Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit

17. Rivers

17

RIVERS

I stumbled up the last few stairs and basically fell through the door onto my floor, chuckling to myself. God, I was drunk. Way more drunk than I’d realized when I left the bar downstairs. I hadn’t really felt it at first, but once I was climbing the stairs and trying to use my legs for something more complicated than just walking, it had become a problem.

I tried to remember how much whiskey I’d had to drink. One bottle? No, that wouldn’t have caused this much confusion. I drank a bottle on my own all the time. Two? That still didn’t seem right.

Could it have been… three? How the fuck would I still be standing if that was the case?

And why couldn’t I remember a simple detail like how much I’d had to drink?

That, I did know the reason for. I wasn’t paying attention to how much I was drinking because I hadn’t been drinking by myself. There had been at least three other people at the bar with me, and we’d been splitting bottles. I thought I’d had roughly ten shots, but I couldn’t be sure of that.

Hell, I couldn’t even remember the names of the girls I’d been drinking with. Or, come to think of it, what they’d looked like.

I know how awful that sounds, but the truth was, I probably hadn’t asked their names, and I hadn’t cared what they looked like. They weren’t important enough for me to bother. I’d found them in the bar and joined their party without an invitation, and when they realized who I was, they’d let me right in. No arguments. Just plenty of flirty looks and that general adjusting of the hems of skirts and necklines of blouses that always came with groupies realizing there was a rock star among them. I’d noticed it and laughed under my breath, half sickened and half thankful for it.

I was there, after all, for distraction.

I’d just come off stage and had been reeling with something I couldn’t name, though I knew I didn’t like it. I hadn’t been able to keep my mind of Lila Potter and the way she’d gotten to my side and managed the audience like a fucking natural.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the way she’d laughed when that guy had bent down to whisper something in her ear, and the jealousy that had flooded through me at the sight. I’d felt as though my heart was being torn out at the root, and had reacted so quickly—well, overreacted so quickly—that she’d gotten on stage before I realized what I’d done.

When she asked me what I wanted, I hadn’t been able to answer her. I wanted her all to myself. I wanted her in my life, in my pocket, for as long as she’d have me. She’d been special since the first moment I laid eyes on her, but something had shifted between us during that drive from one town to the next. Somewhere between stealing a truck and laying in the meadow, making stories about clouds, the girl had managed to crawl inside me and make herself at home. And I didn’t know how to deal with it. For the first time in my life, I wanted someone there with me rather than wishing they’d leave me alone. I wanted her sunshine and her laugh and her ability to believe the best of the world.

And I’d known the moment I started wanting it that I couldn’t have it. Hell, I’d realized it before I asked her to come on stage. Deep in my head, in the shadowy part I never looked at, a voice had been muttering that I needed to leave the girl alone and get over her. Let her talk to that other guy and enjoy her time on tour.

Let go of the ridiculous crush I’d been building. Forget about tucking her into my pocket. Because I wasn’t the sort of guy who could keep a creature like Lila alive. She needed the sun and air, and I lived in the darkness of lonely hotel rooms. Worse than that; I carried shadows and heartbreak wherever I went.

Lila Potter wasn’t for me, that voice said sharply, and I needed to let her go.

Instead, I’d given in to the jealousy twisting inside me and called her up to the stage. And she’d laughed and started playing her music, and my band had gone along with her like it was all a plan, and I’d known two things at once: that I was having the best time of my life... and that it couldn’t last. Because I wouldn’t let it.

After the set, I’d left the stage without looking back and had gone right to the bar to forget about Lila Potter and what she made me feel.

So you can imagine how I felt when I stumbled onto the floor that held my hotel room, looked up, and found her standing in the hallway in a T-shirt several sizes too big for her and nothing else. Her hair was mussed and tangled, and she didn’t have a speck of makeup on her face.

She was wearing slippers.

Banging on a hotel room door.

What the hell was going on here?

I started forward on instinct, knowing only that I needed to figure out what was wrong and fix it for her, and she turned to me, her eyes large and her mouth caught in an ‘O’ of surprise.

“Lila,” I breathed. “What are you doing in the hallway? In...” I gestured toward her outfit, realizing now that it might very well be what she’d been sleeping in.

Her mouth snapped shut, and she stared at me like she’d just been caught doing something she definitely shouldn’t be doing. Then she followed my own gaze down her body. When she looked up again, a bright flush was making its way over her cheekbones.

