Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit

38. Lila

38

LILA

T he night ended far too quickly.

I got a ride back with Rivers, who held my hand the entire time and then left me at the elevator. He kissed me softly, his eyes dreamy and his lips parted, but when I asked him to walk me to my room, he told me that I didn’t need anyone seeing us together after the announcement he’d made.

“They will have seen us together at the bowling alley,” I pointed out.

“And that was a public event with lots of people. I’m not going to mess with your reputation by returning you to your room after midnight,” he argued.

He’d melted away into the shadows before I could respond to that or stop him, and though I’d stared at the space where he’d been for some time, I didn’t go after him.

I chose to turn and walk toward my room, forcing my mind to dwell on the memories of him during the day—and the lingering glow of what we’d done afterward—rather than the fact that even after that, I hadn’t been able to hold onto him. Five minutes back in the realm of the music industry and he’d been like smoke trailing through my fingers. Wispy and impossible to grasp, disappearing so quickly it felt as if I’d never had it at all.

I wasn’t discounting the feeling. I knew that part was real. The part where he couldn’t quite bring himself to commit to anything, particularly when it came to me.

I also wasn’t discounting the fact that there was something there. He’d pursued me time and again, his eyes watching me as I passed through a room and his lips parted as if he wanted to say something to me. He’d come after me tonight, and it wasn’t the first time. He looked at me like I was the only one who could truly see him, and he held me like he never wanted to let me go.

You didn’t do that with someone you didn’t care about.

I just needed to find a way to make him feel safe. I was positive that there was more than I knew about his past, even after my talk with Matt. I knew that people had made him feel like he didn’t belong or didn’t matter, and I knew it must have created a tendency in him to think he didn’t deserve anything out of life. He probably went out of his way to undermine anything good that came to him, subconsciously, and he probably hated that he’d done it.

I doubted he knew why he did. Maybe he didn’t even realize when he was doing it.

He needed to heal from some decades-old trauma so he could stop. It was the only way to help him, and also, by default, the only way I thought he’d ever be able to have a strong, functional relationship with anyone else. One where he let himself be loved and taken care of rather than pushing the other person away the moment he decided they were too good for him.

I had an idea for how that could happen.

But I was going to need some help.

I unlocked the door to the suite I was sharing with Anna and opened it quietly, praying that she was either still out—I really needed to ask her what was going on with her and Matt—or already asleep. The light from the hall sliced through the room to show one bed, then the other, and I saw that Anna was indeed already in her own bed. I stopped short, worried that I’d wake her, but her slow, even breathing told me that she was well and truly asleep.

Thank God. I didn’t think I had the energy or patience to tell her all the things that had happened today or listen to her lecture me about the dangers of letting Rivers back in.

I already knew them by heart. And I was running out of ways to tell her that I didn’t care.

I crept to the desk, picked up the laptop I’d brought with us, and tiptoed into the sitting area, where I at least had a wall between me and the sleeping Anna. With a sigh of relief, I opened the laptop and went right to my email. I’d sent several out last night, and if people were at all organized...

Yes. I had several emails, most of them junk, but at the top of the list was one from the Jonesboro Children’s Society.

“Thank you, Baby Jesus,” I whispered, clicking on it.

Dear Lila , it read, thank you for your inquiry. As it happens, we did have a Rivers Shine in our home around the timelines you’ve noted. We had him from when he was three until he turned twelve and left for Nashville. He was in and out of a number of foster homes, but I think I can tell you that he was not an affectionate or kind child. He didn’t fit any of the families who tried to take him and they inevitably returned him with complaints about his behavior. He did not make friends easily and was never a candidate for adoption. He left without asking permission but told his friends where he was going. We do not know of any forwarding address for him.

I sat back and considered the terse email for several moments. Well, there it was. I’d learned the name of the orphanage from Matt and emailed them immediately, but hadn’t expected much in the way of a response. They’d sent me more than I’d thought they would.

I suspected they were also violating a range of privacy laws with how much information they’d already given me.

But as long as they were willing to violate them, I was going to ask for more. If he was turned over to a Jonesboro orphanage at the age of three, it stood to reason that this was why he hated Missouri so much. It was where everything had started. His life, and then the end of his time with his family. And, if I was reading this email right, everything that happened to him after that. This was where his demons were.

The demons who told him he didn’t belong, and that no one would ever care about him the way he cared about them.

This was where it had all kicked off.

I hesitated for another moment, wondering if I was going too far. Was I overstepping the boundaries of our relationship? Pushing too close to the truth? Would he hate me for doing it?

Or would he finally get the closure he needed to heal and move on with his life?

I didn’t know. I had no fucking idea what was right or wrong here, or where my head was at. But I did know that Rivers deserved more than he’d been given, and I might be the only person in the world willing to do something about it.

So I started typing out a response, thanking them for answering and asking whether they knew anything more. Anything that I might be able to use to help Rivers destroy the demons that had been holding him at bay for far, far too long.