How not to seduce a rock.., p.8
How NOT to Seduce a Rockstar, page 8
Painfully real.
A story of madness and redemption, of delusion and clarity, of metamorphosis and waterproof mascara.
And love?
I didn’t know if there’d be room for that, too. But for now, there was resentment, strategy, transformation. And yes, a brand-new energy. A voice that, finally, was mine.
“Well, Mr. Bronson? What would your fancy literary friends say while swirling their thirty-euro French wine? What would they think of a story like this?”
I smirked to myself.
Because deep down, I knew.
This story was absurd. Unbelievable. But damn alive.
And maybe, for the first time… it had more heart than anything I’d ever forced myself to write before.
12
Woke up in the early afternoon, face glued to the pillow and my head full of warm bread crumbs.
Sunlight pushed through the window with the persistence of a door-to-door salesman, and I felt like I'd just stepped out of an emotional spin cycle.
I didn’t remember much about the night before—except that I could not handle alcohol. Never could. Never claimed otherwise. And those two gin and tonics at Spice, taken back-to-back with all the grace of a cheerleader under pressure, had launched me straight into orbit.
But one thing I did remember. Oh, I remembered it vividly.
The rapture.
The exact moment I got home, ignored the desperate cries of my bladder, and lunged for my Olivetti like God Himself was calling me.
I couldn’t remember how long I’d written.
I couldn’t even remember how many pages I’d cranked out.
But I remembered exactly how it felt.
It felt—drunk or not—like the truest, most right thing I’d ever written.
Yeah, okay. I always said that when starting something new. It was my motivational mantra: “This time it’s different.” But usually, it was just a single step above the last book.
This time, though? This was a whole flight of stairs.
A gin-fueled epiphany, sure. But a powerful one.
Because yes—the truest thing I’d ever written, at that moment, was about a slightly unhinged roommate who, after reading a Victorian-era seduction manual, decides to seduce the most famous rockstar on the planet as if it were some sort of guided spiritual cleanse.
And yet—and here’s the paradox—it felt more real than anything I’d ever written under the banner of “serious literature.”
I don’t know. Maybe it was just the gin. Or maybe it was truth, slipping through the lines. At least that’s what I believed last night, as I wrote like a woman possessed, heart ablaze, bladder screaming.
Then, at some point, I must have dropped everything. Run to the bathroom. Come back. Collapsed onto the bed like a sack of potatoes with a literary calling. And passed out instantly.
I wondered: would I still think those pages were brilliant now?
Now that I was sober. Cynical. Back in full Bea mode.
A part of me was afraid to find out. I fidgeted under the covers. Rolled to one side. Then the other. Grabbed my phone. Put it back. Pretended I was just looking for a comfortable position, when really I was just hiding from myself.
I was disgusted. Truly.
“Pull yourself together, for God’s sake,” I muttered, like that would somehow shake me out of it.
I got up. Went to the bathroom. Peed. Splashed my face with cold water—the kind that makes you regret being born but also snaps you back to life.
Back in my room, I opened the blinds: Manhattan glittered in the distance like a hyperactive mirage made of glass, metal, and possibility.
I wondered what Mr. Bronson was doing right then. Probably reading some overly ambitious manuscript filled with words like “oneiric” and “symbolic dissonance.” I wondered if he ever thought about me. If anyone else had ever stormed into his office and shouted in his face that they deserved to be read.
Enough stalling, I thought.
It was time.
I sat down at my desk.
Stared at the stack of pages—face down, carefully aligned, with just a pinch of superstition—next to the Olivetti, like it was asleep too.
There had to be at least a dozen. Maybe more.
I sighed.
Reached for the stack. Flipped it over.
And started to read.
I tried to be as critical as possible. Cynical. Ruthless, like a talent-show judge with the flu.
But the truth?
That story kicked ass.
I found myself laughing out loud more than once.
Yeah, I know… laughing at your own jokes is basically a crime punishable by wine confiscation at any dinner party. But that wasn’t the point. The point was—I was having fun.
