Page 65 of Discover Me
When the stream ends after about thirty minutes of questions and explanations, they all sit back with visible relief. The hardest part is over. The truth is out, in their words, before Tom can twist it into something else.
Kellan sighs and looks at his bandmates. "Great. Now go home. I want to spend time with my boyfriend, please."
They laugh, patting him on the back as they gather their things. Jordan stops at the door, turning back. "Seriously though, thank you. For letting us invade your home and use it for our dramatic revelations."
"Anytime," I say, and mean it. "Though maybe warn me next time so I can put on pants that don't have holes in them."
They leave in a chorus of goodbyes and promises to keep in touch about the legal situation. When the door closes, the sudden quiet is deafening.
"That's it?" I ask, moving back to the living room. "You just tell the truth and now everything's fine?"
Kellan shakes his head, pulling me down onto the couch beside him. "No, it's going to be a bit of a legal battle. Tom will sue, the label will push back, there'll be months of lawyers and depositions and bullshit. Fans will be split between supporting us and staying loyal to Tom's version of events. But we'll come out okay on the other end. We have the truth on our side and contracts that protect us."
He cups my face, his expression concerned. "What about you? How are you dealing with the Colt thing? Finding out he was murdered?"
"I'm shocked," I admit. "But I think I'm okay? Like, I'm not celebrating his death or anything. But I'm also not sad about it. He hurt me badly and was threatening to do it again. I'll be happier when Derek isn't a problem either. I really need him gone, need to feel safe in my own town again."
"I can't promise anything," Kellan says softly. "But I'll be happier when he isn't a problem either. So it really can be you and me against the world, without looking over our shoulders constantly."
"My Alpha forever and all that," I tease, echoing his social media post from days ago.
Kellan snorts. "Yeah, something like that."
Epilogue
Kellan
Three months later, and we've been through so much shit with the label and breaking away. The legal battles dragged on for weeks, depositions and court filings and lawyers arguing over contract minutiae. Tom fought us every step of the way, trying to claim we owed massive penalties or that we'd stolen intellectual property. But the contract clause held up under scrutiny, and eventually the label had to concede that we'd followed the termination process correctly.
Fans weren't sure which side to choose at first. Social media split into factions, some supporting our decision to leave and praising our honesty, others staying loyal to Tom and the label. The hate was intense for a while, death threats and doxxing attempts and people trying to cancel us before we could even start over. But gradually, as more details came out about Tom's manipulation, the tide shifted in our favor.
Despite all of that chaos and uncertainty, I've never felt better as part of the band we renamed simply Ransom. Dropping the "Lunar" felt symbolic somehow, shedding the identity Tom crafted for us and claiming something simpler and more direct. We're still working on trademarking it and making sure the label can't challenge us legally, but so far it's holding.
Tom's been pissed and still runs our names through the mud on social media whenever he gets the chance. He posts cryptic messages about betrayal and ingratitude, shares old photos of us with captions about how we've forgotten where we came from. His followers eat it up, keeping the drama alive. But aside from that annoyance, life has been absolute bliss living with Micah.
I've watched him heal over these three months, his body recovering from injuries that could have ended his career permanently. The physical therapy was brutal at first, painful sessions that left him exhausted and frustrated. But gradually his strength came back, the muscles rebuilding and the range of motion improving. Last week his doctor cleared him to return to light construction work, with restrictions but enough freedom to start feeling like himself again.
Derek got arrested about a month ago, spouting shit about how Colt died and insisting it wasn't natural causes. He went on a rant to anyone who would listen about serial killers and conspiracy theories and cover-ups. Nobody believes him, of course.
The investigation into Colt's death is technically ongoing, but everyone thinks it was just an unfortunate accident. Go figure—the same dismissal Derek and Colt got when they hurt Micah, now applied to one of them. There's probably some poetic justice in that, though I try not to think about it too much.
Derek's arrest came from a bar fight he started, assault charges that finally stuck when there were multiple witnesses and video footage. He violated his bail conditions from Micah's case, so now he's sitting in county jail waiting for trial. Micah can finally breathe easy in his own town, can go to the grocery store or the hardware store without looking over his shoulder.
Everything has been chaotic between figuring out new places to practice, getting all our belongings from the company, waiting for our final payouts, and finding ourselves again as a band. We rented a small warehouse space on the outskirts of the city, nothing fancy but it's ours. No label oversight, no Tom scheduling our sessions, no PR managers lurking to capture content. Just four guys making music in a room that smells like old concrete and possibility.
Getting our belongings from the company was its own nightmare. Tom dragged out the process as long as possible, claiming certain items belonged to the label or had been destroyed or mysteriously gone missing. We lost some instruments and equipment we'd been attached to, but we replaced them with gear we actually chose instead of what sponsors provided.
The final payouts came through two weeks ago, smaller than expected after legal fees and various deductions Tom's team claimed were justified. But it was enough to keep us stable while we figure out our next moves, enough to fund this independent venture without having to immediately sign with another label just to survive.
Finding ourselves again as a band has been the best part. We've been writing new music, the kind of stuff we always wanted to make but Tom said wouldn't sell. Complex rhythms that challenge us, lyrics that actually mean something, experimental sounds that might fail but are worth trying. Jordan's been writing from the heart instead of crafting marketable hooks. Liam's guitar work is more intricate, showing off his technical skill instead of dumbing it down for radio play. Rex is exploring different bass styles, adding funk and jazz influences that sound incredible.
And me? I'm playing guitar again. Not exclusively—I still love drums and take over on percussion for some songs. But having my guitar in my hands, singing lead vocals on tracks I wrote, it feels like coming home after years of being lost.
But this, right now, is officially our first show as Ransom. Not a huge venue, just a mid-sized club that holds about five hundred people. We could have aimed bigger, leveraged our existing fanbase and name recognition to book something more impressive. But we wanted intimate, wanted to connect with the audience instead of performing for a distant crowd.
I stand backstage, my hands shaking slightly as I tune my guitar. The nerves are worse than they've been for any show with Lunar Ransom, probably because this actually matters. This isn't just going through motions for a paycheck. This is us proving we can make it on our own, that leaving the label wasn't career suicide.
Rex sits at the drums we set up earlier, doing his pre-show routine of twirling sticks and testing the tension on each drum. He's been surprisingly good on percussion, picking it up faster than any of us expected. Turns out he's got a natural sense of rhythm he never got to explore while playing bass exclusively.
