“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. “While I’m not going to say I disagree, I will say dumping me at the altar feels pretty wrong too.”

Standing, Oliver collected the wastepaper basket and set it carefully back in its place. Perhaps it was the only thing in the room he knew how to fix. “I know how badly I’ve hurt you, Lucien. But”—he returned to his seat—“would you truly rather I married you? Even if it would make both of us miserable?”

I imagined the room outside, bristling with our friends, family, and work colleagues I would rather not have invited. How they would all be sitting there, waiting for us to prove our relationship was just as good as theirs. And I remembered last night, standing on the Millennium Bridge with my best friend, trying not to throw up at the thought of letting Oliver down. “Yes.” My voice rose, in pitch if not in volume. “Because that’s the polite thing to do. I mean, I didn’t want to marry you either, but I was going to go through with it because I’m a great person and I didn’t want to embarrass you.”

A little pause. “Pardon?” said Oliver.

Welp. There went the moral high ground. “Nothing.”

“Did you just say,” asked Oliver, “that you didn’t want to marry me either?”

“That’s not the point. The point is I love you so much I was willing to do it anyway.”

Twitching out his exquisitely chosen pocket square, Oliver dried his eyes. “Well, that’s very flattering. But clearly an abysmal idea.”

“Whereas breaking up on our wedding day is a fucking corker.”

I drew my knees up to my chest and hid my face against them. This was, like, the worst day of my life. Even worse than the day I passed a newsstand and realised my entire relationship with Miles was now a tell-all story in the tabloids. At least then there’d been a clear villain. Now I was being left at the altar by a genuinely wonderful guy for reasons that were—

Actually…

“Hey,” I said. “Hang on. Why don’t you want to marry me?”

He gave me a challenging look. “Why don’t you want to marry me?”

“Oh, no you don’t.” I wagged a finger at him. “I’m a mess. I’m obviously going to have second thoughts about anything that looks even a little bit like commitment. You, though, you fucking love responsibility. What’s wrong with me?”