I was writing, and I liked it. Not just the result. The act itself.
I’d found my spark again.
That rare, precious thing that, once lost, can slide under a couch and stay there for years.
Then, like a pebble cracking a windshield, one not-so-minor detail slammed back into my brain:
Next month, no more money from Mom and Dad.
How was I supposed to pay rent?
Utilities?
Buy food?
I looked around. Considered selling the rug for a second.
Three weeks.
That’s all I had.
And right now, in Vivienne Blaze’s messy little saga—the literary alter ego of Tess Martini—I was still knee-deep in Act One.
But if I kept writing each night with the same frantic fire I’d had yesterday… if Tess kept diving into her romantic delusions with that same dramatic flair…
If the universe cut me just a little slack—both financially and creatively…
I could do it.
I’d print that manuscript. I’d get a meeting with Mr. Bronson. I’d walk back into that office, this time with my head held high, and slam it on his desk like a pie to the face.
“See if this pops off the page, you pompous twit.”
I realized, with some alarm, that I was starting to sound like Tess. That same unhinged tone, full of fate and signs from the universe and the holy power of one’s own ideas.
I’d become a hopeless dreamer.
Only I didn’t have the sex appeal. I had… publishing. And publishing, spoiler alert, has never seduced a soul.
Besides, Bronson didn’t even rep romance novels.
But mine wasn’t just any romance, dammit! It wasn’t Salted Caramel Hearts, or Two Roommates and a Cabin, or Love on Holiday (seriously, who comes up with these titles?).
No. Mine was another planet.
A rom-com that made you laugh, sure—but then hit you with that gut punch. The kind that makes you laugh while realizing there’s actually nothing funny at all.
Forget the Great American Novel.
This was the story of a girl clinging to her dignity by her fingernails. Who wanted a place in the world, even if she wasn’t sure where it was.
Rom-com?
Chick lit?
Ridiculous little tale?
Who cares.
It was a story. Period.
And I had three weeks to live it and write it. I’d reach the end exhausted, overdrawn, maybe even evicted. But the beauty of it was, my Olivetti didn’t need electricity. If I had to, I’d finish that damned book sitting on the curb. I swear I would.
This wasn’t over, Mr. Bronson. Not even close. And I’d prove it to you—I would prove it.
But enough wallowing. It was time to throw on my investigative journalist hat, grab my notebook, and find out exactly what my main character was scheming next.
13
The living room had turned into some kind of horror museum… dedicated to Zane Ryder.
I stood in the doorway in my slippers, hair a mess, brain still stuck in “slow mode,” staring at the scene like I’d just discovered a cult had taken over our apartment.
Someone had completely reconfigured everything.
And by “someone,” I obviously meant Tess.
Last night, when we came home, there was none of this. Just a dying plant, a crumpled throw blanket on the couch, and two glasses we’d left out for days like sad monuments to our laziness.
Now?
It looked like the office of a private investigator gone mad in the middle of a manhunt. The kind with walls plastered in photos, red string, thumbtacks, and scrawled notes in cursive.
Yep. That.
Except it was all Zane Ryder.
Posters of him everywhere—on the fridge, the front door, even taped over Aunt Gertrude’s oil painting.
And not just the typical rockstar shots—Zane on stage, backlit, one boot propped up on a speaker while flashing the wolf tattoo on his tongue—but also paparazzi pics from his personal life: Zane on a yacht in Capri with a mojito and a “too famous to function” expression; Zane flipping off a photographer while entering rehab; Zane in a tux at a movie premiere, playing (of course) the villain.
On top of that, clippings everywhere: charity headlines (“Zane Donates Millions to African Children”), gossip (“Ex-Wife #2 Speaks Out: ‘He’s Like a Hurricane’”), reviews (“Zane Ryder Is the Marlon Brando of Rock”).
Magazines were scattered across the floor—music mags, fitness spreads, luxury lifestyle glossies—all open to features about him, every page assaulted by neon Post-its. Tess had filled them with notes, as if she were prepping a PhD dissertation.
