A Love Song for Liars (Rivals #1) - Piper Lawson Page 0,39

classes. You wanted a stage, you got one.

I always felt as if being on stage meant playing a role, but now I wonder for the first time if this is how my dad feels playing his own music, if it’s possible the crowd can make you as vulnerable as it makes you strong.

At the end of the day, I drop my books in my bag, grab my gear, and head to rehearsal.

“Annie,” Miss Norelli says when I’m barely in the door, “I want to run the dancing scene. Can you grab Kellan?”

I head up to the stage and drop my bag in the wings. After shrugging out of my jacket and rolling up my sleeves, I scan for him. My attention snags on two figures behind a curtain, bobbing heads mashing together.

“Can we break up this two-headed-dog thing?” I ask.

Kellan pries his face away from Carly, looking disinterestedly at me.

“Annie, I’m surprised you even showed. You seemed emotional in English today.” She smiles wickedly. “Your little poem had a very unrequited love vibe, don’t you think? Listen, I know you didn’t get asked to prom, but Kellan and I will tell you all about it.”

Kellan snorts at her meanness, and I turn my back.

At least she doesn’t know what happened between me and Tyler. Falling for the guy in my pool house, the one they all worship? I’d never live that down.

Kellan and I take the stage, and I force myself to step closer to him, wondering how Ariel ever loved this guy.

The choreography is simple, but Kellan trips as he sings the chorus, and I hold in a groan.

Miss Norelli calls, “Stop! Kellan, what’s going on?”

“Annie’s fucking it up.”

I barely hear Norelli chastise Kellan for his language because I’m looking past him to take in Carly’s mischievous expression. My hands ball into fists. “Maybe if you spent half as much time practicing your dance moves as your seduction moves, you’d have it down.”

“Again,” Norelli commands.

We do it again. And again, Kellan makes it look like my fault when we screw up.

Carly’s already up off the floor, heading for us.

Miss Norelli sighs. “Annie, I understand it’s challenging, but we can’t keep doing this. I’m going to have to—”

“It’s not challenging.” I glare at my costar.

“She’s right. It doesn’t look hard.”

Every heads whips toward the open auditorium doors.

There’s a collective gasp followed by whispers as people realize the same thing.

Tyler Adams is in rehearsal, and he has a fucking opinion on it.

Kellan recovers first, barking out a laugh. “You can do better? Be my guest.”

Even Norelli doesn’t object as Tyler makes his way up the steps, sets his bag on the floor, his jacket over that. His tie is loose, and his shirt clings to the slopes and planes of his chest and shoulders. He rolls up the sleeves as he approaches.

My anger at Kellan fades. He’s a pawn in this game of Carly’s, nothing more. The frustration I feel with the boy in my pool house though…

Oh, that’s a living, pulsing thing.

“What are you doing here?” I hiss as he approaches.

Tyler reaches up to flick the top button of his shirt open, then the second, his gaze never leaving mine. “You haven’t answered my messages.”

“A rational person would assume I didn’t want to see them.”

My attention drifts to the exposed skin at the top of his chest as he takes my hand, tugs me closer.

I’m too startled to resist when he fits my hips to his and murmurs his response next to my ear. “Thank fuck you don’t speak rational.”

Someone starts the music.

Tyler nudges me back, and he steps into the choreography Kellan screwed up.

I’ve died.

There’s no way in my lifetime I expected to see Tyler Adams dance on stage at our school, not to mention with me.

But it’s not a dream, it’s a waltz, and his touch warms my waist through my shirt, his confident hands moving my body where he wants it.

When I lift my gaze to meet his, I’m taken from stunned to wrecked. The longing from the restaurant hallway is there, but there’s also fierce determination, as if he knows this is a bad idea and he gives zero shits.

There’s something beneath the fierceness. If we were alone, I’d pressure him to tell me, but I don’t have to wait long for him to spill his secrets.

Eight bars in, the guy I can’t stop thinking about sees my “what the hell” and raises me a “the fuck he is.”

Because Tyler starts to sing.

His voice is smooth