Page 86 of Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit
This was also the man who’d told me to leave him alone. He’d broken my heart again and again over the last few weeks, and if I was smart, I’d give him time to explain. I’d force him to tell me what he was doing here.
I wriggled to get him to put me back down and took a step back, both physically and emotionally. And when I looked up at him, I had myself under control again.
“Rivers. What are you doing here? And why…?” I gestured to the press around us.
He had the grace to blush. “I couldn’t stop them. Someone evidently promised Taylor the publicity of a lifetime, and she had them all ready to go. When I got back to the hotel and found you gone, and Anna told me what had happened, I knew I had to follow you. And they…well, I guess they’d been promised a show.”
Right. Now it was my turn to blush.
“That may have been my doing. But I thought…I thought that meeting your family…”
I didn’t have the words to tell him exactly what I’d thought, because it all sounded so insane now. How had I ever even considered it? His mother had left him once; why had I believed she’d want him to come back home now? And why had I thought that seeing the woman who’d deserted him would actually heal him?
Even worse, I’d promised Taylor that it would work.
God, I’d been stupid and naive. I didn’t blame him for turning away from me for doing that.
So why was he back?
“Why are you here, Rivers?” I asked quietly. “What do you want?”
He gulped and then started talking. “I’m here for you. I’m here because you came blazing into my life, full of sunshine and fire, and changed everything. All my life I’ve had people telling me I’m not enough. My mom didn’t think I was enough to want to keep me. And even before that I couldn’t please her. Nothing I ever did was right. None of the foster families even bothered to treat me like a human being. I lucked into a music contract, buteven in the industry, I wasn’t good enough. I was too young, too unrefined. I brooded too much. I drank too much.”
“Youdiddrink too much,” I said gently. “That was your choice.”
He took my hand and kissed it. “Only because I was so unhappy. Only because no one had ever tried to make me stop. I thought no one cared. I thought I broke everything I touched. Until you.”
I nearly sobbed at the lurch in my heart. “You tried to break me, too.”
“But you wouldn’t break. You saw what I was doing and called me on it. You looked through me and thought I was worth saving. And you never stopped trying.” His voice broke. “I loved you from the moment I met you, Lila. I couldn’t look away from you. I never stopped wanting you. But I thought you were too bright for me. I didn’t think I deserved that much sunshine in my life.”
Okay, this was too much. I was going to explode. Or implode. Whichever was worse.
“And now?” I whispered.
“Now I know that sunshine is exactly what I need. It’s what I want. This is real. I’m giving you my heart. It’s banged up and damaged, and I’m not sure it even works, but I want you to have it.”
I stopped breathing for an entire ten seconds. Maybe longer. Was this actually happening? Was any of this real or was I dreaming it?
“Are you asking me to take you as you are?”
The ghost of a smile brushed his lips. “Are you going to run away if I do?”
Oh God. Oh God, oh God. “That depends on what exactly you want.”
Now the smile was more solid. “Everything. The white picket fence. The house. The yard. The real family. You.”
The sunshine broke through me then, shining so brightly I could hardly stand it, and it echoed on his face, his eyes brighter than I’d ever seen them, all trace of the shadows gone. This was the guy I’d known was in there. This was the guy who saw something he wanted and grabbed for it with both hands.
And what he wanted was me.
God.
I was going to marry a rock star. And he was finally going to let me save him.
“In that case, Rivers Shine,” I whispered. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”
I threw myself into his arms again, and this time I didn’t hold back. I didn’t question it or keep any of myself back, and there was a good reason for that.
