I’m gone before the sound hits the wall,
But your name’s the echo I can’t outrun at all.
Spotlight heat, your shadow’s there,
I taste your breath in the LA air.
If faith is falling, then I fell clean?—
Into something real, something seen.”
By the bridge, I stop thinking altogether. I justfeel.I move. I pour every ounce of what I can’t say into the mic until it hurts.
“Maybe we break, maybe we bend,
Maybe we burn right to the end.
I’d still choose the crash, the spin, the dive?—
If it means we walk outalive.”
Eli’s pounding the kit like he’s exorcising something. Miles’s head down, lost in the melody. Drew is locked on the groove.
I look up again.
Ollie’s still there, eyes locked on mine. His jaw is tight, his throat moving like he’s swallowing words he can’t say.
For a heartbeat, it’s just us.
And then the final chorus hits.
“Velocity—
No slow lane, no disguise for me.
You’re the proof that the noise was worth the fight?—
The reason I stayed in the light.”
I let the last note hang until the feedback hums.
Silence.
Then—applause. Huge. Wild. A wall of sound that shakes the stage.
Eli throws a stick in the air. Drew’s laughing, breathless. Miles just exhales, the tiniest smile on his face.
I bow my head, gripping the mic stand until my knuckles go white. Because in that silence—before the noise swelled—I swear I felt something shift.
Not just the music. Not just the moment. Something inme.
When I look up again, the balcony’s still lit in red glow.
Ollie’s gone.
But that’s okay. I know with everything in my being that he’ll be waiting.
The last chord’s still vibrating when I drop the mic to my thigh, breathing hard, pulse still climbing instead of coming down. The roar of the crowd hits again—deafening, alive, demanding more—and I can’t stop smiling. Eli’s standing on his drum stool with his sticks in the air, Drew’s bent double laughing, and Miles just shakes his head and mouths, “Holy shit.”
