Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit

35. Lila

35

LILA

I didn’t follow him.

I know, the mind boggles. I’d spent most of the time I’d known Rivers Shine chasing after him and basically throwing my heart at him. Any time he left, I ran after him to try to figure out what was wrong with him—or to see if there was anything I could do. I’d taken one look at this guy and known that he needed someone to actually see who he was rather than who he was presenting to the world. I’d seen a lost boy who needed love rather than the tattooed, brooding rock star that the world loved to fear.

And it hadn’t done me any good. He might have welcomed me into his arms, but he’d pushed me out again almost as quickly, and though he’d given me a glimpse or two of what lay behind his mask, he’d never actually let me all the way in.

He might have just made the most insane announcement ever and essentially thrown his whole career to the wolves. Everyone in here was reeling from what he’d said. But I didn’t think running after him was going to fix any of that.

I had a better idea.

I whirled from the door, my eyes jumping through the crowd until I found Matt. I knew enough to know that Rivers called his bandmates his best friends and that they’d known each other forever. I also knew that out of everyone in his band, Matt was the one who scared me the least. He was a cinnamon roll in human clothing and was already in love with my best friend. He didn’t look like he might chew on nails in his spare time. He had a couple of tattoos but nothing like what Noah and Hudson had.

He was the one I could go to for help.

I found him quickly, his dark hair standing out from a crowd of blondies, and I started for him. He’d left Anna alone and was now at the drinks table pouring himself something, his eyes on the door Rivers had just gone through. He looked thoughtful and concerned, but like he wasn’t going to go after Rivers anytime soon. In fact, he looked like a guy who’d seen this before and was trying to figure out the best way to handle it.

“Matt,” I said the moment I drew even with him.

His eyes dropped to me and widened. “Lila,” he said hesitantly.

I put a hand in the middle of his chest and pushed, backing him right up to the wall on the other side of the table. This increased the surprise on his face, but he didn’t fight me. Instead, I saw his mouth relaxing, like he already knew what this was going to be about and wasn’t surprised.

“What the fuck is going on with your friend?” I asked, refusing to mince words.

At that, the surprise jumped back onto his face. He’d probably never realized that I knew how to cuss, I thought with a flash of humor. Hell, maybe he thought I’d never cussed before in my life.

But that was because he’d never heard me fighting for someone I cared about.

“What do you mean?”

I narrowed my eyes and shoved him a bit. “You know exactly what I mean. What’s going on with Rivers? Why was he all smirks and flirting last week and now suddenly he’s in full-on heartbreak mode? What happened to him? And what does it have to do with Missouri?”

His own eyes narrowed then, and I knew I had his attention.

“He told you about Missouri?”

“He told me his mood had something to do with Missouri. And something that reminded him that he wasn’t worth anyone’s time. He made it sound like this was the worst place on Earth. I want to know what’s going on.”

“Why do you care?”

I got as close to him as I could and stared up into his eyes. “Because I care about him . I want to know how to fix whatever’s wrong.”

It was a bold, very blunt statement, and the moment I made it I wondered if it was the wrong thing to say. I’d only known Rivers for a couple weeks, and he’d spent a lot of that time pushing me away or proving that he didn’t think he deserved to have people who cared about him. He’d spent even more time pretending that he didn’t like me as much as I liked him. Pulling me close and then throwing me out.

Wanting me and then pushing me away again.

And I didn’t care. I mean, I did. I cared a lot. I felt like my heart had been through a freaking war since I met Rivers. But that didn’t mean I was ready to stop fighting for him. I’d seen something deep and wounded inside those eyes, and I’d never been able to turn away from a wounded animal. I wanted to know what—or who—had hurt him so badly, and I wanted to know whether I could pull him back up again.

And no, it didn’t have anything to do with the contract Taylor was holding over my head or the fake relationship. The publicity or the idea that I might have a career on the horizon. It didn’t have a single thing to do with any of that.

