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Before Molly could ask what he meant by that, two massive pairs of hands grabbed her by the hips and hoisted her straight into the air.

‘Whoa! No! Put me down! I’m too old for this!’ Molly shrieked, her legs flailing wildly as her centre of gravity disappeared.

But she wasn’t going down. A dozen hands caught the small of her back, her shoulders, and her wet trainers, lifting her clear above the crowd. The audience around her had realised exactly what was happening. A massive, chaotic cheer went up as they began to pass her forward, a human conveyor belt of teenage adrenaline and sticky palms.

Molly was terrified, and in real fear for her life, or at the very least, her skeleton. She dropped three inches every time someone shifted their grip. She felt like a sack of laundry.

But she was moving.

The crowd was a wave, roaring under her, carrying her straight down the centre toward the flashing strobes.

She could hear Ashley winding down the song, completely blind to the fact that her ex-girlfriend was currently flying over the stalls like a loose football.

Molly reached the front row just as the final guitar chord rang out into the room. The crowd gave one last, massive heave, and Molly went clean over the iron security barriers, completely missing the foam padding and landing with a loud, distinct thud against the concrete floor of the pit.

‘Jesus Christ!’ a security guard yelled, lunging forward to grab her arm.

Molly looked past him to see Ashley, only a few feet away, looking down into the pit to see what lunatic had fought their way to her.

Molly gave her a finger-waggle wave as the roidy man tried to lift her by the arm.

Ashley’s dark eyes widened, and her mouth fell clean open. The Gibson acoustic nearly slipped out of her fingers. ‘Molly?’ Ashley breathed into the microphone, her voice echoing through the entire arena.

She unclipped the guitar strap, dropped it onto the stage floor with a loud clang, and scrambled down the front steps into the pit.

‘Leave her!’ she yelled at the security guard, who instantly dropped Molly back onto her bum.

‘Are you insane?’ Ashley gasped, dropping to her knees and grabbing Molly’s shoulders, checking her elbows, her face white with panic. ‘What are you doing? You’re supposed to be in London. Did you fall off the balcony?’

Molly sat up, her hair sticking to her forehead with sweat. Her ribs ached where she’d clipped the barrier, but her head was completely clear for the first time in five years.

‘I turned around,’ Molly panted, her fingers digging into the leather sleeve of Ashley’s jacket. ‘Because you’re an idiot, and your manager is an idiot, and I’m a massive idiot.’

‘Molly—’

‘Shut up and let me talk before I lose the nerve,’ Molly snapped, her voice shaking but loud enough to clear the noise of the front row. ‘I’ve been acting like a child because I was terrified of feeling for you again. But I heard the song. And the truth is I never stopped loving you, and I’m not going to London until you know that.’

Ashley stared at her, her mouth slightly open, eyes wide with fear and hope.

‘You love me?’ Ashley whispered. ‘Still?’

‘I just said it, didn’t I?’ Molly said, frightened to death.

‘And I love you,’ Ashley said.

‘I know,’ Molly said, grinning. ‘So does half of Birmingham, you nutcase.’

‘As long as you know, who cares about them,’ Ashley said.

She grabbed Molly by the lapels of her damp coat and pulled her forward so hard that Molly pitched right into her, bringing their mouths together with a sudden, desperate force that knocked the air right out of Molly’s lungs.

It was messy and ferocious, five years of misery snapping all at once. Molly’s hands instantly clawed into Ashley’s leather jacket, holding on for dear life as the noise of the crowd and the glare of the lights just evaporated.

Above them, the cameraman in the pit, who had been tracking the chaos, swung his massive lens straight down, projecting the entire thing onto the sixty-foot LED screens behind the stage.

The venue absolutely erupted into a deafening, floor-shaking roar from three thousand people who had been following the tabloid story for weeks. Up on the drum riser, Toby started playing a chaotic, celebratory roll on the snare.

Ashley pulled back just an inch, her forehead resting against Molly’s, a huge, stupid grin breaking across her face. ‘You’re mad.’