I almost laughed, but stopped myself right in time. “And they believed you?”

  He leaned in and dropped his voice. “It was a small town. They didn’t get much traffic. They were desperate for a sale, and probably bored out of their minds.”

  “So you literally learned how to play guitar by learning the finger positions on a piece of paper and then practicing those motions on guitars you pretended you were going to buy. Even though you didn’t have any money to buy them,” I interpreted, allowing myself to look incredulous. “How long did it take you?”

  “About three months on the paper. Anther three in the store.”

  I whistled softly. “Six months to teach yourself how to play the guitar in the most backward way possible. You actually are a phenom.”

  He shrugged, looking partially humble and partially impressed with himself. “I mean, there’s a reason I have that reputation.”

  “Yeah right. It would have been easy for your publicist to put that out there and make it a reputation. It didn’t have to be true for that to happen.”

  “But it would have been hard to maintain if I then got on stage and didn’t play my own music,” he pointed out. “Even harder if I hadn’t been able to go on any show or to any live venue and make shit up without any warning.”

  “Okay, that’s fair,” I allowed. “I mean I always believed you were a phenom. I wasn’t questioning it.”

  “You were absolutely questioning it!” he said on a huff. “You just said it could have been my publicist making shit up!”

  “I said it could have!” I protested. “I didn’t say I believed that!”

  He scoffed. “You basically said you didn’t believe I could actually play the guitar.”

  “Okay, that’s an out-and-out lie,” I said.

  “Whatever. Now I see what you actually think of me. So fair’s fair. Give me one of your childhood stories. How did you learn to play guitar?”

  I almost didn’t want to tell him. “My parents wanted us all to have hobbies. So when I decided my hobby was going to be guitar, and two of my sisters wanted to do the same, we got lessons.”

  “That easy? Did you go to a school for it or something?”

  “No. The teacher came to our house.”

  He looked shocked. “Really? Right to your house? How often?”

  “Three tines a week,” I said quietly, feeling somehow guilty for admitting it, like I had done something wrong by having the upbringing I had.

  Now it was his turn to whistle, though his face had turned sort of wistful. “So that’s how it is to live in a house where the parents actually love you.”

  Okay, what?

  “Huh?”

  His face shuttered as quickly as it had opened and the wry, sarcastic expression replaced the dreamy look he’d been wearing a moment earlier. “Nothing. Just interesting to hear how the other half lives.” His mouth turned up into a smirk. “So I guess that means I worked harder to learn guitar than you did.”

  “Excuse me? I worked really hard to learn guitar!”

  He rolled his eyes. “Yeah right. You probably practiced for about two weeks before you could do anything you wanted on it.”

  “Which would mean I’m probably better at it than you,” I shot back.

  He swung his guitar between us and scooted so close to me I could feel the brush of his skin against mine, our hands on our instruments exact mirrors of each other. And then he leaned in, his face filling my vision until he was all I could see. His dark eyes. Those thick lashes. Incredibly lush lips.

  I jerked my gaze up from his lips to his eyes and caught my breath. I hadn’t seem him smolder like this since the time we made out in the hallway. I’d been in my pajamas then, and desperately aware of how bare my legs were.

  Those legs were bare now, too, and burning with awareness.

  “Care to prove that?” he whispered.

  My mind stuttered. Prove what? What had we been talking about?

  Oh, who was better at guitar.

  “Any time,” I whispered. “You don’t scare me, Rivers Shine.”

  Instead of answering, he ducked and captured my mouth, his lips hot and wet and demanding, and I opened for him and let him in without thinking about it, my body reacting without any help on my brain’s part. God, he was intense. Like kissing someone who was actually on fire. I’d forgotten what he did to me when he was this close, and the groan he forced from me was pure need and desire.

  And the moment I let it out of my mouth and into his, everything started moving at warp speed. His guitar was thrown to the side and mine jerked out of my hands, tossed to the ground. His hands were on my arms, running up my shoulders and then into my hair like they had a mind of their own. He grasped the threads of my hair and pulled, forcing my head back and my mouth open. His tongue delved swiftly into my mouth, and it was all heat and demands and pure, overwhelming desire.

  “Lila,” he whispered in a breath against my lips.

  I didn’t know whether I could respond at all. The heat of him, the demand that I respond, had stolen my breath away, and my voice was nowhere to be found. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t understand. I couldn’t see anything but him.

  I didn’t know what we were doing, but I knew I wasn’t going to stop it. I’d waited a week for him to touch me again, been into the depths of despair at his sudden absence from my life, and now here he was right in front of me, his lips on mind and his body so close I could feel him vibrating with need.

  He reached down, grabbed the backs of my legs, and jerked, pulling me smoothly underneath him, and before I could truly comprehend it he was yanking my skirt up around my waist. Laying my legs even more bare in front of him. He pulled back and stared into my eyes, his eyebrows suddenly creased with concern like he’d just realized that maybe he was taking things too quickly.

  “Is this okay?” he whispered hoarsely.

