Age Gap10 min read
The Stage Fell — I Chose to Stay
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"I’m falling!"
The metal beam cracked over my head and the lights went wrong like someone cut a string.
"I need you to move!" a man shouted behind me.
I froze. The crowd pushed. I smelled hot wires and heard someone scream my name.
Then strong hands shoved me forward.
"Jaylee!" I heard him say. "Get down!"
A huge shadow hit the ground where I had been standing. Dust hit my face. I tasted metal. I coughed and my legs refused to work.
"Gallagher!" I screamed, pushing through people. "Gallagher, stay with me!"
I found him half under the stage frame, breathing hard but alive. He was bloodied and still smiling like a madman.
"Jaylee, stop… stop crying, okay?" Gallagher Yamashita's voice trembled. "You'll make me feel bad."
"Don't say that," I grabbed his shirt and tried to pull the metal off his chest. "Don't sleep, don't—"
He raised a hand, weak. A piece of pipe fell from above and hit the back of my head.
"Gallagher—"
Black.
I woke up face down on a hospital bed, a blunt smell of disinfectant, and a voice I did not expect.
"Madam, you are awake."
"Where is Gallagher?" I sat up so fast the nurse moved like she wanted to hold me down.
"He's in the next room," Dylan Dunn said. He looked away like people who hold bad news.
I ran. The hallway felt too long.
I pushed the door open. He looked like sleep, pale, an angel with his face too calm. I touched his cheek. It was cold.
"Gallagher, wake up. I'm sorry, I was wrong," I said. I begged him the way people beg the dead.
He smiled then, a half-formed smile. "Jaylee, don't cry. I will be hurt," he murmured—like the words from some other life.
The doctors came and the room blurred into a white noise. I held his hand until my eyes closed from the tears and the world spun.
When I woke again, it was in the same hospital but everything was wrong and right at once.
"Mom?" I said, because Abigail Coppola grabbed me so hard I thought she might break me.
"You scared me to death!" she scolded. "What did you do out there?"
"Mom?" I repeated, staring at her like she was a miracle. She was alive. I remembered her long gone in the other life. My heart did a strange thing.
"You're twenty, darling," she said. "Come on, sit. And don't bolt out like that again."
Twenty. I had been thirty, bitter and tired. Now the world folded back as if someone had turned a page.
"I didn't escape a wedding," I told myself. "I escaped the future."
"Jaylee, drink this," she fussed. "You asked to not get married, remember? I told Gallagher that. I can talk to him."
I froze. Gallagher. He was still in this life, too. He was two years older, same as before. Memory and time had reset, but feelings and mistakes were mine to change.
A voice on my phone left a message: "Come to the event. Gallagher is there."
I swallowed so hard my throat hurt. I could change things. I could be kinder. I could be his.
"You want to come now?" Aliana Combs, my assistant, looked worried when she saw me.
"I will go to him," I told her. "I will do differently."
We reached the city square where the stage had been built for a show. People kept talking about the collapse. Cameras were near and my old life buzzed like angry flies.
Gallagher’s bodyguard team filed out of a black van. He stood a bit behind them, mask on, watching me with the quiet worry only those who loved you can hold.
"Smile," I said to the fans. "One more picture." I moved differently now—soft, honest. I gave away signatures, waved, and then turned toward the backstage with the note Aliana shoved at me.
"I don't want to do this show," I told her later. "I only came because of… favors."
Aliana rolled her eyes but kept the paper. "You look tired," she said. "Check the lines. At least pretend."
I sighed. "Fine."
The crowd was loud again. Then someone screamed.
"The stage is unstable!"
Metal crashes. A beam falling. Panic. My legs froze, the old instinct came back and slowed me down.
"Run!" Aliana cried, but I could not move.
"Jaylee, move now!" Gallagher barked and shoved me forward with so much force I almost flew.
He pushed me and took the impact himself. The frame landed on him square. I found myself on the floor, alive. He was trapped and bleeding, his breathing slow.
"Don't close your eyes," I sobbed. "Stay, please."
He tried to smile through the pain. "Jaylee, don't cry. I will hurt."
His hand found mine as if nothing had changed between us and everything had.
Then a pipe hit the back of my head.
Black again.
I woke to disinfectant and a calm voice.
"You are awake," Aliana said.
"Where is he? Gallagher?" I grabbed her like I would not let go.
"He is in the room beside you," Dylan said again, looking guilty.
I walked into the second room as if pulled on a string. Gallagher lay quiet, too quiet. My hands shook as I touched him.
"Gallagher, I'm sorry. I was wrong," I said. "I promise I won't be cold. I'll stop running."
He smiled. "Jaylee, don't cry. I will be hurt."
