Playing Autumn (Breathe Rockstar Romance Book 1) (18 page)

“God, Haley, keep doing that, fuck—”

She was riding him, she realized, and her hips moved faster, finding that friction, feeling that throbbing inside her, and he pumped up harder to meet her wherever she was planning to go. She was breathless, and lightheaded, but he felt
so good
, so fucking better than anything. Her hips worked harder until finally, almost as a surprise, she came with a shudder, panting breathlessly, hanging on to those shoulders for dear life.

“Haley. God. I’m almost—” And then he allowed himself to let go, several strokes later, his body quietly, violently shaking as he came inside the condom, inside her.

She hung on to him like this, relishing the sound of his breathing.

Chapter 21

Saturday

Oliver began to understand why he had so few friends as a teenager. It was hard to inflict this kind of irritable “genius” onto the world and expect to be liked. Or understood even. If he had been in these students' shoes,
he
would be on his own case, asking, “So what was your last hit again?”

What was making the experience bearable, exciting even, was that Kari and John were now willing to listen to him. Last night he had told them that they
should
go for Bon Jovi if they wanted to. He’d be willing to help them, and they’d turn out something as unexpected as their
Hot N Cold
. They’d be the talk of the festival. The siblings were stoked. Mr. Bolton had come up behind him as they discussed this, offering a nod and a fist bump, and Oliver was fine with that simple acknowledgement. It was all he needed.

He couldn't do this though, for real. It was going to be depressing.

At breakfast, Victoria dropped by his table, looking friendlier than the last time they saw each other.

“So, Cabrera, your kids did great last night,” she said. “I'm sorry about being a pain about the other things. Do whatever you're doing. Don't let my stress cramp your style.”

It was nice of her to apologize, but Oliver was surprised that she did it anyway. Then he remembered that this was how people were back home. Nicer. He had forgotten how certain courtesies were expected, even if they were never demanded. “I'm sure your way gets things done around here. Don't worry about me.”

“I know, but I have to remember that you're all artists, and shit. You all love this, and why think that anyone's less dedicated than anyone else? Or that you’ll all respond to the same kind of discipline.” She plopped down on the empty seat beside him and glanced around, her ponytail swishing around with her head. “But that’s not all we have to talk about. Do I have to warn you about my friend? Or warn my friend about you?”

Oliver wondered what Victoria would say about Haley that he would consider a fair warning and bring him down from the high of last night.

“I'm a good guy, I promise,” Oliver said. “And you can ask my grandmother, she’ll tell you how good I am.”

The corner of Victoria's mouth curved up. “Right, use the grandmother card again.”

“What's the deal with Logan though?” he said. “The way Haley talks about him, they're over. But it’s not over?”

Victoria frowned a little and gave him a look. “I don't know what to tell you.”

“He's either a jerk, or not a jerk. I need confirmation of one or the other.”

“No, you don't get it,” she said, sighing. “Logan is...he's been the guy for her. If you knew her long enough, you might be happy if they end up together.”

“So people are okay with the cheating, then.”

“She told you about that? Well, yes, some people might be okay with that. If you're the kind of person who thinks that Logan growing up is the only thing that has to happen to make this all come together.”

What a strange set of circumstances for people to consider better for someone. Was it because they were rooted to this place and had to make the best of it? He hadn’t thought that way in…ever. There was always an escape hatch somewhere, he knew. “So everyone means well, but they don't think that she deserves better.”

Victoria smiled and patted his head like he was a hamster. “What would be 'better'? That she join the dating circus again? That she be your groupie for a weekend?”

“I was beginning to think you were on my side on this.”

“Oh, I'm on my friend's side, if there are sides,” Victoria said. “I know she doesn't want Logan back, and I think taking him back is stupid. But I don't know, maybe there's a stupider decision?”

“You invited me here,” Oliver said, confused all of a sudden.

“I invite you every year because she loves your music, and I thought it would make her happy. I didn’t think that Logan would be planning to make a move. Didn’t think she’d lose her job this weekend too. So yeah. That's the situation. It could get messed up.”

Sounded exactly like the thing he told himself not to do to her life. “You have a point there.”

“I'm only saying it because it might not mean anything to you. You have to know what's happening, what's going to happen when you leave.”

“When she leaves. She's leaving too.”

“Yeah, but this is home. She's always going to be able to come back here.”

Or they were always planning on welcoming her back, once she gave up on whatever path she was on. Oliver knew the feeling. It was easier on him, probably, because home was no longer a city or an address to him, but for a second he knew what Haley was afraid of. He at least had no such safety net, no chorus telling him not to fly out so far. He fell harder, sure, but he probably had more fun. Sometimes that was comforting.

“Apart from that,” Victoria said, changing her tone, “You seem to have gotten through to the Ball siblings. A little bit. I don’t think they’ll survive as a brother-sister act for very long though.”

“I think this weekend’s making that clear to both of them.”

“That’s what I’m here for. Clarity.” She smiled and scanned the room, probably deciding which fire to put out next.

Victoria was a good friend.

***

“That’s not going to work.”

“Maybe we need to adjust the—”

“No, I’ve heard you, and I’m telling you that it’s not going to work.”

