I opened my mouth to try to talk to her, try to say anything that might sound like I didn’t hate her guts...

  And then I heard Lila screaming.

  LILA

  I couldn’t believe this was happening.

  And I mean any of it. I couldn’t believe I’d actually talked Rivers into coning out with us today and then talked him into going into his mother’s trailer. I was also finding it impossible to wrap my head around how badly it had gone. She wasn’t at all the person I’d thought she was, and she hadn’t even tried to apologize to him or make things right. She hadn’t even fucking hugged him.

  Instead, she’d sneered at him and started asking for money.

  None of which was important right now, as I was currently backed up against the side of a shed with Rivers’ little brother—Richard?—standing way too close to me and wearing something that looked a whole lot like his mother’s sneer.

  On a face that looked way too much like Rivers’.

  “What are you doing?” I gasped, trying to fend off what felt like eight different hands.

  He reached for my face with a hand I hadn’t even seen coming, grabbed my chin, and banged my head back against the metal of the shed. “Stop fussing, girl!” he drawled. “I’d say what I’m doing is pretty obvious. I saw you looking at me in the trailer. And I could see exactly what you wanted.”

  “What?” I gasped, trying to yank my chin away from his hand and get out from between him and the shed. “What are you talking about?”

  “Couldn’t have hid it if you tried,” he said, moving forward and pressing his body against mine. “I can spot girls like you a mile away. Girls who look all good but want to act all bad.”

  Oh my God, I was going to throw up.

  “You have no idea what I’m like!” I snapped, jerking to the side.

  Unfortunately, he was way too strong for me. He might have been skinnier than Rivers but he was just as tall, and that put him at least a foot taller than me. I didn’t have a prayer of getting away from him, and that realization made me feel even more panicked. What the fuck was even going on here? I’d barely looked at this guy in the trailer. I’d been too busy staring at Rivers’ mom, trying to figure out what game she was playing. How did this guy come to the conclusion that I’d not only been staring at him but also wanted him to make a move on me?

  And where did he get off, thinking that making this sort of move was in any way appropriate? I’d come here with his brother, for God’s sake!

  His brother who he’d never met. His brother who was a rich rock star while he...

  I turned my eyes to him, trying to figure out whether there was anything I could use, here. But he looked insane, his eyes rolling around like he’d taken something that made him hyperactive. Was he on drugs? He had to be, though I’d never been around anyone when they were taking drugs so I didn’t really know. I’d never even known anyone who did drugs, I didn’t think. Those sorts of people just didn’t show up in my life. I was too sheltered, I realized suddenly.

  I didn’t have any experience that matched up to what Rivers had been through.

  God, I was a fool.

  Richard slammed my back against the shed again, wiping my mind of the spiraling thoughts that had been running through it, and I grunted... and then started panicking again when his hand went to the waistband of my jeans.

  Oh God, oh God, oh God, this couldn’t be happening. Anna and Matt were right on the other side of this shed and in the car, waiting like I’d asked them to. They hadn’t see me come out of the trailer though as I’d turned away from the car, wanting some time to think. They didn’t know I was back here, or that I was in trouble.

  So I screamed again, hoping against hope that this time someone would hear me.

  I’d barely closed my mouth on the scream when Richard suddenly disappeared.

  I stumbled as his body vanished into thin air and hit the ground on my knees where he had been, looking up just in time to see Rivers throwing him to the side and snarling in his direction. Richard looked up at him, horrified, and then jumped to his feet and ran away, blubbering something about going right to the press with this.

  I didn’t listen. I was too busy gasping again as Rivers picked me up and held me too him, his heart hammering under my ear and his breath raspy against my hair.

  “Are you okay?” he whispered. “Oh God, Lila, did he hurt you?”

  I swallowed and tried to get my voice to work. “I’m okay. He didn’t... He didn’t do anything. You got here. You saved me.”

  I rocked back and looked up at him, the words shooting through me as I said them. “You saved me.”

  Instead of looking relieved or proud of himself, though, or kissing me like I thought he was going to, Rivers closed his eyes and blew out slowly. He waited a beat, and then nodded to himself.

  And took a step back.

  “I wouldn’t have had to save you if it weren’t for my brother.”

  Wait, what?

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He opened his eyes and pinned me with them, looking like he was about to tell me the worst news anyone had ever told anyone, and suddenly I wanted to shut him up. Kiss him or slap my hand over his mouth; anything that would mean he couldn’t say what he was about to say. Because I didn’t have to hear it to know I wasn’t going to like it.

  He stepped back again like he knew what I was thinking and needed to be out of my reach. And God, he looked like a man who had just signed his own death warrant. A man who was choosing to take that step even though he knew he was going to die once he reached his destination.

