Page 23 of Movers and Shakers

“I want my fans happy.” She said it like it was obvious.

“Why?”

“It doesn’t matter. Blaze thinks you can help me and I . . . I agree. The only song close to being finished is about you.”

“Aboutme?”That sent a jolt straight to my heart.

“I can show you if you want.” She pulled out a notebook and opened it to a page filled with scribbled words.

I took it with shaky hands, reading it slowly. It was a love song, or so I hoped. If it wasn’t, it was the most charged friendship track I’d ever heard. As I made it through the lyrics, my eyes caught on one line.

“‘A man with a voice better than mine’—that line. What does it mean?”

“Oh, um, it’s about when you sing onstage.”

“You saw me sing onstage?”

Her eyes widened for a moment as I scanned through the last times I’d performed, trying to remember when she could have been here. “I heard you did. From a friend of mine.”

I tried to hide my disappointment. I wish she’d seen it herself.

“So you’ll make this about Blaze? As far as I know, he can’t sing.”

“I don’t know how . . . For now, I needsomething.”

“Did he come with you?”

And can I kick his ass?

“No, he has a modeling gig in LA.”

“He sent you here alone, then?”

“He said I could get my revenge for the waitress.” Her shoulders fell and she looked defeated.

“He’s an ass.”

“Maybe. But he’smyass.”

My fists tightened and my teeth ground together. I shouldn’t have been jealous of Blaze Matthews, of all people, yet here I was, wishing I was the one who was hers.

After years, I thought I would be good at being alone. I thought I would never feel jealous because I never got close enough to people to have feelings for them.

Lila was the exception.

To everything, it seemed. I should have said no and went back to my life of being alone. It was what I was good at, after all. But when Lila Wilde asked to spend time with me, I knew turning her down wasn’t an option. She’d been with me through everything.

“Let’s write more.”

She looked at me, eyebrows raised. I didn’t blame her for her confusion.

What kind of self-respecting man would let someone write songs about him and then use them for someone else?

Me.

Because I knew I wouldn’t sleep at night if I turned her away now.

There was a stupid, almost useless hope that if I showed her what a real man could be, she might leave Blaze.

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