Chapter 9

It took Reese a good forty-five minutes to calm her heart after the sound check. Which was insane because it wasn’t even the concert. Just a sound check. Was Sterling always that amazing? The last and only time she had seen him perform had been when she was a teenager. She had been totally giddy, filled with teenage hormones that kept her screaming until she was hoarse.

Reese assumed that sound checks were low-key affairs where the band didn’t even go through a whole song. Maybe it was because Sterling knew she was taking a video, but they had played through one of her favorite songs, completely killing it.

Nothing could have prepared her for the way it felt to stand on the same stage with Sterling James as he gave what amounted to the best performance she had ever seen in her life. She thought maybe it was just her or just the proximity—being right there. Feeling the bass thumping through her chest and hearing the sound up close. But the energy had shifted in the empty amphitheater. The crew and band members clapped him on the back and congratulating him after. It was definitely something special.

Hewas something special.

If someone had designed a personal torture training regimen just for her, they could not have done anything more perfect than putting her on tour with Sterling. Because as soon as the song was over, it seemed like Sterling looked for her. And then lit up with a rare smile so compelling that Reese had been frozen to the spot. Until Morgan ran over and jumped in his arms. Jealousy had pinned her heart to the wall with one flaming arrow. Reese had to walk away, hiding backstage. She couldn’t risk anyone seeing the look on her face, which was probably somewhere between just-about-to-vomit and crushing disappointment.

Had she imagined the moment between them? She kept playing over what had happened. At first, she thought that Morgan had stepped in and intercepted the moment. But when Sterling spun Morgan around, Reese realized that maybe he had been looking at Morgan the whole time.

Reese found a quiet corner backstage to hide in and worked on responding to comments on the video. She meant to post a short Facebook live video and then move over to Instagram stories, but she couldn’t stop filming that song. The video had blown up. Comments flew in during the filming, which she ignored, and now, after, she could respond from his page. She and Sterling hadn’t talked about whether he wanted her to post as him, or post as someone managing his page.

Often celebs had people talk in the third person on their social accounts, making it clear that a manager or someone was handling it. Smart people who understood the ways of social media and culture hired someone to write in the first-person. That was Reese’s preference. But it took a certain degree of nuance and understanding with that person. Did they use emojis? Gifs? Complete sentences and correct grammar? Did they respond to every comment? What kind of tone—playful, sarcastic, confident, flirty?

Reese needed to finish up the brand audit they had started. She hadn’t looked yet to see if he had completed the Google form she sent him with some of these questions. For now, she answered as Sterling, knowing that it was taking a risk, but with a video poised to go viral, it mattered that it wasn’t some random, faceless third-person response for the eager fans.

Many of the comments didn’t need a response. There were marriage requests, comments about his hotness, and other things that she just deleted off the bat. A few made her blush and one or two sparked her anger. Delete, delete, delete. No need to let the negativity have space. Thankfully those posts were outweighed by the positive ones.

She’d had some clients who were big in the public eye. A fairly large indie banjo player who had a small but rabid following. An influencer who got big on Instagram somehow (Reese felt sure it was because she had amazing hair) and wanted to secure sponsorship deals. They both could get anywhere up to a thousand comments on a post, many of them inane drivel or spam from bots. None of that was prep for this.

Reese could have spent the entire night answering the comments. They were flooding in as fast as the video was shared. The numbers just kept jumping. After an hour and a half, sitting on a cramped stool back by some equipment back stage, she gave up, writing a comment that wouldn’t stay as the last one for long: “Thanks, everyone! Hope to see you at the show!” She added a link to the tour page before closing her phone. Always a good thing to push ticket sales.

“I’ve been looking all over for you! Why are you hiding back here?” Morgan suddenly appeared in front of Reese as she was climbing down from the stool, realizing how cramped her legs had gotten. Clearly, she hadn’t changed positions while she sat. Her butt felt like someone had smacked it with a concrete paddle.

“Ow, my body,” she groaned. “Remind me to avoid stools when responding to Facebook comments.”