  “It means that you wouldn’t have been in that position if you hadn’t brought me here, Lila. You would never have even met him if it wasn’t for me. And I don’t blame you for bringing me. Really, I don’t. You’re so pure and good that you must have thought if we could find my family, it would make everything okay, because your family always makes things okay for you. But that’s not who my family is. They never were. My mother left me with someone else because she didn’t want to take care of me on her own anymore. She never searched for me. She never wanted me back. She was only out for herself. Just like my brother is. And the thing is...”

  He stopped and looked at me like he wanted me to tell him he didn’t have to say it. But then he kept talking before I could stop him.

  “This is who I am, too. These people are my blood. I might have left them behind a long time ago but the things that drive them drive me, too. This is what I’ve come from. And I’m afraid I’ll never be able to escape that. I can’t change who I am, Lila. I can’t change what I do to people. But I’m not going to do it to you. I need you to get as far away from me as possible. Leave, and don’t come back. Stop trying to save me, because you can’t. Not even you, the wonderful, shining Lila Potter, can save me. I’m no good. I’m broken and you need to save yourself. Please.”

  My heart shattered. I didn’t want to believe a word he was saying. It was so ridiculous, and so untrue. He wasn’t a bad person. He wasn’t broken. He’d just been through some things. But I could help him heal. I knew I could. It would just take a little bit of time, that was all. Time, and plenty of love.

  But I could see in his eyes that he wasn’t going to give me that time. He didn’t believe he could heal, so he wasn’t going to give it a chance. He was telling me what he believed to be true, and he wasn’t willing to listen to me if I tried to convince him otherwise.

  My broken bird was going to choose being broken by himself instead of risking me. Even if it meant destroying his chance at happiness.

  Defeat flooded through me at that, and I knew I’d already let him convince me that I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t want to give him up. I didn’t want to admit that I might have to leave him. Every cell in my body was screaming for the chance to save him. Gather up his broken soul and tuck it into my pocket. Pet it and soothe it until it started to come back together.

  But how could I do that if he didn’t agree to be soothed? How could I save him if he didn’t believe he could be saved?

  I couldn’t. That was the sad, horrible truth.

  And he wouldn’t thank me for spending my life trying, only to keep failing the way I’d failed today.

  I reached up and touched one finger to his lower lip, trying to memorize the feel of him. The way his eyes looked and the shadow along his jaw. The tousle of his hair. The smell of him.

  “If you change your mind, I’ll be here,” I whispered. “I’ll never give up on you. But I need you to believe you’re worth saving.”

  And then I turned and walked away, my heart destroyed and my mind reeling.

  I wanted to go home. I didn’t want the tour anymore and I didn’t give a fuck about the contract. I didn’t want music or crowds or my guitar. I wanted to go back to my family.

  Where things made sense.

  RIVERS

  This didn’t feel good.

  It didn’t even feel a little bit okay.

  It felt wrong and unnatural, like I’d just cut off my own arm intentionally and voluntarily, and then thrown it to wolves who were definitely going to eat it and keep me from ever being able to attach it again.

  Worse than that, actually, since it wasn’t my arm I’d just destroyed but my heart. I’d carved it out of me and thrown it to the ground, where it now lay with what was left of my soul and everything good inside me. Turning to dust.

  Sending Lila away and then watching her actually follow the order was like…

  I didn’t even have the words for it, honestly, but I knew that nothing had ever hurt this much. Not my mother leaving me. Not the foster parents who had hit me and done things I’d worked hard never to think about again. Not the fires or the dead animals or coming home to the orphanage where every kid except the three I’d befriended hated me.

  Nothing could ever have prepared me to watch the girl I loved running away from me, her hands over her face and her shoulders shaking with sobs as her heart broke right alongside mine.

  But there was a good reason, I reminded myself, leaning one shoulder against the shed for support. This wasn’t just something I’d done without any thought. I’d done this for reasons. Lila was too good for me. She was too bright and optimistic; a rich, well-mannered girl from a good family in Nashville who didn’t know the meaning of heartbreak. She’d never gone hungry, never watched someone who was supposed to love her desert her. She’d never known how it felt to be thrown away by the person you needed the most in the world.

  She wasn’t broken the way I was, but if I kept her around I would eventually break her. I broke everyone I knew. It was why I’d worked so hard to keep them all at arm’s length: To protect them. She just needed more protection than most. She also needed more convincing than most. She was perhaps the most stubborn person I’d ever met, and no matter how many times I’d backed away from her, she just kept coming back.

  Kept trying to save me.

  Kept, most annoyingly, believing she could save me.

  She was wrong. I was broken deep down inside, irretrievably damaged. My mother had been able to see it, and had dumped me at the first opportunity. She must have known that eventually I’d start breaking her too. At some point, everyone figured that out.

  Until Lila.

  The truth, now that I was thinking about it, was that she’d refused to be broken. Every time I’d turned away from her or done something she hadn’t expected, she’d shrugged and laughed it off. Shaken her head at me as if she was disappointed… and then tried again the next day. Hell, I’d been trying to push her off for the last week—okay not all the tine, but most of the time—and yet she’d set this whole thing up with me meeting my family, and though it hadn’t gone well, I was sure she’d thought it would fill some of the hole in my soul.

