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A knock sounded on the glass door of the VIP Suite before Derek pushed inside. Jo squealed and jumped up from her place beside Kat, leaping into his arms. He caught her, laughing. “Hey, little menace,” he said in a deep, throaty voice.

“Hey, daddy fox.” She pressed a quick kiss to his lips before he set her back down on the floor, his cheeks already turning bright red by the time he turned his attention to Kat.

“Kat, thanks for coming,” he said.

“I wouldn’t miss it,” she replied, her skin growing itchy and too tight at the memory of the last time she’d seen Derek, the disappointment in his voice as he’d fired her. There was none of that disappointment in his face at the moment, however. If anything, he seemed softer somehow. “You must be glad the tour’s over,” she added.

He sighed, glancing out the glass front of the VIP Suite towards the stage below. “It’s bittersweet. This isn’t how I would have wanted them to go out. But I’m damn proud of how they’ve handled it.”

“Are you going to watch the end of the concert with us?” Jo asked.

Derek shook his head. “I came to get you, actually. You should see the encore from the floor.”

Kat frowned, confused. “I thought the VIP Suites were the best seats in the house.”

He grinned. “Not tonight.”

Derek led them through the arena, past thousands of fans scream-singing along to the last few moments of the last Midnight Storm concert for the foreseeable future. When they reached the floor, Gideon stood guard at the steel barricade closing off the pit from the seated areas.

“Hey, Gid. Good to see you,” Kat said.

One corner of his lip twitched and his eyes sparkled. “You, too. Ma’am.”

Kat rolled her eyes as Gideon moved aside a section of the steel barricade to let Jo and Kat in. Jo grabbed Kat’s hand and pulled her down to the very front, only a few people back from the edge of the stage just as the arena was plunged into darkness.

The crowd roared, screaming and chanting for the encore. Kat’s anxiety spiked, bitter and prickly, as she anticipated the pyrotechnics that would kick off the final number. It settled in her stomach, a slimy, amorphous ball of coiled panic, ready to spring to life at the slightest sign of trouble. Never mind that she’d watched these guys perform this number a hundred times, watched them rise up on the platform above the audience and plunge through the trap doors to the airbag below without incident over and over and over.

But not the last time. The last time she’d watched this particular song be performed, everything had changed, people had been hurt, and she’d been powerless to stop it.

She bounced on the balls of her feet in anticipation, but instead of the typical pyrotechnic display that announced Midnight Storm’s return to the stage, the lights slowly rose on the stage, purple and pink and electric blue. At the center of the stage, Beckett and Zach sat on stools behind stand microphones, their guitars balanced on their laps. Behind them, Nico had taken up position at the backing band’s drum kit, Logan at the keyboard. A confused murmur rolled through the crowd and Beckett seemed to search the wings for something, his face setting into a determined look when he found whatever he was looking for.

“I know you all were expecting something a little different to close out the night,” Beckett said into the microphone, his fingers tapping restlessly against the body of his guitar, “but I’ve got something new I’d like to play for you.”

Kat could feel the shift in the audience as their confusion turned to excitement, phones rising all around her as Storm Chasers throughout the arena realized they had a chance to capture the premiere of Midnight Storm’s first new song in years.

“I’m not the best songwriter,” Beckett said.

She wished she could reach across the space between them, brush the hair from his eyes, tell him how much she believed in him, calm his obvious nerves.

“But my brother is,” Beckett continued. “He’s always been fucking great at it.” He glanced at his bandmates. “And even though Jackson can’t be here tonight, he left me with the start of a new song, and these guys helped me finish it. So… Here it is. ‘Luna’s Song.’”

Kat forgot how to breathe as Beckett played the first slow arpeggios, Jo gripping her hand so tightly her fingers began to tingle. But she couldn’t care about lack of circulation at the moment, not when Beckett was singing a song for her—about her.

The song was slow and achingly beautiful, the chords mingling with Beckett’s deep baritone as though they were in conversation with each other. The music swirled around her, seeping through her skin, knitting itself into her muscles and bones as he sang their story—not the way it was, but the way it felt.

“You can set us down in Paris with the stars in our eyes,” he sang, “Drop us in the lake with the moon on the rise, You can call us what you like a thousand times, but it’ll always be us at the end of the night.”

She clapped her hand over her mouth, tears streaming down her face as she recognized the references to her books, to the ways she had written their love story over the years. Somehow he’d made those stories part of theirs, reclaimed them and made them into something new.

As the last words faded away, Zach, Nico, and Logan kept playing softly, but Beckett set his guitar down, his hands visibly shaking as he rested the instrument in its stand. He grabbed the microphone, shielding his eyes with one hand as he scanned the audience. “Kat? Are you here, love?”

She sobbed, lifting her hands into the air, but Gideon and Rodney were already at her side, strong arms lifting her until she was able to climb up onto the stage. Beckett found her through the lights and his shoulders relaxed, the tension around his mouth softening into the kind of grin that made wrinkles appear at the corners of his eyes. He crossed the stage, determination in every step, and pulled her to him, strong arms closing around her waist and holding her close.

“Hey, baby,” he said directly into her ear so she could hear him over the screaming crowd. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.”

“No more secrets, Luna. Need to tell you something, just you and me, before I tell all of them.” He tilted his head towards the audience. She nodded, biting her lip as butterflies fluttered in her stomach, making her feel so light she thought she might float away. His lips brushed the shell of her ear, his voice gravel and heat. “I’m in love with you.”