That phrase had haunted me before and now it stung like a promise missed. Two days later they carried him home in a crystal box and I cried until I fainted.
I woke in a new bed. This time Abigail Coppola—my mother—was at the foot.
"You are back," she said, holding me like a child. "Stop pretending, tell me everything."
"I think I was… given back," I said. My voice sounded like someone else's.
"Stop the dramatics. Eat. Why did you leave him in the old life?" she scolded and laughed.
"Mom—" My life had been a mess. I had let him wait, let the year after marriage become a cold war. I hated him for a mistake he did not know he made. I left. He remained gentle.
Now I had a second chance.
"I will stay," I told my own reflection.
"I am going to change." The promise surprised me with its heat.
Weeks folded differently. I acted as if this life mattered. I called Gallagher like I had lost him, begged him to come to breakfast, made him watch me eat, and laughed like the world was a lens focused on him.
"Jaylee?" he said the first morning after I woke from the hospital. He had come to see if I was okay. He looked as if any second his fear would step out of his chest.
"You are still here," I told him, happy the sound of his name did not hurt anymore.
"Of course. I always showed up," he said, with the small, soft voice he'd used for me since we were kids.
"Marry me," I blurted one morning, and then clamped my mouth shut.
He looked stunned. "What?"
"I mean—we won't break it," I said. "We won't hide. I won't run. We will do it right."
The truth was small and fierce like a match. "I love you, Gallagher."
His face broke like something beautiful falling apart. He was used to my fights, my cold shoulders, but not this sudden softness.
"You are serious?" he whispered.
"Yes. I am. I'm done wasting time."
He sat like a man learning to breathe again. He brought up the phone to call Dylan and Aliana. "Call my lawyer," he said without a tremor. "We will do this quietly. A marriage first. No press."
But in the city nothing stays quiet.
Our photos eating street rice in a small alley went up on social apps in minutes. The world said we were "pretend couple," "stunt." Journalists sniffed for fuel. A hot topic bloomed and grew like a rash.
"You're trending," Aliana warned as if the words could hurt.
Dylan was distant that day. "We could downplay this. Pull low," he said. "If they expose you now it will be messy."
"What?" I looked at Gallagher, angry I had to fight for our quiet.
"No. Let the heat stay. Do not bury it," I snapped. "We will own it. I won't let people make me small."
He looked at me with a new softness and then took my hand. "You don't have to fight alone."
That night, I asked for a ring. He put one on my finger—small, firm, like everything he had. We went to the registry like kids stealing time. The clerk barely looked up. We signed. It felt real, not because the paper said so, but because his hand kept finding mine.
"Now you are mine," I teased, pressing my forehead to his chest.
"I always was," he said.
We did not shout the news. We did not parade it. We had a plan: a press conference to clear the "escape wedding" rumor. I wanted honesty. He wanted to protect me. We met in the middle.
"Make it clean," I told Aliana. "No games."
The press room was bright and full of flashes.
"Jaylee Sousa, explain why you left your engagement," the first reporter said.
"I left that night because my father had an accident and we had no way to reach him," I replied. "I know the photos looked bad, but they were taken out of context."
"Is the engagement with Gallagher Yamashita still on?" another voice asked.
"He is my partner. We have a contract of trust. We will hold a proper ceremony when this settles," I said. I kept my voice steady because I had learned how to anchor it.
Penn Ikeda showed up. He walked into the room like a man who had been handed the part of "the other man." He smiled, and the cameras hung on him like he was oxygen.
"Jaylee, I just wanted to explain—" Penn said when they turned to him. "I called because I had emergency work. I didn't mean—"
"Save it," I cut him off. "Do not drag me into your climbs."
He bristled. "We were seen together. You should at least let the truth come out."
The truth, of course, was messy. He wanted roles. He wanted access. The press wanted romance. I wanted quiet.
The reporters asked, we answered, and the whole event trended like wildfire. Penn's face changed when my words gave him no crumbs. He went red with rage and left like someone stealing a toy he thought should be his.
Outside, the apps exploded. Some cheered the love story. Some said I was playing games. Some hated me for the change in spin.
Gallagher sat through the whole thing like a man whose whole army had been stripped. He held my hand in the crowd and when I looked at him his thumb brushed my knuckle.
"Are you okay?" I whispered.
He smiled. "Because you decide to stay, I have hope. I will move heaven."
It was not all easy. My old habits came back in jagged moments. I still wanted to push him away sometimes because it was my defense. He still flinched when I raised my voice.
"Why don't you just say you love me?" I would snap.
"Because words are cheap," he said. "Because I have been silent while you left. I want action."
So I acted. I let him cook for me. I sat next to him and told him things. I kissed him when his face looked small. I learned his coffee order and his meeting times like folktales.
