Archive of Our Own

“I need a favour,” Penelope says.

Colin barely hears the rest.

He doesn't need to.

It is a fundamental truth universally acknowledged: there is nothing he would not do for Penelope Featherington.

i. i’ve tried to hold back

His brothers give him shit about it constantly, all the boyfriend stuff he does for her.

“I just don’t understand why you aren’t together together. You are, quite literally, together all the fucking time,” Benedict always says.

“Dude, you are basically her boyfriend, but you don’t reap any of the benefits. How is this okay with you?” Gregory always chides, now far too old to pretend like he isn’t allowed to partake in their brotherly shenanigans.

The worst, though, undoubtedly comes from Anthony, who always has that prim, severe look on his face as he asks, “Haven’t you wasted enough time, Colin?”

The jokes he can handle. Colin has heard every iteration of them possible for years. Decades at this point, really. He always laughs, and shrugs them off, and sometimes tells people to simply go and fuck off.

But the judgment in Anthony’s tone and the look he gives Colin always cuts in a way he should expect after all this time, but is never quite prepared for.

Penelope is, without a doubt, the longest non-familial relationship he has ever had in his life. He has dated before. Gotten serious about a few relationships. Went through a phase of fucking around because he felt like it was what he was supposed to do, what he was supposed to like, but the only purpose it served was to make him feel further from the person he was told he should be and more confused about why those experiences left him feeling empty.

Forming connections with people has always come easily to Colin. Maintaining them, however—hiding the parts of him that are too much, that he deems unworthy—is fucking exhausting.

It was why he spent so much of his early twenties travelling. He told his family that travelling was a way to discover his purpose, but the other, more valid truth was that it’s easy to explain being solo when you weren’t in one place long enough to form any lasting relationships. He could flit in and out of places and the lives of the people there, making an impression that lasted, but did not reveal all he tried to hide. But that eventually became exhausting, too, and he realised he was flitting in and out of the lives of the people that mattered, to the point where he feared they didn't even expect him home or need him anymore.

When Auggie cried upon seeing him after a several-month span of travelling because he didn't recognise him, Colin finally said enough. He took a job with a local magazine and came home to people and places that seemed to have undergone remarkable change in his absence, while he remained stagnant despite it all. And no closer to any of the answers that he claimed to have been searching for.

Throughout the first few weeks and months at home, he felt restless and disjointed, out of place. But not when he was with Penelope. She somehow always managed to settle him when he was at his most unsettled.

She always had, truthfully, but he had long since ignored and taken advantage of it.

The first time he did her a favour—a gala for work that time—maybe it was out of some misperceived need for penance, but it was also because he simply liked spending time with her. Because he felt this innate, inexplicable need to make her happy. That night, Penelope had worn this emerald green, backless dress that made his mouth go dry, and they spent the evening drinking and making fun of her co-workers and dancing so close that he could do nothing but allow the warmth of her to envelop him completely.

The second time was for a dinner with her boss and their partner. The third time was for a company picnic. Penelope’s second novel was a success on the bestseller lists by then, her star rising and, subsequently, her need to attend public functions. She never did well with crowds, enjoyed sticking to the outskirts of events and observing rather than being the centre of attention, but her well-earned success made it so that was no longer possible, and she once told him that he was one of the few people who made her feel comfortable enough to be herself.

So, he was just doing his very best friend a favour.

That’s all.

Really.

The first time someone had referred to him as Penelope Featherington’s boyfriend was at a wedding for an old friend of his he hadn’t seen in years, but kept up with on socials. One of the few people from his past who stuck around and who Colin made an effort with. The word boyfriend dropped between Colin and Penelope deftly, and he felt her go tense beside him immediately.

Neither moved to correct the statement.

And they never really talked about either.

After that, it just kept happening. Her work colleagues assumed they were together, and they both fell into that role easily. They played pretend at weddings for her colleagues. At work events. At the pubs, when he wrapped an arm around Penelope’s shoulders and pulled her close, because the later the night gets, the bolder drunk men are, and there was a point where the only thing those men understood was territorial behaviour. The first time this ever happened, Penelope had been angry at the time, spouting off an Eloise-styled diatribe about the patriarchy—which after two shots and several gin and tonics, was absolute nonsense—but in their shared cab, she had mumbled thank you for being there and he had hugged her close and promised, I will always be there for you, Pen and meant it with everything in him.

So, yeah.

He pretends to be her boyfriend sometimes.

And he does boyfriend things for her when she asks because she is his best friend, and he wants to make her happy.

At some point, though, he finds himself secretly pretending it’s for real.

ii. wanted too much

“So, you and Penelope are going to Wales…To a wedding… On her birthday… And sharing a room… That probably has one bed… As friends?”

“Yes.”

“Right.”

Benedict draws out the word and grins smugly around the rim of his pint glass. It makes Colin want to smack the look right off his brother’s face. Instead, Colin just scowls.

“What?”

“You know exactly what.”

“We’re friends,” Colin says, palming his own pint back and forth between his hands. It sweats all over his fingers.

“The best of friends. Of that, I am quite aware. We all are. Nobody would ever dare argue that, brother.” Benedict pauses to motion to the barkeep for another round. “You are, indeed, a very good friend.”

“There is nothing wrong with helping a friend out,” Colin bristles, brow furrowed at the accusation laced in his brother’s tone.

“There is not. But you don’t want to be just friends. Therein lies the issue.”

Colin immediately chokes on his beer. He is pounding his chest softly a few times to ease the pain from the liquid going down the wrong way when he says, “I have never once said that.”

With a tilt of his head and a look that somehow reads both pitying and condescending, Benedict replies, “You don’t have to.”

When it is the group of them, Benedict usually plays the role of mediator. Allows the other siblings to do their ribbing and only gets in a few jabs in himself if they are particularly witty and worthwhile. His family has a tendency to pile on when it comes to Colin, mostly because he set the precedent very early on that he could take it, that he would always be there for a laugh, to be the butt of a joke if it made someone else feel even the slightest bit better. But now, much older and with much more baggage, his siblings do not know when to quit, and he is never quite bold enough to say stop. Benedict gets this, somehow much wiser and perceptive than any of them give him credit for, and sits back and redirects just enough to keep things from going too far.

When it is the two of them, however, Benedict wastes no time calling Colin on his shit.

Typically, Colin would engage in his method of deny, deny, deny. It has always been easier that way, a way of acting out of sheer self-preservation. He has been doing it for so long that it has become habit. But tonight, Colin feels too exhausted from maintaining the façade, so he merely groans and runs his hand over his face.

“Is it that obvious?”

“To us? Yes. To Penelope? Apparently not. You both are ridiculously blind when it comes to the other.”

Traitorously, his heart speeds up at the mere mention of her. Colin feels his cheeks warm. “What exactly does that mean?”

Benedict rolls his eyes. “You know exactly what it means. Don’t be daft, Colin. That girl has looked at you like you hung the moon since she was fourteen years old.”

He sits up a bit straighter on reflex. “Perhaps that was true once—”

“—I’m pretty sure it is still true now­—”

“—How can you be certain?”

“I can’t. But you can…” Benedict waves a hand in Colin’s direction. “If you’d talk to her.”

Colin frowns. “I don’t want to do that.”

Now Benedict is the one who groans, quite loudly, making a dramatic show of it. “So, how does this end for you, then? You’re just going to take her to this wedding, as friends, and keep spending all your spare time with her, as friends, pining away for her as her friend. And then one day, what? You’re going to stand beside her when she gets married as only her friend?”

Panic slices through his gut; he sets his glass down before he drops it.

“Is she seeing someone? Do you know something I don’t know? Surely, she would have mentioned if she was seeing—”

“Oh my god,” Benedict says in exasperation. “That is not the point, Colin.”

Benedict mutters this is utterly pointless, but Colin cannot make out the words because he is already five steps past this conversation. His mind is spiralling into a freefall of worries about whether Penelope has a new boyfriend, or is simply seeing someone new, and either way, why did she ask him to the wedding and not this person? And if she was seeing someone new, why hasn’t she told him about it? The topic of dating is not one they traditionally discuss, but Colin always assumed that was because there was not much worth discussing. Penelope hadn’t really dated since her last relationship ended with the imbecile leaving her to study bloody penguins in Antarctica, and Colin hasn’t dated someone seriously—or at all, really—since, well…Uni. It had always been assumed, at least on his part, that their lack of discussion on this topic was due to a lack of any new information, but what if Penelope had been dating all along and just never told him about it? And if she hasn’t felt like she could tell him about it—or worse, didn’t want to tell him about it—what does that signify? Are they not as good of friends as he thought they were? And—

Colin has to stop himself because his head is starting to pound.

Benedict is right. None of that is the point, but it certainly proves the point.

After a prolonged silence, Colin asks, “Everyone knows?”

Benedict looks confused for half a beat until it clicks. “Yes,” he grins. “There is a whole group chat for us to complain about how idiotic you both are. Mum joined in December after you gave her a first edition of fucking Emma for Christmas.”

Colin winces. He hadn’t intended it to mean anything—except, yeah, maybe he did.

Quickly, he downs the rest of his pint in a single gulp and wonders where their next round is. On the television above the bar, Richmond claims the lead over Arsenal. Immediately, the bar erupts into a chorus of jeers and boos, except for Benedict, who gets up to high-five and embraces the man next to him, the only other person in the pub with a Greyhound shirt on.

When Benedict finally settles back down into his seat, Colin asks, “Even Eloise knows?”

Benedict gives him a pointed look, clearly annoyed that Colin is being a downer and causing his celebratory mood to dwindle rapidly. His cheek tightens as he considers carefully—a habit all three of the eldest Bridgerton sons were fortunate enough to pick up from their father way back when—but he must ultimately think better of it because he simply softens his composure and shrugs nonchalantly in Colin’s direction.

“She likes to pretend she is blissfully ignorant and keeps the chat mostly muted.”

Colin’s mouth presses into a thin line. “Sounds about right.”

Two years prior, at Benedict and Sophie’s wedding, Penelope’s bridesmaid dress was a soft lilac that made the freckles on her skin stand out. Colin spent much of the evening focused on the singular goal of resisting the urge to trace them with the tips of his fingers, to not pull her close and hold her there like he had been accustomed to during their moments of pretend.

As they danced, Colin held her close enough to smell the jasmine and citrus perfume she always dabbed just behind her ear and felt the soft sigh she released when she allowed herself to relax against him.

