Chapter Text
“Who the fuck doesn’t have a gas fucking fireplace!” Penelope muttered at said definitely-not-a-gas-fireplace, sucking her stinging index finger from where she’d been holding a match too long.
A scrunched-up piece of newspaper twisted and curled a moment, a flash of flame flickering before it disintegrated into ash along with any hopes she might have had of ever feeling warm again. She scowled at the grey mountain of burnt paper, sticks, and one blackened log that refused to light. Standing from her crouching position with a groan that felt more and more reflective of her age, she grabbed a metal prod thingy from a wrought iron stand that housed what appeared to be medieval torture devices and poked at the fire. It did nothing but create a plume of limp dust.
Her throat thickened, eyes burning with frustration. She could not be dealing with this right now. It was just one more thing to add to the list of everything that was wrong with her life. She was being personally victimized by a bloody fireplace.
“Fuuuuuuuuck!” she yelled out to no one in particular.
My Cottage was empty after all.
Empty and freezing. She could see her breath. Penelope was wrapped up in a wool blanket, a beanie, two scarves, three layers of jumpers, a pair of stockings covered by purple track pants, and her thickest socks and slippers. And yet her teeth still chattered. Her bones were cold, aching with it. She was going to die of hypothermia in the middle of Surrey.
And it wouldn’t even be in the top ten of her low points for the year.
She glared at the Christmas present she’d bought for Alfie, sitting on the oak coffee table behind her. It was still perfectly wrapped in white and gold. Just waiting to be burned.
And she couldn’t even do that.
What a joke.
She was thirty years old and completely helpless.
She would give up and drive back to her flat in London, but she’d rented it out on Airbnb until Boxing Day, needing every penny she could pinch at this time of year. Plus, the roads were icy now, so there was no way she could safely drive anywhere, let alone home.
She would google how to start a fire but there was no reception at My Cottage. Something she’d thought would be romantic when she’d organised the mini-break. She’d waxed lyrical to Alfie about how wonderful it was that Sophie and Ben had lent them the cottage whilst they were in Seoul seeing family over Christmas. How she and Alfie could spend their first Christmas together away from their respective families, with whom neither of them had a great relationship with. That they’d be isolated in the best possible way; they’d snuggle by the fire, go for walks, cook. He’d read, she’d write, and they’d get one-on-one time away from the world. Really spend some quality time together.
That was too much for him.
He didn’t love her.
After nearly six months of dating, he’d apparently come to the conclusion just in time for the festive season. Worse, he’d made it unnecessarily clear that he couldn’t see himself ever loving her.
Not that she loved him, but she was certainly open to it. That felt like the courteous thing to be when in a relationship with someone of six months. Open to loving them.
So, instead, he’d headed somewhere even more isolated: Antarctica. The furthest possible place he could get from her, unlovable Penelope Featherington.
It was a trip she quickly realised took months of planning. You couldn’t just turn up to Antarctica. You had to prep for that and get all sorts of permits. Which meant that he’d known about it when she’d initially brought up My Cottage; he’d known about it when she took Ben and Sophie up on their offer; he’d even known about it when she was happily at home wrapping his Christmas present.
The absolute twat.
So even if she wasn’t heartbroken, which admittedly was something she wasn’t quite ready to unpack, she’d certainly earned the right to burn his present.
Except that she couldn’t light the fire. She poked it again, nothing but dust.
Maybe she should have just joined Eloise and Phillip on their trip to Scotland. But then she would have had to tell Eloise that they broke up. And Eloise had never quite liked Alfred—she’d thought he was too old for Penelope, too condescending.
Penelope wasn’t ready to hear I told you so.
Not that Eloise would say it exactly, but she’d be able to read it on her face. Which was actually worse, because you couldn’t snap back at a facial expression without seeming like you might be a little on edge.
Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you looked at it), she couldn’t go to Aubrey Hall either. Violet wasn’t hosting Christmas this year. All the Bridgertons were celebrating with their partners’ families. Even Violet was cosying up somewhere with Marcus Anderson. Just another wonderful reminder that Penelope was seriously single.
Cat lady levels of single.
She winced at the thought. She could practically hear Eloise shouting at her that ‘cat lady’ was made up fear-mongering by the Patriarchy so that women would settle for playing servant to some man-baby for the rest of their lives rather than living happily independently. Plus, she kind of liked cats.
Anyway, she certainly wasn’t going to spend Christmas with her own family. Abso-fucking-lutely not. Alone, in a cosy stone cottage, was far more appealing. The perfect place to wallow.
She’d throw herself into wallowing, make an art form of it. She deserved to wallow.
