Page 156 of The Sound Between Us

They do. Oh, they do.

“Ten!”

“NINE!”

By the time we hit zero, it’s chaos again. Arms, confetti, someone throwing a bra. Dex gives me a mock salute. Jamie’s got tears in his eyes.

But I’m not done yet.

I walk to the side piano, barely seeing the keys through the sweat on my lashes. My fingers hover like they’re scared. Maybe they are.

The mic squeals slightly as I sit.

“I want to play something you haven’t heard before,” I say, and I know my voice is hoarse now, too rough to be pretty. “I wrote this when I was falling in love. Really falling. Not PR shit. Not magazine spreads. The kind where your chest feels too small for your heart, and the sound of her breathing becomes a melody you can’t unhear.”

A beat.

“She’s here tonight.”

That hush again. A thousand camera flashes aimed toward the wings. Seren’s still there. Still watching. Her arms are crossed. Her face unreadable.

“If this goes badly, please clap anyway. My ego’s hanging by a thread.”

Laughter. One more breath.

“This is ‘Frequency.’”

And I play.

It’s slow. It’s stripped back. No drums. No backing vocals. Just the ache in my chest and a hundred nights of missing her bleeding out through the melody.

The lyrics are a prayer. A confession. A map of what we were and what I still hope we might be.

I sing about Tokyo. About coffee spoons and whispered lyrics and the kind of silence that says more than words ever could. I sing about fucking up. About hurting the person you love because you’re afraid to admit just how much you need them.

About writing a song that might be the only way to say sorry and mean it.

The last note hovers—one fragile, trembling sound held in a space so huge it shouldn’t matter, but it does. My foot slips off the pedal. The piano hum fades.

Silence.

Then—

Applause. Deep and low, not frenzied.

I turn my head.

She’s still there.

Seren.

Holding up a sign.

Sharpie scrawled across the back of a setlist sheet.

5/10.

I burst out laughing. Head back, whole body shaking.