I made a noise. Because all my internal yelping had decided to come out of my brain through my throat.

Drawing off his marigolds with deliberate care, like he was satisfying a really specific but highly mundane fetish, Oliver took my hands in his. “I know this seems frightening and it seems like a lot. But it is not a lot. It is exactly what we’re already doing.”

I made another noise.

“It’s no different,” he went on in his gentlest voice, “than when we were first dating. Nothing actually changed. We just agreed to start calling it something different.”

My handholding was veering into clutching. “That’s…that’s true.”

“You still make me happy, Lucien. You are still everything I want and a lot of things I couldn’t have imagined wanting—”

“Thanks.”

“In a good way. We don’t have to do this. We can move at whatever pace you like. But you should know that I am yours, more truly than I have ever been anyone’s. Because when I’m with you, I’m me. Not someone I think I should be. And I’ll be with you, however you want, for as long as you’ll have me.”

Only Oliver would say something like that in the middle of scrubbing his kitchen cabinets. And maybe that was why I could listen to him, when I sometimes couldn’t even listen to myself. Why he made me feel safe and hopeful and worth something when I had a bunch of reasons not to.

Not going to lie, it was kind of annoying.

Because he was right again.

I could do this. We could do this. We were already doing this. We had something strong and right and special, and I’d be more of a bellend than usual if I didn’t accept that. Cherish it. Hold on to it.

I opened my mouth to tell him yes, of course I’d move in with him, I couldn’t imagine anything better.

Except then, somewhere at the back of my mind, a tiny glitter bomb of a boy in internet-friendly makeup said, It’s worth rolling the dice.

And so instead, what came out of my mouth was, “We should get married.”

Chapter 17

I’D AGREED TO MEET JAMES Royce-Royce—the other James Royce-Royce—during my lunch hour outside an embarrassingly middle-end jewellers in central London. He turned up exactly on time with Baby J strapped to his chest, making him look like the world’s most wholesome kidnapper.

“Do you two ever put him down?” I asked.

He blinked at me exactly once. “Yes. Just not in the middle of London.”

That was fair. The last thing you wanted to do was put your kid down for five minutes and then come back to find he’d been detonated by the bomb squad. “So how’s…” I found myself pointing at Baby J.