In fact, all I heard was silence.

  When I sat up and turned to look, I saw that the stack of speakers I’d been sure was falling was... still standing there, the speakers stacked like they’d always been.

  They hadn’t fallen at all.

  I’d completely overreacted to the idea that Lila might get hurt. And judging from the looks on everyone’s faces, they’d all seen me do it.

  Terrific.

  LILA

  These words weren’t coming out right.

  I wrinkled my nose in frustration and scratched out yet another line of lyrics, frustrated beyond belief. I never had trouble with lyrics. They were my thing. Sure, I could write music with the best of them. I’d never had any trouble coming up with a tune and making it dance to my needs. But lyrics were something altogether different. Those were like magic for me. I’d have a thought that I needed something—some line or emotion—and that something would just appear in my head, like someone else had written it and sent it right into my brain. The words would come flowing out like I’d always known what they were and just had to reach out and grab them to make a song. The hard part had always been deciding which tune to fit them into.

  But right now, I couldn’t write anything. I couldn’t come up with good emotion or words that fit together the way they should. Everything I wrote felt like I was back in the sixth grade trying to write my first love song when I didn’t even know how being in love felt.

  Something was wrong.

  I pushed back from the table and pulled my guitar into my lap. Maybe if I worked on some tunes instead, the language part of my brain would free itself up.

  I strummed the strings and closed my eyes, letting myself sink into the chords that had been my home for years, and started plucking out a tune. It wasn’t complicated and it definitely wasn’t original—it belonged to Olivia, actually—but as I played, I felt the music work its way into my blood, and then into my imagination. And I was able to start thinking in what I’d come to term ‘lyrics language.’ I started seeing the world and everything in it in music and lyrics rather than regular old English. Everything was colored with notes.

  With emotions and the words that described them.

  There it was, I thought, relief flowing through me. There was the piece of me that understood this sort of thing. I hadn’t seen her in days—not since we’d started following this tour—and I’d been worried that she’d decided to fuck off and take a break when I needed her most.

  “What are you doing?”

  My eyes snapped open, the spell broken, and I looked up to see someone standing in front of me. Not just any someone, either. The someone I was pretending to date—and who had been studiously avoiding me for the most part, except for when some handy photographer was around.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  He dropped into the seat across from me and sighed. “Can’t sleep.”

  Then he took in my guitar, the half-eaten blueberry pie in front of me, and the sheet of paper next to that. His eyes traveled over my body and I remembered—belatedly—that I was dressed in my pajamas. Plaid pajama pants and a t-shirt that was at least a size too small.

  Things I almost never let anyone else see.

  I felt the flush start at my chest and rise rapidly up my neck and into my face, and I watched as he watched me blush.

  Which just made the blush even worse.

  God damn him and those stupid, brooding eyes of his. I was sitting here trying to write music and he, what, thought he’d come in and stare at me like he wanted to eat me up? Where the fuck did he get off?

  “What do you want?” I asked, injecting as much ice into my voice as I could manage. “There aren’t any photographers in here to take pictures of us, you know. You’re in here with me all by yourself.”

  He leaned forward on his elbows, let his eyes rake up and down my body once more, and whispered, “That’s what you think, sunshine girl. But you never know where the reporters might turn up.”

  He reached out, grabbed my fork, and took a bite of my blueberry pie.

  “That’s mine,” I said hoarsely.

  He shrugged. “I figured. Mind if I have a bite?”

  “Little late to ask for permission, isn’t it?” My eyes flicked down to his mouth, which was currently savoring my blueberry pie, and the heat in my face spread rapidly to the rest of my body.

  A man eating blueberry pie should not make you feel like you were about to burst into flames. Eating blueberry pie like it was the sexiest thing you’d ever tasted should be illegal.

  Rivers’ mouth curled up like he knew exactly what I was thinking and he leaned back, releasing me from the hold he’d had on me. “I can order my own if you like. Is there anyone even left in the kitchen?”

  I gazed out over the hotel’s small café—empty at this hour—and nodded to the kitchen. “The chef’s still back there. He’s the one who brought me the pie.”

  Rivers followed my gaze, then got up and strolled in that direction, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched like he didn’t expect to have any luck with his request. Moments later he was back with his own slice of pie, though. He cut the tip off and slid it onto my plate, then gave me a quick flash of a smile.

  “To pay you back.”

