Her cheeks pink up. “I know you’re not about to talk about that night.”
I chuckle. “Thankfully, the tabloids aren’t nearly so interested in stories about Broadway singers.”
Now she laughs. “True.”
“You have shown me who I can be. Not the joke I thought I had become. But the real me. The person who cares. Who can love.”
Kelsey brushes her hand across my cheek. “You always could.”
“But I chose not to, until you.”
I turn to Jester, who’s making his way along the bar. “Excuse me, hey now, oooh, I like you.” He’s working the whole crowd. He arrives, tugging a black velvet box from his pocket. “I believe you need this.”
Kelsey shakes her head at him and leans down to kiss his cheek. “Somebody help our dear friend down.”
Cal and my father take Jester’s arms and lift him off the bar and to the ground.
“But I was going to do a little dance,” he says to a smattering of laughter.
The singers get louder, the happy lilt of the final number coming around a second time.
I open the box to reveal a ring that would be ostentatious in Hollywood, but I know Kelsey will melt over.
And she does, her jaw dropping. “Zachery!”
“Kelsey Whitaker, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife, to love and cherish as long as I live?”
She holds my gaze a moment. “Yes. Yes, I will.”
Another cheer goes up, and the singers break out in full belting chorus.“The moonlight at night gives way to the bright sun of morning!”
I slip the ring on her finger, then stand up to gather her in my arms.
When I kiss her, it’s familiar and new all at the same time. I never intended to get here, never thought anyone would see past my facade.
But this golden girl from Tinseltown is the one who knew me all along.
And we may have written the script in all the wrong ways, but it didn’t matter.
Because every love story is different.
And this is the next page in ours.
