Page 52 of Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit
My eyes met his, and I felt a jolt go through me. All his focus was on me, the energy coming off him something nearly electric, and for a second my voice completely failed me. God, I wanted to run to him and jump into his arms. And I wanted to stand here and revel in the fact that he was actually looking at me. I wanted to shout at him for suddenly showing up like the entire last week hadn’t even happened.
Then he lifted one brow, I realized I’d stopped singing, and I turned back to the crowd and jumped into it again. Moments later I was lost in the song once more, my fingers working the strings on my guitar and my soul soaring up with the sound of the music. The audience was singing and stomping, dancing around, and I had the thought that this was it. This was what it would be like to play on a tour this big, with artists like this.
I moved toward Anna, wanting to share this with her, but ran right into someone who was already next to her. I realized in that moment that Matt had moved and was now standing right next to her, playing his bass like he was offering it up to her on a silver platter while she grinned madly at him, her eyes shining and her laughter sounding out across the stage.
She wasn’t even bothering with the words to the song anymore. She was completely smitten, and that was saying something when it came to Anna because she wasn’t a girl who shared her heart easily.
I started laughing, then, though my fingers kept moving on my guitar, and when I turned back to the microphone, I found Rivers’ eyes on Matt and Anna as well, his mouth stretching into a wide smile. He looked up and met my eyes, and then we were both grinning, the shared amusement at our friends’ antics bridging the distance he’d been building between us. It was the first time we’d really connected in a week, and I couldn’t believe how good it felt. I’d already thought I was flying with the music and the crowd, but now, with Rivers’ eyes on me, I felt like Iwas expanding and taking over the whole place. The boundaries of my body had disappeared, and I was a balloon filling with helium, about to take off and float up into the night sky.
Though I knew within moments of thinking it that I couldn’t let that happen.
Because I’d known Rivers long enough now to know that this moment might not mean anything at all to him. Or it might mean something right now... and he might decide to forget about those feelings in ten minutes.
He might decide to turn cold and distant again ten minutes after that.
I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. I wanted to revel in this feeling of being in love. Get into it and splash around like a bird in a bird bath. Let it seep under my skin and fill me up and make me all floaty and happy and swoony.
But I’d be a fool to do that. I’d be a fool to believe in anything he gave me until he proved he was actually willing to follow through on what his face seemed to promise me. And I might be a girl who led with my heart and wanted to believe the best of everyone, but I was also smart enough to see what people were when they showed me.
So I turned off that need for love. I shied away from the need for connection. And instead of leaning into the heat coming off Rivers Shine, I looked out over the audience and brought the song home, knowing that this music—and that crowd—were the only things I could really count on.
Until he figured out what the hell he was doing and what it might have to do with me.
27
RIVERS
Ipushed my fingers through the links of the chain that supported the swing and looked up into the night sky, trying to focus on the stars above me and the great expanse surrounding them. Miles and miles—light years, evidently—of darkness that held nothing but stardust and wishes. Big empty spaces where no one knew your name or what you’d been in the past.
Places where no one was waiting to hurt you or leave you behind. Blame you for things you didn’t understand and leave scars on your soul that you couldn’t seem to get rid of.
I shut my eyes on that thought, which hit far too close to the truth of the matter and thought back over the night. Lila hadn’t given me a second look after the one we’d shared when we caught Anna flirting with Matt—and Matt virtually laying his bass down at her feet—during the first song they played. She’d held my gaze for a long moment, every emotion she was feeling clear on her face, and had then turned away and gone into the end of the song like a pro.
Like she’d played to audiences that big a million times and knew exactly what to do.
And like we hadn’t just been sharing some sort of unspoken inside joke that had covered not only the antics onstage but also everything we’d learned about each other over the past two weeks, and how deeply it had affected both of us. At least how deeply it had affected me. I’d thought it had all affected her too, but looking at the situation now…
Well, maybe I’d been wrong. Maybe she just looked like the kind of girl who took everything to heart and was, instead, someone who instinctively understood how to protect herself from feeling too much for people she should avoid.
If she knew that, I wish she’d share her secret with me.
Not that I was actually surprised when she turned away. Hell, I’d been surprised when she’d met my gaze at all. I hadn’t done anything good for her, and I sure as shit wasn’t going to help her reputation. We’d barely even spoken over the last week. She probably didn’t know what to make of me or my moods, and she definitely hadn’t come around asking if I was okay.
Which was exactly what I’d wanted. I’d loved singing with her tonight, loved seeing her smile at me again, but the truth was, I was trouble. I’d pulled away from her for a reason and I was still solid on that decision. I wasn’t going to risk her or her reputation, even if it would have meant saving my own. I already knew I was heading for rock bottom—a crash bigger than anything I’d ever experienced before—and I wasn’t going to take her down with me.
The problem was, I could see that I was breaking her just by being around. There was a pain in her eyes that hadn’t been there before and a tension in her shoulders that didn’t match her usual carriage. She’d stopped wearing the bright expression she’d had when I met her, and her lips didn’t smile as often these days. Instead, she looked jaded, like she’d been down a road she didn’t like and had started wearing armor that didn’t fit quite right.
I understood that armor, and I knew what it meant. I’d known her for two weeks, and I was already hurting her. The sooner I was out of her life, the better.
I looked back into the night sky, trying to push myself up into that darkness. What would it be like out there? Cold, I bet. Empty. Maybe even lonely. But I wondered if it would be quieter. I wondered if that silence could shut down the voices in my head. Make me stop thinking.
Being up there would certainly mean I couldn’t hurt anyone down here anymore.
Though it would also mean I’d lose anyone here who I cared about. Matt. Noah. Hudson. Molly.
Lila.
And therein lay the rub. Lila. She was the bright spot in my darkness right now. The lighthouse beckoning me home. The candle in the window that told me where I could find safety. And that was what I didn’t get. Surely the universe knew exactly how little I deserved that. Surely it understood that I’d never had a safe home before and that I knew how to live without one. That I broke the homes I’d been given—and the people who lived there. All it had to do was look at the string of foster families I’d had and the situations I’d run into. Foster parents who thought they were getting a servant—or worse, someone they were allowed to abuse. Garden sheds I’d burned down just so I would be sent back to the group home. Bottles of whiskey stolen from kitchens and consumed in the darkness of garages as I tried to forget who and what I was. Older foster siblings who’d seen a young kid and taken the opportunity to teach him a thing or two.
