Page 29 of Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit
It wasn’t anything like what I’d been expecting, and I looked over at her, surprised. Were we living in the same world right now? We’d just stolen a truck and were alone for the first time since that first night, and she was thinking aboutdragons? “You were thinking what?”
She turned and met my eyes, her eyebrows lifted. “You never played that game when you were a kid? Like, making up stories for what the clouds looked like? Searching for shapes and then deciding what those shapes meant?”
No, I thought. When I was a kid, I’d been too busy getting through the chores my foster parents—all three sets of them—had given me. Or I’d been hiding from the older kids in the group home. The ones that thought it was funny to play pranks on kids littler than them. Or I’d been reading any book I could find on the music business and teaching myself to play guitar, positive that the music industry was going to be my way out of my situation. I’d been teaming up with Noah, Matt, and Hudson to take care of Molly, our adopted little sister, and keep her out of the sorts of homes that some of the other girls were sent to.
I’d been fighting for my life, same as all the other kids. I hadn’t had time to stare at the clouds.
And I hadn’t had anyone to stare up at them with me. My friends would have thought I’d gone crazy if I even asked.
Now, though, I turned back to the sky and tried to see what she was seeing.
“A dragon?”
“Sure.” Her hand shot into the air over us, and she pointed. “See, there’s its head. And right there is its wing. And its tail is that part that comes down around the bottom.”
And just like that, I could see it. A dragon, twisting back on itself with its wings spread and its tail coiled around it. He wasroaring at the next cloud over, and I wondered what that cloud had done to piss him off. Maybe something was hiding in that cloud. Something dangerous. Maybe the dragon was protecting us.
A guardian angel we hadn’t known about, that had followed us on this crazy adventure.
The whole story was insane, of course, but even so, it felt like magic. I hadn’t been able to see anything in that stupid cloud, and then with a wave of her hand, Lila had changed that. She’d opened up a whole new world I hadn’t even realized existed.
She was a witch. It was the only possible answer.
When I looked back at the other cloud, though, I saw something there, too.
“That one’s a dog,” I said, pointing at the smaller cloud to the left.
“A dog?”
“Yes! See it? The part on top is its head, and there’s its body and its leg...” I put my hand up and gestured, trying to figure out how to explain that a cloud was actually a dog, and wondering why the fuck it was so important to me that she be able to see it.
This was ridiculous, I told myself. We were seeing shapes in clouds and making up stories. A little kid’s game and nothing more. Why should I care if she saw what I saw, and why the fuck did I feel like every cell in my body was working to prove to her that I deserved to be part of this game she’d created?
And yet.
I didn’t have the right words to show it to her, though, and I was just about to give it all up and slam my way back into the truck, too angry to keep playing the game, when she laughed.
“I see it! You’re right, it’s perfect!”
My heart soared, and it was so, so stupid to be so excited about something like this, but I felt like something had lit upinside of me. Something that didn’t have an expiration date or rules or expect anything of me.
And God, did it feel good.
It felt so good that before I could think about it, before I could talk myself out of it, I rolled over, pinned her to the truck, and kissed her. Not just any kiss, either. It was slow and deep and passionate, and it held everything I couldn’t say in that moment. All the magic I’d felt when I saw the dragon. The heart-expanding fullness when she saw the dog I saw.
I was officially going insane.
And I didn’t care.
I dove deeper into the kiss, savoring the feel of her fingers running through my hair and her body opening up to me, and I let myself forget about the world around us. I shut out the thoughts that never stopped running through my head, forgot about the people waiting for us, and eliminated the knowledge that there were people out there who didn’t care about me.
All that mattered was Lila. And us in this moment.
I tipped her chin up, sweeping into her mouth, and heard an answering groan from her that told me she was just as ready for this as I was. My hand trailed down her throat and over one breast, making her gasp and push up against me. God, the girl was all fire and glorious sunshine, and I couldn’t get enough. I brushed my fingers over her nipple, the bud hard and ready under her shirt, and she gasped again. And I wanted to pause there and stroke her until she was panting and ready for me, but I knew I couldn’t.
We might have found our way into some time alone, but that didn’t mean we could stay here forever.
I dragged my hand down her belly and raised the hem of her shirt, letting my fingertips drag against the softness of her skin there. She moaned into my mouth and squirmed against me, her breath coming quicker now, and I let the kiss go, pressingmy mouth instead to her neck. God, she tasted good. Like roses, maybe, or fresh grass. Something beautiful and natural and pure.
