Page 57 of Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit
And tomorrow I’d put myself back into the box I was learning to live in and focus on the things I knew I needed to do to save her from herself.
* * *
The next night, of course, we were back on stage, Anna and Lila once again standing front and center and looking like a couple of deer in the headlights.
Lila turned wide, nervous eyes toward the side of the stage like she was looking for a way out, and I looked that way as well. What was she looking for over there? An exit plan?
If so, she wasn’t going to find one. Taylor was standing there like a fully-armed Greek goddess, glowering at the girl like she’d actually kill her on the spot if she even thought about leaving the stage.
I smirked, recognizing the look. I’d been getting that exact same look from Taylor since the day I signed with her and started making her life a living hell. She didn’t take well to nonsense, and she liked it even less when someone dared to question her authority. If Lila wanted the contract Taylor was offering, she was going to have to get in line and do what she was told.
Which meant, I guessed, that she had to perform tonight the way Taylor wanted her to.
I glanced at the girl in question, wondering if she’d figured that out yet, and found that she’d turned those big eyes from Taylor to me like she was looking for a lifeline. The corner of my mouth twitched at that—what can I say, I didn’thatethe idea of being her hero—and I lifted one eyebrow in question. She caught the movement and narrowed her eyes slightly like she was suddenly annoyed that I’d noticed she was staring at me.
Or maybe she was just annoyed because she thought I was laughing at her.
News flash: I was. But not for the reasons she thought. I didn’t give a single damn that Taylor was making her do something she didn’t want to do, and I cared even less than that about what else Taylor was making her do when it came to her relationship with me. I wasn’t going to get upset that she was up here with my band taking all my face time and cutting into our actual set time. Her music was great, and the audience loved her. The guys in the band also liked playing with her and Anna. It gave us all a break from going through the same songs we’d been playing for way too long.
I didn’t give a damn about any of that.
But I did find it endearing and sort of hilarious to see her so flustered, her skin flushing red with frustration and her fingers tapping along the wood of her guitar as she tried to figure out what the fuck she was doing. I didn’t think Lila was the sort ofgirl who doubted herself easily. She’d probably been born with that instinctive belief that everyone would love her if she just smiled often enough. And I was betting she’d never run into a single person who didn’t respond to her the way she wanted them to.
So, yeah, it made me smile to see her getting flustered about being shoved onstage without any choice in the matter.
That didn’t change the fact that I wanted to save her.
Hey, I said I knew I wasn’t any good for her. That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to step up for her when the occasion called for it.
I lifted my eyebrows high, gave her a pointed look, and strummed a chord from the song they’d played last night. Then I moved my fingers and strummed another. And another. The glare on her face turned even darker, until she looked like she might actually stick her tongue out at me. But then I broke into a fuller version of the song, the chords moving quickly from my head into my fingers and then to the guitar, and before long I’d started the song without her and she was scrambling to catch up, her fingers dancing across the strings of her own guitar and her cheeks flushing even brighter.
Beyond her, I could see Anna glaring at me like she wanted to strike me dead on the spot for needling her friend.
Nothing new there. Anna had never liked me much.
That made me smile even more broadly.
I turned my cheeky grin from Anna back to Lila and found the start of a smile on her lips, too. She’d seen me making faces at Anna, then, and unless I was very much mistaken, she thought it was funny. This time when her eyes met mine, they were sparkling with laughter, and when she sang the first words of the song, they were muffled and hard to understand.
By the time she hit the second line, though, she’d found her stride, and her voice was ringing clearly through the bar, all her nerves forgotten and her focus back where it should be.
We played through three songs, the guys learning Anna and Lila’s songs as we went and letting them take center stage. The girls had a great sound, half pop and half country, and the combination of guitar and keyboard was truly unique. Lila’s voice was both husky and somehow angelic at the same time, and when she combined it with Anna’s sultry alto, the sound made you feel like your heart was actually melting.
I was having more fun onstage than I’d had in years, and it was because we had Anna and Lila adding to our sound. Matt was practically beside himself with excitement about Anna—I had to figure out what was going on between the two of them at some point—and Noah and Hudson were looking at Lila like they thought she could actually walk on water or something.
Hell, for all I knew, she could. She’d walked into my life and given me a sense of joy I’d never had before. She managed to glow with something otherworldly and then did the impossible, casting that same glow over the people around her. She’d even made the press think I might be reforming myself into something happy and respectable.
For a week.
The song we were playing ended, and Lila cast me a quick, teasing glance that immediately told me I was in trouble.
“Thank you!” she shouted into the audience. “But I’m pretty sure you didn’t come here to hear songs that Anna and I wrote. In fact, I’m guessing you’re actually here to see Global Authors and heartheirmusic, am I right?”
The cheering was rather lackluster if you asked me, but she acted like they’d just confirmed exactly what she’d already thought.
“Right! In that case, I say we start out with one of my favorite songs by this rock band. I’ve been working hard to learn it over the last week just so I could play it with them, because I think it’s one of their best. What do you think, can Anna and I stay on stage for one more song?”
This time, the applause tried to shatter the windows in the place.
