Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit

41. Rivers

41

RIVERS

L ook, I’m not trying to say Lila was an angel.

I mean she had the coloring for it. I’d always assumed angels would be either blond or flame-haired, and her skin was pale enough to be nearly translucent. Enormous green eyes, a smattering of freckles, and a smile that could actually make your soul feel like it had been cleansed of anything you’d ever done.

Hell, she could have put on a set of wings and a halo, and I wouldn’t have been surprised.

But still. I wasn’t saying she was a Real Live Angel.

I was just saying that I was sitting there in that dark restaurant with even darker thoughts marching their way through my brain and taking me right to Hell with no one to even try to keep me company. My band—my friends—were up in their rooms, probably asleep already, their minds a million miles from where I was. They hadn’t wondered where I’d gone.

No one ever wondered where I’d gone.

Except Lila.

Lila, who showed up like a vision in the darkness, took my hand, and pulled me away from the thoughts that were trying to drag me down. Just like she always did. No matter where I went, she found me. And she always brought her light with her. Even when I didn’t want her to.

So I got up and followed her, both enchanted and annoyed at her presence but definitely incapable of saying no to her when she said she wanted to take a walk. Because the truth was I didn’t want to be by myself. I didn’t want all of the memories going through my head or the thoughts they led to. I didn’t want to look at any of that.

I’d spent my whole life living with it, and I was exhausted.

I knew who and what I was and that I’d never be anything more than that. Hell, just look at what I’d come from. But if Lila was going to drag me outside and give me something else to look at, give me some of her warmth and fire instead of the shadows that were eating away at me, I was going to let her.

She pushed her way through the first exit she found, towing me along after her like some enormous dog on a leash, and turned to her right, where she pointed us toward a deserted field. I almost stopped and stared, I was so shocked. We were in the middle of fucking Jonesboro and the city was rising up all around us, all office buildings and hotels. How the fuck was there an empty field right next to our hotel?

And had she known? She was walking toward it like she’d already planned all of this, like she’d marked the place out for our special use, and I couldn’t escape the idea of her actually being an angel. Had she ordered a deserted space for us? Had she somehow magicked it into being? Demanded that the universe provide it?

I shook my head, almost laughing. I was definitely insane if I thought that.

Or I’d had too much to drink.

It was probably the latter. Or at least mostly the latter.

“Where are we going?” I asked anyhow.

“To that meadow. Obviously.”

Right.

The moment our feet hit the grass, overgrown and weedy as it was, I started to relax. There was a row of trees in front of us and Lila made for them, once again looking like she knew exactly what she was doing. I looked up at the sky and breathed out, feeling suddenly safer out here in the open with the stars smiling down on us. Away from the crowds and the stuffiness of the hotel and the photographers constantly waiting for their shot. Out from under Taylor’s stare, with all her expectations and judgements.

And, to my surprise, away from the guys, who knew what I’d become but only partially understood how I got there.

We hit the row of trees and Lila turned to me... and pushed me up against the trunk of some unsuspecting sycamore.

“What was that for?” I asked, surprised.

“Because you’re being an asshole,” she replied calmly. “And also because you owe me some answers.”

My brain must be working even slower than usual, I thought, because I didn’t have a damn clue what she was talking about. “What?”

She stepped back, and to my surprise, dropped to the ground with her legs crossed. “Sit,” she said quietly.

Unable to think of any answer to that, I sat.

“Now talk. You told me on that playground that you’d give me the answers I wanted. Since then, you’ve quit the band and nearly knocked me over in your hurry to get off the bus that brought us here. You’ve alienated everyone in your life and look like death warmed over. I know where you came from. I know Jonesboro is part of your past. And I know no one has ever bothered to really ask you what happened here that hurt you so badly. You owe me answers, Rivers, and I’m not leaving until I get them. So talk.”

I felt my mouth drop open in surprise at her words—at the fact that she knew so much already and was actually saying everything out loud.

No one knew I’d come from Jonesboro except Matt, Hudson, and Noah, and even they didn’t know I’d been born here. I’d never told them about the trailer park or the drive to the orphanage in that car that smelled like burnt upholstery and alcohol. Despair and hopelessness. They knew my mother had left me there but didn’t know she’d done it when she’d still had a house of her own where I could have lived.

I might have been three years old, but I knew enough to know that I could have stayed with my mother if she’d wanted me.

I’d spent my entire life dealing with that thought and everything that came after it, but I’d never shared it with anyone. It had felt too personal, too heavy for people who didn’t have to carry that sort of thing around with them. And I hadn’t really wanted anyone else having that sort of power over me.

Until Lila was sitting in front of me acting like she had every right to the information and would know exactly how to carry it if I handed it to her.

The scary thing was, I thought she just might.

I gulped and tried to get my brain to kick in. Tried to find the defenses I’d spent so many years building up to keep me and the people around me safe. Searched desperately for the filter that had always kept my past hidden from those around me.

