Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit

34. Lila

34

LILA

“ A mazing!” Noah shouted, grabbing me up and swinging me in a circle around him. “You had them eating out of your hand! The audience adores you!”

I laughed and wiggled to be put down, more than a little bit uncomfortable at this particular member of the band manhandling me. He was hot, but he also made Rivers look like a choir boy. Ragged blond hair, eyeliner, and more tattoos than bare skin, Noah also smoked like a chimney and drank enough to knock out any normal human being. I could smell the whiskey on him now and wondered if he was actually coated in it.

Though I wasn’t going to lie. It was nice to be admired by someone that good-looking.

“They just liked the song,” I laughed, staring up into his ice-blue eyes.

He snorted. “They like a lot of songs. They adored that song, and I’m thinking it was because you were singing it.”

I made a face at him, blowing it off, and turned to look for Anna. She’d been a part of that song, too, but I hadn’t seen her since we got off stage. The band had hauled us both to one of the meeting rooms backstage, where we’d found every food imaginable and way too much alcohol. We’d been eating and drinking—some of us more than others—ever since. This was evidently where the party started.

Not that I would know. I’d never even been on tour before, and certainly not with a band like Global Authors. They seemed like they got everything they wanted—including their own microphones, if that situation with Rivers was to be believed—and they didn’t even have to ask for it.

I could only dream of a career like that. Although Noah was right about one thing: I was right at home on the bigger stage, in front of a bigger audience. I hadn’t even thought twice about performing tonight, and when Rivers had insisted that we play the whole set with them, Anna and I making it up as we went along, I hadn’t argued with him. When we finished up on the song that he and I had written together...

It had been perfect.

At that moment I finally found Anna, and I started laughing. She was backed up against a wall with Matt standing over her, one hand leaning on the wall behind her and the other tucked behind his back like he was trying to keep himself from touching her. She had her face tipped up to his, and I could see from the look she was wearing that he’d been teasing her. She looked half furious and half amused, but like she was definitely going to give him some trouble for whatever he’d just said, and I wondered—not for the first time—when those two had started this thing between them. And then I felt guilty for having to wonder. I’d been spending every night in the same room as Anna but hadn’t exactly been asking how she was spending her days.

I’d been too busy watching Rivers and trying to figure out what he was up to.

Speaking of...

I looked from my best friend and the guy who looked like he’d stolen her heart around the room, trying to find a certain brooding figure. The place was packed, though, with roadies and agents and the band members from The Leathers, plus Olivia and Connor and their band, and I realized pretty quickly that I wasn’t going to see Rivers if I just stood here and looked. He might be tall, but I was short, and there were too many people.

No quick, stolen glances of amusement about Anna and Matt right now. I had to go find him if I wanted to talk to him.

It didn’t take me long to do just that. He was standing against the wall with a tumbler of whisky in his hand, looking so dark and dangerous that he was practically pulling the light out of the space around him. His face was covered in a scowl, his eyes on the floor, his lips turned down. The shadows under his eyes were deeper now, like he’d been carrying exhaustion around for days, and I tried to remember whether he’d looked that way earlier in his room. God, I’d been right next to him. I’d kissed him. Had he looked so devastated then?

I didn’t think so. He’d looked wide-eyed and excited about the song we’d just written and like he was floating on good feelings.

Now he looked like heartbreak would look if it was a person.

What the hell was wrong with him? We’d just had a terrific show where the audience had gone wild for the newest song, and I knew both Taylor and the record company were happy with the way the tour was going. Sure, he had that problem with Taylor and his reputation, but we were in the midst of fixing that, right? We were still mugging for the press every time we had a chance, and they were eating it up, thinking that Rivers had landed a good girl and was going to turn it all around.

Right, so we hadn’t been doing as much of that lately. And Taylor had straight up told me that she wanted me to step in and be her biggest project. But that didn’t actually mean anything. Rivers just had to try a little bit harder if he wanted to save the day. Put some effort in.

Maybe stop drinking so much.

I took one step toward him, thinking that it had to be more than that. When I first met him, he’d acted like the whole thing with Taylor didn’t matter, and honestly speaking, it probably didn’t. He was famous—and talented—enough that he could get a new agent in moments, plus anything else he wanted. He’d never had trouble getting attention in the music industry.

So what the hell was wrong with him?

Was it this whole Missouri thing? He’d started getting weird as soon as we got close to the border, and the other night he’d said that being in this area had made him realize that he wasn’t worth anything. Or words to that effect. What the hell did that even mean? What had happened to him in Missouri that was so bad it could take him from brooding to something that looked a whole lot more like suicidal? None of my research—okay, stalking—had told me anything about Missouri when it came to him, and he’d first shown up in Nashville. Home of blues and country. No one ever talked about where he’d actually come from, but surely if there was baggage in his past someone would have dug it up by now and put it into a story. The press loved to dig up old news and make it new again. Particularly if it was dramatic.

Come to that, how the hell had Rivers kept his past so private?

And what was he keeping there that he didn’t want anyone else to see? I didn’t remember anything about any family, so it couldn’t be that he’d left someone behind to make it big.

At that moment he stepped forward and cleared his throat, like he’d just been waiting for me to get close to him to make his move. He looked up and glanced around the room, his eyes resting on me for one hot, intense moment before they moved on to someone else. The crowd noticed his movement and grew quiet, and before long the whole place sounded like a tomb, like Rivers had cast a spell over the party. I could see why. He almost never spoke in public, and certainly never to big groups like this. Seeing him standing in front of us, evidently ready to make a speech, was odd at best.

Dangerous at worst.

“Good show tonight, kids,” he said, giving his trademark smirk. “Though I think we have to thank Lila for writing that last song. The audience really does love her, don’t they?”

There was a smattering of cheers at that, but no one really put their heart into it, and when it died down, he continued.

“Look, I’m not going to beat around the bush, here. Tonight was a great show, and every show for the last week has been great. There’s one reason for that, and it’s Anna and Lila. Well, I guess those are two reasons. But the point is the same: those people out there are responding to these girls, and I think I know why. They have a spark. They have magic. They’re all sunshine.”

His eyes darted to mine, and I nearly sobbed at the use of his nickname for me. What was he doing? Why did he look like he was walking to his own funeral?

“They don’t want the tattoos and heartbreak anymore,” he said quietly. “They want the sunshine and excitement. And I don’t blame them for it. That’s why I’m going to be stepping aside as lead singer of The Global Authors. I want Lila and Anna to take my place. I think it’ll be in everyone’s best interests. And I’m not really willing to discuss the matter, so if anyone thinks they’re going to come after me and talk me out of it, do yourselves a favor and don’t.”

He turned and left through the door behind him before I could fully understand what he’d just said, and by the time I’d processed it all the door had closed behind him, shutting him off from the party—and for all I knew, the only people who cared about him—and leaving us all staring after him, our tongues tied and our hearts breaking.