When the song changed, Penelope started to pull away, but Colin found himself unable to let go.

In that moment, the realisation hit him. The act of falling in love with Penelope unfolds over the span of years and decades, a million moments that compile the foundation of a vital truth he was finally forced to acknowledge as he danced with her at his brother’s wedding and could think of nothing but kissing her.

Throughout the years that follow, Colin does think about telling her the truth.

Dreams about it, even.

There are a series of moments that he endlessly replays where there is a shared look, an underlying sentiment of maybe that he swears she feels too. Where courage takes root in his chest and grows, fuelling him.

In every single one, he opens his mouth, ready to shed his truth, to take a chance, but the words always die in his throat.

Penelope has always been the braver of the two.

(The most recent:

Penelope’s editor is a high-maintenance, ridiculously rich piece of work that demands black tie attire for every event. Colin complains every single time about having to dig out his tux, but only half-heartedly because he loves seeing her dressed up and on display and on his arm.

On New Year’s Eve, they stand in front of Penelope’s mirror, in the same flat she has had since her first year out of uni, and admire themselves. Colin is dressed in his best tux, the one he was forced to buy for Anthony’s wedding and somehow fits even better now, and Penelope is in this black dress that somehow manages to be modest and revealing all at once, exposing just the right amount of her chest and the porcelain skin of her bare shoulders.

“We look good together, don’t we?” she asks, smirking just slightly, right before leaning forward and closer to the mirror so she can carefully apply her lipstick.

All he can do is nod, distracted by everything about her.

Their gazes catch in the mirror.

Penelope smiles, soft and coy.

His throat goes dry.

“Are you alright?” she asks quietly after a long moment, eyebrow raised. She is trailing the tip of her index finger along the line of her mouth, cleaning the edges of the stain there, but somehow manages to make it feel like she is looking right through him while not looking at him at all. “You would tell me, right? If there was something you needed to say? Something you wanted me to know?”

For a brief, minuscule and hopeful span of time, he thinks she knows.

That she is giving him the space and freedom to finally say what has been etched into his bones for far longer than he even realises. The words are there, right on the tip of his tongue, begging to be spoken aloud. He opens his mouth, holds her gaze, feels ready—

“Of course,” he replies instead.

Her face falls instantly.

Colin is too busy cursing his cowardice to notice.)

When he is in the mood to reconcile certain truths with himself, Colin knows a large part of his fear stems from the likely reality that he fucked this up long before it ever had the chance to begin.

Years ago, when Anthony brought Kate around the family for the first time, Penelope was there. Naturally. She was the only person, before Kate, who slotted right into the Bridgerton chaos like she belonged there all along.

It was a nice evening, mostly because Anthony was on his best behaviour, which brought out the worst behaviour and antics from the rest of them. After dinner and drinks, the lot of them sat around Mum’s kitchen, drinking some more and raiding her cabinets for the snacks she still keeps for them, trying their best to break Anthony by telling the most embarrassing stories from years past. Daphne was crowned the winner after a vulgar story that even had Simon blushing. As she made her victory lap around the kitchen, demanding people to curtsey in her presence, Kate turned to Penelope and Colin and grinned in a way that Colin wasn’t quite aware yet meant trouble.

“So, how long have you two been together?” She asked bluntly. “Anthony talks a lot about you, Penelope, but he never mentioned that you two are dating.” Kate motioned between them with the glass tumbler in her hand as she talked.

Colin was caught off guard, flustered, and his cheeks were turning red, but Penelope did not miss a beat.

“Us?” She laughed, loudly, and glanced sideways at him. “We aren’t a thing. Just friends. We could never date.” She tilted her head towards him, grinning tightly as she continued, "Isn't that right, Colin?”

“I wouldn’t say—”

Penelope shoved his shoulder, a little too hard to be friendly, before turning back to Kate, who was now lounging in her chair, watching the two of them with a positively gleeful look on her face. Penelope, clearly past the point of tipsy, covered her mouth conspiratorially and said in a loud whisper, “He did say it, actually. Referred to me as his sister. But no harm, no foul. We are definitely better as friends.”

Kate’s eyes narrowed on Colin. “You did not.”

All he could do was wince.

Because he did say it.

He said that and worse.

He had been twenty-one and drunk, stupid, and showing off to the idiots he was once dumb enough to call his friends. Idiots he kept around because, at some point, they helped him to feel like he belonged, but with time and some clarity, Colin realised they only just highlighted all the ways he was different and all the things he was certain he did not want to be. But at twenty-one, Colin had not yet figured that out, so when they started ribbing him about all the time he spent with his little sister’s friend, and that devolved into comments about her tits and fucking her, Colin felt embarrassed, but he also saw red. His anger started to vibrate under his skin and threaten to take over, and he knew he needed them to shut them up before he lost control. So, he spouted nonsense about Penelope being like a sister, barely even his friend, and forced a laugh as he declared that nothing would ever, ever happen between them.

Even then, a lifetime before he was ready to acknowledge the truth, the words felt like a lie.

Penelope had heard his shitty declaration, been rightly hurt, and promptly told him to fuck off when he tried to apologise.

For a long time after, Colin worked hard to earn back her favour, trying desperately to remain in her orbit when she made it clear she was content to keep him at a distance. He knows the allowances she eventually began making for him again were likely due to him wearing her down, and not because she truly wanted to, or because she missed him in that deep, aching way he missed her.

Sometimes, Colin worries that he spent so long and worked so hard to prove himself worthy enough to simply be her friend again, that a friend is all she will ever see him as. That friendship is all she believes him capable of offering her.

Sometimes, he looks at her and remembers the girl who would blush and stutter in his presence, but also held his hand at his father's funeral and every single time he cried in secret for the days and weeks and months afterwards. Sometimes, he replays memories on a continuous, somewhat tortuous loop, and he hates himself for being so blind, for being so slow on the uptake to realise what he had felt all along. Sometimes, as he reminisces and yearns, Colin thinks he can pinpoint times in the past when she may have still harboured even a fraction of the affection and love he now feels for her.

But those seem so far rooted in the past that they do not give him hope, but only serve to deter him even further.

Franny calls while he is packing.

Earlier that day, Colin bought just the right tie to match perfectly with the silver of Penelope’s dress. He is taking extra care to roll it just so, as to avoid any creases, as he cradles the phone between his shoulder and ear and mumbles his distracted hello.

“Spending the weekend with Penelope, are you?” Franny just sort of says upon greeting, never one to waste time or mince words. Franny is his most introspective sibling, always watching and observing, but willing to pounce with her brutal honesty when necessary.

It is one of the things he appreciates the most about her, except when it is at his expense.

Colin frowns. “For a wedding, yes.”

Franny’s eye roll echoes over the line. “But you will be together? On her birthday? For the… what? Third year in a row?”

“We happen to spend most of our free days together, yes. That is what friends do, isn’t it?”

With a tut, Franny replies, “I do not spend nearly as much time with Michaela as you do with Penelope.”

“Perhaps that says more about you than it does about me,” he deadpans.

Silence greets him.

Then: “Stop deflecting, Colin.”

Ever since the night at the bar with Benedict, he has been subjected to more meddling from his siblings than ever.

Penelope this. Penelope that. Doesn’t Penelope look pretty, Colin? You should tell her so.

Even his mum had started in, asking him if he had any input in who she should set Penelope up with on a date. She was really serious about it, too, shoving screen-capped Facebook profile pictures of some candidates in his face. He had been so surprised that he nearly choked on his tea, taking the sip too fast and scorching his mouth. But his mum had just stood there, hand on hip, with that knowing and pointed look of hers, daring him to call her bluff.

Despite himself, he did just that.

Offered the name of a relatively good-natured, decent-looking, and successful lawyer at Kate and Anthony’s firm that he knew in passing. His mum didn’t even try to hide her look of sheer disappointment as she blinked slowly in that considering way of hers. She didn’t bring it up again, and, to his knowledge, no date has occurred. Not that he is keeping track. (He is.)

“Is there something you’d like to say, Fran?” he asks warily, sitting on the edge of his bed in preparation for whatever is coming.

“Yes,” she says matter-of-factly. “Can you please just put yourself out of your own misery and do something?”

He doesn’t take the bait. Mostly because he doesn't want to give her—or any of them, really—the satisfaction, but also because he doesn't want to talk about this. He could talk about Penelope all day. Could sing her praises and list off his favourite memories and wax poetic about how genuinely good she is. But talk about his feelings? Talk about the likely unrequited nature of them and how fucking scared he is to even hope? No thanks. Colin chooses to save that for his sleepless nights when he has nothing but thoughts of her and his racing mind to keep him company.

With faux nonchalance that makes his voice too high, he asks, “About what exactly?”

There is a groan and a curse of his name echoing in his ear at that, Franny reaching a point of frustration that is a rarity for her.

“Aren’t you exhausted from running?” she asks.

Colin sighs.

“I'm not running, Francesca.” He spits her name like a curse, and it lands all wrong, causing her to hiss in a breath and him to wince. She scoffs to cover up her dismay, and when he continues, it is much gentler. “I’m not running… I’m just…” Sighing, he runs his hand through his hair. Tugs at the ends until it hurts a bit. “I’m just stuck. Terrified of moving forward. Of… fucking everything up.”

There is nothing much to say to that, he thinks, because Franny is quiet for a long time.

Finally, she says, almost too kindly, “You can fuck things up by doing nothing at all…Ask me how I know.”

Colin wonders, briefly, if Michaela is there beside her because Franny’s voice suddenly has a particular lilt to it that only Michaela’s presence can bring about. He longs for that sort of intimacy. Is reminded he already has that with Penelope, feeling for her the way his siblings feel about their partners, but it still feels so far out of his grasp, so far from possibility.

“What if I have already fucked things up?” he asks tiredly.

“Then you unfuck it,” Franny says simply.

When he finally hangs up with Franny later, he is greeted by a single text from Penelope.

I’m looking forward to this weekend!! Don’t know what I’d do without you x

Immediately, Colin types back: Me too, Pen. More than you know.

He stares at the message for too long, thumb hovering over the send button.

He presses send before he can talk himself out of it.

The three dots appear immediately, then disappear. Then appear again.

Finally: x

Just that. A single letter. But still, he hopes.

iii. now i lose track

The night, Colin sleeps in spurts, body restless and mind racing with possibilities of things he had long since deemed impossible, but still remain too far out of his reach.

