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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?”
