Unwritten (Woodlands 5)

“What’s the holdup?”

I grab the amp and gesture with my head for Noah to grab the mic stand. “She had a bad run-in with a guy before.”

“You need Bo and me to pay a visit?” the former Marine asks with a hard edge to his voice.

“No. She’s safe here, and I already have Mal looking into it. Landry’s stalker dropped by the week before we left on tour, but the guy had two witnesses. Mal says the two guys are the stalker’s old frat brothers, and apparently junkies, too. Marrow might either be dealing to them or he has some good contacts. Mal figures he can peel them away from Marrow, but it’s taking a little effort. In the meantime, he’s a thousand miles away, and she’s having a good time.” I heft the amp onto my shoulder. “While you were waiting for Grace to come to her senses, what’d you do?”

Noah gives me a speculative look. “I lifted. A lot.”

“I’ve been running five miles every morning,” I confess.

“How’s that working out for you?”

“Not well. How’d it work out for you?”

“Not well.”

That isn’t encouraging.

“So what’s the holdup?” he asks again.

“She told me she trusted me.”

Noah winces.

“Exactly. Maybe some girls would be thrilled to hear that my dick gets hard at the thought of her, but she’s not one of them.”

He hands the mic stand to Ian, who packs it away in the belly of the bus. In a low voice, Noah says, “I thought it might be the brother.”

“If it were just him, I’d tell her exactly where I stood and let her make the decision.”

“The band be damned?”

I look over his shoulder at Davis, who is mock boxing with Rudd while Ian lights up a joint and watches. “I don’t think it’d come to that, but if it did?” I shrug. “Bands come and go. Girls like Landry are once in a lifetime.”

“You should tell her that.”

“And have her run screaming for the hills?”

“She doesn’t act like someone who’s scared of you. In fact, during your set, she couldn’t take her eyes off you. Grace and AnnMarie tried to talk to her, but she was too focused on what was happening onstage to pay any attention.”

I shove the amp at Ian and draw Noah to the side. “She say anything?”

Christ, I feel like I’m in middle school, trading notes on the way to class.

Noah doesn’t give me shit, though. He knows what it’s like to want and not have. “Before you got onstage, it was Adam this and Adam that. She believes the sun rises and sets on your ass. I don’t think telling her how you feel is violating any trust she might have. If she tells you she’s not interested, then you deal with that. I know you’re not going to force yourself on her.”

I hesitate. “I don’t want to spook her.” I need to handle her with care. The crush she once said she had doesn’t seem to have materialized into anything concrete. I don’t want to scare her off.

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Noah says.

I turn it over in my head. She’s comfortable with me because she thinks I’m safe. If I don’t make it weird for her if she turns me down, then, yeah, what do I have to lose? And she’s only here for another few weeks. Although, that thought bothers me more than it should.

“Are we going to the bus tonight?” Rudd yells.

I shake my head. Noah and Bo won’t want to sit around in a pot-fueled, post-gig orgy. Besides, if there was a time to talk to Landry, tonight would be a good one. Away from the party for one night, it’d give us both time to breathe. “Thought we’d do this.”

I pull up the website of the golf place and show it around.