On the TV, a documentary was playing on an endless loop, modestly titled:
Zane Ryder – The Imperfect God.
The footage alternated between grainy concert clips—fans screaming, Zane dripping glitter sweat—and black-and-white interviews with brooding musicians, their hollow eyes framed by dark circles and too many rings.
The narrator’s voice droned lines like: “Zane Ryder never wanted to be an icon. He became a legend despite himself.”
I rubbed my face.
How long had I been asleep?
Tess must have gotten up at dawn, entered a fugue state, and gone on a citywide shopping spree like a possessed fan.
And now here she was, having transformed our living room into a stalker’s bunker. She sat cross-legged on the rug, wrapped in her black silk robe, wearing tortoiseshell reading glasses, and looking so profoundly focused that CIA analysts would’ve seemed like toddlers playing with Legos in comparison.
She was clutching Zane Ryder’s autobiography — I Set Fire to the Silence — a heavy black brick with the title embossed in fiery red. In front of her, strategically laid out, were a set of highlighters and a notebook crammed with notes. She switched colors with obsessive precision, changing shade every few seconds, as if she were charting some elaborate emotional map of Ryder’s soul.
She didn’t even look up. Her voice carried the solemn gravity of a general announcing a dawn invasion. “The first phase has begun.”
I yawned, still in pajamas, wrestling with the moka pot like it was a live bomb. “The persecution phase?”
“Close,” she murmured, turning a page with reverence. “You have to study the prey before you strike. You need to know every crease, every habit. His weaknesses. His vices. What makes him laugh. What makes him cry. What he drinks before going onstage. What he listens to when it rains. What he pretends he doesn’t want but secretly craves with every fiber of his being.”
She pressed her lips together, then added: “I want him to look at me and feel like he’s always known me. Like I’m the song he doesn’t remember writing.”
“I thought that was called stalking…” I muttered, pouring coffee into my mug.
“Only if you’re desperate,” she shot back. “If you’re elegant, it’s strategy.”
I watched as she ran a glitter highlighter over a sentence with the kind of care usually reserved for the Constitution. She didn’t even flinch when, from the TV, the narrator of a documentary whispered dramatically: “They said Zane wrote his songs with his eyes closed, so he could hear the whispers of his own soul.”
Tess nodded slowly, like she’d just received divine revelation. Then she froze. Her eyes lit up — and I knew that look. The spark. The one that always came right before a ridiculous declaration.
“Oh, by the way,” she said casually — too casually — which immediately set off alarm bells. “Ryder’s playing a show tonight. At Yankee Stadium. We’re going.”
I choked on my coffee. “That show? The one that sold out weeks ago?”
“No, no. The one that sold out in seven minutes the day tickets went on sale,” she corrected, precise as ever.
“Exactly! We don’t have tickets.”
She snapped the book shut. Finally stood. Pulled her robe around herself with the elegance of a Byzantine queen and fixed me with a look. And in that look lived all her ideas: wild, unstable, utterly irrational… and maddeningly persuasive.
“Tickets…” She said the word like it was vulgar, something too indecent for her vocabulary. “My poor, naïve Bea…”
She stepped closer. “A seductress doesn’t need tickets.”
I stared at her. Then at the stack of magazines. Then at the TV, where Zane Ryder was screaming something heartbreaking under a storm of blue lights, while the crowd looked ready to devour him whole.
And I knew.
I was about to get dragged into something absolutely insane.
And damn it, I couldn’t wait.
Because this kind of insanity was pure gold. Gold I could melt straight into my novel.
14
Yankee Stadium blazed like a festival, wrapped in an electric glow that seemed to vibrate in the air like the purr of an over-revved engine. Spotlights slashed the sky like swords of light, the speakers shook the asphalt for miles, and the restless hum of the crowd pulsed like a city on the edge of something unrepeatable.