He is exhausted when Penelope arrives the next morning to pick him up. Mumbles his thanks as she shoves a coffee into his waiting hands. He shivers from the cold but also from the brush of her fingers against his own. Their touch lingers. Colin doesn’t pull away, and neither does she, and he feels the crisp air bite at his lungs as he inhales, feels hope and warmth coil in his belly as her mouth curls slightly at the edges when she glances up at him.

Her eyes are impossibly blue, the smile twisting at her mouth soft and hers, and he thinks of Franny’s advice, of all the missed moments and wasted opportunities and feels resolved to tell her this weekend.

The thought makes his palms sweat, even in the early cold of April.

Then she is pulling away, moving toward the car, and he follows her like he always does.

In the car, they are quiet. It is comfortable, as it always is with her, their small talk interspersed with easy silences. Penelope still drives the same old Vauxhall that he cannot believe is still running after all this time. The seats creak with every movement, and the leather on them is cracked and faded. The heat doesn’t work quite right. It is either too hot or doing nothing with no in-between, and today, it chooses to be too hot. Before they have even made it out of town, Penelope sheds her jacket and oversized sweater while stopped at a red light, tossing them into the back haphazardly.

Colin keeps his eyes on the road ahead. Focuses on the brake lights of the car in front of them. Thinks very hard about the weather, the route, anything but his peripheral vision betraying him.

He lasts approximately thirty seconds.

When he glances over, she is adjusting her seatbelt, and the vest she is wearing has a generous neckline that makes his mouth go dry. He looks away immediately, face warming, and drums his fingertips against his jeans.

"You're quiet this morning," Penelope observes as the light changes, and she pulls forward.

"Didn't sleep well."

"Nervous about the wedding?"

"Something like that," he manages.

She hums, noncommittal, and reaches forward to adjust the volume on the ancient iPod connected to the aux. A familiar tune fills the car, a song they both know from years of these drives together, and Colin tries to let it settle him.

It doesn't.

Every silence feels weighted now. Every moment feels like an opportunity he is failing to take. He thinks about Francesca's voice on the phone, the quiet certainty when she said this weekend. He thinks about the text he sent—More than you know—and how his heart had pounded as he watched the three dots appear and disappear before her response came through. Just an x. Just a single letter. But he had stared at it for a long time, wondering if it meant anything, hoping it did.

"Colin."

He startles. "What?"

Penelope is glancing between him and the motorway, eyebrow raised, amusement playing at the corner of her mouth. "You're staring."

"I'm not."

"You absolutely are." She laughs, light and easy. "Do I have something on my face?"

You're beautiful, he thinks. You're the most beautiful person I've ever known, and I've been in love with you for years, and I—

"No," he says instead. "Sorry. I'm just—tired. Mind's wandering."

"Wandering where?"

The question is casual, but she holds his gaze for a beat longer than necessary before turning back to the road. There's a curiosity to her expression that unsettles him. He wonders, not for the first time, what she sees when she looks at him. If she has any idea. If she's been waiting, the way Francesca suggested, for him to finally be brave.

Tell her now, a voice in his head urges. Just say it. Get it over with.

But the words stick in his throat, thick and immovable, and the moment passes.

"Nowhere important," he says quietly.

Her jaw tightens. She exhales through her nose—not quite a sigh, but just as deliberate—and her fingers flex around the steering wheel before she loosens her grip. It is a gesture he has seen her make before, usually when one of her sisters speaks cruelly and she is choosing not to engage. He doesn't know what to make of it being directed at him.

When she speaks again, her voice is lighter, determinedly casual. "Well, try to get some rest. It's going to be a long weekend."

“Right.”

The song on the radio switches, and Penelope hums along to the tune, fingers tapping against the steering wheel. He envies her that. The ability to exist in a moment without being consumed by what comes next. Colin leans his head against the window and watches the grey blur of the motorway pass by. His coffee has gone cold, but he drinks it anyway, grateful for something to do with his hands.

When they arrive at the hotel, and the man behind the desk tells them there was a mix-up with the reservation and their room only has one bed, Colin can do nothing but laugh.

The wedding venue and, subsequently, their hotel is a refurbished Welsh castle. The exterior has retained the century-old stone façade, but the grand entrance and check-in area feature modern updates alongside ostentatious displays of wealth and an excessive use of gold. It immediately reminds Colin a bit of Portia, which is probably why Penelope’s irritation is so evident as she mutters a tirade about gentrification under her breath that is far too reminiscent of Eloise. He nods and listens, but eventually, they both become distracted as they venture further inside, towards the true bones of the house. Much of the charm and beauty has been expertly maintained, and the character in the arches and ornate stone and woodworking is breathtaking. Every last intricate detail speaks to hundreds of years of history, and Colin loses himself a little in wondering what stories the walls may hold.

It is all stiflingly romantic. Even more so is their room, which is a tiny thing, probably a reformed maid’s quarters. It has just the one bed, a chair, and, fortunately, an ensuite bath. The space is limited, and already, Colin’s chest feels a bit too tight. Then his eyes land on a bottle of chilled champagne, a plate of chocolate-dipped strawberries. Next to them, there is a bouquet of beautiful camellias and ranunculus. Penelope’s eyes widen immediately, excitement and surprise flickering across her features as she makes a beeline for the flowers. There is a small card off to the side, and he grabs it before she can, scowling at the gift voucher for a couples massage and the accompanying message.

Time to get your shit together, brother

Hy

Hastily, he pockets the card and clears his throat. At Penelope’s raised eyebrow, Colin merely shrugs and clarifies, “An apology from the staff for the room mix-up.”

“Oh.” The flicker of disappointment across her features is brief, but he catches it all the same before she busies herself acquainting herself with the room.

They have travelled together before, and it is not the first time they have done so in tight quarters and shared a bed, but t this time feels undeniably different to Colin. It is quite torturous, actually, how easily they fall into place around one another. Her shoes are neatly tucked next to his, just inside the door. Their suitcases stand tall, side by side. Toiletries are quickly intermingled on the sink. He has always felt pleasantly at ease just existing within Penelope’s orbit, but now the gravitational pull towards her has become too much at times. Now, they occupy what little space this tiny room has to offer, and he feels inundated by everything about her.

Penelope disappears into the bathroom to get ready, and Colin is left standing in the middle of the room, unsure what to do with himself.

He unpacks methodically, if only to keep busy. Hangs his suit in the narrow wardrobe. Places the silver-blue tie on the chest of drawers where he can see it. Checks his phone—a message from Hyacinth that is just a string of suggestive emojis, which he deletes without responding—and then checks it again five minutes later for no reason at all.

Through the bathroom door, he can hear the faint sound of Penelope's music, upbeat and poppy, that she would never admit to listening to in public. He hears the shower turn on. Does not allow himself to think about the shower. Thinks about it anyway.

Christ.

Colin sits heavily on the edge of the bed—the singular bed, the only bed—and drops his head into his hands.

This is going to be a very long weekend.

He offers to wait in the bar downstairs while she finishes getting ready, partly because the room is too small for two people to prepare simultaneously, but mostly because he does not trust himself to watch her get ready any longer.

Penelope raises an eyebrow at the suggestion but doesn't argue. "Order me a drink, will you? And make it strong. I'm going to need it."

The bar is tucked into what must have once been a drawing room, all dark wood and leather chairs and a fireplace large enough to stand in. Colin orders a whisky for himself and a gin and tonic for her—Hendrick's, extra cucumber, the way she likes it—and settles into a corner table where he can see the entrance.

He is halfway through his drink when his phone buzzes.

Fran: Well?

He stares at the message.

Colin: Well what?

Fran: Have you told her yet?

Colin: We've been here for two hours

Fran: And?

Colin: And nothing. There hasn't been a right moment

Fran: There's never going to be a "right moment." You know that, yes?

He does know that. He has known that for years. The right moment is a myth he tells himself to justify his cowardice, a moving target that he allows to stay perpetually out of reach.

Colin: I know

Fran: So?

Colin: So I'm working on it

Fran: Work faster

He is composing a response—a defensive deflection that he already knows she will see right through—when he looks up and sees Penelope standing in the doorway of the bar.

The phone slips from his fingers.

She is wearing a black dress, the one she had shown him pictures of weeks ago when she was deciding what to pack. He had thought it was beautiful then, objectively, but seeing it on her now is an entirely different experience.

The fabric catches the low light of the bar and shimmers when she moves, clinging to curves he has trained himself not to notice and failing miserably at it tonight. Her hair is pinned up, exposing the long line of her neck and the delicate silver earrings that catch the light when she turns her head. She has done something to her eyes—makeup, probably, subtle enough that it makes them look wider and darker than usual—and her lips are painted a deep berry colour that draws his gaze like a magnet.

She looks, in a word, stunning. She also looks, in several more words, like every fantasy he has never allowed himself to indulge.

Penelope spots him and smiles, weaving through the scattered tables toward him. Colin stands on instinct, nearly knocking over his drink in the process, and has to grip the edge of the table to steady himself.

"You clean up nicely," she says when she reaches him, eyes sweeping over his suit in a way that makes his skin feel too tight.

"I—" His voice comes out rough. He clears his throat. "You look—"

Beautiful. Incredible. Like everything I've ever wanted.

"—nice," he finishes lamely. "You look nice, Pen."

He wants to bang his head against the wall, but Penelope just laughs. "Nice," she repeats, a teasing edge to her voice. "High praise indeed."

"You know what I mean."

"Do I?"

There is defiance, he thinks, in how she holds his gaze, an almost dare. Her chin lifts, just slightly, and he is struck by the sudden, irrational sense that he is being tested. That she is waiting for him to correct himself, to replace nice with the word that is clawing at the inside of his chest.

She holds his gaze for a beat too long, and Colin feels the air between them shift, feels that familiar tension creeping in at the edges. His heart is pounding so loudly that he is certain she must be able to hear it. Tell her, his mind reels, the command stuck on a continuous loop, and he opens his mouth, takes a breath—

"Is that my drink?" Penelope asks, breaking the moment as she reaches for the gin and tonic on the table.

Colin exhales. "Yeah. Hendrick's. Extra cucumber."

Her face softens. "You remembered."

"I always remember."

The words come out more sincere than he intended, weighted with a meaning he did not consciously put there. Penelope's hand stills around the glass. She looks up at him, her expression unreadable, and for a moment, neither of them moves.

Then she takes a sip of her drink and smiles, and the moment passes, and Colin is left wondering if he imagined the whole thing.

