WILDER: A Rockstar Romance by Vivian Lux

spent all his money that month just to get me another amp and lessons with the voice instructor at the music school. I wasn't about to ask him to buy me running shoes as well.
    Besides, I intended to fix this on my own.
    It was one of those mornings where heat hung in the air like a promise, but for now, the weak sun kept it at bay. I stretched a little, feeling the blood start to pump through my limbs, and felt that dogged determination that I always felt when I had a new project at hand.
    Our house was the shittiest house on the block. There was no getting around this. My dad didn't have time to do maintenance, and neither Rane nor I could be bothered with anything more than just making sure the crap didn't get piled all the way to the rafters. But the houses on the rest of the block, those were actually pretty. Each one of them tried to outdo each other, whether by their own hand or, more often, with professional landscapers hired to cart away anything that died and had the nerve to be unsightly.
    The prettiest house on the block belonged to the Sawyers next door.
    In our neighborhood, filled with the disease of one-upmanship, not calling attention to yourself drew the most attention. Scarlett moved like she didn't want to be seen, along the edges of your sight, never fully stepping into your line of vision where you could actually confront her head on. That had been my experience of her.
    Until that morning, as I stretched in our broken-up driveway and looked across our pitted, brown lawn to see her dead on.
    She was standing on her porch, stretching, dressed in running shorts that rode just a little too high on her thighs. Those thighs, because that's where my horny teenaged eye went immediately, were long and coltish, like a gazelle's, and she moved like one as she stretched, light and easy, her talent for not calling attention to herself making her movements short, controlled and fucking beautiful.
    I stopped in my stretching and smiled appreciatively, taking in her height, tall for a girl, her tits, small but perfectly round, and especially the flatness of her sixteen-year-old belly and the thick rope of honey blonde hair that swung in a long ponytail as she moved.
    She looked up from bending at the waist. I smiled, then I waved.
    She drew herself up and tossed that rope of hair behind her shoulder. And then she began to run.
    Scarlett Sawyer ran like a gazelle, a cheetah. She moved with an easy feline grace, her feet barely touching the ground as she rapidly put distance between the two of us.
    I had a new goal, a new project to work on.
    I was going to catch her.
    My first day out as a runner kicked my ass. I was man enough to admit it. She lapped me, and then some, and when I finally arrived back on our block, red-faced and wheezing, she was standing in her drive with her hands on her hips.
    But she smiled at me, and that's what counted. That's when it all started.
    I made it a point to go out the same time the next day. And the next. We started running together. Well, not together. Not at first.
    First, I had to catch her.
    That's how it started with Scarlett. With the literal thrill of the chase.
    I opened my eyes, and for some reason, I was smiling.
    I chased her down back then. She always ran faster than me, until I fixed that. I worked my ass off until I could catch up with her, get to know her, bring her around again.
    Wasn't this just more of the same?

Chapter 14
    Scarlett
     
    The biggest, loudest band in rock 'n' roll is asleep, rocking gently inside the metal spaceship that carries them swiftly down the highway.
    Inside this great metal beast, all is quiet, but I know it won't be for long. The Wilder brothers like their music like they like their life—loud and chaotic. I know this firsthand, having grown up next door to the chaos.
    I flipped my notebook shut and stared out of the window. The rain that had been threatening all morning was finally falling, beading up in a light gray mist that obscured the