This was what Oliver happened to hear when he entered the practice room that he was still sharing with Trey. Kari and John were set up for rehearsals but were already getting the lecture.

“Oliver’s helping us out on this,” Kari said, her voice getting louder as she saw him approach.

“It doesn’t matter if he’s helping you or not,” Trey said, “It doesn’t sound good. At all.”

Oliver needed more coffee if he was going to have to deal with this. Or something stronger.

“Is there a problem?” he asked, hating that he sounded like an older brother trying to get everyone in line. “Leave them alone, Trey.”

Trey looked at him square in the face and then took a deep breath. “Fine,” he said, his tone strangely low. “I was simply giving them my professional opinion, but you do what you want. They’re
your
students.” He faced the other corner of the room where his student was, turning his back on the others. “Ash, I couldn’t hear you at all—you let your nerves get to you. You didn’t do any of my relaxation techniques?”

“
Relaxation techniques,” Oliver muttered. “I think everyone knows how to breathe,” he said louder. “No need to teach them. Look, this is what John wants to do today, and Kari is going to be supporting him.”

Trey’s shoulders went up and the “relaxed” voice turned up a notch higher. “It’s a waste of precious time in front of important people. Trust me on this.”

“We kind of want to do it Oliver’s way,” Kari said.

“Of course you want to do it his way, he’s telling you what you want to hear.”

Oliver’s lungs flared, that old familiar surge of adrenaline kicking in. This kid was kidding, right? Trey couldn’t possibly know what he was doing.

“What are you saying, Lewis?” Oliver said. He reached for the chair nearest him and gripped it to keep himself anchored to something. “Not everyone wants to be a copy of you.”

“And no one wants to end up like you, Cabrera.”

Very quickly, in one region of Oliver’s mind, this scene played out differently. It was like he was twenty-one again and itching to “express himself” onto anyone who was dumb enough to say the wrong thing. He scanned Trey’s build and muscle mass and decided that while the guy could dance, he probably couldn’t fight. Not that Oliver’s brand of fighting required any knowledge of anything; he pretty much just threw fists. When you throw fists, the guy who punches first has the advantage. Then follow it up until the other guy starts crying.

At the same time, he remembered where he was, and what he didn’t have today that he had when he was twenty-one.

Everything.

Well, he had a thing or two. But not much.

Everyone else in the room was quiet, barely breathing, expecting him to snap back. But then the door behind him creaked open and Haley popped her head in.

“Is Mia here?” she asked breathlessly. “Have any of you seen Mia?”

“What?” Oliver said, thankful for the interruption.

“Um, I lost her,” Haley said. “Anyway. Excuse me.”

He followed her out of the room and shut the door behind him, and no further words were exchanged, no fists flew, and Trey’s face remained intact.

That showed excellent control on Oliver’s part. For what it was worth.

Chapter 22

Haley once “lost” a student before. It was her first time as a mentor so it wasn’t fun, but as a volunteer who had seen some artist meltdowns, she didn’t think it was that big a deal. The hotel wasn’t so huge, and there were enough people everywhere that it wasn’t easy to disappear. She eventually found twelve-year-old Annie in the second floor bathroom with a bad case of cramps.

She had a feeling that this was not the same thing afflicting Mia. Haley had last seen her at breakfast, hunched over her phone, reading something. She asked what it was, and Mia said, “Some blog about yesterday. I was ‘
forgettable.’
”

“No one’s blogging about the festival,” Haley said. “Not anymore at least. Victoria found the volunteer doing it and kicked her out.”

“Well,
someone
’s still at it!”

“This person couldn’t have been one of us. How are you sure she’s talking about you?”

Apparently the blogger didn’t name her but mentioned “that emo Alanis wannabe” and yeah, no one else fit that description. Haley told her to put the phone down and get something to eat.

But then she wasn’t at practice and didn’t seem to want to pick up any of Haley’s calls—or Victoria’s—either.

Now, Mia was sensitive and all, but she wasn’t likely to do anything drastic, would she?

“You checked her room?” Oliver was asking, falling into step beside her as they went down the hall to the other practice rooms.

“Yeah,” Haley said. “We had housekeeping clean there first, no sign of her.”

“Is she maybe practicing with someone else?”

Haley knocked and peeked into one of the rooms, no luck. “With someone else here? I doubt it. She barely talks to
me,
and I haven’t really seen her talk to anyone. Don’t you have practice of your own?”

He shook his head. “I needed to get some air.”

Oliver looked a little flushed to her, and not in a good way. “Everything all right?”

“One thing at a time.”

Haley’s phone started ringing. It was Victoria.

“I found your girl.” She sounded like she was yelling into the phone. “You’ll have to come out to the street to get her because I’m tied up somewhere else.”

For a second Haley wasn’t sure what Victoria even meant, but she started moving in that direction, nodding silently at Oliver to follow, until it dawned on her—Mia was outside. On the street. Fighting with some Trey Girls.

She wasn’t surprised by the small tent city that had sprung up there, but concern immediately bubbled up when she saw the huddle of teen girls at the very edge of the curb, a hair away from vehicular traffic. A paltry number of muscled guys in black, too few now to handle the expanding Trey Girl city and the disturbance, were keeping them away from actual harm.