Then he released me, stepped back, and asked if I was alright. Professional. Distant. Just a security guard doing his job.
I nodded, managed to say thank you, and spent the rest of the day convincing myself it meant nothing.
That night, I dreamed about him.
Not vague, forgettable dreams—vivid ones. His hands on my body. His weight pressing me down. His mouth on my neck, my chest, lower. I woke up hard and aching, the sheets tangled around my legs, my skin damp with sweat.
I lay in the dark for hours, staring at the ceiling, unable to deny what my body was telling me.
I was attracted to men. I'd always been attracted to men. No amount of pretending, no carefully chosen girlfriend, no arranged marriage was going to change that.
The next day, I walked through the venue tour in a daze. The day after that, I went home with Elizabeth, smiled for my parents, and spent the next four weeks trying to figure out how to undo the life I'd built on lies.
I hadn't figured it out. I just kept going through the motions, hoping something would change, knowing nothing would.
And now here I was, less than two hours from making the biggest mistake of my life.
The hours crawled by.
I sat on the edge of the bed and stared into space. I paced the length of the suite and back again. I picked up my phone, put it down, then picked it up again. Elizabeth had texted that morning—I can't wait to see you at the altar—and I'd replied with a heart emoji because I didn't know what else to say.
What could I say? That I'd spent the last month finally admitting what I'd always known? That every time she touched me, I felt nothing—had always felt nothing—and now I finally understood why? That I was about to ruin her life because I'd spent twenty-six years too afraid to face myself?
The Langfords didn't produce gay sons.
But they had. They'd produced me. And I'd spent my entire life trying to be someone else, anything other than what I actually was.
I couldn't do it anymore.
I couldn't stand at that altar and promise to love Elizabeth when I was incapable of wanting her the way she deserved. I couldn't spend fifty years pretending to be a husband, lying every day.
She would know eventually. She would feel the distance, the performance, the absence of real desire. She would spend her life wondering what she'd done wrong, why she wasn't enough, why her husband never looked at her the way other husbands looked at their wives.
Elizabeth was kind, intelligent, and beautiful. She deserved a husband who actually wanted her.
I wasn't that person. I could never be that person.
The cruelty of it took my breath away.
Not the cruelty of leaving—the cruelty of staying.
At two-fifteen, there was a knock at the door.
"Mr. Langford?" The wedding coordinator's assistant, professionally cheerful. "We need you at the altar in about fifteen minutes. Your mother asked if she could have a word first."
"I'll be right there."
My voice sounded steady. Normal. Twenty-six years of practice had made me excellent at sounding normal.
I straightened my jacket and checked my reflection one final time. The groom in the mirror looked back at me with hollow eyes.
If you walk down that aisle, you'll never be free.
The thought arrived with absolute certainty. I'd been avoiding it for months—telling myself that duty was enough, that plenty of marriages worked without passion, that Elizabeth would never know the difference.
But she would know. And worse—I would know. Every day for the rest of my life, I would know that I'd been too much of a coward to face the truth about myself.
Then what? Run? Hide? Destroy everything?