They were all missing. I couldn’t find a single wall or stubborn instinct in my body. Everything in me wanted to lean back on my butt in the grass and hold Lila’s hand there in that dark field and pour my soul out to her.

So after a moment of hesitation, that was exactly what I did. I turned my face up to her, our knees resting against each other in our poses. I reached out, took her hands, and pulled them into my lap, our fingers twisted together and her thumbs rubbing what they could reach of my hands. I looked into her eyes, dark now rather than their usual green, but just as open and welcoming...

And I started talking.

I told her about my first memories with my mother. The cigarette burns. The constant abuse. Me hiding under the bed whenever I could get there and the trail of men that had made their way through our trailer. The fact that I had one aunt who had cared about me, but that she’d shown up less and less often as time went on, and that on most nights we hadn’t even had enough to eat, much less enough blankets on the bed.

And how she’d still been my mother and somewhere in my toddler’s brain, I’d known that at some level she was the only one I could count on. How I’d always hoped that she’d make things okay. Even when I knew she wouldn’t.

I told her about the day my mom and her latest boyfriend had dropped me off at the orphanage. How she’d toted me up that long walkway, handed me right to that tall man, and then turned away like it hadn’t mattered. Like she’d just dropped off a bag of potatoes. Or something even less valuable, as she definitely would have kept potatoes to herself.

How she’d walked away without looking back, leaving me there.

Her hands spasmed in mine and she suddenly squeezed even harder. “She just left?” she whispered.

I shrugged, trying hard to act as if it hadn’t mattered. “I guess she must have thought I’d have a better shot at happiness if I could find another family.”

Lila’s mouth thinned at that and her face got downright furious. I’d never seen that expression from her before and I almost laughed at how unnatural it looked. My Sunshine Girl had become something fierce and determined, like she was ready to go to war over something. Ready to claw someone across the face. I wondered how often she wore that expression.

I wondered how much she had to care about someone to look like she’d fight to the death for them.

And then I told her the rest of the story. The abuse at the orphanage itself, where we were little more than servants, set every day to cleaning or weeding or dishes or laundry. How Matt and I had found each other early and how we’d been taken in by Noah and Hudson, who were older and wiser and, if you’d asked me or Matt, practically gods.

“And I bet they looked just as intimidating then as they do now,” she said, smiling slightly.

I let myself smile a bit at that. “Not even close. They were skinny kids, just like us, but they had a couple years on us and both had reputations that made the bullies avoid them. After that, things got better. Until we were sent out to foster families.”

I tried to spare her the details about those. I didn’t want to tell her about what they’d done to us in those houses that were supposed to be more like homes. I didn’t want her to have to know. I’d wished a million times that those things weren’t in my mind. I wasn’t going to curse her with the knowledge.

But she didn’t give me a choice. I’d start a story and fade to quiet when I got to the bad part—the abuse or the beatings or being locked in a closet for days—and she’d poke at me and ask questions until I finally gave her the information she was looking forward. And she didn’t shudder. She didn’t start crying or look away. She sat there and stared back at me, listening and taking all of my pain into herself like she was drawing poison from my wounds.

Like she was saving me one story at a time.

“But you know none of that was your fault, right?” she finally asked quietly. “You know that didn’t have anything to do with you. It was them failing.”

I bit my lip at that, wondering if I had the strength to tell her the rest. I’d thought it so many times, knew it deep down in my bones, but I’d never told anyone. I didn’t know if I had the words.

Though I guessed if I was going to find the words for anyone, it would be this sweet, gentle girl who was giving me the only safe space I’d ever known.

“It was me after a while,” I said brokenly. “I started doing bad things on purpose, just so I would get sent back to the orphanage. Burning down their sheds. Destroying their houses. Leaving dead things in their beds.”

I put a hand over my mouth at the thought, hating that I’d let anyone drag me down that far, but she reached out and ran her fingers down my cheek, drawing my eyes back to her.

“Rivers, you were a kid. Those adults were hurting you. You weren’t to blame for trying to get away from them.”

The tears I’d been holding back finally came to my eyes and I leaned into her touch. “They broke my soul, Lila. And I’ve never been able to put it back together. I’ve never belonged anywhere or to anyone. I’m half a person. No one would want that. No one needs that in their life. I break everything I touch.”

She reached out and pulled me into her lap, pushing my head against her chest and shushing me. Her fingers raked through my hair and she began to massage my scalp, the movements easy and soothing, and I found myself relaxing into her like a child.

Like someone who had finally found a safe landing place.

“You’re not broken, Rivers. You’re lost. There’s a difference.”

God, I wished she was right. I wished I could sit here in her arms for the rest of my life, letting her tell me sweet things and pretending they were right. I wished I’d known her a whole lot longer, and that I’d had someone like her in my life when I was in the midst of breaking.

I wished I deserved someone like her.

I knew I didn’t, of course.

But for tonight I was going to try to forget about that. I had a whole lifetime ahead of me to deal with the monsters in my brain. For tonight, for just a little bit longer, I was going to let Lila Potter chase them away and tell me it was all going to be all right.