Husband Material (London Calling #2)(125)

Oliver’s mouth tightened. Then he stepped inside, closing the door behind him. “Frankly, no.”

Fuck, he knew. He fucking knew. I had no idea how he knew, but he fucking knew. “Look,” I blurted. “Oliver. Whatever Bridge has told you, it’s very out of context.”

Walking slowly and a little unsteadily, Oliver pulled a chair over and sank down onto it. It was about the gravest I’d ever seen him.

And I’d seen him at his father’s funeral.

“Oliver,” I began, wanting to go into damage-limitation mode but still not sure what the damage was or how to limit it.

“Lucien.”

It wasn’t exactly a reply because I’d barely said anything. And it wasn’t exactly an interruption because I hadn’t been saying anything else. If I was lucky, we’d be able to pass the time until the ceremony just saying each other’s names back and forth in tones of increasing concern.

Unfortunately, Oliver thwarted that plan by putting his head in his hands and starting to cry in that quiet, desperate way that people did when they were beyond wrecked.

I was going to kill Bridge. I was going to kill Bridge with a spoon.

How had she ever thought this was going to help? Unless this was option four, in which case I had literally asked for it.

“Oliver,” I said again, not quite managing to get out of the saying-names space. And since I was kind of already on my knees, I crawled over in what I hoped was consoling rather than flat-out weird way. “It’s going to be okay. I love you and I want to be with you and I’m ready to go through with this.”

Oliver sobbed. “Please don’t.”

Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. I’d ruined my boyfriend. I’d ruined my boyfriend on the morning of our fucking wedding. I patted his knee like that was going to be any help at all. “Look, I know I can be flaky sometimes, and I get in my head, but I really am all in. I’m all in on you.”

At last, Oliver looked up. His eyes were red and swollen—he apparently hadn’t slept any better than I had. Which was weird when you set it against his wedding suit, which was formal to the point of vintage and immaculate in ways that neither of us seemed to be feeling right now. “I mean it, Lucien. I need you to stop.”

“But I’m trying to tell you that it’s all right. That whatever happens we—”

“I can’t marry you.”

The words made no sense. Like traffic lights in the rain. Like this blur of colour that took a moment to a moment to resolve into distinct shades of red and amber and green.

I. Can’t. Marry. You.

What.

The.

Fuck.

I’d been up all last night worrying about this wanker’s feelings, and here he was doing to me exactly what I had, with great maturity and compassion, decided I couldn’t possibly do to him. Lurching to my feet, I grabbed the wastepaper basket and upended it over Oliver’s head, showering him in a confetti of old receipts, chocolate wrappers, and those little paper circles from the bottom of hole punches. “You bastard. You utter bastard.”

“I’m aware,” he said with far too much dignity for a man with a Crunchie wrapper on his shoulder, “that this is selfish and that…” He had to stop because he got all choked up again, for which—given the circumstances—I had zero sympathy. Well, maybe one sympathy. Make it one point five. “And that,” he went on, “I’m probably going to lose you.”

I was trying to hold on to my anger because the alternative was collapsing on the floor in a pool of broken heart and sad feels. “Yes, Oliver. Leaving me at the altar might just do that.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice breaking. “I’m so so sorry.”

Deciding that avoiding the floor was delaying the inevitable, I crumbled down beside him. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

I asked him. And myself as well.

“Because I love you. And, fully acknowledging the irony of this”—with an attempt at composure, he plucked a discarded treasury tag from his collar—“I was afraid of losing you.”

It was getting hard to stay angry because my relationship was dissolving, Oliver was falling apart, and I—let’s be honest—was kind of being a massive hypocrite. “Well, it’s good that you appreciate the irony,” I told him, “because you picked a weird strategy.”

“And an ineffective one,” he agreed.

I got it. I couldn’t admit it, but I got it. “I don’t suppose it occurred to you to say no when I proposed?”

“How could I?” He gave me this devastated, half-pleading look. “I know what it cost you to ask me, and I know what it meant.” For a moment, he seemed unable to go on. He just sat there breathing and looking sad. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“Yeah.” I prodded the wastepaper basket with my toe and watched it roll across the floor, then roll a little way back as what was left of the contents settled on the bottom. “Nice of you in theory. Not super great in practice.”

“I’m sorry,” said Oliver again. “I don’t think I understood quite how wrong this would feel.”

The last stubborn coffee grounds of my anger vanished down the emotional plughole. Because it had felt wrong, and we’d both known it. I just wasn’t sure who’d fucked up worse: me by doing nothing or him by doing something at the last possible second.