Never giving up on you - Completed.

56.

[A/N: I think three more chapters after this and it's done...]

Austin

'How's the rest of the guys doing?,' I asked Alan. We were sitting on the beach, both only wearing shorts and our feet buried in the sand while we were watching Lillian and Hailey holding hands to jump over some waves while Caity was laughing about them with her feet in the shallow water. The sun was warm and burning, and Alan, ginger as he was, was putting sun screen on his skin for the fifth time in the past few hours. There was something so serene about listening to the girls laugh in the distance, their voices rolling with the sound of the crashing waves and being carried through the soft breeze. The weather was amazing after a short but heavy downpour this morning, my best friend was sitting next to me and my family was enjoying themselves, I was even having a pretty okay day myself, but still I felt restless.

'They're... fine,' Alan said, rubbing his face with sunscreen.

'You know that putting on layer after layer doesn't work any better, do you?,' I chuckled. Alan threw me a look and leaned back onto his towel.

'I just don't wanna turn into a lobster and be in your wedding photos like that for forever,' he mocked.

'Fair point, Ashby...,' I chuckled. We fell silent and looked at the girls again.

'It's so weird to make music without you,' Alan then mumbled. I bit my lip and looked at him. His gentle brown eyes stared back at me and he shrugged.

'You guys nailed those two new songs,' I told him, trying to sound genuinely happy for them and not as if it tore me apart on the inside.

'Yeah, we're really happy about them. New album's gonna be lit.' He smiled a little and played with the sand between his feet.

'Good. I am so glad you picked it up and went on. That was the most important thing to me when I left...' He nodded.

'We know. Somewhere we all want to make you proud. Aaron's been so anxious about picking up the roll as new frontman and we're all just... I don't know, kinda nervous about how the fans will receive us without you, you know?' I hummed a bit.

'It'll be fine.'

'You sure? There's been so much hate going on on the internet since you've left...,' Alan said a bit timidly.

'I know...' I'd seen the mostly made up stories and gossip on Instagram and Twitter. One of the hardest rumours going on was that I got kicked out of the band by the guys because they weren't happy with the way our last album had turned out, and I was having too much influence in what our sound should be like. People said Aaron was supposedly the guilty one for throwing me out of the band after I had put too many religious lyrics in our songs, and the fact I wasn't healthy enough to perform anymore had been the last straw for him.

This wasn't the case in any way; I myself had chosen to leave the band, at the advice and plead of my medical team. Aaron, and everyone else in the band, hadn't had any influence on my departure. We weren't on bad terms either, we just didn't talk to each other that often anymore because we were all busy with just life in general. I had taken a few steps back, and they were heading forward on full speed.

I didn't really respond to all the rumors, neither did any of the guys exept for Alan a few weeks ago. He had stated on Twitter that no one kicked anyone out of the band and that I had always somehow put my religious influences in our lyrics. I hated to see how these false stories tore fan apart and made them argue about literally nothing on social media. I also hated how wrong these stories actually were. They knew nothing.