I smile into the mic, breath a little quick, sweat warm at the back of my neck. “Thank you,” I say. “Seriously.”
Eli steps forward, hand raised, and the room settles again. “All right,” he says, voice bright. “We’ve got time for one more.”
Cheers.
He grins. “You want something older? Something loud? Something that’ll make you all regret the open bar later?”
A chorus of “Yes!” rises up.
I scan the crowd: familiar faces, friendly strangers, donors with soft eyes. Elliot raises his hand like he’s in class.
“Play the new one!” someone calls from near the front.
My stomach dips. They’re talking about our December release.
The one-off not yet attached to any album. The song we’ve never played live before.
It’s a song that shouldn’t exist—because we weren’t planning an album, because we weren’t in that creative cycle, because we’ve never done a random drop like that without a bigger project behind it.
But after I saw Ollie, those fragments I wrote in the car—the ugly truths, the raw lines, the things I never let myself say—grewteeth. Grew shape. Grew into something that demanded to be sung.
When I brought it to the guys, expecting them to tell me I was out of my mind, Miles had just looked at me for a long beat and said, “Get in the studio.”
So we did. One song. One release. One controlled burn.
Eli leans toward the mic, grinning. “You sure you want that one? It’s a gut-punch.”
Someone shouts, “We love pain!”
Laughter ripples, and Drew’s mouth quirks. Miles glances at me, checking. Asking without asking if I can handle it.
My voice sticks in my throat.Can I?I swallow and nod once.
“All right,” Eli says, lifting both hands. “You asked for it.”
The room quiets, anticipation humming. Eli taps his sticks together. Drew shifts his grip. Miles rolls his shoulders.
The opening riff of “My Stupid Heart” hits—killer, sharp, a build that climbs fast like a heartbeat trying to outrun itself. My fingers move on instinct, and then I sing, the lyrics wrapping around the room like smoke.
“I learned to stop waiting at midnight doors,
learned that silence can still be war.
Third headline hit and I didn’t even check?—
hope’s a blade and I’m tired of bleeding for it.”
The room is still, listening in that way people do when a song feels too honest.
My voice stays steady.
“You said my name like it wasn’t a weapon,
like all these years didn’t sharpen the edge.
I built a life out of almost and never,
and you still feel like the part I can’t forget.”