Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit

10. Rivers

10

RIVERS

I figured out within the first two days that the only way either of us was going to survive this was if I stayed as far away from her as I could.

Sure, I had to make public appearances with her. I had to make sure we were walking together on the sidewalk at times when the paparazzi were around, and that she was part of my entourage whenever I went anywhere. I found her in the crowd when I was on stage and did my best to make it look like every single song might actually be about her.

Despite the fact that I’d written all those songs before I even met her.

And most of that was easy. I had no problem taking her hand and walking with her like we were a cute couple out for a stroll. Leaning into her and saying something to make her laugh right when the cameras arrived. Looking at her like she was the most important and beautiful thing I’d ever laid eyes on, and like being with her filled me up to the top with something many people had never even felt before.

Putting on a show like that was easy. Hell, I’d spent most of my life performing and I’d practically perfected the ability to pretend I felt something I’d never felt. I was a walking mask, giving the people what they wanted and protecting myself as best I could while I played their bad boy, in love with nothing but whiskey and rock and roll. I lost myself in a string of girls whose names I couldn’t remember and spun through towns I wouldn’t recognize if I saw them again. And I drowned all the loneliness with an act that everyone thought was the truth.

I knew how to pretend.

The problem was, I wasn’t pretending with Lila. When I leaned into her, it was to press my nose against her skin and smell the sunshine on her. When I took her hand, it was because I didn’t think I could stand one more moment of not touching her. I looked for opportunities to take her out, even started tipping the photographers off just so I could tell her we had to go take pictures.

Making her smile quickly became the best part of my day.

I was literally pretending to feel something I actually felt, and that was so fucked up that I could hardly wrap my mind around it.

Even worse was the fact that I knew I shouldn’t be feeling any of it. Lila Potter was the best person I’d ever met. She was literally sunshine and rainbows, her smiles lighting up the room and her laugh drawing everyone around her. It had taken her about five seconds to get to know every single one of my crew by name, and even less time to worm her way into the hearts of the guys in my band. Hudson, our rhythm guitarist, was so soft on her that he practically worshiped the ground she walked on, and Matt had taken to spending some of his free time teaching her how to play bass. Even Noah, our designated grouch, grinned every time he saw her.

It was infuriating.

Mostly because I wanted her to be mine and mine alone. I didn’t want the guys in the band realizing how special she was, much less the roadies and managers and agents. I hated the idea that she might look at anyone else with that soft, sweet smile, or bestow her laugh on another man. I wanted to tuck her up against my body and keep her away from everyone else.

Ridiculous.

I didn’t have any right to her. Not really. I was damaged goods, the baggage I was carrying around with me so heavy that I couldn’t stand it myself most days. I’d never had anything I didn’t break, and I knew enough to know that it was because of who I was. My parents had deserted me when I was just a baby, and I’d spent my entire childhood coming to terms with the fact that they’d done it because I hadn’t been enough for them.

Lila was soft and gentle and sweet, and way too perfect for me to touch. She had a family that loved her and a best friend so loyal that she’d dropped everything to come on this adventure. I didn’t know for sure, but I didn’t think anything had every gone really wrong in her life. She’d never known heartbreak of desertion.

The shadows in my past would break her, and I didn’t think I’d be able to stand it when they did.

Sure, I’d jumped at the chance to spend more time with her on that first night, when we’d had so much to drink we could hardly walk straight on the way to my room. I’d held onto her like she was a life jacket and I was drowning, and I hadn’t given my reputation two thoughts. I’d been too caught up in how good I felt with her.

But that had been one night, and I hadn’t thought I’d ever see her again.

This was going to be weeks of pretending we were a couple. Weeks in which I could screw everything up. I’d seen the way she looked at me that first morning in front of the cameras. Her eyes had been full of her heart, those bottle-green orbs telling me exactly how much she was feeling in the moment, and that hadn’t changed. When she looked at me, I could see a girl on the edge of falling in love.

And I couldn’t let it happen.

