Bridge squidged a bit closer. “Have you thought about telling him this?”

“Yeah, the time to do so would have been literally any time before now.”

She made a nervous face. “So that leaves option two?”

“I can’t do that either.” The thought of how badly that would hurt Oliver was like a knife in my balls.

“It’s one or two, Luc,” said Bridge with gentle finality.

Which made me realise, well past the eleventh hour, that there wasn’t really a choice here. It had to be option one. Because I loved Oliver and, like a prick, I’d asked him to marry me and, supportive of my bullshit as always, he’d said he would. The least I could do was not leave him at the altar.

I had to see this through.

Chapter 41

THE HAPPIEST DAY OF MY life was passing in a miserable blur. Bridge got me home at about six and Priya picked me up an hour later, making certain to tell me I looked like crap. Which I did. Oliver was going to be so proud to take this haggard, badly shaven wreck of a human being to be his lawful wedded husband.

And now I’d been deposited in a side room at the Green Room—why had we chosen a venue with multiple rooms that was only named after one of them—where I was managing very diligently not to jump out the window or drown myself in the tall Americano that Priya had bought me in an effort to get me functional.

My brain was blank apart from a scrolling marquee that read This is a terrible mistake, this a terrible mistake. But we’d been through this last night: in the vortex of fuckery I’d made of my life, this was the least fucky way to fuck things.

And we’d be fine. We’d be fine. We were a good couple. We worked. We weren’t very good at organising weddings, but whatever happened with Oliver, I could be a hundred percent certain I was never doing this again. So that was cool. I had learned a valuable lesson about myself and the world.

Oh God. I was going to throw up.

“Lucien?” I heard Oliver come up behind me as I was crouched over a wastepaper basket in a state of pre-upchuck preparedness. “Are you all right?”

“Totally fine,” I told him. “I just dropped some…cuff links.”

“You’re not wearing cuff links.”

“No, because I dropped them.”

“Your shirt has buttons on it.”

“Obviously.” I sat back on my heels. “Because otherwise my chest would be hanging out.”

“On the cuffs.”