Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit

4. Rivers

4

RIVERS

T hese girls could drink, and I was shocked as hell at just how much they were willing to put back.

Look, I’d come into their room already full of half a bottle of Jack, but I was guessing that they still had a head start on me. They’d barely made it back to their room without stumbling all over each other, and there was plenty of giggling going on, even from the cranky one.

I was guessing that had at least a little bit to do with the fact that I was following them into their room, which was indeed right next to mine.

They were literally the trouble next door.

Except that I didn’t think Lila Potter had ever made trouble in her entire life. The girl was pure sunshine, and it wasn’t just her coloring. Her giggle was so infectious I felt it crawling right into my bloodstream and bubbling like champagne, and that smile of hers, which lit her whole face up…

I wasn’t the kind of guy who had an immediate response to other people. I’d spent too much of my life being handed from one manager to another and learning the hard way that I couldn’t really trust anyone. I hadn’t had a family to teach me how to be kind or loving or any of that jazz, and I certainly hadn’t had anyone telling me that I was worth anything more than the money I could make for them.

In short, I’d learned early on how to protect my heart from other people. It usually looked like me pretending I didn’t have a heart in the first place.

But something about Lila, with her auburn hair and those laughing eyes of hers, the freckles across her nose and the sly, giggling sense of humor she’d already showed me…

Something about it had me following her right into her room, my heart opening up like a creature that had been kept in the dark too long and had just seen its very first sunbeam.

And fuck me, that might have been the cheesiest, most pathetic thing I’d ever thought in my entire life, and though I should maybe have been embarrassed about that, I found myself grinning instead. Bathing in the glow that was coming off the golden girl in front of me.

I cut my thoughts off abruptly, if only to keep myself from veering into a truly humiliating spiral, and glanced around the room. The girls had obviously only been here to drop their things off. Two bags sat on the two beds, still stuffed to bursting, and aside from a couple of cowboy hats on the side tables and a purse thrown on the table, there were no personal belongings in the room. I wondered at that. When people got to a hotel room they generally unpacked immediately, trying to make the place their own for the short time they’d be there. Trying to replicate something that looked like home.

At least that was what I did. I’d always assumed other people did the same thing. Enter a space and try to make it yours. Put your mark on it enough that when you walked in the room it embraced you with open arms. Make it familiar and comforting so that when you ran to it, trying to get away from the people outside?—

I cut that thought off as well. This room, with its girls who had probably been protected for their entire lives from anything that might try to do them harm, was no place to think about the bad things I’d run from in my life.

I returned to the question of what these girls were actually doing here—they hadn’t told me yet—and why they’d dropped their bags and run for food and drinks.

“So, what are you two doing in little old Bardstown?” I asked, eyeing the bags on the bed. “It doesn’t look like you’re packed for a long trip.”

And Bardstown wasn’t exactly a destination city. Sure, they had a thriving music scene here, which was why Olivia Johns and Connor Wheating had decided to start their tour here, but it was also a small town.

The other reason they’d decided to start here, if you asked me. Olivia and Connor had spent their first tour—the one they did with Atomic Records—stuck on their own in Missouri and playing from town to town trying to make enough money to get home to Nashville. At the time it had been a great publicity stunt, as far as the label was concerned, and a source of constant stress for Olivia and Connor. But it had also given them a taste for small-town performing, and when Avery Dawson’s label sent them out again, they’d insisted on at least some small towns so they could return to what they thought of as their performing roots.

As one of Olivia’s best friends, Avery had put all her weight—not much, with how tiny she was—behind giving them exactly what they wanted.

When my band, Global Writers, was signed to the tour, the dates and locations had already been set. Taylor had told us we didn’t have a choice about where we were going, but I’d jumped in with both feet. I’d spent too much time in big cities, with the noise and traffic and drama that went with them, and a tour full of small towns had felt…

Like a break.

But I hadn’t expected to find a lot of tourists.

“We’re here for the tour,” Lila said immediately.

I jerked, surprised. “What tour?”

“Olivia and Connor’s. Obviously,” she said, looking like she was rethinking her opinion of my ability to use my brain. “What other tour is in town?”

“Well, I’m in town,” I said, pretending offense.

She rolled her eyes. “And I’m pretty sure you’re on their tour . Or are you here as a groupie? Just a fan?”