The Welcome Hour is held in what the hotel literature calls the Grand Ballroom, though Colin thinks that is a generous description for a room that might comfortably fit fifty people and is currently crammed with at least twice that number.

Penelope tenses the second they walk in. He can feel it in her hand that tightens on his arm, see it in her lifted chin. It is the posture she adopts when preparing for battle—her armour against a world that has never been kind to her.

"We don't have to stay long," he murmurs, leaning close so only she can hear. "Give it an hour, make an appearance, and then we can escape."

"An hour," she repeats, steeling herself.

"I'll be right here the whole time."

She glances up at him, her expression softening. "I know you will," she says quietly. "You always are."

Before he can respond—before he can tell her that he always will be, that there is nowhere else he would rather be than beside her, that she never has to face anything alone as long as he is breathing—a voice cuts through the din.

"Penelope! You made it!"

The bride descends upon them in a flurry of silk and perfume, air-kissing Penelope's cheeks with performative affection that immediately sets Colin's teeth on edge. She is beautiful in the way most ostentatious things are: polished and precise and utterly devoid of warmth.

"Cressida," Penelope says, her voice perfectly pleasant and completely hollow. "Congratulations. Everything looks lovely."

"Doesn't it?" Cressida beams, surveying the room like a queen surveying her kingdom. "Michael wanted an intimate affair, but I said, ' Darling, if we're going to do this, we're going to do it properly." Her gaze slides to Colin, sharpening with interest. "And who is this?"

Penelope's hand tightens on his arm. "This is Colin. My—" She hesitates, just for a fraction of a second, her eyes meeting his before she finishes, "—date.”

Cressida's eyebrows rise. "Date," she repeats, drawing out the word. "How lovely. I didn't realise you were seeing anyone, Penelope."

"It's relatively new," Colin interjects smoothly, placing his hand over Penelope's where it rests on his arm. "But not that new."

He isn't entirely sure what he means by that. He isn't sure Penelope knows either, based on the sharp glance she shoots him. But Cressida seems satisfied—or at least, satisfied enough to move on to whatever point she actually wanted to make.

"Well, I'm so glad you could come. Both of you." She leans in conspiratorially, her voice dropping to that register people use when they are about to speak unkindly and want plausible deniability. "I know it must be hard, attending all these weddings when you're still—" She waves a hand vaguely. "Well. You know. But I think it's so brave of you, Pen. Really. Especially on your birthday. How lucky are you that you get to spend it with me!"

Colin feels Penelope stiffen beside him. Feels the barely perceptible tremor in her hand. He opens his mouth, prepared to offer a retort that will get them thrown out of this wedding before it even starts, but Penelope beats him to it.

"It's not hard at all, actually," she says, her voice light and sharp as a blade. "Not when you have the right company."

She looks up at Colin as she says it, defiance in her gaze, and he understands immediately what she is asking for. He has played this role before. Dozens of times. The devoted boyfriend, the protective partner, the man who looks at Penelope Featherington like she is the only person in the room.

Colin turns to her fully, angling his body so that Cressida fades into his peripheral vision. He reaches up and tucks a strand of hair behind Penelope's ear—a gesture so familiar it is muscle memory at this point, except his hand lingers longer than it should, his thumb brushing the curve of her cheek.

"The right company makes all the difference," he agrees, his murmur low enough that Cressida has to strain to hear, but just loud enough that it is impossible to miss.

Penelope's breath catches, and her eyes widen, just slightly, as a flush creeps along her neck and spreads across her cheeks. He should look away. Should break the spell before it becomes too much, too real, too obvious.

He doesn't.

Somewhere behind him, Cressida makes a sound that might be surprise or annoyance or both, and then she is making her excuses and drifting away to greet other guests, and Colin still hasn't looked away from Penelope.

"Colin," she says softly.

"Come on," he says instead, finally dropping his hand. "Let's get you another drink."

Penelope stares at him for a bit longer, emotion flickering behind her eyes that he desperately wants to understand. Then she nods, and he leads her toward the bar.

His skin still tingles where he touched her face.

The Welcome Hour drags on interminably.

Colin loses track of how many people he is introduced to, how many times he has to smile politely while Penelope's rivals and frenemies make thinly veiled comments about her career, her appearance, her relationship status. He plays his part—the attentive boyfriend, the supportive partner—but with every passing hour, the line between performance and reality blurs further.

At some point, they are separated. Penelope is pulled into a conversation with someone from her publishing days, and Colin finds himself cornered by the groom's university friends, who want to talk about rugby, cryptocurrency and other things he cannot bring himself to care about.

He keeps his eyes on Penelope across the room. Watches her smile grow more strained as the evening wears on, how she keeps tucking the same strand of hair behind her ear—a nervous habit she has had since she was fourteen. He watches her laugh, and even from across the room, he can tell it is not a real laugh, and he knows, instantly, she needs rescuing. He excuses himself from the conversation with a stupid excuse, and makes his way across the room to her.

"There you are," he says, sliding his arm around her waist with an ease that should probably alarm him. "I've been looking everywhere for you."

Penelope leans into him instinctively, her body relaxing against his. "Have you?"

"Mm. This place is a maze." He smiles apologetically at the people she was talking to. "Do you mind if I steal her for a moment? I promised her a dance."

It isn’t true; there isn't even music playing, just the low murmur of conversation and the clink of glasses, Penelope plays along without missing a beat.

"You did promise," she agrees, looking up at him with gratitude in her eyes. "Excuse us."

He guides her away from the crowd, through a set of glass doors and onto a terrace that overlooks the castle grounds. The cold hits them immediately, sharp and bracing, and Penelope shivers against him.

"I needed that," she admits quietly. "Thank you."

"I know."

She looks up at him then, her expression soft and vulnerable. "You always know."

Colin swallows hard. "Pen—"

"I'm going to get some air," she says quickly, pulling away. "Just—give me a minute, okay?"

She slips out of his grasp and moves further onto the terrace, hugging herself against the cold, and Colin watches her go with a familiar ache settling behind his ribs.

He waits five minutes, then ten. After exactly twelve, he goes looking for her. Finds her outside on one of the terraces. She’s huddled next to the heater, glass of champagne nearly gone and dangling between her fingers. She looks up and smiles as he makes his way over to her, teeth chattering just slightly but trying to hide it. Colin immediately sheds his jacket to place it over her shoulders. She smiles her gratitude, burrowing into the fabric. Tries, desperately, not to think about how the scent of her perfume will linger on that jacket for days, how he will be able to carry a remembrance of her, even if just for a little while.

“We can go back in a sec. I just needed a breather.”

He nods. Watches as she squares her shoulders and sets her jaw. Prepares herself. It is not unlike how she conducts herself every time before every family event and every time the phone rings, with one of her sisters' names flashing on the screen.

Colin is quiet as he asks, “If you dislike this woman so much, why are we at her wedding?”

Penelope makes a displeased sound in the back of her throat just before finishing the rest of her champagne. She sets her now-empty glass on the nearest high-top table.

“You wouldn’t get it.”

“Try me.”

She sucks in her teeth. “It makes me sound ridiculous.”

“I doubt that.”

There is a long span of time where she considers him closely, where he knows she is trying to figure out how much of this story to tell. Even after decades of friendship and all that they have shared with one another, she is still careful with him. He used to fight against it, try to force his way in, but it never did anything but push her further away. Eventually, he learned the best way to handle Penelope's wary nature was to give her the time and space she needed to feel comfortable and hope he had earned her trust enough to be one of the privileged few she allows in.

“We were friends at uni, but… I use that term loosely. We never really liked each other that much…It was always a competition. I’m not even sure how it started, but the entire time we were there it was just a constant game of anything you can do, I can do better. Even as adults, we cannot escape each other. She’s a huge name in the publishing industry, the head of her own imprint—”

“You are a New York Times Bestselling author—”

“—Two of her authors have been nominated for Pulitzers. One of them even won—”

“—You have an entire book series that has impacted loads of people—”

“—She’s getting married.”

Colin frowns. “So?”

“So even if I have a better job, even if I’m a published author, I am still…alone.” She winces as she says the word, avoiding eye contact.

He reaches for her hand without thought, fingers threading around her wrist and tugging until she looks at him. “You aren’t alone, Pen.”

“Aren’t I, though?”

There is a pointed edge to her tone that makes him stand a bit straighter. She catches his gaze. Holds it. It feels as though she has issued a challenge, and the you don’t have to be is trite and the worst type of cliché, but it is right there, building in his throat. He opens his mouth, and her eyes widen just slightly in response, but the words die in his throat.

She looks away.

Drops his hand.

“I told you it makes me sound ridiculous. I know I have a very successful career. I know I have a very full life. A life that I am very happy with and have worked very hard to build. But sometimes… sometimes I do get caught up in that voice in my head that tells me none of that matters if I am alone.”

“Why do I suspect that voice sounds like your mother?”

She burrows deeper into his coat. Into herself. “It does always come back to Portia, doesn’t it?” Penelope laughs, but it is short, practically mirthless. She waves a hand at him, feigning nonchalance that he sees right through. “This feels like it has become a conversation for my therapist. Let’s move on, yeah?”

As she moves to glide past him, he grabs her wrist again, gently rooting her in place next to him. She glances up at him, then looks away, and he can see the unshed tears in her eyes and the wobble in her chin. Penelope’s insecurities have been etched into the very core of her by those who were meant to protect her, to love her unconditionally. Even before he understood what she meant to him, how important she was to his entire being, he made it a mission to heal some of those scars. Even if it gives too much of himself away now, he knows he has to continue the effort.

“You are surrounded by so many people who love you, Pen.” He hates how low his voice is from the intensity of his emotions, but he does not allow it to deter him. “You are not alone.”

The fingers around her wrist tighten of their own accord. The only way he realises he has done it is that her eyes flicker from his face to where their hands are joined. He immediately loosens his hold, just slightly, but does not let go.

“I know that. I do,” she amends quietly. “I do understand that this entire line of thinking is completely irrational, but I just…” She stops, sighs, squeezes his fingers once before twisting her hand free from his grasp. “I simply can’t stop it right now. I came out here to try to get out of my head…”

There is some commotion inside, a chorus of cheering and clinking of crystal. It draws Penelope’s attention and, in turn, his. Through the glass-paned doors, the bride and groom are kissing, making a show out of it to the delight of onlookers, but when they pull away, the way they look at each other is so full of warmth and affection that even he, someone who has no ties to the people and will likely never think about them again, can feel it.