Pilgrims of a modern cult had poured in from all over the world—one built on riffs, leather boots, and notes screamed at the heavens. But mostly, it was women who had flooded the temple: young, not-so-young, tattooed, glittered, smudged, or polished to mannequin perfection. All united by one obsession: Zane Ryder.
Artist. Icon. Walking, breathing sex legend. Zane had always been the kind of musician who spoke to women’s emotions with the force of an elephant tranquilizer—he hit hard, and he left a mark.
Some wore the official Wolfblood World Tour tee; others had gone full cosplay—black leather pants poured on like a second skin, weathered cowboy boots, and the inevitable denim vest hanging loose across their chests, as if they were waiting to be summoned onstage to duet (or faint). Tattoos were everywhere: tiny wolves etched onto ankles, napes, shoulder blades, hips. Zane’s fetish symbol was stamped across their bodies like a sacred brand.
Tess, naturally, stayed loyal to her dark countess aesthetic: a flowing black dress, a corset belt with a whiff of steampunk, glossy boots, and a stare sharp enough to drop a hitchhiker at two hundred yards. But for once, she hadn’t gone overboard. No feathers. No lace gloves. No eyeshadow applied with the patience of a Renaissance restorer.
Her plan tonight didn’t involve a frontal assault. It was reconnaissance. A strategic survey. A live taste test. Like a terrorist trailing the president at a rally—just to map the blind spots, study the routines, find the weak points. Only instead of an arsenal, she carried chocolate lip gloss and the gospel of Contessa Éloïse. Different tools, same principle.
I had my own weapon: a notebook. Hidden in my bag between a water bottle and a pack of mint gum (essential field equipment). I had to be ready to scribble at any moment. Some of Tess’s lines—straight from that cursed manual’s brainwashing—were too priceless not to catch on the spot, like rare butterflies. If I waited even a minute, I might soften them, distort them, or worse—forget them. And her lines were pure gold.
The challenge was doing it without getting caught. I had to be invisible, silent, scentless, and above all harmless. My presence couldn’t alter her behavior in the slightest. If Tess even suspected I was writing a novel about her, she might… well, cut me off. Break the bubble of recklessness and turn rational. Or maybe not. Maybe she’d be flattered. Start speaking about herself in the third person and demand italics whenever I described her.
Better not risk it.
Up until that point, Tess had acted around me with total abandon. As if I were a cactus in the corner—present, but not interesting enough to affect her behavior. That’s how it had to stay. I needed to remain neutral, passive, camouflaged.
A Discovery Channel camerawoman.
Observing the lioness in her mating dance. Documenting without interfering.
Letting nature take its course, free of artificial contamination.
Girls from all over the world poured toward the gates like noisy, colorful waves—an army of teenage dreams armed with posters and permanent markers. They flashed their phones with barcodes printed on them like passports to bliss, got patted down by weary, underpaid staff, shuffled through metal detectors, and pushed past the squealing turnstiles that seemed to groan under the weight of all those romantic expectations.
“Holy hell,” I muttered, watching the scene with equal parts awe and claustrophobia. “It’s worse than getting into Fort Knox.”
Tess didn’t flinch. She just shifted her weight from one hip to the other, the way a queen sizes up the castle she’s about to conquer.
“Not for someone like me,” she said, with the calm confidence of a woman who already knew the camera placements and the guards’ nap schedule.
Her sniper’s gaze swept the stadium perimeter as we drifted along like undercover agents whose skirts were about six inches too short for the mission. Then we saw it: a side emergency exit, recessed into the wall. No crowd. No barriers. Just one massive human obstacle guarding it.
He was bald, square-jawed, the kind of guy who’d seen more than his share of parking lot brawls. Staff cap on his head, ID badge swinging around his neck like a medal for “Successfully Keeping Doors Shut.” Every so often, someone with a matching badge would flash it, he’d crack the door open just enough to let them slip inside, not a word exchanged.
It wasn’t many people going in that way. Clearly VIP access—maybe staff, maybe family of Zane Ryder, maybe just the chosen few who always seem to know the secret way in without a ticket.