Morgan shook her head as she laughed, hooking an arm around Reese’s neck. “Let’s get some food in you. Are you excited? Did you hear that sound check? This is going to be amazing. I can feel it.”

“What is?”

She waved an arm through the air, “This night. The tour. Everything. I just have this feeling like everything is about to change for Sterling.”

“That was pretty incredible. I took a live video and it looks like it’s on the cusp of going viral on Facebook.”

“Awesome,” Morgan said. “You’re a lifesaver.”

Guilt threaded through Reese. Not that she had acted on them, but her feelings for Sterling weren’t going anywhere, even if Morgan shared the same feelings for him. She thought again of the moment after the song, when she thought Sterling was looking at her. She felt like he had wrapped her in his arms, even though they were separated by twenty feet of stage. He probably hadn’t felt what she did. Though there had been a fire in his eyes she couldn’t have been imagining. But was it really directed toward her?

She didn’t want to think about this as she trailed behind Morgan to a green room in the back, empty save a long table with sandwiches, snacks, and desserts. “You’ll want to eat something now. It will be too crazy later. After the show we may go out or just back to the hotel. Depends on how the guys are feeling.”

“Makes sense,” Reese said, grabbing a plate with a sandwich and a bag of chips. “So, where should we be during the show?”

“There are a few areas backstage that we can hide out in. If you want to be out front, I can get you seats. I don’t think we’re sold out. You probably saw that the back of the amphitheater is just grass. I’ve been to this venue before with another band. People usually bring blankets. Really, whatever you want to do.”

“I might float around. It would be nice to see things from backstage, but I also would love to get out there.”

“Ever see Sterling in concert?” Morgan grinned at her, popping a strawberry in her mouth.

“Once. I was fifteen.”

“That’s right! I can’t believe I already forgot that you had that big crush on him and wanted to marry him.”

Reese groaned. Before she could respond, she heard Moby behind her. “Who wants to get married?”

Reese spun around. Sterling and the other band members had joined them and started loading up plates with food.

“No one,” Morgan said, winking at Reese.

She could feel her cheeks heating and sat down on a couch, hoping they would calm before anyone noticed. But of course, Sterling sat down on the couch near her. She kept her eyes down on her food.

“How did the video go?” he asked.

“Better than I could have hoped. Which is entirely because that song was amazing. The video is being shared like crazy and I had to stop responding to comments after like an hour.”

“Wow! I never post videos. I guess maybe I should.”

“Sometimes new kinds of content shake things up. Or maybe your fans are just hungry for more interaction from you. I hope it was okay that I responded to comments.”

“Yeah, that’s fine. I guess I still need to sit down with you and talk about all this stuff,” he said.

Reese made the mistake of looking at Sterling. Whatever connection she had wondered about earlier was still one hundred percent alive. And it was directed at her, not Morgan. For sure.

He was talking about business stuff, but the moment she locked onto his eyes, her tongue danced behind her teeth with the words she should be saying. Her hands trembled and she set the plate down in her lap, finally breaking Sterling’s intense gaze as she stuffed her hands underneath her thighs to hide their shaking.

“Did you finish the questionnaire?” she asked.

“Almost. I’ll make sure I get that done before we talk.”

“Great. We can talk on the bus tomorrow when we head out.”

“Or maybe get dinner or coffee or something at the next stop?”

Sterling’s voice held a tiny note of questioning. It didn’t sound like he was asking about work things. It sounded like he was asking for a date. Reese couldn’t look at him. She didn’t know what emotion was on her face, but she suspected one that would reveal exactly how much that idea excited her.

“Whatever works for you,” she said, trying to sound casual. He shifted next to her, leaning so that his face was in her peripheral, pulling her gaze. She turned and he was grinning, that same genuine smile she had only seen a handful of times.

“Let’s get through tonight and we’ll talk,” Sterling said. “Wish me luck?”

“Luck,” she said, but her voice was little more than a whisper as he got up and left with the rest of the band. He didn’t need it, but Reese had a feeling that she might.