Beside him, Penelope sighs and Colin watches as her features turn both contemplative and melancholy.

“What a thing,” she murmurs, “to be seen like that.”

“I see you, Pen.”

The words fall from his mouth without a thought, his tone thick with emotion. Penelope jerks her gaze to his, and he can feel the hiss of her inhale, the cadence of her breathing stuttering just so. She searches his face, the heat and scrutiny of it unnerving, and Colin resists the instinct to shutter his expression. He wants her to see the validity of his words, the depth of his affection for her, even if the vulnerability of the moment makes nausea twist in his gut.

And she must see it, and she must understand, because she does not hesitate when she takes a small step towards him, invading his space and every one of his senses. Penelope’s hands are steady as they reach for the fabric of his shirt, twisting a little and holding on. There is another step—his, hers, maybe both—and suddenly she is right there, looking at him with wide, blinking eyes and parted mouth. His pulse begins to race along with his thoughts, and a dull, white buzzing echoes within his ears. He reaches for a curl that has gone astray, tucking it behind her ear, and is startled when her hand reaches for his just as it falls.

Colin feels stuck, his eyes flickering from hers to where their hands are joined, and back again. Penelope watches him closely, eyes wide and imploring and dark. Her gaze is impatient and wanting. He has been in moments like this before, of course, the calm before a kiss, but this, with her, feels too significant. He is faced with the excitement of possibility and the abject fear of potential loss. He wants to kiss her. Count on his fingers and toes how many years he has wanted to kiss her and loses track.

And time stretches on and on until finally, Penelope pulls away with a sigh, finality in the distance she places between them.

Colin stands there, rooted to the stone, and watches her go.

This weekend, he had promised Francesca. This weekend, he had promised himself.

And she had been right there. Looking at him like she was waiting. Like she wanted him to—

He squeezes his eyes shut, and the cold seeps through his shirt where his jacket no longer is, and he thinks: Coward. You fucking coward.

When he opens his eyes, Penelope is already at the door, hand on the handle, not looking back.

He follows her inside because that is what he does. That is all he ever does.

iv. (no more) holding back

They do not talk about what happened on the terrace.

They do not talk about much of anything, actually. Penelope keeps her distance, keeps her champagne glass full, keeps her smile sharp and brittle whenever someone approaches. Colin hovers at the edges of her orbit, close enough to intervene if needed but far enough to give her the space she so clearly wants from him. When the party finally winds down, and guests begin drifting toward their rooms, Penelope is unsteady on her feet. She refuses his arm when he offers it, but she does not refuse the hand he places at the small of her back to guide her through the corridor. Small mercies.

Their room feels even smaller than before. The bed dominates the space, impossible to ignore, and Colin busies himself with the curtains while Penelope disappears into the bathroom without a word. He hears the tap running. The clatter of her toothbrush against the sink. A soft thud there and there.

When she emerges, she has scrubbed her face clean and changed into an oversized shirt that falls to mid-thigh. Her legs are plush and perfect and bare, and he forces himself to look away.

"Which side do you want?" she asks, and her voice is flat, carefully neutral.

"I can take the floor."

"Don't be stupid. It's freezing, and the floor is stone." She pulls back the duvet on the left side, the side closest to the window, the side she always takes when they share a bed. "Just stay on your side."

It is not an invitation. It is barely even an acknowledgement, Colin nods and waits until she has settled under the covers before he turns off the lamp and climbs in beside her.

The bed is narrow. Even with both of them pressed to opposite edges, he can feel the warmth of her, can hear the rhythm of her breathing in the dark. The juxtaposition of having her so physically close, yet so incredibly far, is maddening, and the silence stretches and stretches as their breathing fills the space around them.

Colin stares at the ceiling and thinks about all the things he should have said. On the terrace. In the bar. In the car. Every instance stretching back years and years, a lifetime of missed opportunities piling up until the weight of them feels like it might crush him.

Beside him, Penelope shifts. Sighs.

"Pen," he whispers into the dark.

She doesn't respond.

He tries again. "Penelope."

"Go to sleep, Colin."

Her voice is tired, resigned, and the desire to reach for her, to touch her, is this constant hum under his skin, always, and it feels so intense now, but the distance between them feels insurmountable.

"Good night," he says quietly.

She is silent for so long that he thinks she might have fallen asleep after all. Then, barely audible: "Night.”

Silence, again, then the evening of her breaths and the effort to even his own to match. Sometime in the night, long after Colin has finally drifted into fitful sleep, he wakes to find her curled against his side, her head on his shoulder, her hand resting over his heart. He doesn't move. Doesn't breathe. Just lies there in the dark, memorising the weight of her, and wishes he were someone else. Someone who deserved this. Somewhat brave enough to ask for what he wants, even if he knows he will never be good enough for her.

In the morning, he wakes up alone.

The note on her pillow is brief: Went to use the massage voucher. Seemed a waste. Be back later.

He reads it once. Sets it down. Reads it again despite himself, searching for meaning between the words that isn't there. It is the type of note you might leave for a roommate you barely know, and the careful neutrality of it is worse, somehow, than anger would have been.

The pillow beside his still holds the faint indent of her head. He presses his hand to it without thinking, then pulls away.

The room feels different in the morning light. Smaller, somehow, and emptier, which should be impossible given that it was barely big enough for the two of them to begin with. The champagne Hyacinth sent sits untouched on the dresser, the strawberries softening beside it. The flowers have opened further overnight, their scent thicker now, cloying.

On the sink, her toiletries have been rearranged. Separated from his, neatly lined up on her side, a quiet border drawn where none existed yesterday. He stands there for longer than he should look at it, then at the tie still on the dresser. Silver-blue and waiting.

Colin showers. Dresses casually, saving the suit for later. Checks his phone and finds seventeen messages in the family group chat, all variations of well??? and any update??? and, from Hyacinth, a series of eggplant emojis that he deletes without acknowledging.

Francesca's message is separate, private: Call me when you can.

He stares at it for a long time before pocketing his phone. He doesn’t call, too ashamed of what he would be forced to say.

The hotel restaurant is mostly empty when he ventures down for coffee, the breakfast rush long since passed. The solitude should be a relief, a chance to regroup, to sit with a coffee and figure out what to say to her when she gets back. But the quiet only leaves more room for the replaying—her hands on his shirt, her face tilted up, the question in her eyes that he couldn't answer. The way she had smoothed the fabric where her fists had wrinkled it before she stepped away. He keeps returning to that, to the tenderness of it, of her fixing what she had disrupted, even as she was the one being let down.

He is on his second cup, staring blankly at the grounds in the bottom of the first, when a voice interrupts.

"Colin Bridgerton?"

He looks up. The man standing beside his table is tall, broad-shouldered, with a rugged handsomeness that belongs on the cover of an outdoor magazine. Colin doesn’t like it. Sits up a bit straighter, but does not stand as he asks, “Do I know you?” Even though he is fairly certain he does. Or, at least, knows of him.

"Declan Murphy." The man extends his hand. "I think we have a mutual friend."

And, ah, there it is. Declan, the ex. The one that, by Penelope's account, simply ended one day without much ceremony or explanation. Colin never pushed for details. He knows, now, that he did not want to know them. Now he is standing in front of Colin with an outstretched hand that Colin does not take.

"Right," he says flatly. "Penelope's mentioned you."

She hadn't, really. Not willingly. What little Colin knows has come from Eloise, whose assessment was neither kind nor brief, and from the particular way Penelope's face would close off whenever the name surfaced—the same expression she wore when her mother called and she let it ring

If Declan notices the chill in Colin's tone, he doesn't show it. He slides into the seat across from Colin without being invited, signalling the waiter for a coffee of his own, and settles in with the ease of a man who has never once considered that his presence might be unwanted.

"She's here, isn't she? I saw her name on the guest list. Cressida's doing, I'm sure." He shakes his head. "Those two never could stand each other."

"And yet here you both are. At Cressida's wedding."

"Michael and I go way back. Couldn't miss it." Declan leans back in his chair, studying Colin with an open curiosity that makes his skin prickle. "You're her date, yeah? I heard she brought someone."

The word date lands strangely. After last night, Colin isn't sure what he is. Isn't sure what he's ever been. The word feels borrowed and wrong. The truth is both bigger and smaller than date—bigger because what he feels for Penelope could not be contained by a word so casual, and smaller because he has never once been brave enough to make it official.

"Something like that.”

"Good for her. She deserves that." Declan's smile shifts into wistfulness, and Colin braces himself without knowing why. "She's one of those people, you know? Makes everyone around her feel as if they matter. Even when she doesn't realise she's doing it." He turns his coffee cup in his hands, a slow rotation.

The words land harder than Colin is prepared for. Not because they're threatening, but because they're familiar. Because they’re his. He has thought these exact things, in these exact words, lying awake at three in the morning with the weight of his own idiocy pressing down on his chest. Hearing them from someone else, from this man with his easy smile and his uncomplicated certainty, makes Colin feel like he is watching someone walk through a door he has spent years standing in front of, too afraid to open.

"And yet you let her go," Colin says, and his voice comes out quieter than he intends.

"I did." Declan doesn't flinch. Doesn't look away. Colin wishes he would, wishes he could find anything to dislike beyond the general principle of the thing, but Declan just sits there, steady, owning his mistakes with a straightforwardness that Colin finds both admirable and infuriating. "Biggest mistake I ever made, honestly. But I was young and stupid, and I told myself we weren't quite right together. That she deserved what I couldn't give her.”

Colin’s jaw clenches before he can stop it. "What does that mean, exactly?"

"It means I've thought about her. A lot, over the years. Wondered about what might have been." Declan's gaze drifts toward the restaurant entrance, then back, and there is longing in his expression that Colin recognises instantly because he sees it in his own mirror every morning. "Wondered if maybe it's not too late to find out."

Colin's hand tightens around his coffee cup.

"She's moved on," he says, and it comes out harder than he intends, more like a warning than a statement, and even as he says it, he wonders what gives him the right. He is not her boyfriend. He is not her anything, not really, except the man who stood on a terrace last night and watched her walk away because he couldn't find the words to make her stay.

Declan considers him. The easy smile doesn't waver, but recognition shifts behind his eyes. Colin has the uncomfortable sense that he is being read, that this man can see the whole pathetic shape of the situation with a clarity that Colin has spent years avoiding.

"Right," Declan says simply. "Well. I hope you know what you have with her."