A story of madness and redemption, of delusion and clarity, of metamorphosis and waterproof mascara.
And love?
I didn’t know if there’d be room for that, too. But for now, there was resentment, strategy, transformation. And yes, a brand-new energy. A voice that, finally, was mine.
“Well, Mr. Bronson? What would your fancy literary friends say while swirling their thirty-euro French wine? What would they think of a story like this?”
I smirked to myself.
Because deep down, I knew.
This story was absurd. Unbelievable. But damn alive.
And maybe, for the first time… it had more heart than anything I’d ever forced myself to write before.
12
Woke up in the early afternoon, face glued to the pillow and my head full of warm bread crumbs.
Sunlight pushed through the window with the persistence of a door-to-door salesman, and I felt like I'd just stepped out of an emotional spin cycle.
I didn’t remember much about the night before—except that I could not handle alcohol. Never could. Never claimed otherwise. And those two gin and tonics at Spice, taken back-to-back with all the grace of a cheerleader under pressure, had launched me straight into orbit.
But one thing I did remember. Oh, I remembered it vividly.
The rapture.
The exact moment I got home, ignored the desperate cries of my bladder, and lunged for my Olivetti like God Himself was calling me.
I couldn’t remember how long I’d written.
I couldn’t even remember how many pages I’d cranked out.
But I remembered exactly how it felt.
It felt—drunk or not—like the truest, most right thing I’d ever written.
Yeah, okay. I always said that when starting something new. It was my motivational mantra: “This time it’s different.” But usually, it was just a single step above the last book.
This time, though? This was a whole flight of stairs.
A gin-fueled epiphany, sure. But a powerful one.
Because yes—the truest thing I’d ever written, at that moment, was about a slightly unhinged roommate who, after reading a Victorian-era seduction manual, decides to seduce the most famous rockstar on the planet as if it were some sort of guided spiritual cleanse.
And yet—and here’s the paradox—it felt more real than anything I’d ever written under the banner of “serious literature.”
I don’t know. Maybe it was just the gin. Or maybe it was truth, slipping through the lines. At least that’s what I believed last night, as I wrote like a woman possessed, heart ablaze, bladder screaming.
Then, at some point, I must have dropped everything. Run to the bathroom. Come back. Collapsed onto the bed like a sack of potatoes with a literary calling. And passed out instantly.
I wondered: would I still think those pages were brilliant now?
Now that I was sober. Cynical. Back in full Bea mode.
A part of me was afraid to find out. I fidgeted under the covers. Rolled to one side. Then the other. Grabbed my phone. Put it back. Pretended I was just looking for a comfortable position, when really I was just hiding from myself.
I was disgusted. Truly.
“Pull yourself together, for God’s sake,” I muttered, like that would somehow shake me out of it.
I got up. Went to the bathroom. Peed. Splashed my face with cold water—the kind that makes you regret being born but also snaps you back to life.
Back in my room, I opened the blinds: Manhattan glittered in the distance like a hyperactive mirage made of glass, metal, and possibility.
I wondered what Mr. Bronson was doing right then. Probably reading some overly ambitious manuscript filled with words like “oneiric” and “symbolic dissonance.” I wondered if he ever thought about me. If anyone else had ever stormed into his office and shouted in his face that they deserved to be read.
Enough stalling, I thought.
It was time.
I sat down at my desk.
Stared at the stack of pages—face down, carefully aligned, with just a pinch of superstition—next to the Olivetti, like it was asleep too.
There had to be at least a dozen. Maybe more.
I sighed.
Reached for the stack. Flipped it over.
And started to read.
I tried to be as critical as possible. Cynical. Ruthless, like a talent-show judge with the flu.
But the truth?
That story kicked ass.
I found myself laughing out loud more than once.
Yeah, I know… laughing at your own jokes is basically a crime punishable by wine confiscation at any dinner party. But that wasn’t the point. The point was—I was having fun.
