Yes, it would seem that the crowd knew it by the volume of their united voices.

“All right. Get ready then because we’re ready to jam the fuck out for you all!”

The intro started off with Flipper, Connor, and X bringing out the melancholy beauty, and then it was picked up by Jason some heartbeats later. Then, Phil opened his mouth and sang as though his life depended on it.

“Our adventure begins on a dark stretch of highway/

An anthem in our hearts for the tribe we leave behind/

A band of brothers united by the song we play/

We follow the road of our own design./”

For the chorus, both Jason and Connor sang backup vocals, enriching Phil’s powerful voice, making it swell and rise up and over the crowd.

“We are the Fortunate Fallen/

Heroes for each other, if for no one else/

We strengthen these bonds to be unbroken/

Our heart’s anthem a force unto itself./”

Watching them from the side wasn’t the greatest, in my opinion. I would’ve loved nothing more than to run out and view from the crowd, but it was still magical to behold. Seeing the poise and grace in Phil on stage was something else. He was something else up there.

While I was watching Phil swell up with the air needed to release his powerful voice, my eyes spotted something far across the stage. Barely visible was a drawn pale face framed in black fringe with dark circles ringing the eyes. I knew he had attempted to wash the paint off, but he’d ended up leaving a trace of black liner.

Dressed in all black, Devon watched Phil, too. I could see how affected he was by this song, by the power of the music, the lyrics. He ached with it.

His eyes shifted and found me, and the emotion behind them struck me hard behind my rib cage. Devon wasn’t just affected by the music. He was in pain. Devon looked repressed on a level that I couldn’t begin to comprehend.

Smiling a tired, sad smile, he pressed his hand over his heart, tapping twice. He had only wanted to hear them, see them perform it live. He knew it by heart already.

“We ride away from our only truth/

From the ones we love above all else/

Searching the world for glory to bring back home/

Hoping we haven’t sacrificed all just to be ourselves.

Fighting to be the Fortunate Fallen/

Hardened heroes for each other, if for no one else/

Holding on to the unbroken bonds between us/

Our heart’s anthem crying out for itself./”

A part of me wanted to reach out to Devon, to help find a way to heal whatever it was inside that was ripping him to shreds. But it wasn’t my reach that was needed. It was Phil’s.

“Against all hope, praying Our Chance won’t fuck with what’s fated/

We fight. We bleed. We’re so close to breaking/

Only our faith in each other holds us together/

Undivided to the end, we still stand.

We are the Fortunate Fallen/

Heroes for each other if for no one else/

Graced with the unbroken bonds between us/

Our heart’s anthem heard and felt.

The passing of time has opened deep chasms/

Our longing for loved ones too painful to ignore/

This band of brothers turns toward muddy waters/

It’s time to find our tribe along the shore./

We are the fortunate fallen/

A band of brothers, homesick and sore/

Glory now found in our unbroken bonds/

Homeward bound, a tribe waits without blame/

The adventure is over for now/

We are forever changed.”

Once more, I looked across the stage.

Devon was gone.

“Thank you, New York!” Phil roared.

Our Boys joined at the front of the stage to take their unified bow. Phil gave the crowd his Namaste, and funnily enough, so did Connor. To me, it wasn’t unexpected, but Phil caught it, and his smile was blinding.

As they exited toward us, Alys, Lili, and I launched ourselves at my little brother. The four of us howled at the top of our lungs.

“Fuck! That was amazing!” he roared.

“Dude, I think we just got dumped for the new guy,” X stated in mock incredulousness.

Throwing his arm around his flame-headed best friend, Phil grinned. “I don’t blame them. He’s a fuckin’ cutie pie.”

Untangling from each other, I turned to throw my arms around my incredibly sweaty fiancé, receiving a dimpled grin and a kiss that made my toes curl in my Chucks.

“Amazing show, babe.”

“Gotta please our number one fan.”

“Your number one fan.”

“Yeah, that, too.”

From Bethel, New York, the tour headed to New Haven, Connecticut, then to Providence, Rhode Island, on to Boston, Massachusetts, and Concord, New Hampshire, before wrapping up in Portland, Maine.

Wow. Talk about exhausting.

We’d done five shows in ten days.

Luckily, we had a two-day break back in New York, away from the stinky bus and everyone else. We weren’t getting on each other’s nerves so much as a little privacy went a long way.

Connor’s confidence had been growing with each show. I called Da regularly to keep him updated since I was pretty sure Connor was too busy to be bothered with letting our parents know how he was doing.

A lot of my time spent on the bus was with Lewis, designing recipes of local favorites from each town we stopped in. We had been doing our best to provide the healthiest cuisines for the guys and ourselves, avoiding fast-food joints and restaurants. Unless we were staying in a hotel for a night, Lewis and I would cook.

Lili was also involved with Lewis’s cookbook, taking photos of the finished products, and I had to congratulate her. She was truly embracing her photography, and with all the time on her hands to do so, she’d been developing a great style.

We’d discovered a couple of gems, mostly on the second stage. The crap stage was still producing…well, crap. My reviews had been received with positive feedback from the guys, and I felt I had been developing a decent writing style myself.

Sheri was a wonder. Always in a decent mood, she was ready to help in whatever capacity she could. She and Tim spent long hours going over details and arranging stuff. I didn’t even know what. I just thought the two of them were amazing at whatever the hell it was they did.

Connor and I practiced our yoga together every morning, and Sheri would join us, glowing with health and happiness from her stable diet and regular exercise.

Mopping the sweat off her face and chest after a particularly vigorous routine, she smiled. “It’s incredible. I have the energy to tackle practically anything, all day long. Before, when we toured, I was dying by nighttime.”

Phil had to hit a gym at least three days a week. There were many twenty-four-hour places, so he mostly did his weight-lifting at night with Sheri joining him.

In the last ten months, Sheri had gone through an amazing transformation. From the sickly stick figure who could hardly stand to eat more than a few bites of food, she had blossomed, putting on twenty pounds of lean mass, which had brought her from a size zero to a size four. She was hoping to put on another ten pounds. Being curvier was something Jason certainly appreciated, and he’d found he was unable to keep his hands off her.

“That yoga shit you taught her is fuckin’ awesome,” the blond god had whispered in my ear. “The different ways I get to twist her up while fuckin’ her…off the fuckin’ charts.”