The words should be a concession, but they feel like an accusation. He does know what he has— what he could have—but knowing and acting have never been the same thing for him, and that is the whole fucking problem.

Before he can respond, Penelope appears in the doorway. Colin sees her hair first, that perfect shade of copper he would recognise anywhere, and watches her freeze when she sees them. Watches as her gaze moves from Colin to Declan and back again, surprise and irritation flickering across her features before the guardedness sets in.

"Declan," she greets carefully, once she has crossed the distance to their table. "I see you've met Colin."

"Just getting acquainted." Declan stands to greet her, pressing a kiss to her cheek. "I'll let you two have breakfast. But Pen—save me a dance tonight, yeah? For old times' sake."

He touches her arm as he passes. It is a casual gesture, one that speaks to a history Colin wasn't part of and has no claim over, and it shouldn't bother him as much as it does, but his hands curl around his coffee cup until his joints protest.

Colin watches Penelope watch Declan go, and the shift and distance between him and Penelope is numbing. And with it, the sudden, searing understanding that while he has been standing still—paralysed by his own fear, telling himself he is waiting for the right moment, protecting the friendship—the world has continued to move around him. That Penelope's life does not exist in the limbo he has built for himself. That other men have loved her, will love her, will sit across from strangers and speak about her with the raw, uncomplicated honesty that Colin has never once been able to manage.

And he is running out of time.

Penelope makes it clear she was just passing through, but he asks her sit with him anyway, surprised when she does. The result is a quiet that breeds into a silence that discomforts in a way it never has before. They met decades before, when she was nine and he was twelve, and some of his favourite memories of their friendship are of them simply existing with one another. There is nobody else who sees him like she does, who knows him like she does. Typically, silence is a chance for his thoughts to run wild and rampant, each one circling until he feels inundated by them. But with her, always with her, everything is calm.

Penelope orders tea and toast and thanks the waiter with a warmth that does not extend to Colin. She sits across from him with her hands wrapped around her cup, her posture careful, her gaze fixed somewhere past his left shoulder. She has showered since the spa—her hair is damp at the ends, curling slightly against her neck—and she smells different. Like eucalyptus and minut. Not at all like herself.

Colin orders nothing. His appetite died somewhere between the pillow indent and Declan Murphy's handshake.

"How was the massage?" he asks.

"Fine."

"Just fine?"

"It was a massage, Colin. It was fine."

She takes a sip of her tea. He watches her fingers adjust around the cup, the careful way she holds it, both hands, like she is grounding herself with the heat of it so she can avoid looking at him.

He tries again. "Pen—"

"Did you sleep alright?" she asks, and the question is so aggressively normal, so determinedly pleasant, that it makes his chest ache. She is performing. Not for a crowd this time, not for Cressida or her colleagues or the drunk men at pubs. For him. She is giving him the version of herself she reserves for people she does not trust with the real one, and the worst part is that he knows he earned it.

"Not really," he says. "You?"

"Like a log." She says it lightly, easily, and he knows it is a lie because he felt her breathing in the dark, felt the absence of the rhythm that means sleep. But he doesn't call her on it, because he has no ground to stand on, and they both know it.

The toast arrives. Penelope thanks the waiter again, butters one triangle with care, and takes a small bite. Colin watches her chew and swallow and reach for her tea, and thinks he has never been so aware of another person's choreography, how she moves through the most mundane actions as if she were following stage directions.

He needs to let it go.

Instead, he says, "So. Declan."

Penelope's cup freezes halfway to her lips. She sets it down precisely, finger drawing around the curve of the handle before dropping to the table.

"What about him?"

"Nothing. Just— I didn't realise he'd be here."

"Neither did I."

"He seems..." A pause. "...keen to reconnect."

Penelope looks at him then. Actually looks at him, for the first time since she sat down, and the expression on her face is tired. "He's being polite, Colin."

"He asked you to save him a dance."

"People dance at weddings. Who knew?" Her tone is light but her jaw is set, and she is tearing her toast into smaller pieces without eating any of them.

"He kissed you."

"On the cheek. The way adults greet each other." She looks up at him, and there is a warning in it that he should probably heed but can't. "Is there a point to this?"

The point is that Declan Murphy sat across from him twenty minutes ago and talked about Penelope with the kind of easy, unburdened honesty that Colin has never been able to manage. The point is that Declan touched her arm like he had a right to, and called her Pen, and looked at her the very same way Colin looks at her, except Declan is apparently willing to do something about it. The point is that Colin is terrified, not of Declan specifically, but of what Declan represents: the inevitability that someone, someday, will be brave enough to love her out loud.

But he cannot say any of that, because saying it would mean admitting all of it, and admitting all of it is the thing he has been unable to do for years, and so what comes out instead is:

"I just didn't like the way he was looking at you."

Penelope goes very still.

"The way he was looking at me," she repeats slowly.

"Yes."

"And how was that?"

Colin opens his mouth. Closes it.

"I don't know," Colin mutters. "Forget it."

Penelope stares at him, eyes hard, that furrow between her brows becoming prominent as she presses her mouth into the thinnest of lines. He watches emotions flicker across her features quickly, too quickly for him to catalogue. With a flick of her wrist, she tosses her toast to the side. Wipes her fingers on her napkin. When she speaks, her voice is quiet, and flat, and tired.

"Forget it," she says. "Right. That's always the answer, isn't it?"

She pushes back from the table, and Colin opens his mouth—to say what, he doesn't know, something, anything—but she is already standing, already making her features impenetrable, already retreating behind the walls he has spent years trying to scale and has never once had the courage to climb over.

"I'm going to get some air," she says. "The ceremony is at five."

She leaves her toast half-eaten and her tea still steaming, and Colin sits there alone, surrounded by the ruins of a breakfast neither of them wanted.

He returns to the room, surprised to find it empty. Even more surprised when Penelope does not come back. Not after an hour. Not after two. Colin sits in their room and watches the morning bleed into afternoon, the light shifting across the stone walls as the hours stretch and flatten. He texts her once, even though it takes him four attempts to word: Lunch? She replies twenty minutes later. Grabbed a bite with some people from last night. See you before the ceremony.

Some people. He does not ask which people. He does not want to know. He thinks about Declan's easy smile, the kiss on her cheek, the hand on her arm, and forces himself to put his phone down.

He tries to read. Gives up after the same paragraph loops three times without sticking. He walks the castle grounds for a while, follows a path through the gardens where the first stubborn blooms of April are pushing through despite the cold. It is beautiful in a way that feels pointed, as though the universe is conspiring to remind him of all the romantic gestures he is failing to make. He takes a photo of a walled garden with climbing roses just beginning to bud and almost sends it to Penelope before he remembers that she is not speaking to him. He pockets his phone and keeps walking. Takes it back out immediately to send the photo. Watches those blue dots appear, disappear, appear, then disappear completely.

Back in the room, he showers. Shaves. Puts on his suit with the mechanical focus he usually reserves for tasks he is dreading. Checks his phone again. Nothing. Checks it again five minutes later, just in case. Nothing.

The tie sits on the dresser, the perfect shade of silver.

At half four, the door opens, and Penelope slips inside wordlessly. Her cheeks are flushed from the cold, and she is carrying a paper coffee cup and a small bag from the hotel gift shop. She does not quite look at him as she sets both down on the dresser.

"Hey," she says. It is not unfriendly, but it is also not really anything. Just a fill of dead air.

"Hey."

She moves past him toward the dresser, setting down her things, and Colin watches her avoid his gaze with great effort.

"Pen."

She stills for half a second. He sees it in her shoulders, how they tense and then release, and he knows she heard everything he meant in those three letters.

"I need to get ready," she says, already reaching for the wardrobe. "We're going to be late."

"We have half an hour, I just wanted to—"

"Colin." She sighs his name as she pulls the dress free, hangs it on the bathroom door handle, before turning to face him. Her expression is closed and distant. "I need to get ready."

It is not an invitation to continue, but he opens his mouth anyway, because he has spent the entire day rehearsing this despite Fran telling him not to, has paced the castle grounds running through a dozen versions of what he wants to say, each one more inadequate than the last. But Penelope is already turning away, and the bathroom door clicks shut between them before he can find a single word worth saying.

He stands there, staring at the closed door, and wonders when she learned to do that. To cut him off so cleanly. To pre-empt the conversation, she knows he is trying to start and end it before he can fumble his way through it. He wonders if she has always been able to do it, or if this is new. If this is what he taught her.

Colin sits on the edge of the bed, already dressed, and listens. He knows her routine innately. The tap runs first, always, while she washes her face. Then the click of her curlers heating up. The clatter of her makeup bag unzipped, the order she works through: foundation applied with her fingers because she once told him brushes felt like painting a wall. The faint tap of a compact. The curling wand clicking against the sink as she picks it up.

A small hiss. She has burned her fingers. She always does.

Then the smack of her lips, a sound so specific to Penelope that he could pick it out in a crowded room. It means she has found the right shade. It means she is just about done.

Through the wall, he hears the rustle of fabric. The slide of a zip that stops partway. A pause. Then the sound of the zip again, straining, and nothing.

He waits.

More rustling. A muffled sound that might be a curse.

Colin crosses the room and knocks once. "Do you need a hand?"

"I've got it,” she mutters tightly.

He steps back and returns to the dresser. Picks up the tie. Runs the silk between his fingers, the fabric still smooth from where he rolled it so carefully at home. From the bathroom, another attempt at the zip. Then quiet. Then her voice, stripped of everything except resignation.

"Colin."

He sets the tie down.

"Please."

It is not a question. He opens the door, and she is standing with her back to him, the silver dress half done up, one arm twisted behind her at an angle that is not working. The zip is caught at the middle of her back. Above it, bare skin. Freckles he did not know were there, scattered across her shoulder blades like they were placed by someone who loved her. He holds his breath and steps closer, watching as she gathers her hair and holds it up off her neck without being asked. The gesture is so practised, so automatic, that it tells him she has done this before with someone else, and the thought sends a flare of jealousy to his gut that he forces himself to ignore.

"Thank you," she says quietly.

His fingers find the zip. The metal is warm from her trying. He works it free from where it has snagged, careful, his knuckles brushing her skin. She inhales at the contact, and he freezes.

"Sorry."

She shakes her head once without turning around.