* * *

Sterling hadn’t felt this kind of fire in years. As the last note rang out in the encore, the crowd continued to roar. Audiences were smart now; some of them were already filing out of the amphitheater as Sterling shouted, “Good night, Atlanta! Thanks for being the first stop on the tour. You were amazing!”

But as he pulled out his earpiece and ducked off the stage, sweat dripping from his hair, it sounded like most of the crowd had stayed in place. They were still shouting and stamping and clapping. Morgan gave him a side hug.

“Ew. You’re disgusting. But good job,” she said.

Sterling grinned and flicked sweat in her direction as she pulled away. He caught sight of Reese and he stepped toward her. Her eyes lit up.

“That was completely amazing,” Reese said. “You were amazing.”

“Hey, now. You mean we were all amazing, right?” Moby wiped his face with a towel.

“Of course. That was a plural you. Y’all were amazing. You know, the crowd hasn’t moved. Isn’t there usually just one encore?”

Sterling peeked around where he could see the amphitheater. It was still packed. Only a handful of people were filing toward the exits. The rest still faced the stage on their feet. Even the people on the lawn were standing. Sterling had only seen this kind of reaction a few times. A hand touched his arm. He looked down to see Reese’s fingers brushing his arm. She pulled back when he noticed and bit her lip.

“You know, this might be a good time to introduce them to some of your new stuff. I know you wanted a new sound. Do you have new songs? This crowd will eat out of your hand. Whatever you feed them. It would be perfect. I mean, if you want to do that.”

Sterling’s nerves sang. He had a gut-level reaction to say yes. He looked to Morgan. “What do you think, boss? New song?”

“We don’t know the new stuff,” Moby said. “It would just be you and your guitar.”

Morgan looked at Sterling, then looked out at the crowd, still mostly on their feet, cheering. “If so, you need to go right now before they lose momentum.” She turned to Reese. “You think this is a good idea?”

Reese gestured toward the amphitheater. “I think they want more. You want to get people on board with a new sound? This crowd would be on board with whatever you gave them right now. Give them something new. Make them feel special.”

“She’s right,” Morgan said, shoving him. “Get out there, big guy.”

Sterling hesitated for approximately half a second and then jogged out onto the stage with a smile on his face. The crowd erupted and he spent a minute bowing up front, smiling and waving. Morgan or Moby must have talked to the stage crew because they brought out a stool and one of the guys was tuning his Taylor acoustic. Sterling stepped to the mic and held up a hand. The crowd stilled and he could feel the magnetic pull between them, that rare thing that he always hoped for but didn’t always experience.

“You guys have been so incredible. Would it be okay if I did something a little special for you? I’ve got some songs no one has heard before. You want to be the first?”

Again, they went wild. The crowds at the back started settling in, sitting back down on the ground, seeming to pick up on the vibe as the stage hand gave him the acoustic guitar. Sterling put the ear piece back in and spoke, leaning away from the mic. “You with me, Mike? I know we didn’t prep for this.”

“Please. The day I can’t handle a girl with a guitar, shoot me.”

Sterling laughed and leaned forward toward the mic again. “This one is called ‘Voiceless.’ I hope you love it.’”

As Sterling strummed the first chords, the crowd stilled. But that electric connection was still there and it felt like they were holding their collective breath as he began to sing. He went through three of his new songs and probably could have done a few more, but it was a good idea to leave them wanting more, to leave while things were on the upswing.

As the last note of the third song echoed through the amphitheater, Sterling looked up. Normally he watched the crowds as he sang, but for this last little set, he had mostly kept his eyes closed. The newest songs he wrote were gut-wrenching for him, most of them focused on the pain he had been feeling going through what felt like the complete loss of his sister May and the family division. Some were about his dad, something he hadn’t written about before. They were raw and had a depth that some of his other songs lacked. It was cathartic to sing through the pain.

His eyes felt damp as he stared out over the faces. Panic squeezed his stomach. No one had moved. The crowd was totally still.

This had been a mistake. The music was too different from his normal sound. This was a rock crowd and he played a fully acoustic set. It probably sounded totally unprofessional. Like an open mic night. Sterling swallowed and got to his feet.

