Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit

29. Rivers

29

RIVERS

I returned Lila to her bedroom like the gentleman I had definitely never been, apologized to Anna when she opened the door glaring at me like she knew exactly who I was—a devil in human clothing—and then turned and went to my room without looking to the left or right. I didn’t want to see anyone else. I definitely didn’t want to spend any time talking to another person.

I wanted to get back to my room with my hand still warm from Lila’s and her memory coloring all of my thoughts. I wanted to climb into my bed with the teddy bear no one in the entire world knew about and spread Lila through my brain like honey butter, letting her coat every thought and dream in my head.

In truth, I wanted her in my bed with me, her skin pressed against mine and her moans in my ear as I slid into her and showed her exactly how much I adored her. I wanted to hear her laugh at one of my jokes, see that shy smile when I made her feel too much, watch her blush when I got too close to the truth with one of my guesses. I wanted to drink her sunshine down until I was glowing with it.

But I wasn’t the kind of man who got to glow. And I definitely couldn’t take her to bed with me right now. Not when Taylor was trying so hard to make Lila her new pet project. The last thing Lila—or Taylor—needed was me muddying the waters in that regard. Lila and I were pretending to be a couple, and that was all there was to it. Anything more was dangerous.

And I wasn’t going to put Lila in danger.

I also wasn’t going to lead her on in regard to my intentions. She deserved someone who would be there for her every step of the way, supporting her on the bad days and celebrating with her on the days when she did something amazing. I wanted to be that man. I would have sold my pathetic, black soul to be that man.

But I wasn’t, and my soul probably wasn’t worth more than five measly pennies at this point.

So for tonight, I’d use the memory of her smile as a balm to my soul. I’d fall asleep to the echo of her laughter and the brush of her lips across my own. I’d let myself have the much, at least.

And tomorrow I’d put myself back into the box I was learning to live in and focus on the things I knew I needed to do to save her from herself.

* * *

The next night, of course, we were back on stage, Anna and Lila once again standing front and center and looking like a couple of deer in the headlights.

Lila turned wide, nervous eyes toward the side of the stage like she was looking for a way out, and I looked that way as well. What was she looking for over there? An exit plan?

If so, she wasn’t going to find one. Taylor was standing there like a fully-armed Greek goddess, glowering at the girl like she’d actually kill her on the spot if she even thought about leaving the stage.

I smirked, recognizing the look. I’d been getting that exact same look from Taylor since the day I signed with her and started making her life a living hell. She didn’t take well to nonsense, and she liked it even less when someone dared to question her authority. If Lila wanted the contract Taylor was offering, she was going to have to get in line and do what she was told.

Which meant, I guessed, that she had to perform tonight the way Taylor wanted her to.

I glanced at the girl in question, wondering if she’d figured that out yet, and found that she’d turned those big eyes from Taylor to me like she was looking for a lifeline. The corner of my mouth twitched at that—what can I say, I didn’t hate the idea of being her hero—and I lifted one eyebrow in question. She caught the movement and narrowed her eyes slightly like she was suddenly annoyed that I’d noticed she was staring at me.

Or maybe she was just annoyed because she thought I was laughing at her.

News flash: I was. But not for the reasons she thought. I didn’t give a single damn that Taylor was making her do something she didn’t want to do, and I cared even less than that about what else Taylor was making her do when it came to her relationship with me. I wasn’t going to get upset that she was up here with my band taking all my face time and cutting into our actual set time. Her music was great, and the audience loved her. The guys in the band also liked playing with her and Anna. It gave us all a break from going through the same songs we’d been playing for way too long.

I didn’t give a damn about any of that.

But I did find it endearing and sort of hilarious to see her so flustered, her skin flushing red with frustration and her fingers tapping along the wood of her guitar as she tried to figure out what the fuck she was doing. I didn’t think Lila was the sort of girl who doubted herself easily. She’d probably been born with that instinctive belief that everyone would love her if she just smiled often enough. And I was betting she’d never run into a single person who didn’t respond to her the way she wanted them to.

So, yeah, it made me smile to see her getting flustered about being shoved onstage without any choice in the matter.

That didn’t change the fact that I wanted to save her.

Hey, I said I knew I wasn’t any good for her. That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to step up for her when the occasion called for it.

I lifted my eyebrows high, gave her a pointed look, and strummed a chord from the song they’d played last night. Then I moved my fingers and strummed another. And another. The glare on her face turned even darker, until she looked like she might actually stick her tongue out at me. But then I broke into a fuller version of the song, the chords moving quickly from my head into my fingers and then to the guitar, and before long I’d started the song without her and she was scrambling to catch up, her fingers dancing across the strings of her own guitar and her cheeks flushing even brighter.