I was writing, and I liked it. Not just the result. The act itself.
I’d found my spark again.
That rare, precious thing that, once lost, can slide under a couch and stay there for years.
Then, like a pebble cracking a windshield, one not-so-minor detail slammed back into my brain:
Next month, no more money from Mom and Dad.
How was I supposed to pay rent?
Utilities?
Buy food?
I looked around. Considered selling the rug for a second.
Three weeks.
That’s all I had.
And right now, in Vivienne Blaze’s messy little saga—the literary alter ego of Tess Martini—I was still knee-deep in Act One.
But if I kept writing each night with the same frantic fire I’d had yesterday… if Tess kept diving into her romantic delusions with that same dramatic flair…
If the universe cut me just a little slack—both financially and creatively…
I could do it.
I’d print that manuscript. I’d get a meeting with Mr. Bronson. I’d walk back into that office, this time with my head held high, and slam it on his desk like a pie to the face.
“See if this pops off the page, you pompous twit.”
I realized, with some alarm, that I was starting to sound like Tess. That same unhinged tone, full of fate and signs from the universe and the holy power of one’s own ideas.
I’d become a hopeless dreamer.
Only I didn’t have the sex appeal. I had… publishing. And publishing, spoiler alert, has never seduced a soul.
Besides, Bronson didn’t even rep romance novels.
But mine wasn’t just any romance, dammit! It wasn’t Salted Caramel Hearts, or Two Roommates and a Cabin, or Love on Holiday (seriously, who comes up with these titles?).
No. Mine was another planet.
A rom-com that made you laugh, sure—but then hit you with that gut punch. The kind that makes you laugh while realizing there’s actually nothing funny at all.
Forget the Great American Novel.
This was the story of a girl clinging to her dignity by her fingernails. Who wanted a place in the world, even if she wasn’t sure where it was.
Rom-com?
Chick lit?
Ridiculous little tale?
Who cares.
It was a story. Period.
And I had three weeks to live it and write it. I’d reach the end exhausted, overdrawn, maybe even evicted. But the beauty of it was, my Olivetti didn’t need electricity. If I had to, I’d finish that damned book sitting on the curb. I swear I would.
This wasn’t over, Mr. Bronson. Not even close. And I’d prove it to you—I would prove it.
But enough wallowing. It was time to throw on my investigative journalist hat, grab my notebook, and find out exactly what my main character was scheming next.
13
The living room had turned into some kind of horror museum… dedicated to Zane Ryder.
I stood in the doorway in my slippers, hair a mess, brain still stuck in “slow mode,” staring at the scene like I’d just discovered a cult had taken over our apartment.
Someone had completely reconfigured everything.
And by “someone,” I obviously meant Tess.
Last night, when we came home, there was none of this. Just a dying plant, a crumpled throw blanket on the couch, and two glasses we’d left out for days like sad monuments to our laziness.
Now?
It looked like the office of a private investigator gone mad in the middle of a manhunt. The kind with walls plastered in photos, red string, thumbtacks, and scrawled notes in cursive.
Yep. That.
Except it was all Zane Ryder.
Posters of him everywhere—on the fridge, the front door, even taped over Aunt Gertrude’s oil painting.
And not just the typical rockstar shots—Zane on stage, backlit, one boot propped up on a speaker while flashing the wolf tattoo on his tongue—but also paparazzi pics from his personal life: Zane on a yacht in Capri with a mojito and a “too famous to function” expression; Zane flipping off a photographer while entering rehab; Zane in a tux at a movie premiere, playing (of course) the villain.
On top of that, clippings everywhere: charity headlines (“Zane Donates Millions to African Children”), gossip (“Ex-Wife #2 Speaks Out: ‘He’s Like a Hurricane’”), reviews (“Zane Ryder Is the Marlon Brando of Rock”).
Magazines were scattered across the floor—music mags, fitness spreads, luxury lifestyle glossies—all open to features about him, every page assaulted by neon Post-its. Tess had filled them with notes, as if she were prepping a PhD dissertation.