The space completely erupted. The cheering was different somehow. Just as charged as it had been, but he could see a few people wiping their eyes as well. They had gotten it.

Sterling put the guitar in the stand and walked forward to the very edge of the stage, where the people in the very front area could almost touch him. He waved and then put his hands together and took a little bow. People stood in their seats, but they weren’t moving to the exits, even though now the concert had gone on twenty minutes longer. They stood and they cheered for him.

Sterling’s chest warmed. The tears in his eyes now were happy. They liked the new stuff. His most personal and raw songs, played in the most basic of ways. He couldn’t help the smile on his face and could see the smiles and waves in return. Before exiting the stage, he did another pass along the front, making eye contact with as many people as he could, nodding and waving. He never did this, but it felt right.

When he finally walked to the side, the crowd went crazy again, another surge of cheering. The first face he saw was Morgan’s. Her eyes were bright and her smile wide. “I’m not sure you need me managing you. I mean, that was perfect. They loved it. I loved it. This is a great new direction. I think you should do this for every show moving forward.”

“We’ll see,” Sterling said. Not every crowd might appreciate this. He would have to take it show by show. But this was certainly a good start. His eyes scanned the area for Reese.

“Everyone else is in the green room. Ready to head back to the hotel and shower?”

“A shower is most definitely necessary,” Sterling said.

“I concur. Are you going to want to go out after? Tell me how you’re feeling. We can set something up if you need us to.”

Sterling was still looking for Reese. This had been her genius idea. If she hadn’t suggested it, he wouldn’t have thought of it and he wanted to thank her. Distracted, he told Morgan he would text her to let her know his plans and then he headed to the green room. Just outside the rooms in a dark alcove, he saw Reese with her face buried in a phone.

“Hey,” Sterling said. Her head snapped up and her face slipped into an easy grin when she saw him.

“Hope you don’t mind. I took a video during that set. So glad I did. It’s going just as crazy as the other one.”

“Awesome,” he said. “I want to see it later. Just to hear how the set sounded and everything.”

“I went down into the crowd too,” Reese said. “I got their reaction, which was fantastic. This really was something else.” She shuddered and he noticed her rubbing her arms.

“Cold?” he asked.

“No. I get goosebumps when I’m excited.”

His mouth hooked into a grin. “That’s cute.” Realizing that sounded way too much like he was calling her cute, he took a step back. “Uh, we’re heading back to the hotel. Maybe going out or something. Do you feel like … are you …”

He couldn’t find the words to ask what he really wanted, which was to spend time with this woman who had officially given him whiplash. Yesterday he had been horrified to see her on the tour bus. Now he felt like he only wanted to be where she was. He couldn’t say exactly what it was about her but kept going back to what she had said about vulnerability. Reese was vulnerable. And it only added to her physical beauty.

He ran a hand through his damp hair. Suddenly he was aware of his T-shirt, drenched in sweat. He backed off another step. The last thing he wanted was to scare her off with his post-concert funk.

Reese leaned against the wall, looking up at him. “I don’t want to go out. I feel weirdly energized but exhausted at the same time. Is that how it is for you after a show?”

Sterling gazed past her, thinking about the crowd tonight. He might be one of the rare rockers out there who had never tried drugs, but he felt like performing might come close to that kind of high.

“Something like that,” he said. “My whole body feels kind of electric. And there’s this hum, like, in my heart. That sounds stupid.”

Reese shook her head and Sterling found himself staring at her hair. At first glance, it was simply brown. But it was more than that. When she moved, there were gold highlights and darker undertones. He fought the urge to touch it to see if it felt as silky as it looked.

“I love it. It gives me more of a concrete sense of how it feels to be you.” She smiled and Sterling felt his heart plummet down into his stomach. “You should put that on Twitter. People would love it.”

“Are you always thinking about social media?”

Her cheeks flushed. It was a good look on her. “Sorry. Not always social media. I’m definitely always strategizing. It’s been that way forever. Before social media, it was other things.”

