"Don't." Her voice was sharp. "Don't you dare start with 'I'm sorry.' Not yet."
I closed my mouth and waited.
"Do you have any idea what you did to me?" Her composure cracked slightly. "Three hundred people, Tobias. Three hundred people watched me stand at that altar waiting for a groom who never came. My parents. My grandmother. My colleagues. Everyone I've ever known, watching me realize that I'd been abandoned."
"Elizabeth—"
"I stood there for fifteen minutes." Her voice shook now. "Fifteen minutes of everyone whispering, checking their phones, looking at me with pity. The priest didn't know what to do. My father had to walk me back down the aisle. Back down the aisle, Tobias. Like a funeral march."
I couldn't speak. Couldn't defend myself. There was no defense.
"My mother cried for a week. Not because she was sad for me—because she was humiliated. The Ashworths, humiliated. Do you know how many people called to 'check on me' that first month? Do you know how many were really just calling for gossip?"
"I'm sorry—"
"I said don't." Her eyes were bright with tears she refused to let fall. "I spent eighteen months planning that wedding. Eighteen months choosing flowers, tasting cakes, and picking out table linens. Eighteen months believing I was building a life with someone. And you couldn't even give me one conversation? One honest moment before you destroyed everything?"
The words hit like blows. Each one deserved.
"You're right," I said quietly. "I was a coward."
"You were worse than a coward." She leaned forward. "You were cruel. Maybe you didn't mean to be, but that's what it was. Cruel."
"I know."
"Do you? Do you really?" She laughed, but it was bitter. "Because I don't think you understand what it's like to have everyone you know look at you like you're broken. To have your own mother ask what you did wrong to make your fiancé run. To spend months replaying every moment, every conversation, trying to figure out what signs you missed."
"Elizabeth, I never wanted—"
"What you wanted doesn't matter!" Her voice rose, then she caught herself, looked around at the other customers, and lowered it again. "What you wanted stopped mattering the moment you made that choice. You don't get to care about your intentions when the results were this devastating."
I sat there and took it. She was right about all of it.
The silence stretched, her breathing ragged. When she finally spoke again, her voice was tired.
"Why?" Just one word. "That's all I want to know. Why?"
I owed her the truth. The whole truth.
"Because I'm gay." I watched her face. "I've always been gay. I spent my whole life pretending otherwise. I thought if I went through with the wedding and the marriage, I could make myself be normal. Be what everyone expected."
She stared at me. The anger didn't disappear, but something else crept in alongside it.
"You're gay."
"Yes."
"And you knew this when you proposed to me."
"I knew something was wrong. I didn't let myself name it until recently."
She laughed again. This time it was hollow. Empty. "So I was what? A prop? A costume you put on to look normal?"
"No." I leaned forward. "You were someone I genuinely cared about. Someone I thought I could learn to love the right way. I was wrong, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But you were never just a prop to me."
"That's supposed to make me feel better?"
"No. Nothing I say will make you feel better. I just—I need you to know that I didn't do this to hurt you. I did it because I was too weak to face the truth until I stood at that altar and realized I couldn't go through with the biggest lie of all."
