I roll my eyes. “You love it.”
“Only when you’re buying drinks.”
Drew chuckles. “You two are hopeless.”
Miles just watches, half smile in place. “You know what’s crazy? We’re all from different corners of the same storm. Eli’s the chaos. Drew’s the control. I’m the caution. You’re the spark.”
“That’s poetic,” Eli says. “You rehearsed that?”
“Just came to me.” Miles grins. “Guess Rafe’s rubbing off on me.”
I laugh, but the truth of it hits somewhere deep. This isn’t just my dream—it’s ours. Every chord, every sleepless night, every fight over tempos and lyrics and sound levels has led us here. And for once, it doesn’t feel impossible.
“We make a pact,” I say. “Right now.”
Eli leans forward. “I like the sound of this.”
“If we get an offer tonight—any kind of offer—we take it. No second-guessing. No ‘let me think about it.’ We go all in.”
Drew’s the first to nod. “All in.”
Miles follows, calm but sure. “All in.”
Eli grins like a kid. “Hell yes, all in.”
They all look at me then, waiting. I lift my bass a little higher. “All in.”
We knock fists—four hands, calloused and rough and steady. For a second, it feels like a promise carved into something bigger than all of us.
Eli stands and stretches, groaning. “Okay, boys. Showtime in a few hours. Let’s eat, shower, and try not to pass out.”
Miles chuckles. “You’re gonna need another Red Bull.”
“I’m gonna need divine intervention.”
They file out one by one, still joking, still alive with that jittery kind of joy that only comes before something life changing.
I linger a moment longer, fingers tracing the strings of my bass. The silence hums again, low and familiar. I think about Ollie’s face when I told him about tonight—the disbelief, the pride, the way his eyes softened like I’d just handed him part of my dream to hold.
And I think about the promise I made him—that I’d make them see what he sees.
I set the bass down gently, the metal still warm beneath my fingertips.
Because for the first time, I’m walking onto a stage with something more than ambition in my veins.
I’m walking in with a name still echoing in my chest like a song I can’t stop replaying.
Ollie.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
The backstage airhums with electricity and sweat. The kind that buzzes in your bones before a show—before the lights, before the noise, before the fall.
Eli’s bouncing his sticks against his thigh like he’s trying to start a fire. Miles is pacing, humming scales under his breath. Drew’s tuning for the fifth time, pedalboard glowing like a spaceship. The crowd’s already roaring beyond the curtain—bass-heavy, impatient, alive.
A stagehand shouts, “Five minutes!”