On the TV, a documentary was playing on an endless loop, modestly titled:
Zane Ryder – The Imperfect God.
The footage alternated between grainy concert clips—fans screaming, Zane dripping glitter sweat—and black-and-white interviews with brooding musicians, their hollow eyes framed by dark circles and too many rings.
The narrator’s voice droned lines like: “Zane Ryder never wanted to be an icon. He became a legend despite himself.”
I rubbed my face.
How long had I been asleep?
Tess must have gotten up at dawn, entered a fugue state, and gone on a citywide shopping spree like a possessed fan.
And now here she was, having transformed our living room into a stalker’s bunker. She sat cross-legged on the rug, wrapped in her black silk robe, wearing tortoiseshell reading glasses, and looking so profoundly focused that CIA analysts would’ve seemed like toddlers playing with Legos in comparison.
She was clutching Zane Ryder’s autobiography — I Set Fire to the Silence — a heavy black brick with the title embossed in fiery red. In front of her, strategically laid out, were a set of highlighters and a notebook crammed with notes. She switched colors with obsessive precision, changing shade every few seconds, as if she were charting some elaborate emotional map of Ryder’s soul.
She didn’t even look up. Her voice carried the solemn gravity of a general announcing a dawn invasion. “The first phase has begun.”
I yawned, still in pajamas, wrestling with the moka pot like it was a live bomb. “The persecution phase?”
“Close,” she murmured, turning a page with reverence. “You have to study the prey before you strike. You need to know every crease, every habit. His weaknesses. His vices. What makes him laugh. What makes him cry. What he drinks before going onstage. What he listens to when it rains. What he pretends he doesn’t want but secretly craves with every fiber of his being.”
She pressed her lips together, then added: “I want him to look at me and feel like he’s always known me. Like I’m the song he doesn’t remember writing.”
“I thought that was called stalking…” I muttered, pouring coffee into my mug.
“Only if you’re desperate,” she shot back. “If you’re elegant, it’s strategy.”
I watched as she ran a glitter highlighter over a sentence with the kind of care usually reserved for the Constitution. She didn’t even flinch when, from the TV, the narrator of a documentary whispered dramatically: “They said Zane wrote his songs with his eyes closed, so he could hear the whispers of his own soul.”
Tess nodded slowly, like she’d just received divine revelation. Then she froze. Her eyes lit up — and I knew that look. The spark. The one that always came right before a ridiculous declaration.
“Oh, by the way,” she said casually — too casually — which immediately set off alarm bells. “Ryder’s playing a show tonight. At Yankee Stadium. We’re going.”
I choked on my coffee. “That show? The one that sold out weeks ago?”
“No, no. The one that sold out in seven minutes the day tickets went on sale,” she corrected, precise as ever.
“Exactly! We don’t have tickets.”
She snapped the book shut. Finally stood. Pulled her robe around herself with the elegance of a Byzantine queen and fixed me with a look. And in that look lived all her ideas: wild, unstable, utterly irrational… and maddeningly persuasive.
“Tickets…” She said the word like it was vulgar, something too indecent for her vocabulary. “My poor, naïve Bea…”
She stepped closer. “A seductress doesn’t need tickets.”
I stared at her. Then at the stack of magazines. Then at the TV, where Zane Ryder was screaming something heartbreaking under a storm of blue lights, while the crowd looked ready to devour him whole.
And I knew.
I was about to get dragged into something absolutely insane.
And damn it, I couldn’t wait.
Because this kind of insanity was pure gold. Gold I could melt straight into my novel.
14
Yankee Stadium blazed like a festival, wrapped in an electric glow that seemed to vibrate in the air like the purr of an over-revved engine. Spotlights slashed the sky like swords of light, the speakers shook the asphalt for miles, and the restless hum of the crowd pulsed like a city on the edge of something unrepeatable.
