A Stone in the Sea(63)

Sunder missing in action?

Just weeks after front man, Sebastian Stone, was arrested on assault charges against a producer with Mylton Records, Sunder announced a cancellation days before what was supposed to be the onset of their world tour kicking off in France.

I call foul.

In a Tweet issued to the world, Sunder blamed scheduling conflicts for the cancellation.

Yet Sunder has fallen off the face of the earth, leaving thousands of fans mourning the loss of their beloved band.

Where oh where art thou, Mr. Stone?



I blinked through the tears that wouldn’t stop falling, reading and rereading the line that told of his arrest. A ball of dread sank into the pit of my stomach.

I’m not a good guy.

He warned me, and I wouldn’t listen.

Shakily, I clicked on the word Sunder that stood out in blue, knowing the link would take me deeper, deeper into the man, and deeper into the guys that along with his brother, he claimed as his only family.

The search repopulated. Immediately an article from a little over a year ago caught my eye, and my pulse sped as I scanned the caption, the horrible words growing my torment, my throat locked as I read what was spilled across the page.



Mark Kennedy, Sunder drummer and founding member, was confirmed dead late Tuesday afternoon of an apparent drug overdose. Kennedy was found in the early morning hours on the band’s tour bus while in Dallas, Texas, as part of their Divided Tour. Rumors of addiction have swirled around the troubled band since front man Sebastian Stone was arrested and served six months of a two-year sentence on charges of heroin possession and theft more than four years ago.



And I knew. And I knew. And I knew.

I hadn’t been able to look away despite how hard Sebastian had worked to push me away.

Just as intensely as he’d worked to draw me near.

The two of us thriving off something that could never truly be.

I’m no good for you.

Pain took me whole when my gaze locked on the picture tacked on the bottom of the article. It was a brown-haired guy with a hint of curls over his ears who had to be about the same age as Sebastian. What almost looked like a shy smile curved the side of his mouth as he peeked sideways at the camera while walking along a sidewalk. Insecure. Is that what that was? Something about him appeared broken and sad.

In that second, I felt the magnitude of Sebastian’s anguish in his murmured words.

Took my whole crew down with me.

Some things you can’t take back.

And I hurt for him, ached for him in a way I wished I didn’t understand.

Even though it all felt like too much, there was no resisting the incredible longing I felt when I saw the stilled video, the four men who I thought I’d come to know in the secluded booth right outside the door, frozen on the screen. Obviously, it was a live video that had been posted by a fan. I clicked on it and watched Sunder come to life.

On stage, Sebastian was something magnificent.

Imposing and fierce.

Never had he looked so bad, and my hurting heart fluttered a wayward beat, hitting me with an errant bolt of desire. But it was unstoppable, the undeniable attraction this man held over me like coercion. Like every piece of me was drawn to him—blinded by the lie that we could somehow fit.

The video was taken inside a dark, dark music hall by a phone amid a raving crowd, a bedlam of chaos and flinging arms and slamming bodies right up under the elevated stage.

Spotlights flashed and shadows played, Sebastian with a guitar strapped across his chest, fingers sliding in frenzied precision up and down the neck while the other hand strummed a reckless beat, that pretty, pretty mouth pressed up to a microphone, screaming angry, piercing lyrics that I felt more than understood, somehow grasping the meaning of his intensity completely without registering the actual words.

My father would have said this wasn’t music.

God. Most of the people in this bar would say this wasn’t music.

But it was so Sebastian that it sent another round of tears skidding down my face, my tongue thick and my heart crippled by confusion, as I watched him in what was so clearly his element, a place where he was undeniably free.

Then the song shifted into some kind of harmony, and that beautiful voice he’d graced me with in my living room weeks ago twisted through the aggressive song. Something haunting, silky, and fluid. Lyrik was playing another guitar and stepped up to his mic to sing along to the chorus, Ash on the opposite side, face intense, lost in the bass line. Zee was elevated in the back pounding at a set of drums. Then the song took another turn and slammed back into those thrashing words.

My head jerked up with the light tapping at the door.

“Shea? It’s Tamar. You okay?”

Drawing in a breath, I forced myself to stand and cross the room. I hesitated at the door, before I finally unlocked it and cracked it open. Tamar quickly pushed through, shut it, and locked it behind her.