like it might actually be pretty smart.

This guy might give us a backstage pass right to our contract.

And PS, he was gorgeous enough to stop a girl’s heart and had me melting into something goo-like and squishy, and he didn’t seem to have eyes for anyone but me.

Even if nothing came of this, I was quite willing to bask in the dark glory that was Rivers Shine’s attention for as long as I had it.