Here With You (A Laurel Heights Novel) - By Kate Perry Page 0,16

downsides?"

"More than I could list. Like that I get roped into helping with his music when he gets stuck." Nicole's smile took the sting out of her words.

"He gets stuck?" That was what she felt like. She hadn't been able to write anything since her mom's funeral.

The saleslady shrugged. "Every creative person gets confused at some point. Sometimes you just need a friend to point you in the right direction."

Rachel nodded. She wished she could be Griffin Chase's friend. How awesome would that be? And then she could help him with his songs—not the music part, but with the lyrics. If she knew him, she'd give him the poem she'd written for her mom.

Nicole handed over the little burgundy bag. "Come back in a week. We'll have new pieces you'll like."

She nodded, taking the little bag home. Rachel stopped abruptly on the sidewalk as a thought occurred to her: if Nicole and Griffin Chase were friends, he probably hung out at Romantic Notions a lot. Meaning if she went there more often, she might run into him.

Meaning maybe she could give him her mom's poem.

Her heart beat to hard that she thought it was going to jump out of her chest. Her mom would have been beyond excited to have Griffin Chase sing a song dedicated to her.

She ran all the way home, bursting through the door and sprinting up the stairs to her room. Dumping her bag's contents onto the bed, she looked for the journal. She scrambled to open it, searching for the loose piece of paper.

Here. She smoothed it open and read it. You moved away...

Closing her eyes, she imagined Griffin Chase singing it. It'd be perfect.

It was one last thing she could do for her mom—the only way to keep her alive.

It'd be a great way to get back at the –sons of anarchy.

Rachel pictured their faces when they heard Griffin Chase used her poem for song lyrics. Especially Madison's. It'd be the best thing ever.

She flopped onto her bed, hugging the paper to her chest. She'd get him to do it. She'd get him to use it for a song, and it'd be beautiful in so many ways.

Chapter Six

His phone rang as he was jogging through the Presidio. Grif checked the screen. Roddy.

He had no desire to talk to his manager. He knew exactly how the conversation would go. He'd say hi, and Roddy would ask him where the hell the new songs were and why he wasn't in the recording studio.

Except in the past couple days, Grif had realized he was a masochist. Why else would he insist on living with Nicole? It was pure torture. He couldn't write anything when he spent every minute of the entire day thinking about kissing her—and more.

And being a masochist, Grif stopped and answered the phone.

Before he could say even a syllable, his manager jumped down his throat. "Where are you?"

"I miss you, too." He walked around, free hand on his hip, trying to breathe.

"Cut out the cute act, Chase. You're in serious hot water here."

He was always in serious hot water with his manager. Roddy had always been stricter with him than his dad had been. He guessed Roddy had repped a lot of musicians who had gone down the path of alcohol and drugs. It was easy to do—the phrase sex and drugs and rock 'n roll wasn't coined just because.

While he had a moment in his career where the sex was really attractive, he'd backed off on all of that. It was about the music, first and foremost. Without it, he'd be nothing.

Which was why he was there, with Nicole. That last night of his tour, he'd been so tempted to chuck it all. But even in that dark moment he'd known that wasn't really the answer.

"Well?" his manager asked in his typical, impatient tone. "What's going on? Where are you? What are you doing?"

"I'm running," Grif replied, knowing it'd infuriate the man.

"That's not what I was asking," Roddy yelled into his ear. "Where the fu—eff are you?"

He grinned. Roddy's daughter was approaching adolescence, so he was especially conscious of his language, probably because his wife made it necessary. She'd told him that for every curse word, he had to pay a hundred dollars into her shopping fund. In the past year, she'd had to convert a second closet into a space just for her shoes. "You know I'm not going to tell you where I am. You'd send the Coast Guard to retrieve