In an attempt to brush aside the heaviness of the moment, I smiled at the assortment of faces, at the shadows of bodies I could see hovering out the dark windows, since we were too packed to let everyone inside. “Wow…there’s a lot of you here,” I told the crowd. They hollered in answer, making me grin. They really do love us.

Removing the microphone from its stand, I stepped forward, to the edge of the stage, so I could get as close to the fans as possible. “I want to thank you all for coming, for supporting us for so long.” I felt my throat closing up as I searched the crowd. Some of them, especially the ones in the front, had made it to damn-near every single show here. I wished I had more to give to them than just my voice. I wished I had a way to significantly change their lives, like they’d changed mine. “I’m gonna miss this…” I murmured, an ache in my voice.

God, Kellan, stop being so fucking melodramatic. You’ll be back.

My mental pep talk amused me, and again my mood shifted. I sought out Kiera in the crowd, my vision swirling as I did. I might have sobered up, but I was nowhere near actually being sober. When I spotted my angel, I smiled. Then giggled. “I’m so wasted right now,” I told the crowd. They whistled, like they loved the fact that I was fucked up. They might think differently if I couldn’t actually do this. Let’s hope ten thousand practices were enough to compensate for a shit-ton of alcohol.

Kiera shook her head at me while I motioned for Evan to start. Here goes nothing.

Surprising even myself, I got through it fine. It was great actually, one of our best shows, if not the best. The crowd fed us their energy, and we fed it right back to them. We played our new song—which they ate up—then we played every mega-hit we had. In fact, as I watched the fans’ reaction to our setlist, I knew, if we ever actually finished setting up the soundproofing in Evan’s loft, a lot of these songs should be on our demo album. Not all of them would fit though, plus there were a lot of other good songs too; deciding the final list would be really hard. Now I kind of wished I’d been more helpful with the soundproofing project, so the album would already be done, and Kiera could listen to me while we were gone. Wasted opportunity.