Page 12 of Reverb

Still, I could have done something. Yet I found myself falling into an easy routine with Stone Zeeland, one of the most difficult men on the planet. He still wouldn’t give me an interview, but he let me use his room. He’d get on the bus with the others and head to the next city, and I’d drive my rental car, because the front office had stopped booking me flights. He’d text me the address to the hotel, and after he’d checked in, he’d text me the room number.

I’d get a single line of text—1410—and nothing else. No chitchat, no emojis, no memes. When I was in a salty mood, I’d reply with a thumbs-up, a winky face, or a message like Nice talking to you. Stone never replied.

When I got to the hotel, I’d go straight to the allotted room and knock on the door. Stone would let me in, give me my room key, and—more often than not—immediately book it out of there, to where, I knew not. Maybe he liked to sightsee. Maybe he had a woman in every city, waiting around to have sex with him. He was a guitar god, after all.

Still, if he was doing booty calls, they didn’t last all that long. He never spent a night away from his room, and he certainly never brought a woman back with him. I’d never met a man so insanely impenetrable, as if he was a human made of granite. He didn’t tell me anything. The only things I knew about him after a week of rooming together were that he took a lot of Advil and that in a hotel room, when one person gets up to pee in the middle of the night, it’s really loud. Hardly headline-worthy stuff.

“It makes no sense,” I said when we were in Cincinnati. Tonight’s show had ended an hour and a half ago. I was in my pajamas, sitting cross-legged on my bed. Stone was sitting on the edge of his bed on the other side of the room, unlacing his badass black boots.

“What makes no sense?” he grunted, not looking up at me.

It was an actual reply, which was more than I’d expected. “There’s no afterparty after the show?”

His tone implied that I should have observed the obvious. “No.”

“Why not?”

“I told you, we’re too old.”

“Sometimes the four of you go to an all-night diner,” I said.

Stone grunted, acknowledging that I had correct information from my sources. “We’re not hungry tonight.”

“There’s not even any alcohol stocked backstage,” I said. “No women on the access list, either. Nothing. Why not? Why is this tour different from the ones before?”

Stone kicked his unlaced boots off and glared at me. I’d negotiated for backstage passes for the rest of the tour a few days ago, in Charlotte. I’d made a deal with Denver and Neal that in exchange for the passes, I’d do a research dive to figure out their anonymous tour backer’s identity. Denver and Neal had made Axel and Stone agree, probably under duress in Stone’s case. I didn’t care, because it was a victory. I’d started watching the shows from backstage instead of from the crowd.

“Stop looking at me like that,” I said after he glared at me for too long across the room. “I swear, it’s like rooming with Sauron.”

“Well, rooming with you is like rooming with a toddler. Do you ever stop asking questions?”

“It’s my job. How about you ask a question instead?”

“I thought I just did.”

Do you see what I mean? Insanely frustrating. “I’m starting to see why so few people put up with you.”

“Plenty of people put up with me.” Stone stood and crossed the room to the bathroom, tugging at his tee.

I blinked hard and looked away. Stone and I hadn’t caught each other naked yet—a small miracle considering our close quarters. We had a bit of a system. I always showered after he got up, usually late in the morning, while Stone went downstairs to pick up coffee for twenty minutes. He always showered after a show, in the middle of the night. Since there was nowhere for me to go so late, I’d stay in my half of the room and he’d shower and change in the bathroom with the door closed. But when he started to tug his shirt off, I caught a glimpse of the happy trail on his lower stomach, then the muscles of his lower back.

The man was built. He was aggravating, but he was built. I’d have to be blind not to notice it. The shoulders, the biceps, the thighs. Some of it was from working out, but he was also a naturally big guy, tall and solid, the hair on his lower stomach dark and thick. Stone Zeeland was not the type to manscape.

When he wore a tee, it wasn’t just the muscles on view that were hypnotic, but also the magical tendons in his forearms and the dark hair that dusted the skin. When he got into bed at night, the mattress always made a groaning sound, and when he sprawled out to go to sleep, he made a queen-size bed look like it belonged to a child. He was basically made of testosterone.

All of this was certainly hot, but it was also a lot. Too much for me.

When I dated, which wasn’t often, I chose intellectual types—guys who had college degrees and had never seen the inside of a gym in their lives. I wanted a man who could talk for hours, who could debate music, philosophy, and ideas, whose ideal date was to sit in a coffee shop and have an intense conversation. Sex was a secondary concern, happening several dates in, if at all. And when it did happen, it was…fine. Pleasant, kind of quick, a tad disappointing, but quickly forgotten. I didn’t mind sex, guys expected it, and if the stars aligned, we’d both get what we wanted.

Stone was the stark opposite of this. He was huge, he was a rock star, and every aspect of him was purely physical. He could go days without talking. When he wanted a woman, I imagined, he simply had her, like a caveman. No conversation, no wooing, no romance. He’d just strip her and toss her down with no need for niceties.

I got under the covers and slid down in bed, tamping down my curiosity about what that would be like. I probably wouldn’t like it very much.

Probably.

I took my glasses off, put them on the nightstand, snapped out the lamp next to my bed, and averted my eyes when I heard the bathroom door open. I knew, without looking, that Stone was crossing the room to his bed, probably wearing cotton sleep pants and a tee. His hair and short beard would be damp from the shower, and he wouldn’t look at me, tucked in bed, as he passed by.

We were like a couple of virgins, the two of us. I felt awkward, but he gave no sign that he felt the same. He just drew the covers back and got into bed, making it groan, as casual as if rooming with a strange woman was something he did all the time.

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