  She wouldn’t have done it if she didn’t think it would help me. Because Lila didn’t have one cruel bone in her body.

  She was made up entirely of sunshine and love.

  And the truth was…

  God, the truth was, I didn’t need this trash family. I didn’t need the mom who’d deserted me or the brother I’d never known but who was evidently just as horrible as my mother. I didn’t need them to make up for what they’d done to me when I was a kid. I might have needed my mom to save me back then, but these days?

  These days, I realized, I needed someone like the girl who was running away from me right now.

  I needed a girl who had seen me for exactly what I was, looked right through me and seen the truth, and started trying to help me from the moment she met me. I needed a girl who’d looked at me like she knew exactly what was wrong… and had taken my hand and tried to understand how she could help.

  I needed someone who loved me so much that she hadn’t given up on me no matter how much I’d pushed her away.

  And for the first time in my life, I thought that person might actually want me back.

  If I could figure out a way to convince her that she’d finally reached me.

  If I could get back to her before she cut me out of her life the way I’d just told her to.

  LILA

  It didn’t take me as long to get home as I would have expected.

  I’d had to drive Anna and Matt back to the hotel, of course, but that was easy when it was just twenty minutes away. Rivers, I’d left where he was. He’d told me not to bother with him, more or less, and for once I was taking him at his word. I’d spent weeks now thinking that he couldn’t be serious when he said he was no good and that I had to leave him alone. I’d intentionally ignored the times when he walked out on me or didn’t show up. Pushed me away like I was someone he didn’t really want or need.

  I’d built such a thick skin that at this point I was basically a turtle. Or some other slightly more sexy reptile.

  But right now…

  I’d looked into his eyes and seen that he was serious about not wanting me around, and I was woman enough to admit when I’d been defeated. I couldn’t get through to him no matter how much sunshine and love I lobbed at him, and it was time I admitted that.

  Time I start taking care of myself rather than trying to take care of him.

  I left Anna and Matt at the hotel, both of them still asking questions I didn’t answer, told Anna to gather my things and bring them home with her when she could manage it, and then took off down the highway for Nashville, my heart wanting only one thing: my home and my family. The safety I’d always found there. And my childhood bed, where I hoped I could stay for several days, to let my heart recover. I needed space to breathe and build myself back up, and there was only place to do that sort of thing safely.

  So that was where I was going.

  And as far as Rivers went?

  He wasn’t my problem anymore. I had to stop making him my problem. Because he wasn’t ready or willing to be saved.

  The drive took me several hours, and I spent most of it singing my heart out to songs on the radio. The noise and lyrics let me turn my brain off and that was the most welcome relief in the world. When I flew into the driveway and hit the brakes my mother came running out, took one look at my face, and pulled me in for the hug I so desperately needed… then ushered me into the room I’d always had in the house—and always would have—and told me to lay down and sleep. She’d make me breakfast—or lunch, or dinner—when I got up.

  I fell into bed, closed my eyes, and willed myself into a Rivers-free sleep for the first time in three weeks.

  I was up and eating breakfast—even though it was 4 in the afternoon—when the ruckus started.

  It began with several cars screeching around the turn two blocks down, one after the other. They were making enough noise that my mother and I both looked up and frowned. We lived in a quiet residential neighborhood where no one drove quickly or honked their horns. No one had ever turned that corner going fast enough for their tires to squeal on the pavement. When two more cars turned the corner in the same way, my mother and I glanced at each other and got up from the table. We made our way quickly to the door and threw it open, our eyes on the driveway.

  I’d barely taken my first step out onto the front stoop when the first car came to a jerking stop in the street outside our gate. Another one appeared, and then another one, and in moments there were ten cars stopped right in front of our house, the tires of one or two of them smoking with how quickly they’d stopped.

  What in the hell was going on here? Our neighbors were going to kill us!

  I was getting ready to look right and left to see whether old Mrs. Oleander had come out of her house to lecture us yet when the first person stepped out of the car right in front of us.

  Rivers Shine.

  Followed by Matt and Anna, who was looking at me like she thought I might rush right down the walkway and strangle her.

  People started climbing out of the other cars then, all of them looking way more excited, and it took me about ten seconds to realize they were all carrying cameras. Cameras that started flashing a moment later.

  Pictures.

  Rivers had brought the press. To my house. Where my family lived.

  That was out of bounds. His deal was with me, not my family, and I was pretty sure that deal had ended the moment I left the tour, which meant he was breaking the rules just by being here. With the press.

  How the hell did he even know where I lived?

  My eyes snapped back to Anna, who looked even more guilty.

  Right. Anna had told him.

  Why?

  I turned my gaze finally to the man in question, feeling like I’d been punched in the gut, and found him rushing up the walkway, an actual bouquet of sunflowers in his hand. That was…

  Okay that was weird.