Page 53 of Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit
My original home, which my own mother had taken from me.
I didn’t even know what family was. Not really. I certainly didn’t know what it was to care about another human being enough to take care of them. So why the hell would the Powers That Be put Lila in my path? Why risk her that way?I understood why it would hand me something I wasn’t going to be allowed to keep. That sort of thing happened all the time, and I was used to it at this point. Hell, I figured that was the universe’s idea of a fun game. A way to pass the time or whatever. Bored? Fuck with Rivers Shine. Give him another black eye. Show him one more time that he doesn’t deserve anything good.
But why fuck with Lila Potter? She was a good girl from a solid family, and talented as hell. She had a bright, shining future ahead of her and deserved every piece of it. She was the epitome of a good girl. Why throw her at me when whoever was out there in the darkness must have known that I would simply hurt her?
And talk about the conflict to end all conflicts. The girl was home to me. Everything bright and good. I felt myself reaching for her even when I was asleep, my fingers stretching toward hers in an attempt for connection. And yet I was pushing her away as hard as I could, knowing that I couldn’t keep her. Or that I wouldn’t.
She was everything I wanted and everything I would never allow myself to have, because I didn’t believe I deserved it.
What. The. Fuck.
I shook myself and tried to get my thoughts to stop spiraling. I didn’t know what the universe was thinking, but I knew what I had to do to get around it. Lila deserved the best in life, and the quicker I was out of here, the quicker she could have it. Taylor was already pushing her onstage to perform with my band, and though I didn’t like the idea of leaving them behind—hated it, actually—it would help everyone if I disappeared. Hell, maybe Global Authors would rebrand with Anna and Lila and make a whole new career. The theory made sense, and the guys would be crazy with excitement about having girls around to protect.
I just had to figure out the right timing.
We only had a month left on this tour—even less, if I could pull this off. I could handle things until I found my off-ramp. I’d just have to keep avoiding people who were likely to ask too many questions. Protect them. Keep them safe.
Isolate myself the way I’d been doing my entire life.
That wasn’t so bad. I could pull it off.
I pulled my eyes back down to the playground around me, feeling a bit better about having a plan... and saw Lila walking right toward me, a puffy jacket dwarfing her small frame and zipped all the way to the top against the chill of midnight around us.
“I wondered where you were,” she said, her voice somewhat muffled. “What are you doing out here all alone? Want some company?”
Well, shit.
28
LILA
God, he looked bad.
I hadn’t seen him up close in a couple of days, now, and though he’d looked rough the last time I’d seen him—all dark shadows and stubble—he looked even worse now. His eyes were haunted, his lips pressed tightly together like he was trying to keep his secrets locked in. His skin was pale and he was sort of hunched, tucked into himself.
Withdrawn.
Gone was the flashy, charming man I’d met on that first night, when he basically invited himself to the room I was sharing with Anna. Gone was the flirtatious smirk as he asked me questions about myself and called me Sunshine Girl. Gone was the dreamer, the rebel, the devil-may-care rock star I’d wanted to kiss.
The guy who’d gotten me drunk and then taken me to bed and fucked me like it had been both a pleasure and a dream, and then woken me up hours later to do it again. I bit my lip and let my mind flit back to that first night, when his kisses had been molten lava on my nipples and belly and his cock had been hardas steel between my legs. The breath he’d exhaled as he slammed into me that first time, then gone so slow I wanted to scream.
The scream I’d given him when he made me orgasm.
I jerked at the thought and came back to the present. We weren’t in bed right now. I didn’t have time to be daydreaming. Head of me, Rivers was sitting alone on a swing in a park in the middle of the night, his eyes haunted and his lips compressed. This wasn’t my rock star. This was the lost boy who didn’t know where he was going or what he was doing and was desperate for someone to actually see him.
And not for the first time, I found myself trying to figure out what the hell had happened to him that left him so scarred. I mean I knew a lot about him—he’d won a music contest and found himself thrown right into the music industry with only a manager and agent to look after him. He’d already been playing the guitar by that time and had been labeled a phenom by those who heard him. His voice, barely developed, was gritty and charming in a kid so young, and the world had taken him right into their arms and become obsessed with him.
Or at least what they knew of him.
Looking at him now, though, I wondered again how much they’d actually known of him. Not much, probably. The trivia you could find on any standard search, and the stories his publicity team had put out about him.
But none of those stories covered anything from his past. They started when he was fourteen and never bothered with the boy Rivers Shine might have been before he was discovered.
I wondered if his publicity team had just buried that boy in the past and left him to fend for himself.
He shifted uncomfortably in the swing, which had to be at least two sizes too small for someone his size, and tipped his head back and forth. “Not sure this is exactly your scene, Sunshine Girl.”
A thrill ran through me at the use of the nickname and I grinned, unable to stop myself. “Maybe not. But maybe I’m here to bring a little sunshine into your darkness.”