Beyond her, I could see Anna glaring at me like she wanted to strike me dead on the spot for needling her friend.

Nothing new there. Anna had never liked me much.

That made me smile even more broadly.

I turned my cheeky grin from Anna back to Lila and found the start of a smile on her lips, too. She’d seen me making faces at Anna, then, and unless I was very much mistaken, she thought it was funny. This time when her eyes met mine, they were sparkling with laughter, and when she sang the first words of the song, they were muffled and hard to understand.

By the time she hit the second line, though, she’d found her stride, and her voice was ringing clearly through the bar, all her nerves forgotten and her focus back where it should be.

We played through three songs, the guys learning Anna and Lila’s songs as we went and letting them take center stage. The girls had a great sound, half pop and half country, and the combination of guitar and keyboard was truly unique. Lila’s voice was both husky and somehow angelic at the same time, and when she combined it with Anna’s sultry alto, the sound made you feel like your heart was actually melting.

I was having more fun onstage than I’d had in years, and it was because we had Anna and Lila adding to our sound. Matt was practically beside himself with excitement about Anna—I had to figure out what was going on between the two of them at some point—and Noah and Hudson were looking at Lila like they thought she could actually walk on water or something.

Hell, for all I knew, she could. She’d walked into my life and given me a sense of joy I’d never had before. She managed to glow with something otherworldly and then did the impossible, casting that same glow over the people around her. She’d even made the press think I might be reforming myself into something happy and respectable.

For a week.

The song we were playing ended, and Lila cast me a quick, teasing glance that immediately told me I was in trouble.

“Thank you!” she shouted into the audience. “But I’m pretty sure you didn’t come here to hear songs that Anna and I wrote. In fact, I’m guessing you’re actually here to see Global Authors and hear their music, am I right?”

The cheering was rather lackluster if you asked me, but she acted like they’d just confirmed exactly what she’d already thought.

“Right! In that case, I say we start out with one of my favorite songs by this rock band. I’ve been working hard to learn it over the last week just so I could play it with them, because I think it’s one of their best. What do you think, can Anna and I stay on stage for one more song?”

This time, the applause tried to shatter the windows in the place.

“Yes!” she shouted, smiling so hard I thought her cheeks must hurt. “In that case...”

She cast me one more teasing look, lifted an eyebrow of her own, and strummed a chord. A chord, I realized, that I knew quite well.

The first notes of our one and only love song.

Well, shit. Global Authors had just started singing the tune on this tour because it had turned out to be so popular with the audience. The problem was, playing it always reminded me of Lila herself. And I’d always managed to find her in the audience and sing it right to her, even when I didn’t want to.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to take the risk of singing it with her on the stage with me.

But the guys were already jumping into it, and she was playing it like she knew exactly what she was doing—she must have actually gone out of her way to learn it—and before I knew what I was doing, my fingers were finding the right notes on my own guitar, and I was joining in.

When I started singing, Lila was right there with me, her voice blending seamlessly with mine and lifting me up in a way I’d never dreamed possible, and we soared together, flying through the space like we’d somehow sprouted wings. My heart was feeling both elated and broken at the same time. I looked over to find her staring at me, her eyes wide and open, showing me all her emotions, and God, if I hadn’t already been split in half, that would have done it to me.

This girl. This beautiful, sunny, happy girl, who’d come into my life and tried to show me that there were animals in the clouds and sunshine no matter how dark the day was...

Only I couldn’t be the man she thought I was. I wished I could. I wished everything was different. If only I knew how to fix myself. Turn myself into the man she needed. Make myself whole, make myself worthy of someone like that.

If only I was anything like what she needed.

Because if I was—if I thought I could live up to her dreams—I’d take her in my arms and never, ever let her go. I’d laugh and cry with her and let myself fall for her charms and bright, shining light.

I’d let myself fall in love for the first time in my life, and I’d never look back.

But that wasn’t part of the plan, and it sure as hell wasn’t within my capabilities. I’d never been able to love anyone before and I didn’t know if it was even in my DNA.

Given the fact that my own mother hadn’t bothered to stick around for me, though, I was sort of doubting it.

I turned away from Lila and her open face and back toward the audience. And for the first time on this tour, I sang the love song to them rather than to the girl who was breaking me down, piece by piece, by loving me too fucking much when I knew I couldn’t love her back.