Page 16 of Guitars and Mistakes
Because if I was—if I thought I could live up to her dreams—I’d take her in my arms and never, ever let her go. I’d laugh and cry with her and let myself fall for her charms and bright, shining light.
I’d let myself fall in love for the first time in my life, and I’d never look back.
But that wasn’t part of the plan, and it sure as hell wasn’t within my capabilities. I’d never been able to love anyone before and I didn’t know if it was even in my DNA.
Given the fact that my own mother hadn’t bothered to stick around for me, though, I was sort of doubting it.
So I turned away from Lila and her open face and back toward the audience. And for the first time on this tour, I sang the love song to them rather than to the girl who was breaking me down, piece by piece, by loving me too fucking much when I knew I couldn’t love her back.
RIVERS
Once the show was over I did what I’d been doing for the last week.
Namely get off the stage as quickly as I could and make for the exit. I didn’t want to talk to the band, or Taylor, or Lila.
Especially after what had just happened onstage. I mean the girl had basically taken the one love song I’d ever written and then sung to her far too many times and weaponized it against me. She’d learned the whole fucking thing and played it better than I ever had, and instead of watching her in awe as she sang my words, which was what I should have been doing, I’d turned to the audience and watched them watch her instead.
Like a fucking coward.
No way was I sticking around now, for her to come running after me. She’d corner me and look at me with those green of eyes hers and do what she always did: Stare right through me and see all the things no one else had ever bothered to look for.
And yeah, sure, it should have been nice to be seen. I should have been reveling in someone actually taking the time to try to figure out who I actually was and then love that person rather than the image I projected.
The truth was, though, it was fucking scary. I’d spent most of my life hiding the soft spots inside me and I didn’t know how I felt about someone else finding them and poking at them. What if she didn’t like what she saw in there? What if she poked too hard and hurt me? What if she turned her head just a bit and realized that those weren’t actually soft spots but gaping holes where I was missing the things any normal human being should have?
I already knew I was. I didn’t think I could stand for Lila to realize it, too.
Which was exactly why I’d decided to run. Way better to be out there in the night on my own, without her probing gaze and questions about why I was doing what I was doing. Sure, it was lonely.
But it was also safe. For both of us.
I spotted the exit ahead and increased my pace, counting the steps until I was through that door and into the dark courtyard behind the place. I was going to make it. I was. And once I was out there I’d put some serious thought into the plan I’d been developing and how I was going to pull it off. Then, once an hour or two had passed and Olivia and Connor were well into their set and everyone was distracted, I’d head to my room in the hotel next door and?—
A body slammed into me and pushed me against the wall, turning me in the process so that I was facing out into the hallway rather than toward the door I’d been aiming for.
I gasped at the impact and looked up, ready to shout at whoever was manhandling me like this. No, I didn’t have security back here but anyone in their right mind should know that you don’t throw the lead singer of one of the bands around like they were a sack of fucking potatoes.
Then I saw who’d done it and changed my mind. Because when you were one of that lead singer’s best friends in the whole world, I guessed it gave you some leeway.
“Matt,” I ground out. “What the fuck?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” he said quietly. “Where are you running off to? The audience is calling for an encore and when I looked over to see whether my lead singer was willing to do another song or two, all I could make out was your footprints in the dust.”
I pushed him off, realizing that he wasn’t going to step back unless I made him do it. Matt Lawson had never been the most aggressive guy—actually, he was way too nice for his own good—but when he got an idea in his head he was like a dog with a bone. It was nearly impossible to sidetrack him.
Which didn’t bode well for the escape I’d been planning.
“Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no dust back here.”
He made a face. “And yet I’m sure you know exactly what I mean. Where were you going in such a hurry, Shine?”
“Don’t call me that,” I snapped. “You know I hate when you call me that. I always have.”
He shrugged like he didn’t care, and the shitty thing was he probably didn’t. He didn’thaveto care. Matt was my oldest friend in the world, and that meant he got away with stuff no one else did. We’d been at the same orphanage, which meant I’d known him since I was just a kid named Rivers, not the music phenom the rest of the world knew. The same was true of all the guys—Hudson and Noah had both been in and out of that group home for our entire childhoods—but those two were older than us. They’d been our protectors.
Big brothers, in a way, to kids who’d never had that sort of thing naturally.
Matt and I... We were in the youngest group of kids, and we’d both been small for our ages. The older kids had picked us early on as easy targets, and we’d been too young to know how to defend ourselves. We’d teamed up as the underdogs and started watching each other’s backs, and eventually Noah and Hudson had found us and taken on the roles as our protectors. Matt, a naturally happy kid, had leaned into it like he’d finally found the family he’d been missing.