  “Oh,” I said, surprised. “Right. I mean... I wasn’t worried about it.”

  “But I wouldn’t want you getting the wrong idea. I’m not the kind of guy who eats someone else’s pie and doesn’t pay them back.”

  Well that statement left me with a number of questions. I wondered if I was allowed to ask any of them. We hadn’t talked, not really, since that first night, when we’d told each other a bunch of secrets in what now felt like an incredibly childish game. Since then, we’d been forced together in a fake dating scheme orchestrated by his agent and told that we both had to behave ourselves if we were going to get what we wanted.

  A spot on the tour for him.

  A contract for me.

  It wasn’t exactly a situation rife with romance.

  But that didn’t mean we couldn’t be friends.

  I picked up my fork and took another bite of his pie. When he raised an eyebrow, I shrugged. “You take a bite of my pie, I take a bite of yours. What are you doing down here, Rivers?”

  He tipped his head at me. “I couldn’t sleep. I always have trouble when we’re on the road. I get so riled up for the shows themselves and then have trouble settling back down.”

  Okay, I hadn’t been expecting so much honesty. But now that I was looking at him, I realized that the mask he usually wore—that cocky, uncaring expression he turned on the world—had fallen.

  Leaving the lonely boy I’d seen that first night.

  I reached out to take another bite of pie but he blocked me with his fork.

  “My turn,” he said. He reached for my pie, took a small bite, and put it in his mouth, chewing thoughtfully as he watched me. When he spoke, it was a question. “Why are you down here, sitting in a mostly dark restaurant that I suspect the chef kept open just for you, with nothing but a guitar to keep you company?”

  “Are we playing this game again?” I asked. “A question for a question?”

  A soft shrug from Rivers. “Unless you’re going to run away.”

  Unless I was going to run away.

  Not likely.

  Because I wasn’t sure I could run from this guy. I didn’t know if I could get away from the magnetic hold he had over me.

  I didn’t know if I wanted to—despite the fact that he’d spent most of the last three days acting like I was the kid sister he didn’t want around.

  “I don’t run from my problems,” I said. “And I’m game if you are.”

  RIVERS

  I woke up on the couch in my suite, and that seemed...

  Well, wrong.

  I never slept on the couch. It was too short for me, to start with, and insanely uncomfortable. This particular couch had one of those raised designs, too, and when I moved, I felt like the design had somehow imprinted itself into the skin of my arm.

  What the hell was I doing on the couch in my suite?

  I opened my eyes and stared blearily across the room at the bed, wondering how I’d ended up here and not there. This didn’t seem right. The bed was only like five steps away. Why would I have slept here instead of—

  Someone rolled over in the bed, groaning, and I sat straight up and stared. Who the hell was in my bed? And why? I stood up and walked in that direction, trying desperately to remember, and saw...

  Oh God.

  A flash of red hair. A nose covered in freckles. Eyes that were closed right now but that would be bright green when they opened up.

  Fuck.

  I tried to remember what we’d done last night—tried to remember if there had been alcohol involved—but all I got was the memory of us in the restaurant. I’d gone in because I couldn’t sleep and there’d still been a light in there. I’d thought I’d get some coffee and maybe ice cream or pie. Take my my mind down a notch or two. But when I walked in, I’d found Lila playing her guitar with her eyes closed. She’d been as beautiful as an angel in that moment and I’d drifted toward her without meaning to.

  We’d spent most of the night talking. Playing that stupid question and answer game. We’d gone through nearly an entire pie together and by the time we came upstairs, it had been early morning rather than late night.

  She hadn’t been able to get into her room. She hadn’t had a key and Anna had been asleep.

  I’d told her she could have my bed and I’d take the couch.

  There hadn’t been anything more to it than that. She’d fallen asleep immediately and though I’d stayed awake for what felt like hours, listening to her breathe, I’d eventually drifted off, feeling more peaceful than I could remember feeling in... ever.

  At that moment, her eyes came open and she stared at me, horrified. I watched her face as she searched her own memories, looking for the reason she was here, and saw the relief when she remembered that we hadn’t done anything but talk and sleep.

  Then her eyes went to the clock on the bedside table and opened up even further. She launched herself out of bed, still fully dressed, and started searching for her shoes.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, shocked.

  She turned and pointed at the clock. “Rivers, it’s 11 in the morning! We overslept!”