He pulls the zip up. His hands are not steady, but he manages it, guiding the fabric closed over the line of her spine, and he keeps his eyes on the zip because if he looks at the curve of her neck or the freckle just below her hairline, he will do something he cannot take back. The clasp reaches the top, and his fingers rest there, right at the nape of her neck, and the room is so quiet he can hear her breathing.

In the mirror across the room, their reflection stares back at him. She is already looking. Her chin lifted, her eyes on the glass, on him. Their gazes catch and hold in the surface, and the room shrinks until there is nothing in it except this: her back against his chest, his hand at her neck, and the silence where words should be.

Three months ago, she would have smiled at their reflection. She would have tilted her head and remarked on how well they cleaned up. He would have nodded and missed his chance, and they would have gone on pretending.

Tonight, she does not smile. Tonight, Penelope looks at him in the mirror with an expression that is open and unguarded and so sad that it takes the breath out of him. He opens his mouth, feeling ready, feeling desperate, but she is already stepping away, cold air rushing where her warmth was.

"Thank you," she says again, barely above a whisper. She lets her hair fall and turns away from the mirror, bending to find her shoes.

Colin returns to the dresser. Picks up the tie. Loops it around his collar and focuses on the knot because the knot is simple and mechanical and asks nothing of him. When he finishes, the silver sits against his white shirt, catching the afternoon light, matching the shimmer of her dress with intention.

They leave the room in silence. Their shoulders almost touch in the narrow corridor, and Penelope keeps glancing at him as they walk, her gaze dropping to his tie. He watches her register the colour. Watches her eyes move to her own dress, then back to the tie, then away. She says nothing, but her step falters, just once.

The ceremony is held in a vaulted stone room deep in the oldest part of the castle. The ceiling arches high above them, ribbed with ancient stonework, and narrow windows cut into walls that must be three feet thick let in thin shafts of late afternoon light. Stained glass paints the room in a kaleidoscope of colours, while candles line the aisle in wrought iron holders, and their flames gutter each time someone opens the heavy door at the back. It is the kind of room that has witnessed centuries of devotion. Colin finds it suffocating.

He sits beside Penelope in the fifth row, close enough that his knee grazes hers. She sits with her hands folded in her lap, her spine straight, her gaze fixed on the altar. She has barely looked at him since the corridor.

The celebrant begins, and Colin tries to listen. Only lasts two minutes, at most, before his attention slides sideways to Penelope’s profile. The line of her jaw. The careful stillness of her mouth. She is watching the bride and groom with an expression he cannot read from this angle, and he wants, badly, to see her eyes.

The vows are personal. Cressida's are polished and rehearsed, delivered with the confidence of someone who has never doubted that she deserves to be adored. Michael's are quieter. He stumbles over a line about how long it took him to say what he felt, and a ripple of sympathetic laughter moves through the room.

Colin remains silent, and beside him, Penelope’s fingers tighten in her lap.

Michael recovers. He says he spent years afraid that wanting her was the same as ruining her. That he mistook silence for safety. He says he wasted time he cannot get back, but he is standing here now, and if she will let him, he would like to spend the rest of his life making up for it. The room is quiet except for a few sniffles from the front rows. Candlelight flickers across the vaulted ceiling, and the stone seems to press inward, but all Colin can do is stare at his hands.

The words feel too close to the shape of his own failure, as if someone reached into his chest and transcribed what they found there and handed it to a stranger to read aloud. He wants to leave. He wants to turn to Penelope and say that, that is what I have been trying to tell you. But the celebrant is already moving on, and the moment passes. As moments do. As they always do with him.

The great hall has been transformed since the Welcome Hour. More candles, more flowers, the string quartet replaced by a band that fills the vaulted space with sound that bounces off the stone. Penelope takes a glass of champagne from the first waiter they pass and drinks half of it before they reach their table.

"Maybe switch to wine? You know champagne gives you indigestion," he says.

She looks at him. Takes another sip. Holds his gaze while she does it. "Maybe mind your business.”

He forgets, sometimes, just how biting she can be, mostly because he is very rarely on the receiving end of it. Colin’s mouth snaps shut, and he nods once. Follows her through the crowd with his hands in his pockets, keeping a half-step behind her because it seems safer than walking beside her right now.

They find their table, and the woman across from them leans forward with a warm smile.

"Penelope, right? Cressida mentioned it's your birthday. Happy birthday!"

Penelope's smile is gracious and automatic. "Tomorrow, actually. But thank you."

"Oh, how lovely! Any big plans?"

"Not yet."

She does not look at Colin as she says it. In his suitcase upstairs, there is a first edition of her favourite book, wrapped in brown paper, with a card tucked inside that he spent an embarrassing amount of time writing. He had drafted it at his kitchen table with a glass of wine and too much hope, choosing each word with care and anticipation because he planned to give it to her after he told her the truth. It was meant to be a fail-safe. A way to make sure she knew, even if his voice failed him again.

The meal begins, and with it, the performance. They’ve done this so many times, the routine is practically embedded as muscle memory. She talks, he supports. She charms, he deflects. When someone asks how they met, she tells the abbreviated version—childhood friends, grew up together, the rest just sort of happened—and Colin smiles and nods and places his hand on the back of her chair because that is what he does. What he has always done. She leans into his touch when the editor across the table is watching, and pulls away when the conversation shifts.

It is a masterclass in selective intimacy, and every bit of it guts him.

Between courses, a publisher Colin vaguely recognises from one of Penelope's previous events approaches their table. Penelope's posture shifts immediately: straighter, professional in a way that reminds him she is very good at her job and has built an entire career while he was busy doing absolutely nothing except being too afraid to tell her he loved her. She introduces Colin as her partner, and he shakes the man's hand, smiles and plays his part while she discusses foreign rights and a potential adaptation and a meeting she wants to set up after the long weekend.

Her hand finds his under the table while she talks. She threads her fingers through his without looking at him, a gesture so practised it might as well be choreography. To the publisher, it looks natural and intimate. Like they do it all the time. And they do. That is the unbearable part, but only slightly less so than when her hand immediately withdraws from his when the publisher moves on.

"You’ve gotten really good at this," he says quietly.

"At what?"

"The networking. The— all of it. At owning who you are and your accomplishments,” he tells her, honestly, because despite everything else, it needs to be said. Watching Penelope endure and grow into who she is has been a remarkable gift.

She looks at him, and for a brief second her expression softens into the Penelope he knows. "I learned from the best," she says, and there is the ghost of a real smile at the corner of her mouth. "You are the one who taught me how to be charming.”

The smile lasts for one beat, then two before disappearing.

Between the main course and dessert, the crowd loosens. People leave their seats to mingle, and then they are alone at the table. Colin opens his mouth to talk to her, finally, to ask for a moment to speak without interruption, but then she’s excusing herself and he is left watching Penelope move through the room, a flash of silver and red among the candlelight, stopping to talk to people he’s met, and whose names he has committed to memory because she once mentioned they mattered.

She catches his eye from across the room and lifts her glass slightly, the briefest of acknowledgements, and he cannot tell if it is an invitation or a dismissal. He decides it is an invitation and immediately crosses the room to her. She is momentarily alone, checking her phone near the edge of the dance floor.

His fingers graze her elbow. "Pen. Can we talk?"

Her entire body stiffens at first touch, but she looks up, holds his gaze.. He watches her weigh the question, watches her consider him with an expression that is not unkind but careful in a way that makes him nauseous.

"Not here, Colin."

"Then where? When?" he asks, near pleading despite efforts not to be too much.

"I don't know," she says quietly. "But definitely not in the middle of a wedding. I don’t want to do this here."

She holds his gaze for one more second, and he thinks he sees that familiar spark flicker behind her eyes, but she turns and walks back into the crowd before he can be sure, and he lets her go, because what else can he do?

He goes to the bar instead. Orders a whisky. Drinks it too fast and orders another.

Later, she materialises beside him to introduce him to a literary agent who summers in the Cotswolds, and Colin performs. Shakes the man's hand. Makes a charming remark about Penelope's work that makes the agent laugh and Penelope go quiet. Her hand rests on his arm while they talk, positioned for the agent's benefit. When the man excuses himself, her hand drops, and she steps away without a word.

He brings her a gin and tonic after that. Hendrick's, extra cucumber. Finds her in a cluster of people he doesn't recognise and touches her elbow. She takes the drink with a brief thanks and turns back to her conversation, and he just stands there, doing nothing but occupying the space beside her that used to be his. He returns to the bar, another whisky ordered and drained, and the hours start to compress after that. The band gets louder. The dancing starts. He stands on the outskirts, never quite belonging in these spaces unless she is by his side, watching Penelope work the room, waiting for any sign that his presence is needed or even wanted.

Sometime later, he realises he has lost sight of her. Scans the room. Checks the terrace, but it is empty. Returns to the hall and searches the crowd, that familiar pulse of anxiety building behind his ribs.

He finds her at the far end of the bar.

With Declan.

They are standing close together, Declan is leaning in, making conversation Colin cannot hear over the band, and Penelope is laughing, and it’s loud and boisterous and so far from the brittle, performative noise she has been deploying all evening. Her head tips back and her hand comes up to cover her mouth like it always does when she is genuinely surprised by her own amusement, and Colin knows that gesture so intimately, has catalogued it over so many years, that seeing it directed at someone else makes his vision narrow.

He is moving before he makes the conscious decision to. Weaving through the crowd with a focus that parts people without effort. By the time he reaches them, his heart is pounding and his hands are unsteady and he does not trust himself to speak, but he does it anyway.

"Pen. Can I talk to you?"

She turns, and there it is again: that flicker of satisfaction, as though she was waiting for exactly this. It makes him angrier, which he knows is not fair, but knowing it has never once changed what he feels.

"Colin. You remember Declan."

"I do." He does not look at Declan. "Can I talk to you? Privately."

"We're in the middle of a conversation."

"Surely it can wait?”

“Surely you can wait.”

“Pen,” he sighs, low and strangled, his eyes pleading, and the pathetic way he implores her silently must work, because she sighs and nods just slightly.

"It's fine," Declan says, easy as ever. Colin still does not look at him. "We can catch up later. Save me that dance, Pen."

He touches her arm as he leaves. Colin watches his hand make contact and withdraw, and his jaw aches from how hard he is clenching it.

The moment Declan is gone, Colin takes Penelope's elbow and steers her through the nearest door. The corridor beyond is blessedly empty, the noise of the reception fading to a muffled hum behind the heavy wood. The stone walls are cool and close, lit by wall sconces that throw long shadows.