  The way his voice broke told me there was only one possible answer.

  “I mean you’ve gone from barely speaking to me to basically mauling me in the space of an afternoon,” I replied breathlessly. “What’s not okay about that?”

  I caught the quick glint of a smile—barely a glimmer of it in his eyes—and then he was back on me, his lips fire on mine and his skin burning against me. And I was both floating and falling, my brain incapable of understanding how this was happening and my body telling me that it didn’t matter whether my brain understood it or not.

  I was back in Rivers’ arms.

  Nothing else mattered.

  He slipped a hand down between us and then between my legs, and with a quick movement pulled my panties to the side. When he reared back to look at me again, his face was wicked. He was finished asking questions, now. He knew exactly what he wanted, and he was going to take it.

  I bit my lip, trying to get ready for what was to come, but still wasn’t prepared when his fingers dipped suddenly into the wetness between my legs, spreading me and feasting on how badly I wanted him. I cried out and bowed up off the couch, every ounce of my focus coming to rest between my legs, and when he spread me further and slipped two fingers inside me I nearly sobbed with the building tension. I bit down on his shoulder, unable to stop myself, and he groaned.

  “Bite me like that and you’re going to leave a mark,” he grunted, sliding his fingers in deeper.

  I bit him harder.

  And, like that was some sort of sign, he slipped his fingers out of me, stood up, and yanked his jeans off. He was hard and ready, his cock bobbing with desire, and I whimpered slightly. Some part of me was trying to remind my heart that this wasn’t a good idea and that I definitely shouldn’t be agreeing to it. I didn’t know what was going on with Rivers lately but he’d been the opposite of forthcoming and this situation was basically guaranteed to break me.

  And fuck it all, I didn’t care. When he came back to me I welcomed him with open arms, and when he murmured something about me being a bad girl for having bitten him, I allowed myself to grin.

  When he slid his cock inside of me, not stopping until he was fully buried, I let myself close my eyes and tip my head up, reveling in the sensation of having him again and trying to memorize every last inch of him.

  Because I might not understand what he was doing, and I might not know how he really felt about me. But I didn’t think I’d ever have the strength to say no to Rivers Shine when he wanted me.

  Half an hour later, he pulled himself off me and stared at me, his chest heaving with breathlessness. We were both covered in sweat and I was still floating somewhere above us, my mind on the way he’d slammed into me again and again and again like he was trying to prove something.

  To either himself or me.

  I fought to focus on his face, though, and bring myself back into the present moment.

  “So I’m thinking maybe we play this song at the show tonight. What do you think?”

  It took me several long, tense moments to understand what the hell he was even talking about. Then it snapped back into place. Oh. The song we’d been working on before he jumped at me.

  Right.

  “The song? Yes, sure,” I breathed. “We just have to finish it first.”

  He nodded and rose up, sliding back into his jeans and then sitting down and scribbling on the sheets of paper like nothing had happened between us. I watched him… and tried to get my feet back under me.

  So I’d just let him have me on the couch of his bedroom, and now we’d be performing this song tonight.

  Sure. Terrific. I mean I’d agreed to it.

  And I’d known when I did it that I was agreeing to a whole lot more than just the song. This whole afternoon had been about more than that, and yet here I was going along for the ride. It was a no good, very bad idea. I’d already seen where this road led, and when it came to Rivers Shine, it would be straight to heartbreak. He took me flying up into the clouds and then dumped me the moment he started to feel too much.

  I knew it. I’d experienced it too many times to pretend he didn’t.

  And yet I was making that same mistake again. I wasn’t even trying to hide it from myself.

  But I was hoping that this time, it might be different.

  This time, I might be able to keep him around long enough to actually reach him. Because I’d seen how much he wanted me when he kissed me. I’d felt the tension in his muscles and the need vibrating through him.

  He wasn’t as finished with me as he’d been pretending.

  I just had to figure out how to reach him.

  RIVERS

  God, Lila’s voice was heartbreaking. Haunting. Beautiful.

  I’d only heard her do upbeat songs before. I mean yeah, she’d also performed my love song, but even that had a relatively quick tempo. It hadn’t given her time to really stretch into the notes or show her range.

  This song that we’d written did all that. It gave her all the notes she wanted and then some, and her voice was cracking with the emotion it brought out in her.

  My heart was fracturing.

  The story was one that I hadn’t even known we had in us. A girl and boy fall in love, break it off because things aren’t working. But they’re miserable on their own and miss their other halves like they’ve cut off limbs. But the time the song is halfway through they’re trying to find their way back to each other, each of them desperate for the connection they once had. The people around them are telling them they’re better off on their own, that they have to learn to be their own people, but they know they’re dying without the other and that life isn’t going to be worth it if they can’t find each other again.

  By the climax they’ve done that.

  By the end of the song they’re in love and getting their happily ever after, and the final crescendo takes Lila’s voice up and up and up into the end of the song.

