The hallway remains empty except for us. Just two people and enough unresolved sexual tension to power a small European nation through an entire winter.
"Explain," I demand, my voice harder than I intend. "You've been pursuing me all week. Teasing me constantly. Touching me during the ceremony. Making suggestive comments at every opportunity. And now you're suddenly refusing?"
Oliver's smile doesn't waver. It's infuriating how composed he looks while I'm practically vibrating with frustrated confusion beside him.
"The rules have changed, Lottie."
"What rules? Since when are there rules?"
"Since you rejected me. Repeatedly." He steps back, creating distance I desperately don't want. "You told me to stay away. Insisted the deal was dead. Called it a mistake you deeply regretted making."
"I was confused—"
"You were scared. There's a difference." His voice carries no judgment, just calm observation. "But the dynamic has shifted now. Before, you had the power. Accept or reject my offer. Your choice entirely."
My fingernails dig painful crescents into my palms. "And now?"
"Now it's my decision when—and if—we continue." His green eyes hold mine with devastating steadiness. "You don't get to flip-flop back and forth whenever jealousy makes you desperate."
The word hits like a physical blow. Desperate. He actually called me desperate. To my face. In a hotel hallway. And the worst, most humiliating part? He's not entirely wrong.
I watched him dance with Gemma and something feral clawed through my chest. Watching his hands rest on someone else made me physically ache with possessive fury I had absolutely no right to feel.
Anger rises in my chest, hot and welcome. Fury is easier than vulnerability. Rage is infinitely simpler than confused wanting.
"You're arrogant," I spit. "Manipulative. Playing games with me exactly like you did when we were children. Testing my reactions purely for your own amusement."
His expression flickers but doesn't break entirely.
"You're still that same cruel boy." My voice rises despite every effort to control it. "Still the one who locked me in cupboards for hours. Who pulled my hair when no adults were looking. Who stood outside laughing while I cried and begged."
I'm practically shouting now. Weeks of confusion and frustration and desperate wanting pour out in a torrent I can't stop or control.
"You enjoy watching me squirm. You always have. The method has changed but the result is identical—Oliver Crawford making Lottie miserable for his own personal entertainment."
My chest heaves. My hands shake. I've said everything I've been holding back, and it feels like ripping off a bandage soaked in petrol and striking a match.
Oliver listens without interrupting. His face gives nothing away. A marble statue carved from pure smugness would show more readable emotion.
The silence stretches between us like an open wound waiting to bleed.
"Are you finished?" he asks finally. Calm. Infuriatingly, impossibly calm.
"Yes."
"Good." He straightens his jacket with maddening composure. "You know where to find me when you're ready to stop lying to yourself about what you actually want."
The audacity. The sheer, breathtaking, unmitigated audacity of this man standing there looking gorgeous while systematically dismantling my dignity piece by piece.
"Go to hell, Oliver."
I turn on my heel and storm toward the ballroom, leaving him standing alone in the corridor. My heels click against marble like punctuation marks on the worst conversation of my entire miserable existence.
The reception swallows me whole. Music and laughter and champagne bubbles rising toward crystal chandeliers. I push through the celebrating crowd, face flushed, hands trembling, desperate for air that doesn't smell like expensive cologne and crushed pride.
I find a quiet corner near the garden doors and press my back against the cool wall. Deep breaths. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Repeat until sanity returns.
The anxiety-management techniques I learned years ago aren't working. Nothing is working. My pulse pounds relentlessly against my throat like it's trying to escape.
"Darling!"
Mum materializes from the crowd like a heat-seeking missile of maternal enthusiasm. She's flushed with champagne and joy, practically luminescent with happiness. Glowing like a woman who finally got everything she wanted.
She pulls me into a hug so tight my ribs protest.
"Isn't this the most wonderful day?" She's actually glowing. Radioactive with contentment. "After everything—David, James, Michael—fifteen years of absolute disasters. And now finally this."
Her eyes are bright with tears that have nothing to do with sadness.
"I finally have what I always wanted, Charlotte. A real partner. Someone who stayed my friend through everything first. Someone who actually chose me and kept choosing me."
Guilt settles heavy in my chest like a stone. I've been so consumed by my own crisis that I nearly forgot what's actually at stake here. What really matters.
"Nothing is going to ruin this." She squeezes my hands with fierce intensity. "I won't let anything stand between me and this happiness. Not this time. I've waited too long and sacrificed too much."
Her gaze holds mine. Earnest. Vulnerable. Fifteen years of loneliness and failed relationships and broken promises compressed into a single determined moment.
"I'm so happy for you, Mum," I say, and mean it completely. "You deserve every single bit of this."
She kisses my cheek and floats back toward Richard, her new husband, her third and final chance at lasting forever.
I watch her go and feel something twist painfully beneath my ribs. She deserves this. She deserves everything. And I nearly ruined it over my own pathetic complications.
Movement catches my peripheral vision. A man standing near the edge of the crowd. Watching.
Something about him seems vaguely familiar—the build, maybe, or the particular way he stands. But I can't place him among the endless sea of faces I've been introduced to today.
Probably one of Richard's work colleagues. Someone I smiled at during the receiving line and immediately forgot. The wedding has been a blur of handshakes and names that didn't stick.
I dismiss it and turn away.
The evening winds down in a haze of toasts and cake and relatives whose names I'll never remember. When the newlyweds finally depart for their honeymoon suite—amid thrown rice and enthusiastic cheering—I feel the last reserves of my energy drain completely away.
I retreat to my room like a wounded animal seeking shelter from a storm it created entirely by itself.
The door clicks shut behind me. Silence descends like a heavy blanket. I strip off my dress and crawl into bed in my underwear, too exhausted for proper pajamas or basic human dignity.
His decision now.
The words replay on an endless loop inside my skull. The arrogance of it makes me want to scream into another innocent pillow. Who does he think he is? Dictating terms like I'm a negotiation to be managed.
But beneath the anger, something else simmers. Something I desperately don't want to acknowledge but can't ignore no matter how hard I try.
Even rejected. Even furious. Even lying alone in this hotel room while my body aches for release—I still want him. The infuriating truth I cannot escape.
He saw through every defense I built. Called my bluff with devastating accuracy. And walked away completely certain I'd eventually come crawling back to him.
I fall asleep thinking about green eyes and silver medallions, and hate myself thoroughly for every single thought.