It was only about Rivers. It was about the glimpses I’d seen of who I thought he might actually be, and the idea that I might be the only one who could see that.

Rivers Shine deserved to be saved. Even if I had to tie him up and force him to let me do it.

But first, I needed to know what I was saving him from.

“Matt,” I said, my voice full of warning. “Don’t make me get mean.”

He smirked at that, at least partially calling my bluff, and shook his head. “I don’t think you have it in you, Lila, but I don’t want to push you. I’ve seen the way you look at him. Yes, it’s about Missouri. Yes, it’s about what happened to him there. And he’d kill me if he knew I was about to tell you what I’m about to tell you.”

“I won’t tell him if you don’t. Now talk.”

And he did. He started with how he, Rivers, Noah, and Hudson knew each other. They’d all been in the same orphanage as kids, though each of them had landed there in a different way. Matt’s parents were killed in a car crash, and he hadn’t had any other family to take him. Hudson’s mother had also died. Noah had been taken away from his mother, who was a drug addict.

Rivers’ mother had taken him to the orphanage and turned him over. Deserted him with only the clothes he was wearing and pair of shoes that were three sizes too small for him. He was dirty and underfed and had burns on his arms that made it into his permanent records as signs of abuse.

Matt and Rivers had been younger than Noah and Hudson, who had taken the boys under their wings and sought to protect them. But the kids had been cycled through foster families throughout their time in the orphanage, and those foster families hadn’t always been good. Rivers had been in some of the worst, according to Matt, and had always come back to the orphanage with haunted eyes and hollowed-out cheeks.

Eventually he’d started setting fires to guarantee that he didn’t have to stay at those homes very long.

“What did they do to him?” I whispered, horrified.

Matt gave me a long, searching look that said he wasn’t going to tell me, even if he knew. “Those aren’t the sorts of things we talked about,” he said quietly. “It didn’t happen to all the boys. Some of us had easier paths. I never got into a foster family that did that, and when I was ten, I was adopted by a family that loved me and treated me right. Rivers, Noah, and Hudson, though...”

“They didn’t have an easy path,” I guessed. “And they...”

He cast a look at Noah, who was standing against the wall and scowling like someone had just insulted him. “They’re carrying a lot of that with them still.”

Right.

I guessed a person probably would carry that baggage.

I tried to understand what he was saying—starting with the idea of a mother actually turning her child over to strangers—but it didn’t make sense to me. It was like he was speaking Greek. My parents had been so loving, so supportive of everything we did. They’d made sure I had whatever I wanted—within reason—and that I was always safe and well-fed. I’d never doubted that they loved me or wanted the best for me.

I couldn’t fathom not having that.

Even worse was the thought of doubting that the people who were supposed to take care of me loved me enough to do their jobs.

But Rivers...

God, he’d been deserted. His mom had left him there, and according to Matt he’d been old enough to remember it happening. Then he’d been passed from home to home, being mistreated in ways so horrible Matt wouldn’t even tell me what they were. The people whose job it had been to care for him had proven to him that they didn’t.

Again and again.

No wonder he had so much trouble accepting love when it presented itself to him. He’d been trained to believe he didn’t deserve it. People had been telling him since he was three that he didn’t deserve the good things in life.

My heart cracked clean down the center at the thought, and I wished with everything in me that I could fly back in time to that little boy. Find him and hold him to me and tell him that everything was going to be okay and that I’d love him so much that it didn’t matter what anyone else did.

Which was insane, obviously. I was smart, but I had never even thought about building a time machine.

Still.

Maybe I could still prove to him that he deserved better than what he was giving himself.

I turned without saying anything else to Matt and ran from the room, my brain darting ahead of me to my room and already making plans. I didn’t know where Anna was, but I was guessing she’d be at the party for much of the night, and that was perfect. It would mean I had the room to myself and plenty of peace and quiet.

Hopefully I’d also have plenty of luck.

Because I had some research to do, and given Rivers’ current mood, I didn’t think I had a whole lot of time to do it.