  I looked at the clock, still confused. “Overslept for what?”

  She turned on me, looking like she couldn’t believe how stupid I was. “The tour, Rivers! The schedule had everyone leaving this morning at 10. Which means we’re an hour late for getting our asses on the road!”

  She finally found her shoes, shoved her feet into them, and literally ran out of the room, shouting instructions back at me for calling Taylor and Olivia and letting them know that we were up and getting ready.

  Moments later she was back at my door, her eyes enormous and her fair skin mottled with red.

  “Anna’s not in our room,” she said, her voice shaky.

  “What?” I asked. “Is she downstairs?”

  “No one’s downstairs. No one’s here. I went and asked the receptionist and she said they left. An hour ago.”

  Wait. 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.

  I was 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?

  I grabbed her 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 driving slowly.

  Why were they in such a hurry that they’d left us here? Just because we overslept? That didn’t make any sense.

  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’s talked to you and that you told her everyone has already left. Is that true? The whole tour has already gone?”

  “Th-That’s right, sir,” he stuttered.

  “I’m not a sir,” I said quickly. “Did they happen to say why they left without waking me up first? Or what they thought I should do about it?”

  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 a note?

  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.

  They’d left us here together on purpose.

  So that we’d have to find our own way to the next town.

  LILA

  “I can’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.

  “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.”

  I turned to look up at him, shocked. “You can believe that the guys in your band, plus your roadies, plus your techs, plus your agent, all left you sleeping in your hotel room rather than waking you up to get on the bus, where you could have gone back to sleep?”

  He gave me a very wry, very sarcastic look. “Of course I can. Welcome to the music industry, Lila. They’ll do anything if they think it’ll make for good publicity. I’m more surprised they talked Anna into leaving you.”

  I was surprised about that as well, and when we caught up with everyone in the next town, I was planning to have a conversation with her about that. And the fact that she’d taken my car with her.

  I didn’t know what her motives were, but they weren’t good enough. We’d never deserted each other, no matter what, and I wasn’t feeling very happy about her having deserted me now—with Rivers Shine as my only companion.

  He was right about the publicity angle, though. We’d been dodging paparazzi since we found out that we were stuck in town without a ride to the next stop, and it was pretty obvious that they were looking for us. They knew we were still here, and there was only one possible reason for that. Taylor—or someone—had tipped them off.

  Look, I could see what she was doing. I was supposed to be dating Rivers, and it would be easy to tell the press that we’d been in his room and had overslept and that the tour managers had decided they didn’t want to wait around for us to wake up. They’d thought it would be better if we came along on our own.

  Funny, even.

  “I’m sure they thought it was funny,” Rivers said suddenly, like he was reading my thoughts.

  I snorted. “Sure. Being stuck in a town we don’t know without any mode of transportation is hilarious.”

  He elbowed me in the ribs, and when I glanced up at him he was actually smirking. “Come on, Lila. This could be fun.”

  Fun. Right. I turned and looked back into the street and went over the plan once again. We didn’t have a car and this little town didn’t have a rental place. We didn’t have time to wait for the only bus that came through town, and even if we had, neither of us wanted to stick around, hiding in the hotel room and waiting for it.

  So Rivers had come up with an alternative.

  “Now,” he muttered, and we went dashing into the street, heading right for the red truck I’d just been staring at.

  The plan was simple. In theory. Get to the truck, get it open, and then wait as Rivers hot-wired the thing so we could get out of town.

  “I still can’t believe you talked me into this,” I hissed as we came to a stop next to the truck. “I can’t believe you know how to hot-wire a car.”

  He put his hand to the truck’s handle and pressed one finger against his lips. “Quiet. If that gets around, you’ll ruin my reputation.”

  That had me rolling my eyes, but I could also feel a smile starting to tug at my lips. No, I’d never hung out with anyone who could hot-wire a car before, but I had to admit that there was something about it that felt... exciting. Forbidden.

  Sexy.

  The fact that it was Rivers doing the hot-wiring—in theory—probably helped.

  He gave me a quick smile, then pulled a length of wire from his back pocket. A quick movement and the wire was inserted into the slot that held the window and Rivers was sliding it around, looking for something. He frowned, though, and put his hand on the handle of the truck.

  Then he opened it up.

  “The thing wasn’t locked at all,” he said, surprised. “Who the hell doesn’t lock their truck when they park it on the street?”