Page 73 of Reverb

I ran my palm up his shoulder. “You’re not mad at me,” I pointed out.

“Ma’am, I am not mad at you,” he replied formally, and I laughed.

“How drunk are you?”

“Not much.” A pause, this one also formal. “It takes a great deal of imbibing to get me drunk.”

I laughed again. I liked drunk Stone. Though he was probably right and he wasn’t completely wasted. To get a grown man of Stone’s size wasted, you’d probably have to drink half of Switzerland under the table. He was just tipsy enough to be cute.

“Were you drinking alone or with Will?” I asked him.

“With Will,” he replied. He still hadn’t moved, and his body heat had erased the chill of the room against my skin. I liked being wrapped in a weighted guitar god blanket. I should probably sell them on Etsy. “He’s my half brother,” Stone added. “He’s much drunker than me. But don’t worry, I put him in an Uber. I don’t think he’ll throw up, but if he does, he has to clean it up himself.”

“Did everything go okay?” I asked.

“Sure,” Stone said.

“That’s it? Sure? You just discovered you have a brother. Did you two talk it out?”

“Sure.”

“Are you going to be friends?”

“You have so many questions,” he groaned. “Want to get naked?”

I squeezed his bicep again. “Stone, I will not take advantage of your body while you are too intoxicated to give informed consent.”

He grunted. “I am informing you that I am consenting.”

That made me laugh again. “Stop distracting me. I want to know everything.”

“You already know everything,” he replied. “You always do. I’m just going to listen to you from now on, because you know more than me.”

“Not about everything.” Like playing guitar, for example. Or about all of the countries he’d been to. Or sex. He knew a lot more than I did about sex, and I was very happy about it.

“Still,” he said, his voice low with sleepiness. “It’s the default.”

God, I loved the way he talked. Those words that came out when he wasn’t self-conscious. I loved how he thought. I loved how he treated me. I loved him.

I wanted to tell him, but this didn’t seem like the moment. I squirmed under him, twisting and rearranging myself so I could see his face. He blinked at me. He looked relaxed, but his gaze was focused.

“Kiss me,” I told him. “Nicely.”

Obediently, he cupped my face and kissed me. Nicely, as instructed, but he took his time. His beard tickled me, and I tasted beer on his lips.

When we finished, he kept his hand to my cheek. “Sienna,” he said softly, his voice reverent.

The word shivered through me and my heart squeezed. He was telling me he loved me, I realized. Every time he said my name.

“We did it differently this time,” I said. This wasn’t like when I’d found out about Chase. When I’d stormed past his defenses like a bull in a china shop. And he hadn’t reacted the same way at all.

“Yeah, we did,” Stone replied. He stroked his thumb over my cheekbone. He sounded sober. “We both did.”

“I finished writing the story tonight,” I told him. “I added a part about Will being your half brother. Is that okay?”

“Yeah.” Stone stroked my cheekbone again. “That’s fine.”

“I could have sent it in, but I didn’t. It’s ready to go, but I wanted to ask you first.”

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