Page 26 of Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit
“What?” I asked. “Is she downstairs?”
“No one’s downstairs. No one’s here. The entire hotel is, like, empty. I went and asked the receptionist, and she said they left. An hour ago.”
Wait. Left? Like… just gone? That didn’t make sense. They’d known what room I was in. They’d known that I was in there—or they would have if they’d called or bothered to knock. It wasn’t like I’d just up and disappeared in the middle of the night or something. And even if I had, there was this thing called a cell phone. I never went anywhere without mine, and I knew for a fact that both Matt and Noah had me on speed dial.
I was also the lead singer of one of the bands on tour.
Why would they have left without me?
And a better question: Why would Anna have left without Lila? The girls were basically inseparable, and from what I’d seen, Anna acted like protecting Lila was her personal mission in life. I couldn’t imagine a world in which she’d just up and leave the girl behind, in a hotel in a strange city.
I grabbed Lila’s hand and hauled her toward the stairs, my mind turning through the information so quickly it was going to make me sick. The tour had a specific schedule, yes, but that schedule was at least kind of flexible. Especially when it came to the timing for moving on from a hotel. I knew the next city and it wasn’t that far away. Maybe a two-hour drive? Three if you were going slow. And we were scheduled to get into the next city hours before the show. The tour manager had wanted to give us time to see the sights before we had to be onstage.
Why were they in such a hurry that they’d left us here? Just because we overslept? That didn’t check out.
We got down the stairs and to the reception desk in no time flat and I paused, trying to bring my charm to the forefront. I wanted to know what was going on, and yelling at the poor kid behind the desk wasn’t going to help me do that.
“Excuse me,” I asked, striving for a reasonable tone of voice.
The kid turned to me and his eyes widened. “Rivers Shine.”
I gave him a quick grin. “That’s right. Lila here says she talked to you and you told her everyone has already left. Is that true? The whole tour has already departed?”
“Th-That’s right, sir,” he stuttered.
“I’m not a sir,” I said quickly. “That word is for old men with pipes, and that’s not you or me. Did anyone happen to say why they left without waking me up first? Or what they thought I should do about it? Did they leave directions or something?”
Not that I needed directions on how to get to the next city. I knew where we were going. But I’d never been left alone whileon tour before. I didn’t exactly know the rules for this sort of thing.
His face, which had been pale up to this point, suddenly broke out into a smile. “They didn’t say anything about it, no. But they did leave you a note.”
A note. They left me anote?
This was all starting to feel like some colossal joke. Everyone on tour—including my best friends and band mates—had left me behind and gone to the next town without me. Anna had left without Lila. And they’d done nothing more than leave us a note?
“Can I have it?” I asked, knowing that my voice now sounded tense and unhappy.
He nodded and slid an envelope across to me, looking like this was all really entertaining.
It wasn’t.
It got even less entertaining when I read the note.
It didn’t say much. Just a couple of lines from Taylor about how they’d noticed that Lila and I hadn’t been getting to spend much quality time together and that they’d decided to remedy the situation. Do us both the favor of leaving us alone and giving us time to really get to know one another.
They’d left us here together on purpose.
So that we’d have to find our own way to the next town.
13
LILA
“Ican’t believe we’re doing this,” I said as I ducked around the corner and scanned the street in front of us. There was no one there, as expected, and the cars were limited to two: a red truck and a brown sedan of some sort. But we were also on a main street in a small town. The sort of place where people were constantly looking out their front windows to see what their neighbors were doing.
I didn’t trust the lack of traffic, and I sure as hell didn’t think we were actually alone.
“And I can’t believe they left us,” Rivers said from right behind me, his hand on my back as he leaned over me to look out of the alley as well. “Actually, scratch that. I can.”
