Page 14 of Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit
I’d wanted to keep that glow. Believe I could be the person she thought I was.
And here we’d had more to drink, and at some point—amidst all the secrets we’d been sharing with each other—she’d said something that had grabbed me by the heart and made me realize that I’d never, ever been so into a girl in my life. I’d wanted everything about her. Her smile, her laugh… her body.
I’d taken her. I’d stripped her and buried myself in her and moved until I could barely stand it, my cock hard enough that I thought I might die from the pleasure and her hands wrapped in my hair, her body surrounding me as I pressed my mouth against her neck and moaned her name again and again.
And we hadn’t just done it once. We’d laid in bed talking, my fingertips trailing over her velvet skin as she told me more about her childhood and I hid my past. She’d gone on and on about her sisters, how they’d performed for their parents and how she’d learned the guitar early enough that she couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been playing. She’d asked whether I played anything else and whether my parents were proud of my career, and I’d...
God.
I’d told her the things I’d never told anyone else. About growing up in the orphanage and winning a music contest when I was young, then getting a manager and being shoved into the music industry with no one to look after me.
And then I’d turned onto my back, pulled her onto me, and brought her down on my cock again. Just so I could lose myselfin the warmth and perfection of her. Feel all the things my life had never bothered to give me before.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I was supposed to be cleaning up my image so Olivia and Connor weren’t damaged—and I was supposed to be doing it quickly so I could save my band’s spot on this tour. Noah had told me straight up that the label was inviting other acts on the road to audition, and for all I knew, one of those acts was going to actually replace us while we were all on the road.
And instead, I’d gotten drunk with the girl next door and dragged her into my bed. A girl who wasoneof those acts and might very well be my replacement.
And there was no way in hell I was going to get out of this, because she was also the sweetest, most innocent person I’d ever met in my entire life. I’d not only fucked the girl next door, but I had also fucked someone who had probably never even met a real live rock star before. She’d been so starstruck that she hadn’t known what she was doing. Drunk and starstruck.
Oh. My. God.
I slid out of bed as quietly as I could, grabbed my clothes off the ground, and put them on so quickly it was probably some sort of record. I found my shoes in no time flat, grabbed my wallet, and left the room.
Please, please let her leave before I got back. And please let her keep her mouth shut. Please let her leave the tour and never come around again, and please let this be the end of it. Because I couldn’t afford the trouble I was going to get in if anyone found out about this.
Yes, all of the above would mean I lost the only girl who had ever made me feel as if I might be worth something. A girl who had, against all the odds, made me feel like there might be some sunshine in my own dark, twisted soul.
That didn’t matter. I wasn’t the guy she thought I was, and I didn’t want to see her face when she woke up and realized that she might be the biggest mistake of my entire career.
Of course I couldn’t just escape with my dignity intact. I couldn’t even do the fucking honorable thing and get out of there before anyone else knew what had happened.
What the fuck did I think, my life was suddenly some sort of fairy tale?
I opened the door and slid out, my face turned back to make sure Lila was still asleep. And I ran right into Noah.
He stumbled several steps back, his arms out for balance, and glared at me once he’d come to a stop. “Is that how you always come out of your room? Because I’m thinking we need to work on it,” he snarled.
Typical Noah. He’d never been a morning person.
“Fuck you.”
I made to slide past him, my mind still on the girl in my bed, but he grabbed me and slammed me back against the wall, his face close enough to mine for me to smell the smoke.
“Been out smoking already?” I asked, trying to make my voice light. “Jesus, and they think I need to clean myself up. How much do you smoke these days? That’s going to kill you, you know.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “I do. I also know that you don’t make jokes this early in the morning. You’re usually still in bed. What’s going on? Why are you barreling out of your room into the hall like a—” He cut his words off sharply, and his eyes swiveled slowly toward the door to my room.
Then back to my face.
Shit.
Noah was one of my oldest friends. We’d been shoved into the same orphanage when we were kids, both of us products of mothers who couldn’t be bothered. He’d watched megrow up, fighting for every scrap of food I could get my hands on, and when I won that contest and went out on the road, I’d called him almost every night, just to hear a friendly voice.
He knew me almost as well as he knew himself. And he always knew when I’d done something wrong.
“You’ve got a girl in there,” he said.