“Like?”

Her cheeks stained a deeper shade of red. “In high school and some of college I was known as something of a matchmaker. High success rate, too. Also, I love strategic board games, which may make me a nerd. When I was younger, it was like elaborate practical jokes. Some of which went on for years. Mostly none of them ended up with people in police custody.”

Sterling laughed. “So, you were a troublemaker? A schemer.”

Reese made a face. “Strategist sounds better.”

“Matchmaking and board games and practical jokes and social media—those things all seem pretty different from each other. What’s the connection?”

“I like to look at the big picture. The long game. Then figure out how to get from point A to point B. It’s like seeing how things fit together. With matchmaking, that’s people. The practical jokes were more like long-term wars and figuring out the right prank to get under someone’s skin. Each joke was another battle. I know it sounds dumb. For a long time, my family traded back and forth my grandmother’s dead dog’s ashes.”

Sterling searched her face. “Are you … serious?”

Reese giggled. “Yeah. When someone would come stay with us, we were always trying to pass Johnboy around between us. Like, hide him somewhere they would find him eventually.”

“Johnboy? Was that her dog’s name?”

“Yep. She loved this show called The Waltons. I think Johnboy was one of the characters. Anyway, he lives in a little plastic container now with his name taped to the lid.”

Her giggles turned into laughs now. Sterling found himself unable to stop staring at her. She was incredibly beautiful when she laughed.

“What kinds of places did you guys hide Johnboy? Give me your best one.”

“Well, mostly we would put him around people’s houses or if it was out-of-town guests like my cousins, we would stuff him in a suitcase, wrapped up in a pair of boxers or something.”

“Him? Don’t you mean ‘it’?”

Reese smiled. “No, definitely a him. The best, though, was the time I put him in the whipped cream at my aunt’s house at Thanksgiving.”

A shocked laugh escaped him. “That’s disgusting, Reese.”

She laughed. “You sound like my mom! It’s not like I dumped the ashes into the whipped cream. It was just the whole container, still sealed, inside the whipped cream. Totally hygienic.”

“You put your grandmother’s dead dog’s ashes into the whipped cream at Thanksgiving.”

“My dead grandmother’s dead dog’s ashes. My Dad’s mom. My other grandma is still around. No dog.”

“Dare I ask what you did with your grandmother’s ashes?”

“What kind of a person do you think I am? She’s buried in a cemetery, thank you very much. Oh my gosh. You must think I am completely a wreck. If you didn’t already.”

Sterling shook his head, laughing. Somehow, the story only made him like Reese more. She was completely different than anyone he’d ever met. Full of surprises and quirks. She made him laugh.

“It just makes me sure I want you on my team, Little Schemer. Speaking of, how about we do our meeting tonight? I’ll get room service delivered to my suite.”

“Your suite?” Her eyes went wide.

“It’s like an apartment, not a bedroom. We’ll stay out in the main room. Promise. It’s a professional, working meeting. Maybe I can hear more of your stories. I need to be prepared for any other pranks.”

She still looked nervous, which was adorable. Sterling hadn’t seen an expression cross her face that he didn’t like.

“Okay,” she said.

“You still look nervous. I’m not the one who said I was going to make you marry me the first time we met.”

“Hey,” she said, poking him in the side. He giggled and jumped back, trying to escape her fingers. Her face lit up. “You really are ticklish.”

“No, I’m not.” Reese stopped and put a hand to the center of her forehead. Sterling watched her. “What are you doing?” he asked.

She put her hand down and smile. “Just making a mental note. Had to file that away for things I can use against you later.”

“I’m really scared now,” Sterling said. “Let’s get back to the hotel.”

“You should be,” Reese said, grinning. “Remember: I’m a long-term pranker. You don’t want to cross me.”

As they fell into step, Sterling realized that he was scared. But not of being pranked. He was scared of other, long-term battles she was launching against his heart, whether she realized she was doing it or not. He felt like he was starting to give up ground, lowering his defenses a little bit more every time he was with Reese.