The other four look at each other and shrug.
Like they have an option of telling him no.
I’m wearing hearing protection and the roar of the crowd in this building is making my ears hurt.
This crowd wants to hear what Davis has been up to.
He shakes his head, a performer’s smile on his lips.
Every time he tries to talk, they drown him out.
It’s beautiful.
And glorious.
And I swear I can feel his heart beating every bit as fast as mine is.
In terror?
Enjoyment?
Both?
It takes all four of the other guys and Aspen shushing the crowd before Davis can finally speak.
And when he does?—
Oh, my heart.
My heart faints dead away and my eyes get hot and my cheeks get wet and there’s a lump in my throat that won’t stop.
He slides me another look. “How about some credit to the woman who inspired our reunion tonight by being brave enough to tell me how disappointed she was that she never got to see us play fifteen years ago?”
Tillie Jean sways into me. “I think I just swooned to death, and I’m a happily married woman,” she says.
“Oh my god,he reunited the band for you,” Annika shrieks on my other side.
“That’s a good place to give some credit,” Levi says.
“If we’re being honest here, that’s pretty much the only thing that could’ve pulled me away from dinner,” Beck agrees. “We were having cheeseburgers tonight. You know how good cheeseburgers are?”
“I can’t top that,” Tripp says. “I only perform in private for my wife these days. Not in front of forty thousand people after spending fifteen years being a hermit.”
“Babe, can we have one more song?” Cash says to Aspen. “Since we got the manbun—ah, I mean, Davis out here, we should make the most of this.”
“My stage is your stage, but only if you make it a good one,” she replies.
The drummer hits a beat, and my breath catches.
I know this song.
I know this song inside and out.
“When You See Me.”
I haven’t heard it in years—not since I used to listen to Bro Code albums on repeat once I left Two Twigs—but this song—this was my secret favorite.
The song about the boy and the girl and the secrets and the truth and how he sees her, and she sees him, and they know.
