Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit

33. Rivers

33

RIVERS

G od, Lila’s voice was heartbreaking. Haunting. Beautiful.

I’d only heard her do upbeat songs before. I mean, yeah, she’d also performed my love song, but even that had a relatively quick tempo. It hadn’t given her time to really stretch into the notes or show her range.

This song that we’d written did all that. It gave her all the notes she wanted and then some, and her voice was cracking with the emotion it brought out in her.

My heart was fracturing.

The story was one that I hadn’t even known we had in us. A girl and boy fall in love, break it off because things aren’t working. But they’re miserable on their own and miss their other halves like they’ve cut off limbs. But the time the song is halfway through they’re trying to find their way back to each other, each of them desperate for the connection they once had. The people around them are telling them they’re better off on their own, that they have to learn to be their own people, but they know they’re dying without the other and that life isn’t going to be worth it if they can’t find each other again.

By the climax they’ve done that.

By the end of the song, they’re in love and getting their happily ever after, and the final crescendo takes Lila’s voice up and up and up into the end of the song.

And me? I did harmony on the chorus and in some of the lines and provided the lead guitar. I had a bitching solo halfway through the song. But the lyrics were all her. I’d known as we were writing it that they had to be, not only because they matched her voice but because at the end of the day, the story was hers. Or at least...well, the ending was hers.

All the breaking? That was what I’d put in there.

The happy ending? That was something Lila had insisted on, because that was who she was. She believed in love saving everything and being enough. She absolutely thought that if two people loved each other enough that could keep them together. Put them on the same team and make sure they were facing the world as an unbeatable duo. She’d probably never even considered the idea that love might not be enough.

Or that one person might have more love in their heart than another.

She’d never had anyone pretend to love her and then walk out on her when she needed them most. Or at least not that I knew of. I couldn’t imagine that she had. Her outlook was too sunny for that to have happened to her.

But me? Yeah, I’d seen it.

I’d lived it.

Lila’s voice rose higher and higher now as she rode the song toward the finish, and I cut in with the harmony on a few words, playing it by ear. The guitars were humming and crescendoing, and her voice was sailing through the air while the band behind us did their best to keep up. We hadn’t given them much time to learn the song, but they’d done their best, and the whole thing was like a tidal wave of sound and emotion and heartbreak.

And the audience was eating it up. They were staring at Lila like she was a freaking goddess telling them the secret of life, their mouths open and their eyes glassy. She held them in the palm of her hand, in the pocket of her song, and they were willing to do anything she asked of them.

Then the song ended, and they went fucking wild. I mean they lost their ever-loving minds, screaming and jumping up and down and turning to each other and sobbing like they’d just realized how to achieve everlasting life.

It would have been ridiculous, and I would have been making fun of it, if I hadn’t turned and seen Lila smiling so hard it looked painful, a single tear making its way down her cheek. She turned to me, still grinning, and then ran at me and jumped into my arms, laughing maniacally at the euphoria coursing through the building.

The audience started screaming even louder at that, like they’d finally got what they’d come for, and I had to laugh. I couldn’t help it. The combination of Lila being so happy and the amount of love and excitement in that building, the reaction of the crowd to the song we’d just written that afternoon, and the fact that they were screaming for us... It all hit me like a water balloon full of the feels, and for just a moment I let myself fall into it. Let myself feel all that excitement and glee, the warmth of the girl in my arms, and the adrenaline and love rushing through my body.

For just a moment, I let myself believe that this could be my life. On the stage with Lila at my side, the audience screaming for everything we did and the colors of my world going from gray and black to something a whole lot more technicolor. Falling asleep at night with her by my side and knowing she’d be there in the morning when I opened my eyes. Writing on our days off, getting into the studio, weaving her into the songs we already had.

Building a family like I’d never known before, and finally, finally being safe.

And then I put her down and let her take those thoughts with her as she made her way back to the microphone. The audience followed her with their eyes as I knew they would, because this was about her, not me. It was about Lila and Anna, not Lila and Rivers. I’d been her path to success, but that was it. No one really believed I was going to reform my reputation with her at my side. Hell, I was drinking more now than I had been before I met her; it was just for a different reason. I was miserable because I’d seen the light in Lila Potter and realized that I couldn’t reach it.

I was a man who’d seen the oasis in the desert and then realized that someone else needed the water more than he did. Because I was the guy who people didn’t bother sticking around for. I was the guy who had broken the first home I’d ever had, and then proceeded to break every chance I’d had at a family after that.

My mother had known she’d be better off without me, and that part had never changed. I was an anchor around a person’s neck. A black hole where there should have been a heart. Even now, I was sinking my band with my behavior.

They were going to be better off without me.

Lila was going to be better off without me. Because once I was gone, she wouldn’t have to worry about her contract depending on her acting like she loved me. My band wouldn’t have to depend on their contract dying because I couldn’t pick myself up and keep smiling for the crowds.

I leave, and everyone wins. Everyone but me.

Luckily, that was a sacrifice I was willing to make.