Scratching his chin, Brayden became contemplative. “Let’s see I was a junior in high school. And then we broke up when I was twenty.”

“What happened there?”

Brayden remained silent for a moment. I knew the sordid details from being in the thick of everything with him, but it wasn’t my place to talk about it.

He drew in a ragged breath. “Tom and Grayson had issues with addiction. Lots of alcohol and some drugs. It derailed the entire creative process for them, but they never wanted to include any of my songs. We weren’t getting anywhere on the music scene, and then things just seemed to be spinning out of control personally with them. So I left.”

Giovanni nodded. “Do you ever see or hear from them?”

“Grayson died from an overdose about a year after I left. I think after that, they just dissolved the band.” After looking down at his hands, Brayden shook his head. “No, I don’t hear from any of them. You know, the guilt is hard sometimes. I’ve heard different artists talk about how you have this guilt about making it. Kind of like survivor’s guilt. Like, what was it about me that deserved to make it, but Tom and Grayson didn’t?”

Tapping his pen on his pad, Giovanni smiled. “I think that shows a great depth of character. So many artists lose their hearts and souls with fame and fortune.”

When I tensed at Giovanni’s words, Brayden sighed dejectedly. “Trust me, I went down that road. It wasn’t pretty.”

“We’ll come back to that one in a few minutes. I’m trying to keep to the timeline of your relationship, and I have a feeling that comes during the part when the two of you were broken up.”

“Yes,” I murmured. When I had first agreed to the interview, I hadn’t envisioned having to relive some of the darkest times of Brayden’s and my relationship. It was even harder knowing that it would be documented in a magazine for everyone to read the sordid details. I guess in the end, our breakup didn’t come from anything salacious like I caught him having an orgy. To some it might not even seem like that big of a deal. But for me, it was life altering.

“Lily?” Giovanni asked.

I jumped. “Yes?”

He smiled. “From those early days together, what is the most romantic thing Brayden did for you that truly cemented your feelings for him?”

Glancing over at Brayden, I found that he was giving me a concerned look. I knew he wasn’t thrilled about having to dig up the past either. I smiled reassuringly at him. “I know some people will think that this was a planned response, but the truth is the most romantic thing he ever did for me was write me a song.”

“Ah,” Giovanni replied, scribbling something down. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that song was the first of Runaway Train’s hits.”

“You are right. It was the first song of ours to ever be played on the radio. Our first Billboard hit,” Brayden replied.

Giovanni smiled. “And it’s all because of Lily.”

Bobbing his head, Brayden said, “You got that right.”

“So where did you first play it for her?”

Brayden glanced over at me with a sheepish grin. “I guess you could say it was a very acoustic performance.”

LILY

THE PAST

I bolted upright in my bed out of a dead sleep. Just when I thought I had been imagining things, something scratched against my window, and it wasn’t a branch caused by the wind. With my heart beating wildly in my chest, I threw back the covers, poised to run down the hall to my parents’ bedroom for help. But then a hushed voice outside stopped me.

Brayden’s voice.

For a minute, I thought I might just be imagining things. After our first date last Friday night, we had been pretty much inseparable for the next few days, so it made sense I would think I was hearing his voice. Not to mention the fact, that he had taken me to the preseason bonfire at the school earlier tonight.

Just when I had discredited it as my imagination working overtime, I heard, “Lily!”

Sprinting over to the window, I peered out. He stood on the lawn, his guitar slung over his back. “What in the…?” I muttered, as he beckoned me with his hand. Glancing over my shoulder, I groaned as I read the time on the digital clock. It was three in the morning.

My curfew was eleven o’clock during the week, and I was pretty sure that didn’t include a lawn rendezvous in the middle of the night. After hurrying out of my bedroom, I then crept down the hall, silently willing the creaky, old floorboards not to rat me out. Once I got to the backdoor, I entered the code for the alarm before heading outside. The moment I opened the door, the gentle strings of guitar music floated back to me. I ran across the steps of the deck and peered down at Brayden where he stood strumming his guitar.

“What are you doing?” I hissed.

A beaming smile lit up his face. “I just wrote a song.”

“Um, that’s wonderful, but couldn’t you have waited until the morning to tell me?”

“It is the morning.”

“I meant like when I wasn’t asleep.”

Brayden shook his head. “After I dropped you off tonight, I couldn’t go to sleep. My mind kept spinning and spinning, and then I would hear this melody in my head. And when I finally got up and started writing down the words, it wouldn’t stop. It felt like I was on a roller coaster or something. Then when I finished, I just had to come over here and tell you.”

Glancing over my shoulder, I nibbled anxiously on my bottom lip. “That’s really cool, Brayden, but you’re going to get me in trouble.”

“I don’t care,” he replied, with a chuckle.

My mouth dropped open in shock at his attitude. “Well, I do! And you should too. If I get grounded, I won’t be seeing you until after graduation.”

Taking a step forward, Brayden said, “Don’t you get it, Lily? I’ve never written anything in my entire life. Hell, I could barely string the right sentences together to write the essays for my English classes.” He stared determinedly up at me. “But then you came into my life just when everything had gone to shit, and I thought I could never be happy again without football. But I’m fucking happier than I’ve ever been. And when you chose me, it changed everything.”

“Oh Brayden,” I murmured, my heartbeat accelerating wildly at his words. For a moment, I had to resist the urge to pinch myself. Could it truly be possible a handsome guy with a beautiful heart was on my lawn in the middle of the night to sing a song he wrote just for me? Surely, I would wake up in a minute and find out it had all been just a dream.