“It’s not meant to be helpful.” My voice bounced off the walls of the taxi. “I’m angry. I don’t understand why you’re not angry too. Because this was clearly a shit evening for both of us.”

“Actually, I thought your friends were rather charming, as long as you didn’t expect them to be anything they weren’t. What made it a shit evening for me was your eagerness to demonstrate how little you think of me.”

I…had not expected that. And, for a moment, I didn’t know what to say. “Um, what?”

“I’m very conscious that you wouldn’t be with me if you had any other choice. But this will not work if you can’t hide your contempt for me in public.”

Oh God. I was the worst human. “I tease you all the time.”

“It felt different tonight.”

I wanted to say that was on him. Except it wasn’t. I guess I hadn’t expected him to notice. Let alone care. Fuuuck. “I’m sorry, okay?”

“Thank you for the apology. But, right now, I’m not sure it’s helping.”

Yeah, that had been a bit lacklustre. “Look”—I addressed myself to the floor—“I really don’t believe any of the shit I said.”

“You acted as if you believed it.”

“Because I…I thought it was going to be different.”

“What was going to be different?”

“I thought it would be like when it’s just the two of us. But you wouldn’t look at me. You didn’t know how to touch me. And you were supposed to be bonding with me over what a posh twerp Alex is. Not bonding with him over how I didn’t go to Oxford.”

There was a long silence.

“Lucien,” said Oliver, in the soft, low voice that made me want to curl up inside him. Like, not in a serial-killer way. Like, in a blankety way. “I think I owe you an apology too. I never meant to make you feel uncomfortable or excluded, and I will admit I didn’t quite know how to act in front of your friends because, well, I’ve never had to pretend to be someone’s boyfriend before.” He paused. “Especially in front of a pair of… What did you call them? Posh twerps who think the National Minimum Wage is the Duchess of Marlborough’s prize racehorse.”

A laugh startled out of me.

“You see.” Oliver gave me a rather smug look. “I can be mean too.”

“Yeah, but where was it when I needed it?”

“I like to make you smile, Lucien. I don’t like to make other people feel small.”

“I guess I can live with that.” I took off my seat belt and slid over towards him.

“You should be wearing your seat belt. It’s a legal requirement.”

I let my head rest ever so lightly, almost accidentally, against his shoulder. “Oh shut up, Oliver.”

Chapter 19

Somehow, against all reason and sense of self-preservation, I invited Oliver into my flat. I mean, to give him his due, he didn’t immediately drop dead from disgust and E. coli.

“I’m aware,” he said, “that you sometimes consider me judgmental. But I honestly can’t understand how you live like this.”

“It’s easy. All I do is I touch something, and whether it sparks joy or not, I just leave it exactly where it is.”

“I’m not certain I’d recommend touching anything in this building.”

I took off my jacket and, with more situational awareness than I would have credited myself with, threw it immediately over the most embarrassing pile of underpants. “I tried to save you. But you wouldn’t be warned. You’re basically Bluebeard’s wife at this point.”

“I thought you were ashamed of me.” Oliver was still staring aghast at the impressive collection of takeaway containers that I was definitely going to get around to washing so that I could then definitely get around to recycling them. “But it turns out you were quite rightly ashamed of yourself.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. Shame is for people with self-respect.”

He put his fingers to his brow again in his so-sad-and-disappointed gesture that was not becoming endearing in the slightest. “At least Bluebeard kept his dead wives neatly in one cupboard.”

“I know you’re probably regretting our fake relationship pretty hard right now, but please don’t dump me again.”

“No, no.” Oliver stiffened his shoulders like he was in a wartime propaganda poster. “It took me a moment. But I’m over it.”

“You can leave if you want to.”

He looked very briefly tempted. But then went back to being all Your country needs you. “For the sake of appearances, we should make sure we don’t repeat tonight’s mistakes. I don’t think either of us had thought through how to be together in public.”

“Wow”—I threw myself listlessly onto the sofa, which was mostly clear apart from two pairs of socks and a blanket—“I really underestimated how much work this was going to involve.”

“Yes, well, as the kids say: Suck it up, buttercup. Now do you think we should hold hands?”

“Did you actually say, ‘Suck it up, buttercup’?”

“I thought pointing out that this is a lot of work for me too, and that I’m not complaining, while an accurate observation, would have made me sound like a prig.”

I eyed him, half-irritated, half-amused. “Good call.”

“So are we holding hands or not?”

If nothing else, you had to kind of admire his ability to stick to a point. “Um…I genuinely have no idea.”

“It involves minimum actual intimacy, but makes it clear we’re together if we happen to get photographed.”

“Well, I do love me some minimum actual intimacy.”

Oliver frowned at me. “Stop being frivolous, Lucien, and hold my damn hand.”

I stood up, picked my way back through a slalom of mugs, and held his damn hand.

“Hmm.” Oliver adjusted his grip several times. “This seems forced.”

“Yeah, I feel like I’m being dragged round the supermarket by my mum.”

“So, no to hand-holding. Try taking my arm.”

“Don’t you mean your damn arm?”

He blinked aggressively. “Just. Do it.”

I took his arm. Still weird. “Now it’s more like I’m a maiden aunt at a garden party.”