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“I loved you then, I love you now, I’ll love you always. And that’s how long I want us to be together. Always.”

He gives some sort of signal to Alyssa, who relays it to the cast behind her. In unison, they raise signs spelling outWill You Marry Me?

My brain’s buzzing, all the pieces falling into place. So that’s what she and David have been up to. And this is what being proposed to feels like. It’s a confusing combination of out-of-my-mind overjoyed mixed with a bit of shock/terror. But mostly I feel wanted. Completely, profoundly, beautifully wanted.

He drops my hand. For a moment I’m confused, the loss of physical contact almost painful, until I realize he’s pulled a ring out of his pocket. The shiny silver band gleams up at me between his outstretched fingers. “Marry me, Chris, and stay with me forever.”

My gaze flits to Alyssa, the cast with their signs, the audience, on the edges of their seats, then finally back to David, who is staring up at me expectantly. “You did all this?”

He nods.

“Why?”

“I thought I made that pretty clear.” He holds the ring up a little higher. “I’m proposing.”

“I know that. I’m just surprised you’d do it here. In front of all these people. You hate grand romantic gestures. Especially public ones.”

“Yeah.” His eyes find mine, the heat in them so intense it almost sucks the air out of me. “But you love it.”

He’s right. I do. “True. But there’s something I love more.”

“There is?”

“Yeah.” My heart’s pounding so loud I’m pretty sure they can hear it all the way in the back row of the balcony. “You.”

“Does that mean you’ll marry me?” he asks, his voice bordering on desperate. “I’m dying down here.”

The words won’t come, emotion clogging them in my throat, so now it’s my turn to nod.

“Is that a yes?” someone from the audience calls out. “Raise the mic. We can’t hear you.”

David slips the ring on my finger and stands, bringing the mic back to his mouth. When he speaks, it’s to the audience, but his eyes don’t leave mine. “It’s a yes.”

“Then kiss him, dammit,” someone else yells. The crowd picks it up and starts a chant.

“Kiss him, kiss him, kiss him . . .”

I can’t help myself. I need to touch him. I reach out and brush a stray lock of his perpetually disheveled hair off his cheek. “Our public has spoken.”

He shrugs and smiles. “Then I guess there’s only one thing we can do.”

“What’s that?”

“Give them what they want.”

He hands the microphone to Alyssa, loops an arm around my neck, and pulls me to him. Our lips meet, and everyone around us—cast, crew, audience—erupts in cheers and applause.

Later, at the bar around the corner where the cast likes to congregate after the show, we’ll probably swap stories about tonight. Alyssa will say how surprised she’d been when David reached out to her for help, and how hard it had been to keep her mouth shut and not spoil the surprise. David will insist that for a long minute there, he was afraid he’d made a huge mistake and I was going to say no. I’ll tell him he was an idiot for thinking I’d ever let him go, then kiss him for all I’m worth to make sure he’s convinced.

But for now, the whoops and hollers of the crowd around us fade to black and it’s just him and me. The way it always should have been.

The way it always would be.