Page 34 of How NOT to Seduce a Rockstar
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 persecutionphase?”
“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. GoldI 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 officialWolfblood World Tourtee; others had gone full cosplay—black leatherpants 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 rarebutterflies. 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.