Pilgrims of a modern cult had poured in from all over the world—one built on riffs, leather boots, and notes screamed at the heavens. But mostly, it was women who had flooded the temple: young, not-so-young, tattooed, glittered, smudged, or polished to mannequin perfection. All united by one obsession: Zane Ryder.
Artist. Icon. Walking, breathing sex legend. Zane had always been the kind of musician who spoke to women’s emotions with the force of an elephant tranquilizer—he hit hard, and he left a mark.
Some wore the official Wolfblood World Tour tee; others had gone full cosplay—black leather pants poured on like a second skin, weathered cowboy boots, and the inevitable denim vest hanging loose across their chests, as if they were waiting to be summoned onstage to duet (or faint). Tattoos were everywhere: tiny wolves etched onto ankles, napes, shoulder blades, hips. Zane’s fetish symbol was stamped across their bodies like a sacred brand.
Tess, naturally, stayed loyal to her dark countess aesthetic: a flowing black dress, a corset belt with a whiff of steampunk, glossy boots, and a stare sharp enough to drop a hitchhiker at two hundred yards. But for once, she hadn’t gone overboard. No feathers. No lace gloves. No eyeshadow applied with the patience of a Renaissance restorer.
Her plan tonight didn’t involve a frontal assault. It was reconnaissance. A strategic survey. A live taste test. Like a terrorist trailing the president at a rally—just to map the blind spots, study the routines, find the weak points. Only instead of an arsenal, she carried chocolate lip gloss and the gospel of Contessa Éloïse. Different tools, same principle.
I had my own weapon: a notebook. Hidden in my bag between a water bottle and a pack of mint gum (essential field equipment). I had to be ready to scribble at any moment. Some of Tess’s lines—straight from that cursed manual’s brainwashing—were too priceless not to catch on the spot, like rare butterflies. If I waited even a minute, I might soften them, distort them, or worse—forget them. And her lines were pure gold.
The challenge was doing it without getting caught. I had to be invisible, silent, scentless, and above all harmless. My presence couldn’t alter her behavior in the slightest. If Tess even suspected I was writing a novel about her, she might… well, cut me off. Break the bubble of recklessness and turn rational. Or maybe not. Maybe she’d be flattered. Start speaking about herself in the third person and demand italics whenever I described her.
Better not risk it.
Up until that point, Tess had acted around me with total abandon. As if I were a cactus in the corner—present, but not interesting enough to affect her behavior. That’s how it had to stay. I needed to remain neutral, passive, camouflaged.
A Discovery Channel camerawoman.
Observing the lioness in her mating dance. Documenting without interfering.
Letting nature take its course, free of artificial contamination.
Girls from all over the world poured toward the gates like noisy, colorful waves—an army of teenage dreams armed with posters and permanent markers. They flashed their phones with barcodes printed on them like passports to bliss, got patted down by weary, underpaid staff, shuffled through metal detectors, and pushed past the squealing turnstiles that seemed to groan under the weight of all those romantic expectations.
“Holy hell,” I muttered, watching the scene with equal parts awe and claustrophobia. “It’s worse than getting into Fort Knox.”
Tess didn’t flinch. She just shifted her weight from one hip to the other, the way a queen sizes up the castle she’s about to conquer.
“Not for someone like me,” she said, with the calm confidence of a woman who already knew the camera placements and the guards’ nap schedule.
Her sniper’s gaze swept the stadium perimeter as we drifted along like undercover agents whose skirts were about six inches too short for the mission. Then we saw it: a side emergency exit, recessed into the wall. No crowd. No barriers. Just one massive human obstacle guarding it.
He was bald, square-jawed, the kind of guy who’d seen more than his share of parking lot brawls. Staff cap on his head, ID badge swinging around his neck like a medal for “Successfully Keeping Doors Shut.” Every so often, someone with a matching badge would flash it, he’d crack the door open just enough to let them slip inside, not a word exchanged.
It wasn’t many people going in that way. Clearly VIP access—maybe staff, maybe family of Zane Ryder, maybe just the chosen few who always seem to know the secret way in without a ticket.
