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A hotel employee serviced my room while I was showering, so everything is where it is meant to beexceptmy songbook.
Laken wouldn’t have taken it again, would he?
He couldn’t be so cruel. River said he cares about the people he loves, so why would he hurt me twice in one week?
I freeze when I realize how deranged my inner monologue is.
Laken doesn’t love me.
He hardly knows me.
I’m the only fool carrying a torch for someone who hurt me.
My limbs harden further when a snippet of a memory smacks into me as fast as a bolt of lightning brightening the sky.
You mean too fucking much to me to sit back and watch you fall.
Another revelation quickly follows the first.
You’re scared of falling because you think no one will be there to catch you.Lyrics flood me when the remainder of Laken’s promise is unearthed.That might have been true a week ago, but it isn’t anymore.
The memories slowly trickling into my mind are foggy but clear enough for me to slant my head to the pillow I lay on last night.
The surge of euphoria thickening my veins tells me I don’t need to search my songbook when I find it safely tucked under my pillow, but I can’t help but check.
Laken made the first song I’d penned in over a year better. He added the beat it needed without overwhelming the lyrics.
He made it a Nicole Reed original hit.
Regretfully the only musical compositions in my songbook are the ones I placed there, but mercifully they push another memory to the forefront of my mind.
This is what you should be working on, Nicole. This is what your audience wants to hear. It’s what they deserve.
“This is what they deserve,” I quote, my voice unhindered by the nerves it hasn’t been without the past two weeks. “So it’s what Imustgive them.”
* * *
“Nicole, over here!” River waves me into the living room bustling with the road crew we’re about to spend the next several weeks with on tour.
“Sorry I’m late. I was writing.” The glee in my voice can’t be missed.
The crew is too busy chatting amongst themselves to give my excuse any thought. The only one who pays attention is Laken. He’s hogging one-third of the only sofa not overflowing with employees of Knox Records.
“I saved you a seat.” River guides me to the three-seater couch I just mentioned. “If you’ll sit, we’ll start proceedings.”
It could be my imagination or the dozens of loved-up lyrics I just wrote down, but I’m confident the gap between Laken’s knees expands when River plops me into the seat next to him.
A surge of excitement runs through me.
Once my thigh is butted to Laken’s, River drags Bella onto a makeshift stage before shifting his eyes to the person I should have known was his brother.
River looks at Laken in a way he’s never looked at Knox.
He truly loves him with everything he has.
“Ready?”
River waits for Laken to give him the thumbs-up before he and Bella reenact a scene I’m certain I’ve seen before.
