The Runaway Groom (The Grandview Hotel #3)

Chapter 1

Tobias

The groom in the mirror looked perfect.

Tuxedo custom-tailored by the same Italian house that had dressed Langford men for three generations. Boutonnière pinned at just the right angle. Hair styled by the wedding coordinator's assistant, each strand in its place.

I looked exactly like what I was supposed to be.

I felt like a ghost in someone else's skin.

The ceremony was at three. I'd been ready since noon—dressed, groomed, and photographed from every angle for the pre-wedding shots that would eventually fill a leather-bound album no one would ever look at. Now there was nothing left to do but wait.

Wait, and try not to think about the fact that in less than two hours, I would promise to love Elizabeth Ashworth for the rest of my life.

I turned away from the mirror and walked to the window.

The gardens below were already filling with guests—women in pastel dresses and elaborate hats, men in summer suits, all mingling with champagne flutes and the easy confidence of people who belonged in places like this.

The white chairs stood in perfect rows, three hundred of them, waiting for the moment when I would walk down that aisle and become someone's husband.

Elizabeth's husband.

I pressed my forehead against the cool glass and closed my eyes.

I'd spent my entire adult life pretending not to notice.

At sixteen, I'd caught myself staring at my roommate's back while he changed for lacrosse practice.

The broad shoulders. The way his muscles moved under his skin.

I looked away so fast I gave myself a headache, then spent the next week convincing myself it meant nothing.

Everyone noticed bodies. It was normal. It didn't mean anything.

At eighteen, I felt my pulse spike when an older boy brushed past me at a party, his hand grazing my hip. I spent the rest of the night avoiding him, terrified of what I might do if we ended up alone together. Afterward, I told myself I'd just had too much to drink.

At twenty-one, I kissed a girl for the first time—really kissed her, as I was supposed to—and felt absolutely nothing. No heat. No urgency. Just the mechanical pressure of lips against lips, my mind already wandering to something else.

I told myself I was a late bloomer. That the right woman would unlock something inside me. That everyone felt this way, and I just needed to try harder.

But late at night, when I couldn't control my thoughts, it was never women I imagined. It was hands larger than mine. Broader shoulders. The rough scratch of stubble against my skin.

I'd learned to shut those thoughts down before they fully formed. Push them away, lock them up, pretend they'd never existed. The Langfords didn't produce gay sons. The Langfords produced heirs—proper heirs who married proper wives and continued the proper bloodline. Anything else was unthinkable.

I didn't think about it. I dated the women my mother introduced me to, going through the motions of attraction even when I felt nothing. I kept telling myself that someday it would click; I'd look at a woman and feel the way I was supposed to.

It never happened.

Then, four weeks ago, I came to this hotel for a site visit.

It was an accident. A stupid, meaningless accident.

I stumbled at the fountain, not paying attention to where I was walking, and someone had caught me. A hand on my arm, yanking me backward. I lost my balance and fell against a solid chest, and then an arm wrapped around my waist, holding me steady.

Five seconds. Maybe less.

But in those five seconds, my body betrayed me completely.

The man's chest was broad and hard against my back.

I could feel his heartbeat, slow and steady, while my own pulse raced.

His arm pressed against my stomach, and the heat of his hand burned through my jacket.

He smelled like clean soap—not cologne, just soap—and something beneath that was purely masculine.

I wanted to lean back into him. Wanted to turn around. Wanted to press closer and feel more of that solid warmth.

I wanted, in a way I'd never allowed myself to want before.

"Watch your step."

His voice was low and close to my ear. I turned my head and found myself inches from a face like a cliff wall—hard angles, sharp edges, gray eyes that revealed nothing.

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?

My feet were already moving—not toward the main door where the assistant was waiting, but toward the service entrance at the side of the suite. The door that staff used to come and go without disturbing guests. The door that led to corridors where no one would expect to find a groom.

I stopped and looked down at myself.

The jacket. The boutonnière. The perfect Langford uniform.

I shrugged it off and let it fall onto the bed. The tie followed, yanked loose and discarded. I rolled up my sleeves and untucked my shirt.

Not a groom anymore. Just a man.

What are you doing?

My hand closed around the doorknob.

Stop. Think. You have a responsibility. A duty. You can't just—

But I could. That was the thing. I could turn this handle and walk through this door, keeping on until everything I was supposed to be faded behind me.

I turned the doorknob.

The corridor beyond was empty—white walls, industrial carpet, the distant clatter of kitchen activity. No wedding guests. No family. No one to witness the exact moment Tobias Langford stopped being what everyone expected.

I stepped through.

The door clicked shut behind me, and the tightness in my chest loosened for the first time in months. I wasn't running. Wasn't panicking. Just walking, one foot in front of the other, my polished shoes silent on the carpet.

I didn't know where I was going. Didn't have a plan. Didn't know how to be myself or how to live as the person I'd spent twenty-six years hiding.

But I knew I couldn't keep pretending. Couldn't keep lying. Couldn't drag an innocent woman into a marriage built on denial.

Behind me, someone was probably knocking on an empty suite, wondering why the groom wasn't answering.

Ahead of me, there was nothing but corridors, uncertainty, and the terrifying freedom of finally refusing to be someone I wasn't.

I kept walking.