  And me? I did harmony on the chorus and in some of the lines and provided the lead guitar. I had a bitching solo halfway through the song. But the lyrics were all her. I’d known as we were writing it that they had to be, not only because they matched her voice but because at the end of the day, the story was hers. Or at least... well, the ending was hers.

  All the breaking? That was what I’d put in there.

  The happy ending? That was something Lila had insisted on, because that was who she was. She believed in love saving everything and being enough. She absolutely thought that if two people loved each other enough that could keep them together. Put them on the same team and make sure they were facing the world as an unbeatable duo. She’d probably never even considered the idea that love might not be enough.

  Or that one person might have more love in their heart than another.

  She’d never had anyone pretend to love her and then walk out on her when she needed them most. Or at least not that I knew of. I couldn’t image that she had. Her outlook was too sunny for that to have happened to her.

  But me? Yeah, I’d seen it.

  I’d lived it.

  Lila’s voice rose higher and higher now as she rode the song toward the finish and I cut in with the harmony on a few words, playing it by ear. The guitars were humming and crescendoing and her voice was sailing through the air while the band behind us did their best to keep up. We hadn’t given them much time to learn the song but they’d done their best and the whole thing was like a tidal wave of sound and emotion and heartbreak.

  And the audience was eating it up. They were staring at Lila like she was a freaking goddess telling them the secret of life, their mouths open and their eyes glassy. She held them in the palm of her hand, in the pocket of her song, and they were willing to do anything she asked of them.

  Then the song ended and they went fucking wild. I mean they lost their ever-loving minds, screaming and jumping up and down and turning to each other and sobbing like they’d just realized how to achieve everlasting life.

  It would have been ridiculous, and I would have been making fun of it, if I hadn’t turned and seen Lila smiling so hard it looked painful, a single tear making its way down her cheek. She turned to me, still grinning, and then ran at me and jumped into my arms, laughing maniacally at the euphoria coursing through the building.

  The audience started screaming even louder at that, like they’d finally got what they’d come for, and I had to laugh. I couldn’t help it. The combination of Lila being so happy and the amount of love and excitement in that building, the reaction of the crowd to the song we’d just written that afternoon and the fact that they were screaming for us... It all hit me like a water balloon full of the feels, and for just a moment I let myself fall into it. Let myself feel all that excitement and glee, the warmth of the girl in my arms and the adrenaline and love rushing through my body.

  For just a moment, I let myself believe that this could be my life. On the stage with Lila at my side, the audience screaming for everything we did and the colors of my world going from gray and black to something a whole lot more technicolor. Falling asleep at night with her by my side and knowing she’d be there in the morning when I opened my eyes. Writing on our days off, getting into the studio, weaving her into the songs we already had.

  Building a family like I’d never known before, and finally, finally being safe.

  And then I put her down and let her take those thoughts with her as she made her way back to the microphone. The audience followed her with their eyes as I knew they would, because this was about her, not me. It was about Lila and Anna, not Lila and Rivers. I’d been her path to success, but that was it. No one really believed I was going to reform my reputation with her at my side. Hell, I was drinking more now than I had been before I met her, it was just for a different reason. I was miserable because I’d seen the light in Lila Potter and realized that I couldn’t reach it.

  I was a man who’d seen the oasis in the desert and then realized that someone else needed the water more than he did. Because I was the guy who people didn’t bother sticking around for. I was the guy who had broken the first home I’d ever had, and then proceeded to break every chance I’d had at a family after that.

  My mother had known she’d be better off without me, and that part had never changed. I was an anchor around a person’s neck. A black hole where there should have been a heart. Even now, I was sinking my band with my behavior.

  They were going to be better off without me.

  Lila was going to be better off without me. Because once I was gone, she wouldn’t have to worry about her contract depending on her acting like she loved me. My band wouldn’t have to depend on their contract dying because I couldn’t pick myself up and keep smiling for the crowds.

  I leave and everyone wins. Everyone but me.

  Luckily, that was a sacrifice I was willing to make.

  LILA

  “Amazing!” Noah shouted, grabbing me up and swinging me in a circle around him. “You had them eating out of your hand! The audience adores you!”

  I laughed and wiggled to be put down, more than a little bit uncomfortable at this particular member of the band manhandling me. He was hot, don’t get me wrong, but he also made Rivers look like a choir boy. Ragged blond hair, eyeliner, and more tattoos than bare skin, Noah also smoked like a chimney and drank enough to knock out any normal human being. I could smell the whiskey on him now and wondered if he was actually coated in it.

  Though I wasn’t going to lie. It was nice to be admired by someone that good-looking.

  “They just liked the song,” I laughed, staring up into his ice-blue eyes.

  He snorted. “They like a lot of songs. They adored that song, and I’m thinking it was because you were singing it.”

  I made a face at him, blowing it off, and turned to look for Anna. She’d been a part of that song too, but I hadn’t seen her since we got off stage. The band had hauled us both to one of the meeting rooms backstage, where we’d found every food you could imagine and way too much alcohol. We’d been eating and drinking—some of us more than others—ever since. This was evidently where the party started.