46. Chapter 46 #2
Behind me, Micah looks emotionally wrecked now, sweat dampening his hair while tears shine visibly beneath the stage lights, but he keeps playing. He glances toward me briefly, his jaw tight, and I know exactly what he’s thinking because I’m thinking it too.
Against every horrible possibility, against addiction and violence and abuse and everything that tried to destroy us before we ever fully became ourselves, we somehow made it here. We never died in that hotel room years ago when we tried to together.
Fuck, friend. We made it.
When the final chorus swells across the venue, the audience sings so loudly that the sound nearly overtakes the instruments themselves, thousands upon thousands of voices carrying the melody outward across the coastline while phone lights sway beneath the night sky like stars in motion.
And standing there surrounded by all that grief and love and humanity, I finally understand something therapy has been trying to teach me for months now. People survive because of each other. Sometimes love is the only thing standing between someone and the edge.
The final notes fade slowly while the crowd erupts around us in applause and tears and screams. But even through all of it, my chest still feels tight because I know what comes next.
Echos wipes quickly beneath one eye before laughing softly at herself, while Kami exhales shakily beside her.
I step toward the microphone again, and I can feel every heartbeat vibrating through my ribs.
I stare out at the lights, and suddenly this next song terrifies me more than anything else tonight.
Because “Falling Star” belongs to all of us. It’s my story. It’s ours.
I grip the microphone tighter, forcing air slowly into my lungs while my gaze drifts instinctively toward the front row.
“They found us young with open hands
Full of hope and borrowed plans
Said, ‘We’ll make you everything’
Then took more than we could stand…”
The crowd quiets immediately, listening. The giant screens surrounding the stage glow softly with drifting visuals of collapsing stars and gold light bleeding through the cosmos.
“Turned our names into something clean
Smoothed us down to fit the screen
Taught us how to smile on cue
While they pulled apart the seams…”
My voice roughens slightly around the last line because suddenly I’m remembering too much at once. Bright camera flashes, hotel mirrors, bathroom sinks stained with blood and cocaine and exhaustion. Nolan’s cold smile. Alexei’s cruel voice.
“Every dream came with a cost
Every light could be a lie…”
My voice nearly disappears before the next line.
“We’re falling stars, don’t look away
We burn the brightest on the way…”
Echos harmonizes beautifully beside me, her voice weaving around mine like something heavenly and haunted all at once. It feels less like backup vocals and more like grief itself reverberating through the song.
“They call it losing everything
But we’re still lighting up the sky…”
The lyric catches painfully in my throat because all I can think about is Adriana sitting on the couch beside me in captivity, with shaking hands and exhausted eyes.
Thinking about her now nearly crushes something inside me.
Because beneath all the cruelty, damage, and manipulation, she’d once just been a fifteen year old girl with dreams big enough to destroy her.
A falling star.
Gone before she ever truly got to live.
She deserved the chance to become someone beyond her trauma instead of dying beneath the weight of it.
Echos’s voice rises beside mine before I can drown too deeply inside the memory. The words burst outward across the venue while Micah hits the drums harder now, emotion pouring visibly through every movement of his body.
“We’re not broken, we’re just changed
They poured fire in our veins…”
My voice cracks slightly on changed. The crowd hears it. I know they do.
“They sell a story, sell a face
Sell the soul and call it fate
If you speak, you disappear
If you don’t, you suffocate…”
The lines hit the crowd heavier now. I see how their faces change. More tears are flowing.
“Bathroom sinks and hotel lights
Glitter tears and alibis…”
Emma lowers her head briefly while listening, and I know she’s remembering pieces of me I wish she never had to see.
The overdoses. The panic attacks. The nights she held me while I shook apart from withdrawal and trauma and fucking fear.
The nights she sang softly against my hair while medication dissolved under my tongue and I tried to remember why I was even doing this in the first place.
By the second pre-chorus, my fingertips have gone numb around the microphone, and I have to pull back for half a second just to get air into my lungs again. Echos takes over gently.
“But there’s a fire underneath
Something they can’t rewrite…”
I lean into the microphone, my chest too tight to contain my heartbeat.
“You can take the stage, take the name
Take the innocence and the blame
Take the silence, take the shame
But you’ll never douse the flames…”
My voice shakes, feeling too much all at once. And then the softer lines come. The ones that pierce my fucking heart.
“Some of us don’t make it out
Some get lost inside the sound…”
Micah lowers his head behind the drums before slamming back into the rhythm harder than before.
“But their echoes don’t fade easy
You can still hear them now…”
The line leaves my mouth almost broken. And somehow the crowd understands anyway. The final chorus detonates across the venue. Every instrument crashes back in at once beneath the summer sky, loud enough that I physically feel the sound vibrating through my chest.
“We’re falling stars, don’t look away
We turn the dark into a stage
They tried to take our everything
But they couldn’t take the sky…”
I’m crying now, tears slipping down my face while I keep singing harder anyway, pouring every remaining shattered piece of myself into the microphone. And suddenly the grief inside me transforms into something else entirely. Not happiness or forgiveness…but something stronger. Purpose.
“We’re still burning, still alive
More than what they left behind…”
My chest aches with every breath. But for the first time in my life, it doesn’t feel like I’m dying from it.
It feels like a release.
“If this is what it means to fall…”
I look directly at Emma while singing the final line. The woman who never gave up on me.
“Then watch us light the fucking sky.”
The final notes fade out slowly while thousands of lights sway before us. Standing there breathless beside my band, I finally understand something I spent years too numb to realize.
Maybe that was the point all along. Not to avoid the fall, but to leave something beautiful behind when it happened.