Penelope yanks her arm free as soon as the door shuts.

"What the hell was that?"

"What was what?"

"You were so rude just then.”

“So?”

“So? So?” She blinks and assesses him. Then: “What is going on with you, Colin?”

"Nothing—”

"Then what was that?"

Fran's voice echoes somewhere in the back of his mind, distant and sensible, telling him to breathe, to think, to not say anything he will spend the rest of his life regretting. But the image of Declan leaning in is louder. Penelope's head tipping back. Her real laugh, the one Colin has spent years earning, given freely to a man who left her and came back expecting to find her waiting.

He cannot think past it.

"You were flirting with him."

The word hangs between them. Penelope stares at him.

"I was talking to him."

"You were laughing."

She scoffs. "People laugh, Colin. It's a wedding. People laugh when they are happy and people are generally happy at weddings, except for you, I guess—”

"Not like that."

"Not like what?"

"Not like—" He stops. Swallows. He is on dangerous ground and he knows it, can feel the edge of the cliff beneath his feet, but he cannot seem to step back. "He's your ex, Pen, and you are supposed to be here with me. Isn’t that… isn’t that part of this whole act?"

She clicks her teeth, weight shifting from left to right before she crosses her arms across her chest. “Part of the whole act?”

“You know what I mean—"

"No, I don't think I do." Her voice has gone quiet, which is worse than the shouting. Penelope quiet is Penelope dangerous. "Explain it to me. What act, Colin? The one where you pretend to be my boyfriend so I don't have to face these things alone? The one where you hold my hand and touch my face and look at me like—" She stops herself. Presses her lips together. "That act?"

"That's not what I—"

"Because if it's an act, then what does it matter who I talk to? If it's an act, then Declan is just a man at a bar and I'm just a woman having a conversation and none of it should bother you in the slightest."

She is right. She is completely, infuriatingly right, and he has nothing to say to that because any honest response would require admitting that it isn't an act, has never been an act, not for him, and the words are right there, right there, pressing against the back of his teeth—

"Unless it isn't an act," she says, and her voice is barely above a whisper. "Is that what you're trying to tell me, Colin? Because I have been waiting for you to—"

"He had his hands on you."

"Oh my god." She laughs, but there is no humour in it. "You sound like you're jealous."

"I am!"

The words rip out of him, the two syllables echoing loudly in the empty corridor.

"What?"

"I am jealous." His voice is shaking. "I am jealous of him. I have been jealous of every man who has ever made you laugh like that, Pen, because I—"

He stops. Starts again.

"Because you—"

Stops again. His hand drags through his hair.

On the terrace. Last night. You were right there and I wanted to—I've wanted to for years, Pen, I don't—and I just stood there and you walked away and I—"

"Colin—"

"—and then this morning, in the mirror, and the way you looked at me, and the zip, Pen, when I was— your skin and I couldn't—"

"Colin."

"—and the tie." He looks down at it, the silver-blue silk, and half laughs at the absurdity of himself. "I bought a fucking tie to match your dress because I couldn't figure out how to tell you that I—"

His voice breaks. Actually breaks, like he is fifteen and not thirty-ish and he presses his hand over his eyes because they are stinging and he will not cry in a corridor at Cressida Cowper's wedding, he will not, except he thinks he might be already.

"I love you," he says from behind his hand. It comes out cracked and quiet. He imagined, in the abstract way he allowed himself to imagine it, that there would be steadiness. Words worthy of her. Not this.

He drops his hand. Forces himself to look at her.

"I'm in love with you. I have been for years. I don't know exactly when it started, or maybe I do, and I've just been too afraid to look at it properly." He exhales. "That's it. That's all I've got."

The corridor is silent. The muffled thud of the bass through the walls. His own breathing, ragged and too loud. All the while, Penelope continues to stare at him. Her cheeks are still wet. Her arms have uncrossed and fallen to her sides, and she is standing very still.

"You're saying this now," she whispers. "Here. In a corridor."

"I know."

"At Cressida's wedding."

"I know, Pen. I know the timing is—"

"Your timing is utter shit, Colin."

"I know,” he groans. “I know.”

The silence stretches between them; the adrenaline is fading now, leaving behind the tremor in his hands and a rawness in his chest that feels like a gaping wound.

“I just. I—why would you love me? You are so brilliant and clever and kind, and I am just…”

“Just what?”

“Just me,” he shrugs.

He cannot look at her. Stares instead at the stone floor, at the scuff marks on his shoes, at anything that is not her face, because if he sees pity there, he will not recover from it. The silence lasts long enough for him to begin composing his retreat. An apology. A deflection about the whisky and the late hour and how they should probably just forget he said anything—

Penelope laughs.

His head snaps up. It is not the reaction he expected, not even close, and for one terrible, lurching second, he thinks she is laughing at him, that he has just laid himself bare in a corridor and she finds it funny, and the humiliation starts to rise in his throat—

But her eyes are bright, and her smile is trembling at the edges, and the laugh is not cruel. "Colin," she says, and his name in her mouth sounds different than it has all weekend. "In what world would I not love you?"

He blinks. The words don't arrange themselves into sense immediately. He has to hear them again in his head, replay them, turn them over, before the meaning lands.

She shakes her head, and he can see her processing, can see the machinery of her mind working behind her eyes, and he waits, because there is nothing else he can do. He has given her everything. Every last piece of himself that he has been hoarding and hiding and protecting for years is now sitting in the space between them, and if she doesn't want it, he will survive, probably, but he will not be the same.

"For fuck's sake," she mutters. "Must I do everything myself?"

She crosses the distance between them in two steps, fists her hands in his shirt, and kisses him.

For half a heartbeat, he doesn't move. His brain short-circuits, every synapse overwhelmed by the simple, staggering reality of Penelope’s mouth on his. Then restraint gives way, and he stops thinking entirely. His hands find her hips. He pulls her closer and she makes a sound against his mouth, a soft, startled noise that vibrates through him and settles low in his belly. He kisses her back with everything he has, which turns out to be fifteen years of wanting compressed into a single graceless act, and it is not smooth, not practised, not any of the things he imagined. His nose bumps hers. Their teeth collide. He does not care. He does not care about anything except the warmth of her and the pressure of her fingers twisting tighter in his shirt and the adorable way she rises onto her toes to get closer, as though even pressed against him isn't close enough.

Her back meets the corridor wall. Neither of them planned it; he stepped forward without meaning to and she stepped back to match and the cold stone caught her between the shoulder blades. She gasps, and he pulls back immediately.

"Sorry, are you—"

She drags him back down by his tie. The silver-blue silk that he bought to match her dress, that he rolled so carefully on his bed while Fran told him to stop being an idiot, fisted now in Penelope's hand as she uses it to close the distance he just created. He would laugh at the poetry of it if her mouth weren't already on his again.

This kiss is different from the first. The desperation is still there, but it has shifted, deepened into more. He cradles the back of her head with one hand, fingers threading through her hair, the curls she set with the curling iron that burned her fingers, and angles his mouth against hers. She sighs into the kiss and her whole body softens against him, the rigid composure she has been wearing all day dissolving, and the feeling of Penelope Featherington relaxing into him, choosing him, trusting him with the full unguarded weight of herself, is so overwhelming that his chest aches with it.

He pulls back just far enough to look at her. An inch of space between them, maybe less. Her breath warm against his lips. She is a mess, lipstick smeared, hair loose from his fingers. Her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are wet and her mouth is swollen and she is looking at him like he hung the fucking moon, and Benedict was right, he thinks distantly, Benedict was right about all of it.

"Hi," he says, a bit dumbstruck.

"Hi," she whispers back, pressing up on the tips of her toes to brush her mouth against his once, then twice, before murmuring, "Do you know how long I've been wanting you to do that?"

"I have some idea."

She laughs, watery and bright, and the sound of it fills the corridor and presses against the ancient stone and he thinks it might be the best thing he has ever heard. Better than the laugh she gave Declan, better than any laugh she has ever given anyone, because this one is his.

He kisses her again because he can. Because she is letting him. Because her hands are in his hair now, nails scraping lightly against his scalp, and her mouth opens under his and the world narrows to the space between them. He kisses the corner of her mouth. Her jaw. The spot just below her ear that he has wondered about for years, and she shivers and tilts her head to give him access, and the quiet sound she makes undoes him.

"Colin." His name against his skin. "We're in a corridor."

"I know."

"Anyone could walk through that door."

"I know."

"Cressida could walk through that door."

"Let her." He presses his mouth to her neck, to the pulse point that is hammering beneath her skin. "I don't care."

"You would care if—" She loses the thread of the sentence when his lips find the hollow of her throat. Her fingers tighten in his hair. "That's not fair."

"What isn't?"

"You,” she breathes. “Doing that. While I'm trying to be sensible."

He pulls back again just to look at her, because he can, and she is a sight to behold: flushed and breathless and trying very hard to frown, and the attempt is so unconvincing that it makes his heart swell.

"I love you, Pen."

Her frown dissolves. Her eyes go bright.

"I love you too." She says it simply, quietly, like a fact she has known for so long that it barely requires stating, and Christ, she really is the best of both of them. Her hand reaches up, cups his face. "I have loved you for a very long time, Colin. Longer than you probably want to know."

Colin presses his lips to her palm. "Tell me anyway."

"No." She shakes her head, but she is smiling. "You'll get smug."

"I will absolutely get smug."

"Exactly."

He leans his forehead against hers. They stand there, breathing together, and the corridor is quiet except for the muffled music through the walls. His hands are resting on her waist. Her fingers are tracing the line of his collar where her lipstick has left a stain he has no intention of washing out.

"We could go back," she says.

"We could."

"Cressida will notice we're gone."

"Good."

A pause. Her fingers still on his collar.

"Or," she says, and her voice drops into a register that makes his pulse stutter. "We could go upstairs."

He pulls back to look at her. Her expression is uncertain but steady, a question she already knows the answer to but needs to hear him say.

"Are you sure?"

"I've been sure for about fifteen years." The corner of her mouth lifts. "I think I've waited long enough. Don't you?"

Colin takes her hand. Threads his fingers through hers the same way she did under the table for the publisher, except this time it is real, and the realness of it, the simple miracle of holding Penelope Featherington's hand because she wants him to, makes his chest feel so, so full.

They leave the corridor together. His hand in hers, her heels clicking against the stone. Somewhere behind them, the band plays on and the party continues without them, and Colin does not look back, and he does not follow.

They walk together.