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“I’d rather show you,” he said.

* * *

The opera house had a different kind of beauty than it did on performance evenings.

Nothing had been arranged for an audience yet. The chandeliers burned at their full brightness, illuminating every carved balcony and sweep of red velvet rather than allowing them to disappear into theatrical shadow. Musicians spoke across the orchestra pit as they tuned their instruments and organized their sheet music. Actors crossed the stage with scripts in their hands. There was something intimate about watching so many people create magnificence before anyone else was invited to see it.

Alexander led me to the Blackwood Box.

“We’re allowed to be here?” I asked.

“I know the Patron.”

I laughed. Of course he did. From where we stood, I could see the entire stage spread out beneath us. Only then did it occur to me. There wasn’t an audience. Only the cast. The orchestra. A handful of people moving through the theatre as though no one else in the world was supposed to be there.

I turned to Alexander. “You brought me to a rehearsal.”

He nodded. “I thought you’d appreciate it.”

I looked back at the stage. Musicians were still tuning their instruments while someone adjusted a light above the set.

“I’ve never seen one before.” I laughed, still looking around the theatre. “I’ve always wanted to.”

“I thought you might.”

“We get to watch what the world doesn’t get to see,” I said. I smiled so much my face began to hurt. “Everyone falls in love with opening night. But this is where it is built.”

I looked back toward Alexander. “Thank you. I love you.”

His eyes stayed on mine as he took my hand and kissed each of my fingertips. “I love you,” he said as he pulled me toward him and held me against his chest. “Dessert will be arriving shortly.”

“We are going to eat here?”

“Tiramisu, two spoons, and champagne.”

I couldn’t hide my emotions. This thoughtful, protective man paid attention to the things that delighted me and had arranged an entire evening around them. An usher appeared beside us, placing the glasses and tiramisu on the table before disappearing as unobtrusively as he had arrived.

“You really do know the Patron.”

A corner of his mouth lifted. The house lights dimmed gradually until only the stage remained fully illuminated and the theatre seemed to draw a slow breath around us. Then came the sharp crack of the auctioneer’s gavel. I laughed before I realized I was laughing. “It’s Phantom!”

“I was hoping you’d recognize it.”

“My mother would be horrified if I didn’t.” The memory arrived as easily as the music itself. “She brought me to see Phantom for my twenty-first birthday. She insisted I was finally old enough to understand it.”

“Were you?”

“I thought I was.” I laughed again. “I’ve probably seen it…” I stopped. “I honestly don’t know how many times.”

I forgot, for a little while, that there was anywhere else I could have been. When I finally looked toward Alexander, he wasn’t watching the stage. He was watching me. Smiling.

The rehearsal unfolded as though the music no longer required conscious thought. The notes had long since given way to the story they were telling together. Occasionally the conductor stopped to adjust a tempo or ask for a phrase to be repeated, and each time the orchestra returned to the beginning of the passage with the patience of artists who understood that beauty was rarely finished the first time around.

I watched everything. Every minute detail. The signals the actors gave each other, the dancers counting themselves into the choreography, Christine marking a movement without yet committing to it. The Phantom crossing the stage like a shadow, there before the music caught up with him.

It was imperfect. It was alive. It was, somehow, even more beautiful than the finished performance I had imagined. Beside me, Alexander said nothing. He didn’t need to. The rehearsal carried us through the first act almost without my noticing the passage of time.

“They’re making something perfect even better,” I said.