Page 174 of Requiem
We are who we were always meant to be at this moment. Though a horrible person might have brought us together, our bond will forever live on, even after his death. I glance at them all, offering the purest smile I can before finally turning away.
The first song hits, and the crowd responds immediately, voices rising in waves, and I can see them already singing back parts they know. Emma, Heather, and Adela are all singing along with their entire chests. I don’t look at my girl too long. If I do, I’ll fall apart. But I see her anyway. I always do. Between verses, I catch fragments of her.
We move through songs like memory stitched into sound, older tracks that once felt like escape and now feel like reclamation, songs rebuilt from something that was once broken, and with each one, the crowd becomes less like an audience and more like a shared pulse. It’s like everyone here has decided to feel everything at once instead of holding anything back. True fans who have loved us from the beginning, who have sung our lyrics through all the ups and downs of their lives.
What a beautiful, humbling thing.
Then everything shifts after our fourth song when I point to the right side of the stage.
Alexandra Norton, the ethereal vocalist behind Echos, steps into place beside me, her presence immediately changing the atmosphere. Her black hair cascades over her shoulders, her bright blue eyes reflecting the lights above.
My heart swells the moment the first notes of“Shadow of the Day”drift out across the coastline, because suddenly the concert no longer feels like a concert at all. It feels like grief unfolding publicly beneath the stars. Just how I wanted it to be.
I stand there for a second with my hand wrapped tightly around the microphone, sweat cooling against the back of my neck while ocean wind moves through my hair and carries salt air across the stage, and all at once, I’m hit with the overwhelming realization that so many people here understand exactly why this song matters to me.
“Echos will join me in singing her cover of‘Shadow of the Day’ byLinkin Park, honoring the late Chester Bennington and the beautiful souls who…who’ve left us far too soon.”
Alexandra smiles sweetly at me, and Kami goes to stand beside her.
“As well as our final song of the evening. It is one that I wrote.” I pause, swallowing past the lump in my throat. “You all know what I’ve been through,” I say, my voice rougher now.
The venue falls completely silent.
“This industry can be amazing,” I continue carefully. “But sometimes people take advantage of dreamers. Artists. Those who just wanted to create something beautiful.” I swallow once.
My lungs suddenly refuse to fully expand.
“But tonight isn’t about what happened to me.” I glance back briefly toward my band. Toward myfamily. “It’s about the people who stayed.”
Emotion flashes across Micah’s face instantly.
I force myself to continue. “And the people who didn’t.”
The silence that follows feels enormous. And somewhere beyond the stage lights and stars and endless ocean dark, I swear it feels like every lost soul is listening too.
And then the music begins. And everything after that becomes something larger than any of us alone. Echos steps closer beside me then, and when she begins singing with that hauntingly intimate voice of hers, something inside my chest opens. Kami joins quietly into her harmony while Finnick’s guitar vibrates through the speakers. And behind me, Micah taps the drums in a slow, steady rhythm.
The crowd starts singing before we even reach the chorus. Not loudly at first, and not in the chaotic way crowds usually scream lyrics at concerts, but softly. Thousands of voices blend together beneath the stars as more and more lights rise into the air, until the entire amphitheater beginsglowing against the darkness, stretching all the way to the cliffs overlooking the ocean.
And standing there in the middle of it, I suddenly remember being twenty-one years old and listening to this song alone in dark hotel rooms while high enough not to feel myself falling apart.
Back then, people already thought I had everything. Fame. Money. Fans screaming my name every night. But I remember staring at ceilings while the world slept around me and feeling this terrible hollow ache inside my chest. Because no matter how successful I became, I couldn’t stop the feeling that something inside me was slowly dying anyway.
The chorus tears from our lungs in an epic symphony of love and loss.
There were nights I genuinely believed I wouldn’t survive long enough to fix things with my parents and sister. Or ever see Emma again. Nights where heroin felt easier than memory. Where the music was the only thing that kept me alive long enough to make it to morning.
And now somehow I’m standing here sober with the people I love still while thousands of strangers sing beside us like they understand exactly what that shit feels like. The realization nearly brings me to my knees.
Emma is crying while Heather clings tightly to her side, tears running down her face, too. And behind them, Rafe’s arms are wrapped around Adela from behind, his chin resting near her temple while she watches us.
I close my eyes for a moment while singing, and instantly, faces begin moving through my mind like ghosts. Those I’ve hurt. Those I’ve killed. Those who have taken pieces of my godforsaken soul that I will never get back. Every exhausted artist I’ve ever met trying desperately to survive an industry that fed on vulnerability and turned their pain into profit.
Kids who arrived with dreams bright enough to light entire rooms before someone crueler came along and convinced them they were only valuable if they bled beautifully for other people.
Some of them survived. Some didn’t.
Emotion climbs so fast through my chest that I physically have to pull slightly away from the microphone just to steady my breathing. But before the silence can settle, the crowd carries the next lines for us gently while Echos’s harmony wraps around the song.
