The Girl in the Love Song (Lost Boys 1)

They both started to go and then Tina stopped, turned. “Oh, I nearly forgot. Your dad called. I guess he hasn’t been able to reach you.”

I froze. The world stopped. I sank deeper in my chair, as if the floor had dropped beneath it. “What did you say?”

Evelyn whirled on Tina. “What did you say?”

Tina recoiled under our scrutiny, her glance darting between us. “Your dad called about twenty minutes ago. Sharon got the message and gave me his number. He wants you to call him back…” She frowned at my deteriorating expression. “Is there a problem?”

Evelyn turned to stare at me, aghast. I’d told her my dad was dead. Because he was, as far as I was concerned. And now he was back, haunting me…

My jaw had gone numb. “You’re sure it’s him?”

“He said his name was Ray Stratton?” Tina bit her lip. “I’m sorry. Are you not close?

“No,” I said. “No, we’re not close.”

Because he’s dead. Dead to me.

“Do you want his number?”

I was aware I was breathing hard, my hands clutching the armrests of the chair. Emotions rampaged through my skull like an avalanche.

“No, I do not want his number. He’s only calling because…he wants something. He saw the Rolling Stone article, maybe. He’s seen my success, and now he wants a piece of it.”

Evelyn recovered her poise and hustled Tina to the door. “Give me the number. I’ll handle this.”

The numbness was spreading, hollowing me out, making me tremble. My vision danced with black spots. Ray Stratton. The name like a baseball bat to my heart.

“Miller!”

Evelyn rushed toward me.

“No,” I said, hardly able to make my lips move. My tongue weighed a thousand pounds. “Tell them…if he calls again, tell him to go to hell… Tell him…”

The black spots widened into a chasm, and then I fell in.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“Hey, V.” Veronica came in the door of our place, her arms laden with groceries.

I looked up from my Physics text and started to uncurl from the couch. “Hey, V,” I replied back with a smile, thinking—not for the first time—the universe had been kind enough to bestow Veronica Meyers on me, to make up for all the people I missed.

Two years older than me, Veronica took me in like an older sister and helped me get the job at Mack’s. We had nothing in common. She was soft-spoken yet blasted old goth metal music with band names like Type O Negative and Motionless in White in our tiny apartment. She had a rotation of older boyfriends that I couldn’t keep track of, while I was a recluse, studying in my room and hardly venturing out to socialize.

“Need some help?”

“I got it,” she said, tossing her dyed-black hair over her shoulder. “I think you’d better stay sitting down. Your man is on the cover of this month’s Rolling Stone.”

“I heard. Can I see?”

Veronica pulled out a magazine from one of the grocery bags and crossed over to me. “I haven’t read it, but the headline is a little alarming.”

She handed me the magazine and a rush of heat flooded me. Miller Stratton, the boy who’d had to pawn his guitar was now on the cover of the biggest rock and roll magazine of all time.

And he looked like he belonged there.

It was a candid photo taken at one of his sold-out concerts. He stood at the edge of the stage where a sea of adoring fans screamed for him, reaching arms clamored for him. An electric guitar hung off his slender frame that had filled out and grown more masculine and defined in the last two years. He wore torn jeans, boots, and a tight t-shirt that clung to his sweat-soaked body, revealing every line of his abs and the broad plains of his chest. His eyes shut, mouth open as he belted into a mic. Leather bands on his wrists highlighted the definition of his forearms, his longish hair falling in his eyes. The perfect image of a rock star.

For a few beautiful, shining moments, he’d been all mine. Now he belonged to the world.