I laughed at the sudden change from snark to wide-eyed innocence, and she grinned in triumph. And fuck did I love being the one that had made her smile like that.

I immediately decided that I wanted to do it again.

“I am in fact on their tour,” I admitted. “But that doesn’t answer my question of why you’re here.”

They were actually here, it turned out, for the reason Lila had already given me. The one I hadn’t even remembered, though Noah had thrown it right in my face. The contest Olivia and Connor were running, with one very big prize. A contract with Avery’s label, and Taylor herself. Lila and Anna—who were evidently musicians—had come to try their hand at winning said contract.

They were the very musicians I’d been so angry about.

Not that I was going to tell them so.

Besides, the conversation had already turned to music and how it had affected Anna and Lila’s lives. How long they’d been playing together and what sort of music they wrote, and what they wanted to do with their careers.

Or rather, what Lila’s interpretation of it was. Because Anna didn’t participate in the conversation much. She did a whole lot more watching, her eyes narrowed and flitting between Lila and me like she was trying to figure out exactly what was going on.

I could have told her, if she’d asked me. But Lila was talking so much I could hardly get a word in edgewise. We’d come into the room to find a bottle of champagne chilling on ice, and between popping the cork—my job, as Lila had said she was too small to get it done—and finishing the bottle, Lila had told me so much about herself that I was starting to feel like I’d known her for years rather than moments.

They were from Nashville and had grown up in the same neighborhood. Lila’s parents were in the music business, and she had three younger sisters who also wanted to be musicians. Anna was an only child but had been adopted into Lila’s family and had practically grown up under her roof. They’d been best friends since they could walk.

“Before that, if you believe our mothers,” Lila added.

That made even Anna smile, and it changed everything about her face. She grew softer and cast Lila a look full of affection and exasperation, something so protective and loving that I suddenly saw what Lila must get to see all the time.

Then she looked back at me and the look disappeared.

The girl obviously didn’t trust me.

I ignored her and went back to staring at Lila. She was three glasses of champagne in at this point and laughing even more easily, and I…

I couldn’t stop wondering what it would be like to kiss her. She’d taken to touching me lightly every time she said something she thought was particularly important, and each touch sent heat coursing through my body. Heat that was a whole lot hotter than anything I’d ever felt.

Heat that didn’t stop at my skin but traveled all the way through my belly and settled between my legs, making me burn in a whole different way.

Maybe she was the sun, I thought, too drunk to realize how stupid that sounded. Or maybe she was a star. Equally bright, equally warm, and focused on me with something that made me want to take her inside me and hold her there.

When we finished the bottle, I wasn’t ready to stop hearing her stories. I certainly wasn’t ready to leave the glowing warmth of her presence. I didn’t want to go back to the emptiness of my own room and sit there by myself thinking about how the world had hurt me and how I wasn’t doing anyone any good with the way I’d chosen to face it.

Anna, on the other hand, seemed to have had enough. “Well, I guess we should probably get to bed,” she said, eying the empty bottle. “I think we’ve drunk enough for the night.”

“I’m not tired,” Lila disagreed. “I don’t want to go to bed.”

“Me, either,” I admitted. “I don’t think I could sleep yet.”

Anna didn’t answer, and I could practically feel the disapproval radiating off her. She didn’t think I should stay. Hell, she hadn’t thought I should come over in the first place.

My gaze met Lila’s, and I could see that she was thinking the same thing. Anna didn’t want us to keep hanging out, and though Lila might usually take that into consideration, she was second-guessing her friend right now.

I lifted one eyebrow, and her lips twitched in response.

Oh yeah, we were thinking the exact same thing.

“If Anna wants to go to bed, you could always come to my room and have another drink.”

Her eyebrows lifted to match mine, and she tried to get serious. “But what if you kidnap me?”

I leaned toward her and breathed in her sunshine and floral scent. “I swear I’m not going to kidnap you.”

Despite the fact that you being here is a way for my agent to threaten me , I didn’t add.

I barely even thought it. I was too wrapped up in Lila Potter.

She tipped forward toward me, and for one crazy moment I thought she was going to kiss me. She stopped just short of doing so, though, glanced down at my lips, and then said, “In that case, Rivers Shine, you’ve got a deal.”