Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit

6. Rivers

6

RIVERS

I opened my eyes to the sun streaming through my window and a splitting headache.

I put my hand to my forehead, surprised at the depth of the pain in there, and tried to remember how much I’d had to drink last night. What had even been doing? And who had I been doing it with? We weren’t on tour yet; I could remember that much. But there were definitely already groupies around, and plenty of girls in town. I’d already hooked up with some of them.

Had I brought another one home last night? God, had I brought more than one? Right after I’d promised Noah that I’d try to shape up and tone it down with all that hard-partying bullshit?

Fuck.

Then the memories started to trickle back in, and I tipped my head. I’d come back to the room, annoyed with all the photographers outside—why were there so many already?—and frustrated at the interview I’d just done. It hadn’t gone well. I was supposed to be presenting a more responsible version of Rivers Shine and instead, the reporter had been asking questions she knew would rile me up.

Typical.

Then a text from Taylor.

She was upset about my reputation. She and the other higher-ups were worried about it doing damage to Olivia and Connor, who had the squeakiest, most wholesome reputations known to man. The entire tour was evidently going to take that squeaky-clean line, and I was screwing it up.

She’d said I had to do something about it.

She probably hadn’t meant I should get drunk in my room and pass out, although at least being in my room meant I hadn’t been out making any public trouble. I hadn’t involved anyone else—that I could remember, at least—and technically that was an improvement, right? Hell, maybe I was already working on my reputation. If I kept the drinking to my room, did that count as trying to clean myself up? If I took that to Taylor?—

A soft huff from my left yanked me right out of my thoughts, and I turned my head slowly in that direction, realizing belatedly that I wasn’t just hungover but also stark naked in a bed with twisted sheets. And those sheets didn’t smell like me. Or rather… Well, they did.

But they also smelled like sex.

I hadn’t slept here alone.

As I turned, I saw several things in flashes. Dark red hair. Skin fair enough that it matched the sheets it was laying on. Freckles across a tiny nose and a face so beautiful I would have thought I was dreaming it.

Except I wasn’t.

Because now that I was looking at the face, I remembered it from last night.

I hadn’t come up and gotten drunk by myself after the run-in with those photographers. I’d gotten drunk, yes, but I hadn’t done it alone. I’d gone to the room next door, where I hung out with two girls I didn’t even know. And then I’d brought one of them back to my room with me because she’d been so interesting, so sweet, that I hadn’t wanted to let her go yet. I hadn’t wanted to be like her—never that, because it wasn’t possible—but I’d wanted her sunniness around me for a bit longer. She’d made me feel like a different person, a better person, and that was something I hadn’t felt in so long.

I’d wanted to keep that glow. Believe I could be the person she thought I was.

And here we’d had more to drink, and at some point—amidst all the secrets we’d been sharing with each other—she’d said something that had grabbed me by the heart and made me realize that I’d never, ever been so into a girl in my life. I’d wanted everything about her. Her smile, her laugh… her body.

I’d taken her. I’d stripped her and buried myself in her and moved until I could barely stand it, my cock hard enough that I thought I might die from the pleasure and her hands wrapped in my hair, her body surrounding me as I pressed my mouth against her neck and moaned her name again and again.

And we hadn’t just done it once. We’d laid in bed talking, my fingertips trailing over her velvet skin as she told me more about her childhood and I hid my past. She’d gone on and on about her sisters, how they’d performed for their parents and how she’d learned the guitar early enough that she couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been playing. She’d asked whether I played anything else and whether my parents were proud of my career, and I’d...

God.

I’d told her the things I’d never told anyone else. About growing up in the orphanage and winning a music contest when I was young, then getting a manager and being shoved into the music industry with no one to look after me.

And then I’d turned onto my back, pulled her onto me, and brought her down on my cock again. Just so I could lose myself in the warmth and perfection of her. Feel all the things my life had never bothered to give me before.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I was supposed to be cleaning up my image so Olivia and Connor weren’t damaged—and I was supposed to be doing it quickly so I could save my band’s spot on this tour. Noah had told me straight up that the label was inviting other acts on the road to audition, and for all I knew, one of those acts was going to actually replace us while we were all on the road.

And instead, I’d gotten drunk with the girl next door and dragged her into my bed. A girl who was one of those acts and might very well be my replacement.

And there was no way in hell I was going to get out of this, because she was also the sweetest, most innocent person I’d ever met in my entire life. I’d not only fucked the girl next door, but I had also fucked someone who had probably never even met a real live rock star before. She’d been so starstruck that she hadn’t known what she was doing. Drunk and starstruck.

Oh. My. God.

I slid out of bed as quietly as I could, grabbed my clothes off the ground, and put them on so quickly it was probably some sort of record. I found my shoes in no time flat, grabbed my wallet, and left the room.

Please, please let her leave before I got back. And please let her keep her mouth shut. Please let her leave the tour and never come around again, and please let this be the end of it. Because I couldn’t afford the trouble I was going to get in if anyone found out about this.

Yes, all of the above would mean I lost the only girl who had ever made me feel as if I might be worth something. A girl who had, against all the odds, made me feel like there might be some sunshine in my own dark, twisted soul.

That didn’t matter. I wasn’t the guy she thought I was, and I didn’t want to see her face when she woke up and realized that she might be the biggest mistake of my entire career.

Of course I couldn’t just escape with my dignity intact. I couldn’t even do the fucking honorable thing and get out of there before anyone else knew what had happened.

What the fuck did I think, my life was suddenly some sort of fairy tale?

I opened the door and slid out, my face turned back to make sure Lila was still asleep. And I ran right into Noah.

He stumbled several steps back, his arms out for balance, and glared at me once he’d come to a stop. “Is that how you always come out of your room? Because I’m thinking we need to work on it,” he snarled.

Typical Noah. He’d never been a morning person.

“Fuck you.”

I made to slide past him, my mind still on the girl in my bed, but he grabbed me and slammed me back against the wall, his face close enough to mine for me to smell the smoke.

“Been out smoking already?” I asked, trying to make my voice light. “Jesus, and they think I need to clean myself up. How much do you smoke these days? That’s going to kill you, you know.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “I do. I also know that you don’t make jokes this early in the morning. You’re usually still in bed. What’s going on? Why are you barreling out of your room into the hall like a—” He cut his words off sharply, and his eyes swiveled slowly toward the door to my room.

Then back to my face.

Shit.

Noah was one of my oldest friends. We’d been shoved into the same orphanage when we were kids, both of us products of mothers who couldn’t be bothered. He’d watched me grow up, fighting for every scrap of food I could get my hands on, and when I won that contest and went out on the road, I’d called him almost every night, just to hear a friendly voice.

He knew me almost as well as he knew himself. And he always knew when I’d done something wrong.

“You’ve got a girl in there,” he said.

“So?” I scoffed, knowing as well as he did that having a girl in my room was nothing new. And further, that he probably also had a girl in his room. I took the brunt of the bad publicity, but at the end of the day, Noah Michael was just as bad as I was.

Plus, he smoked. I did not.

“Why are you running out of there like she’s trying to kill you?” he asked suspiciously. “What did you do, manage to get someone you shouldn’t have? Or are you just running from another mistake?”

“Both.”

I shoved him off me, slid off the wall, and stalked quickly toward the stairs. Fuck Noah, and fuck his god damned intuition. He’d always been too smart for his own good, and too quick to call other people on their bullshit.

That didn’t mean he had a right to this particular secret.

Because I’d never tell him about Lila Potter. And I’d damn sure never tell him that she was the sunshine I never should have tasted. That little secret was for me, and me alone.

If I ever allowed myself to pull it out and look at it.