Page 33 of Reverb

I heard her exhale a shaky breath. I was still too chicken to look at her. I kept my hands over my eyes, massaged my forehead with my fingertips.

“I’ll do the interviews,” I said. “All the interviews you want. We can talk about my stepfathers. We can talk about Chase. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

“Stone,” she said.

“I don’t like to talk about it,” I went on. “I mean—fuck. No one likes to talk about that stuff, right? No one wants to hear about my shit. But I get worked up if it comes up. It’s an old habit, I guess. I’ll get past it. I’ll answer all of your questions.” I pressed my hands against my forehead, wincing at myself. I wasn’t a poet like Denver, I wasn’t a nice guy like Neal, and I wasn’t friendly and sociable like Axel. When I was with those guys, I leaned on them to be all of the things I wasn’t. When I was alone, my faults were more glaring.

“Okay.” I felt Sienna shift on the sofa beside me, and her bare feet lowered to the floor. “I accept. And I’m sorry, too. I crossed a line. Not by interviewing Darren,” she clarified, because she was always a journalist. “But the way I talked to you about it was insensitive. I knew it would upset you—talking about that would upset anyone—and I sprang it on you without warning before one of the biggest shows of your career.” She sighed, taking her glasses off and tossing them on a side table. She glanced at me. “How did the show go that night?”

I shrugged. I’d been off-balance when I went onstage, but I’d locked it down. “I played it. I always do.”

She nodded. “Right. Stone Zeeland, the pro.”

Her cheeks were still flushed, and she looked like she wanted to say words she wasn’t saying. There was something going on in that brain of hers, and I had no idea what it was. For once, I got a taste of what she’d experienced, trying to figure me out for all of those weeks. She ran her palms over her knees nervously, then stood up and walked to the turntable.

When the tour started, Sienna’s dark hair had been long down her back. But Brit had given her a haircut—none of us escaped Brit’s scissors during the tour—and her hair was shoulder length now, with a light curl to it and pieces falling around her face. It made her look younger somehow and yet very grown up. Sexy, but Sienna was always sexy. The subtle way her hips moved under her tee was unmistakable to me. Sienna could wear a potato sack and I’d not only recognize her, I’d be unable to look away.

With her back to me, she took the record off the turntable and put it back in its sleeve. She leafed through the other records sitting there, her weight shifting to one hip. I didn’t even pretend I wasn’t staring at her, that simple movement, while every part of me ached.

She was perfect, at least to me. I’d been a rock star for half my life, and I’d never seen a more perfect woman. I had the same mix of feelings I always had when I looked at her: the crushing desire to touch her, the need to listen to her talk about anything at all, the urge to protect her. If anyone even looked at Sienna wrong, I’d rip him apart.

When had this started? I’d first laid eyes on her at the second show of the tour, in San Francisco. I’d only heard her name before then. She was trying to get backstage, but we’d taken her off the list, and security was sending her away. I’d glimpsed her and thought, She doesn’t look like I thought she would. I hadn’t pictured that hair, those glasses.

Every time I glimpsed her after that, I’d noticed something new. The way she dressed. The way her nail polish was chipped, then gone, so she must have removed it. The far-away look she got on her face when she was thinking. The sound of her voice, smooth and somehow soothing, even when she was mad. The set of her narrow shoulders, the dip of her waist. That unvarnished pink of her lips. Each thing had lodged in my brain, one after another, unwelcome. Images hooked in like fishhooks. I’d told myself I hated her, but it only got worse and worse.

Then I’d seen her in New Orleans, and I’d acted almost without thinking. It had gotten even worse from there, unbearable. And now this.

“I’ve been going through my dad’s blues collection,” she said, oblivious as always to the fact that I was on fire. “It’s been fascinating. Educational. You had some stuff I’d never heard in your library, so I’ve been doing research.” She picked out a record. “I like this one.” She put it on the turntable and gently placed the needle. The sound was low, slow, smoky. That mix of anguish and sex tinged with sly humor that was the hallmark of the best blues. Songs of oppression layered with nonstop sexual innuendo.

“Yeah, this is good,” I said.

She turned around, facing me and squaring her shoulders. “You haven’t mentioned the fact that you kissed me.”

Ah. So that was what this was about? “I did.” I let my gaze fall to her lips. “You wondering if I regret that part? I don’t.”

“Was it an impulse?” she demanded. “Or had you been thinking about it?”

She had to analyze this, too. Of course. “I’d been thinking about it.”

“For how long?”

“You want a precise timeline?”

“If you have one, yes.”

I shrugged. I had already come this far—I may as well be honest. If she rejected me, I’d just take my crushed soul and go. “Since I got into your car in New Orleans.”

Sienna’s lips parted in shock, and her skin flushed darker. “That long? But I thought—” She rubbed a hand over her eyes, as if she could physically rearrange her memories. “You didn’t let on. You didn’t try anything.”

“Journalistic integrity, remember? Besides, you were stranded.” I frowned. “Come on, Sienna. I do have a few morals.”

She dropped her hands. “That’s the second time you’ve used my name.”

“What are you talking about? I use your name all the time.”

“My first name. You keep using it.”

“You want me to stop?”

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