Because I wasn’t the guy who fell in love back.

Besides, the truth was this was a fake relationship that I’d agreed to only because it would save our spot on the tour. And she was only doing it for the promise of a contract. It was a business deal. Nothing more.

Nothing less, either. But still. We didn’t mean anything to each other, and I couldn’t let myself think we did.

Period.

The answer was simple. No matter how much I wanted to see her—all the time—I told myself I could only seek her out twice a day. Three times, max. And I could only see her if we could make it into an appearance for the press. If I could, I kept my distance when we were together, and made sure someone else was around to pad us. I tried very hard to keep from touching her.

Unless I fooled myself into believing I didn’t have a choice in the matter.

All too often, I found myself turning to her and trailing my fingertips over her cheek and down her neck, my skin buzzing with the memory of her as I drowned myself in her bright green gaze. I’d watch her bite her lip and stare up at me like I was more beautiful than the moon in the sky, and my heart would soar at the thought of it.

And when I leaned down and pressed my lips to hers, I told myself I was only doing it because there were cameras there to take our picture. I fooled myself with lies about my promise to Taylor and doing things for the good of the band.

And if some part of my mind admitted that I was lying to myself, a much larger part pushed that away as too painful—and too true—to think about.

On our third night on the road, I was backstage, hurrying through our preparations because we’d been late getting into town. The audience was already in the house by the time we rolled in, and though The Leathers had performed first and had at least warmed the stage up for us, we used different equipment and had to change everything out before we could go on. Our roadies were good but weren’t capable of doing it all on their own, so Matt, Noah, Hudson, and I were running around like chickens with our heads cut off, getting amps and speakers onto the stage and ferrying out guitars, microphones, and the drum set.

We should have slowed down. We should have been more careful. But you get on the road, and you get into this place where all you can think about is getting in front of the audience, and I think we all knew that the sooner we got everything set up, the sooner we’d be up there playing.

We had several speakers still stacked backstage and I was reaching up to grab one of them when someone hit me from behind. I stumbled into the stack, swearing, and felt the bottom speaker give... then start to tip.

Oh God.

I looked up at the stack, everything caught in slow motion, and realized that the whole thing was about to go. My eyes tracked slowly—too slowly—to what was on the other side, trying to figure out whether anything was in the way.

Because this stack of speakers was going down.

To my horror, Lila was standing on the other side, her arms full of boxes. She’d been helping the band, I realized. Carrying stuff around for us. Making herself a part of our family.

And now she was standing in harm’s way.

I was moving before I made the decision to do it, rushing toward her with my arms outstretched and my gaze locked with hers. I couldn’t let her get hurt. Couldn’t let her be crushed under falling speakers on my watch.

I got to her in three strides, wrapped my arms around her, and threw us both out of the way, my body surrounding hers so that I was the one who hit the ground first. We rolled over and over, crashing through boxes of supplies and a couple of microphones, and finally came to a stop with her underneath me, her chest heaving and my arms still wrapped around her.

I rose up a bit so I could look down at her and met those green eyes, my breath caught in my throat. “Are you okay?” I whispered.

She huffed out a laugh. “Sure. I was just tackled by an enormous rock star and thrown around, but that’s nothing new. Happens all the time.”

Her eyes flicked to the scene behind me, and she frowned.

“Though I do sort of wonder what you were doing. I mean if you wanted a hug or something, you could have just said so.”

In that moment, I realized that I didn’t hear the crashing sound of speakers coming down or the shouts I would have expected to accompany them.

In fact, all I heard was silence.

When I sat up and turned to look, I saw that the stack of speakers I’d been sure was falling was... still standing there, the speakers stacked like they’d always been.

They hadn’t fallen at all.

I’d completely overreacted to the idea that Lila might get hurt. Jumped straight into hero mode without giving it three thoughts, and run to protect her, at the expense of my own body. And judging from the looks on everyone’s faces, they’d all seen me do it.

Terrific.