Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit

30. Rivers

30

RIVERS

O nce the show was over, I did what I’d been doing for the last week.

Namely get off the stage as quickly as I could and make for the exit. I didn’t want to talk to the band, or Taylor, or Lila.

Especially after what had just happened onstage. I mean the girl had basically taken the one love song I’d ever written and then sung to her far too many times and weaponized it against me. She’d learned the whole fucking thing and played it better than I ever had, and instead of watching her in awe as she sang my words, which was what I should have been doing, I’d turned to the audience and watched them watch her instead.

Like a fucking coward.

No way was I sticking around now for her to come running after me. She’d corner me and look at me with those green of eyes hers and do what she always did: stare right through me and see all the things no one else had ever bothered to look for.

And yeah, sure, it should have been nice to be seen. I should have been reveling in someone taking the time to try to figure out who I actually was and then love that person rather than the image I projected.

The truth was, though, it was fucking scary. I’d spent most of my life hiding the soft spots inside me and I didn’t know how I felt about someone else finding them and poking at them. What if she didn’t like what she saw in there? What if she poked too hard and hurt me? What if she turned her head just a bit and realized that those weren’t actually soft spots but gaping holes where I was missing the things any normal human being should have?

I already knew I was. I didn’t think I could stand for Lila to realize it, too.

Which was exactly why I’d decided to run. Way better to be out there in the night on my own, without her probing gaze and questions about why I was doing what I was doing. Sure, it was lonely.

But it was also safe. For both of us.

I spotted the exit ahead and increased my pace, counting the steps until I was through that door and into the dark courtyard behind the place. I was going to make it. I was. And once I was out there, I’d put some serious thought into the plan I’d been developing and how I was going to pull it off. Then, once an hour or two had passed and Olivia and Connor were well into their set and everyone was distracted, I’d head to my room in the hotel next door and?—

A body slammed into me and pushed me against the wall, turning me in the process so that I was facing out into the hallway rather than toward the door I’d been aiming for.

I gasped at the impact and looked up, ready to shout at whoever was manhandling me like this. No, I didn’t have security back here but anyone in their right mind should know that you don’t throw the lead singer of one of the bands around like they were a sack of fucking potatoes.

Then I saw who’d done it and changed my mind. Because when you were one of that lead singer’s best friends in the whole world, I guessed it gave you some leeway.

“Matt,” I ground out. “What the fuck?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” he said quietly. “Where are you running off to? The audience is calling for an encore, and when I looked over to see whether my lead singer was willing to do another song or two, all I could make out was your footprints in the dust.”

I pushed him off, realizing that he wasn’t going to step back unless I made him do it. Matt Lawson had never been the most aggressive guy—actually, he was way too nice for his own good—but when he got an idea in his head he was like a dog with a bone. It was nearly impossible to sidetrack him.

Which didn’t bode well for the escape I’d been planning.

“Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no dust back here.”

He made a face. “And yet I’m sure you know exactly what I mean. Where were you going in such a hurry, Shine?”

“Don’t call me that,” I snapped. “You know I hate when you call me that. I always have.”

He shrugged like he didn’t care, and the shitty thing was he probably didn’t. He didn’t have to care. Matt was my oldest friend in the world, and that meant he got away with stuff no one else did. We’d been at the same orphanage, which meant I’d known him since I was just a kid named Rivers, not the music phenom the rest of the world knew. The same was true of all the guys—Hudson and Noah had both been in and out of that group home for our entire childhoods—but those two were older than us. They’d been our protectors.

Big brothers, in a way, to kids who’d never had that sort of thing naturally.

Matt and I... We were in the youngest group of kids, and we’d both been small for our ages. The older kids had picked us early on as easy targets, and we’d been too young to know how to defend ourselves. We’d teamed up as the underdogs and started watching each other’s backs, and eventually Noah and Hudson had found us and taken on the roles as our protectors. Matt, a naturally happy kid, had leaned into it like he’d finally found the family he’d been missing.

I was not a naturally happy kid. I’d already realized how dark I was on the inside, and that nothing was going to change that. I’d stuck with Noah and Hudson but hadn’t really trusted that they would do any better than anyone else ever had. I’d thought they’d desert me just like my mom had.

They hadn’t. And somewhere along the way I’d learned to lean into them, too.

But Matt? He would always be the kid that had my back when no one else did. Even if he was way too good to hang out with someone like me.

“I’ll call you what I want,” Matt said, pulling me back into the conversation. His eyes darted to the exit and narrowed. “And what I want is to know what you’re doing. What the fuck is up with you the past week? You’ve disappeared on all of us, and the level of scruff on your face is truly alarming.”

He brushed a fingertip over my five o’clock shadow, smirking, and I jerked back.

“I’m not in the mood.”

The smirk dropped off his face, and his eyes got even narrower. “I don’t give a fuck. I’m your best friend and bandmate, Rivers. I want to know what’s going on with you.”

What was going on with me. Right. I was fighting against falling for a girl I knew I couldn’t have and watching my band play with her every night. I could see her path laid out in front of her, from this small bar to the stadium tour, and knew that she had the brightest future possible. Unless I fucked it all up. Unless I let her fall for me and took her down into my darkness.

Got her canceled by Taylor.

Hell, got my whole band canceled by Taylor.

Not that I was going to tell Matt any of that. Sure, he was my best friend. That had never meant he got to have access to all the inner workings of my brain.

Though there was one thing I couldn’t hide from him.

“You know what the problem is. Think about it.”

Matt made a face. “You saw the itinerary. You knew we were coming to Missouri. Now you’re going to fuck everything up just because we’re here?”

I felt like a puppet whose strings had just been cut at the bald-faced mention of the place. Like I was a balloon that had just had a pin pushed into it. I wanted to sag against him, close my eyes, shut it out, but I knew that wouldn’t stop the voices in my head. The ones that said that being back in this state was going to bring all the bad in me to the forefront.

“That doesn’t mean I was ready. And you know exactly what I mean by that.”

“You guys okay?” another voice asked from my right.

I did close my eyes then, because the very person I didn’t want seeing me right now—the person I’d been trying to avoid—had evidently found me after all.

She put a hand on my arm before I could turn to face her, and I cringed away, no doubt looking like I was disgusted by the fact that she’d just touched me. I glanced up just in time to see the hurt flitting across her face, the flash of tears at the edges of her eyes, and then she was gone, swinging around and running in the other direction like I’d just bitten her.

God, I basically had. She’d asked me if I was okay, and I’d reacted like she was poison.

“You’re going to lose her,” Matt said softly, his face turned after her as well.

I snorted. “Haven’t you heard? That’s not real. She was never actually mine in the first place.”

I knew it wasn’t true. I’d seen her that first night and known immediately that she could be mine if I wanted her. I’d talked her into stealing a car with me, telling her that we’d return it. I’d made out with her in a hallway when she was wearing nothing more than a big t-shirt. Held her against me as she slept and breathed her in like some idiot from one of those movies girls were always watching.

I’d let myself open up to her.

And then I’d closed off again. Because it was better for her if she didn’t see the real me, and it was better for me if I didn’t get used to having someone like her around. So yeah, I was going to keep telling myself that she was never mine to lose in the first place.

She disappeared around a bend in the hallway with a flash of dark red hair, leaving nothing to show she’d even been there, and I let out the breath I’d been holding.

Then I turned back toward Matt and prepared to tell him exactly where he could stick all his concern about Missouri. Because he was right: There was a problem. And I already knew how I was going to solve it.

Regardless of how anyone else felt about it.