"This person is Seth Harding!"
"Thank you for coming into my life. Every time I felt lost and hopeless, you gave me the courage to keep going."
The spotlight swung onto Seth.
He clapped a hand over his mouth in exaggerated surprise.
Violet's smile was tender, her voice even more so.
"Welcome back."
The auditorium erupted. A deafening chant of "Get together! Get together!" rolled through the crowd like a wave threatening to capsize the hall.
Online, fans lost their minds, flooding comment sections with "They're perfect for each other" and "When's the wedding?"
I glanced at the comments, then down at the ring box in my hand, the one I'd spent a year choosing. The bridge of my nose stung.
Five years. For five years, I'd turned down invitation after invitation from Chris, one of the top directors in Hollywood, locking myself inside an eighty-square-foot study to tailor every word, every line, every role to fit her like a second skin.
I'd once gone three days without sleep just to rework the emotional arc of a single crying scene so it would hit harder.
Everyone in the industry said Violet Henson was born lucky, that she'd landed scripts perfectly suited to her image from the very start of her career. What they didn't know was that every soul-stirring performance that made audiences fall to their knees had been carved out of my own flesh and blood, piece by painstaking piece.
And now, at the crowning moment of her ascent, she'd wiped my name clean off the monument.
Why?
She was the one who'd reached for my hand first, who told me to forget the past and start a new life together.
She was the one who'd promised to propose to me tonight, to make me the happiest man alive.
I couldn't make sense of it.
When Violet and her manager Savannah slipped away to the greenroom during the intermission, I dodged everyone and followed.
My hand had just touched the door handle.
But the voices inside reached me first.
"Violet, have you lost your mind?"
Savannah's voice was tight with barely contained fury.
"Three months ago, you said the moment you won the Golden Dragon Award, you'd marry Tristram. It took us a full month to convince the agency. We had the entire PR rollout mapped out for you."
"The proposal sequence, the ring, everything was ready to go."
"But up on that stage just now, you didn't mention Tristram once. Instead you brought up Seth. How do you think that makes him feel?"
A brief silence filled the room.
Violet took a drag of her cigarette, her expression half-hidden in shadow, distant and unreadable.
"Seth just went through a divorce. He's having a rough time."
"He overthinks things. If his comeback doesn't go well, he'll spiral."
"He came to me for help. All I did was throw him a bone, a little buzz to ride. That's it."
Savannah stamped her foot in frustration.
"And what about Tristram? Do you have any idea how much that man has sacrificed for you over the years?"
"His latest script, Chasing the Wind, he spent a whole year on it. Every ounce of his heart went into that, and all of it was for you!"
"If you push him away, if he actually leaves, what are you going to do then?"
Silence swallowed the room.
I stood outside the crack in the door, holding my breath, waiting for her answer.
Waiting for one reason. Just one reason to stay.
"He won't mind."
Violet's voice carried a certainty that chilled me to the bone.
"He loves me. Even if I never marry him, he'll stay by my side."
My fingertips curled tighter, one knuckle at a time. My chest couldn't find air.
"Besides, he's not like Seth. He's got a big heart. He'll understand."
As she spoke, she tore the proposal plan from Savannah's hands and ripped it to shreds.
Then tossed the pieces into the trash like garbage.
"The proposal can wait. Bringing it up now would steal Seth's thunder."
Those scraps of paper gleamed under the light, bright enough to sting.
I stood in the dim corridor.
For the first time, the five years I'd spent with her felt like a joke.
But she was right about one thing. I did have a strong heart.