He learned me, too. He bought clothes that fit me. He guarded small moments like they were fragile glass.
"Do you ever regret saving me?" I asked one night when it was just us and the rain.
"You would not ask that if you believed in me," he said. "I regret nothing."
We made love that night like we were trying to remember who we were. He was gentle, fierce, full of care. I was present. No running. When the morning came, he made me eggs and did not let me burn the toast.
"Stay tonight," I asked him that same morning, half-joking.
He did not reply with words. He pulled me close and stayed close until I slept.
Time fixed the small things. The press cycle faded. Penn kept trying for the role he wanted, but he found the director cold and unreachable. His smile creased and he started to look smaller each day. I thought revenge would be sweeter, but the best revenge was me being happy.
"You are stubborn," Gallagher would say.
"Only toward the things that matter," I'd answer.
We told no one of the registry at first. Then, when the press calmed, I posted a single photo: my hand in his, a small ring, and the words—"We are married. We will tell you later."
The internet lit up. People cheered or tore it apart. But when we stood in the backyard of his house and looked at our photos, we saw only our messy smiles.
The final test was family. Gallagher's cousins wanted him to be cold. People who wanted his seat at Yamashita Industries watched for any mistake.
"Do you think they will accept you?" I asked him when he grew pale.
"They will learn," he said. "We will write our story."
I did not know then that their attacks would be small at first—snide comments at dinner, a cousin's refusal to attend our small ceremony—but then one night there was a board challenge and a rumor, and someone leaked a private text.
I saw Gallagher in the newsroom and felt cold.
"Let me handle it," he said. "I will answer in the boardroom then come to you. Wait for me."
"Okay." I swallowed.
He came home late with a new scar of worry under his eyes. He had fought them. He had held his ground. He had answered the rumor with numbers, not words.
"Why do you fight so hard?" I whispered while he poured us late tea.
"Because I knew you when no one else did," he said. "Because I promised to be your guard."
"Then stop doing it alone," I told him. "Let me guard you, too."
He looked at me like I had offered him a weapon. "You do," he said. "You already do."
Days turned into months. We built small rituals. I learned to put his tie on in the mornings. He learned my favorite song. We argued about paint colors. We made a tiny garden on the balcony.
One winter morning, Penn appeared again—this time in a new film with a different co-star. He sent a message—public, polite—congratulating me.
I blocked him. I had the right to.
"Do you ever miss the other life?" I asked Gallagher one night, honest.
"Sometimes," he said. "I miss peace. But the peace I want is with you, not a life without battle."
"You saved me once," I answered. "This time, I will save you."
A year after the stage fell, we stood in a small ceremony with a handful of friends and family. Abigail clapped like a fool. Aliana cried. Dylan tried to stay composed and failed. Gallagher's hands were steady.
"I never wanted to force you," he said softly when the priest asked our vows. "I wanted to be ready for you. I will be your home."
"I will be your person," I answered. "I will not run. I will stand."
And when our lips met the first time as husband and wife in front of witnesses, the cameras waited and flashed, but we were on a stage of our own making.
After the ceremony, in the quiet room of a two-star restaurant we loved, Gallagher reached into his jacket and pulled out a small, folded scrap of paper.
"What is that?" I said.
He looked at me like he had kept a secret for too long. "Do you remember the first time I saw you? At the school gate? I wrote a little note and slipped it into your backpack. It said: 'Stay.'" His laugh was soft, ashamed.
"Stay?" I repeated.
"Stay with me. I will say it again, not as a plea but as a promise." He kissed the corner of my mouth. "Stay."
I took the paper and held it like a relic. I put it into my wallet. We walked outside and saw a small stage in the square where they had rebuilt the event rig.
"Watch," he said, and he led me there. People were setting lights. No collapse this time. Only light and music.
We stood there—plain as anyone, hand in hand—and he leaned over and kissed me like a man who had learned the shape of my mouth.
"I saved you then," he said into my hair. "But you saved me back."
"I will always be here," I told him.
"You are here," he said, and that was all.
The night was soft and we walked home against the winter wind. Later, when the house was quiet and the city slept, I looked at the little ring on my finger and thought of two lives.
Once I ran. Once I left. Once it broke our quiet world.
Now I stay.
I put my head on his chest and he wrapped his arms around me like he would never let go.
Outside, the rebuilt stage stood quiet, lights off. Inside, the house warmed, and the sound of slow breathing filled the room.
"Promise me one more thing," I whispered.
"Anything."
"Don't wait until it's too late to say you love me again."
He smiled, like he always did when accepting a new rule.
"I won't," he said. "I love you, Jaylee."
I pressed my hand back to his heart and felt it beat, steady and true.
"I love you too," I said, and we slept.
The End
— Thank you for reading —