“Um,” she started. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“So you decided to wander around the hallway in your...” I glanced down again, still not sure what to call whatever she was wearing.

Her blush deepened. “I didn’t want to wake Anna up. So yeah, I came out into the hallway. It’s so late that I didn’t think anyone would mind, and then...” She turned a hopeless look back at the door. “I didn’t bring my key,” she said ruefully. “I didn’t think it would lock behind me.”

When she glanced at me again, she looked both miserable and sort of hopeful. Like I might somehow have a key that would let her back into the room she was sharing with Anna.

Newsflash: I didn’t.

Additional newsflash: All that shit I said about forgetting her and not wanting to get close to her? All that drinking I’d done at the bar, trying to get my heart to forget she existed? Every single thought about not being allowed to have her because I was no good for anyone?

Yeah, that was all bullshit. I hadn’t meant a word of it. I mean, I had. But I was also really stupid and blind.

I wanted her to myself more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life, and I wasn’t going to let that idiot voice in my head stop me.

I moved forward and put my hands on the wall on either side of her, pinning her in. “You’re trapped out here in nothing but a big t-shirt and slippers, hoping Anna will wake up and let you back into the room?” I asked, my voice tinged with something that walked a fine line between amusement and lust. “And you’ve been banging on the door, but you don’t think anyone is going to notice you’re out here?”

“Um, yeah,” she whispered.

God, this girl. She was too sweet for this world. Too good for the likes of anyone in this life.

And I was utterly, hopelessly in love with her.

I moved toward her at the same moment she moved toward me, her arms coming around my neck and my lips claiming hers like it was meant to be. I pushed her against the wall and held her there with my body, our tongues clashing as we went right back to the place we’d found together in that meadow this afternoon. Only this wasn’t sweet and smooth like that had been. This was a fight to get closer, all teeth and nails and grinding hips. Her legs came up around my waist and I slipped my hands under her ass, then shoved her more firmly against the wall. I was so hard already I could barely stand up and she was right here, open and ready for me. She wasn’t even wearing anything under that t-shirt aside from a pair of panties.

And God, she wanted me. Her skin was on fire and her kisses were like molten lava, her body telling me in every way it could how ready it was. I pushed against her, rocking my hips mindlessly and on the verge of letting my instincts take us away. My cock blood was burning, my cock painfully hard, and all I could think about was sliding inside her and making her gasp my name.

And then I realized I was more than half-drunk and in a very public place.

The hallway of our hotel, to be exact. Right outside her room and across the hall from mine.

Oh my God, what was I doing? Lila wasn’t the kind of girl you fucked in a hotel hallway where anyone might see you. She wasn’t the sort of girl you just took without thinking about the consequences. Any other girl? Maybe.

Given my history, yes.

But that was because no other girl had ever mattered this much. I certainly hadn’t cared about their reputations, and I hadn’t given a single fuck about their feelings or how they might react to being used in a hotel hallway and then deserted.

Lila was different. She’d been different from the start, and she deserved better.

Fuck.

I put her down and moved backward, my mouth dry and my mind reeling. She stared up at me, her brow creased in confusion and her lips still swollen from my kisses. I watched the flush of mortification start upward, from her chest to her neck, and hated myself for what I was doing. For the hurt I was causing her right now.

But it was for the best. I couldn’t just fuck her in a hallway. I wouldn’t . Because she wasn’t a throw-away sort of girl, and I’d never treat her like she was.

I opened my mouth to try to tell her so—to say anything, really, to take that look of betrayal off her face—but realized I didn’t have any words available to me. Nothing I could say would make this any better, and it would probably make it worse, in the end. Better for her to think I was just too drunk to know any better and running away from her the way I had in the past.

That way she could hate me instead of hating herself for doing something she shouldn’t have done.

I turned and stumbled into my room, my phone out and the reception desk’s phone ringing. When they picked up, I gave them Lila’s room number and told them she’d been locked out and to please send someone up with a key.

And then I closed the door behind me, knowing that someone far more responsible than me was on their way to take care of her.

I needed to get sober and get my head in order. I felt way too much for the girl, and I needed to get a handle on that before someone got hurt.

I was no hero. And I’d be a fool to pretend I could ever save her from anything when I’d never been able to save anyone before. Lila Potter might be the most amazing girl I’d ever met, all sunshine and rainbows, but that didn’t change the fact that I had never been any good to anyone else.

She needed someone who could match her energy. Not a damaged rock star on his way toward rock bottom.