Wallow and Write Away. That’s what she’d termed her self-imposed retreat. Because on top of everything, she also had a deadline.
A deadline she’d missed three times now. But she’d promised her editor she’d have the first draft of her next romance novel ready to review by New Year’s Day.
So she’d picked up the keys from Sophie that morning, then bought a case of wine and all the cured meats she could fit in her cool box. She was going to finish her novel, eat prosciutto, and drink wine for the next five days because that’s what one did when they got dumped by a fucking vegetarian before Christmas.
She’d forget about Alfie and focus on her writing. She was all set to write her romance—except that she’d been technically writing it for nine months now and she still couldn’t figure out the ending. Her characters were practically blinking at her, waiting for something to happen. But no matter what plot point she threw at them, nothing seemed to work. Her story was… bland.
But how was she supposed to give them a happy ending when she hardly believed in them anymore? She was a fraud. A romance writer who had never once been romanced.
Because, clearly, she was unlovable.
Okay, she knew she was being dramatic. She knew she was loved.
She even knew what it was to be in love. She had been in love with Colin Sodding Bridgerton for nearly half her life, after all. She’d just never had that feeling returned.
That was the problem. It had only ever been platonic.
At least Alfie had told her to her face. Colin had just announced it to his mates, as if the very idea of dating Penelope Featherington was so inconceivable it warranted a stand-up routine. But she was over it now, over him.
Truly.
She glanced around, wiping her sooty hands on her joggers. She could do this. She could dig deep, pretend she had a clue about romance, and finish her novel. She’d done it before and she could do it again. And what better place to write a romance novel than a cottage that could have appeared in any Christmas rom-com?
It looked like it would snow tomorrow, which never happened over Christmas, so surely that was a sign. Plus the cottage was cosy. The walls were lined with bookshelves, and any spare space was decorated with colourful prints and Ben’s charcoal sketches. Granted, it was tiny—the living room and kitchen were open plan, with an antique wooden dining table that could really only sit four tightly, dividing them—but it was homey. The green sofa was battered and cosy, colourful blankets and cushions thrown on it. A red tartan armchair was angled next to it. There were rugs everywhere, mismatched and well-worn.
Upstairs was the only bedroom, where she’d be sleeping in the iron frame double bed. It was small for two, but perfect for her. As long as she didn’t think about what Ben and Sophie might do with the handcuffs she’d found in the chest of drawers up there when she was unpacking earlier.
There was even a little pine writing desk by the window in the bedroom, where she’d immediately set up her laptop. It was perfect, really. Just what she needed. Time away from the world, from people, from heartache, from vegetarians.
She’d start writing her romance tomorrow. If she didn’t freeze to death before then. She rolled her eyes, abandoning the fire and stalking over to the kitchen, filling a wine glass to the rim with syrah. If she couldn’t burn something, she could at least get drunk and burn her insides.
That was when her eyes locked on the oven. The electric oven. And Penelope had quite possibly one of her best ideas all year.
—
“AND I’M HERE! TO REMIN’ YOU! OF THE MESS YOU MADE WHEN YOU WENNAWAY!”
The oven was roaring, the door open, heat pouring into the tiny kitchen. Ben’s old boombox was blasting Alanis Morissette and Penelope was dancing, her voice strained as she belted out the chorus for what might have been the twentieth time in a row. It turned out Ben didn’t have that many CDs and that Penelope only knew a few songs off of Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill.
But it was perfect.
Pure catharsis.
And with the oven now warming her, the syrah sloshing in her belly, and her cheeks bulging with salty prosciutto, she could forget about every little worry she’d ever had. She was liberated. Free of responsibilities, free of insecurities, free of men. It was just her, her wine bottle, and an angry woman from the 90s reminding her that love sucked, and everyone who disagreed was an idiot.
Or something… admittedly, her comprehension skills were a little inhibited by the amount of wine she had consumed.
She stuck her arms up in the air and wiggled, hips swaying. The wine sloshed in the bottle and she licked her wrist, capturing the red rivulets that spilled.
She heard a throat clear and spun towards it before she screamed, nearly dropping her wine bottle.
“Colin!”
Her heart was in her throat, the music still loudly blaring as he stood there in a navy cashmere jumper and dark jeans, his eyebrows raised.
This couldn’t be real.
She looked down at herself in her purple matching jogger set, a wine stain on her boob. She had thick pink socks over her stockings, liking the way she could slide on the kitchen tiles with them. She was wearing the blanket she’d previously been using to warm herself as a cape. Her hair was shoved up in a messy bun, and she still had a wad of half-chewed prosciutto in her cheek.
Not exactly how she wanted to see the man she’d once loved for the first time in just over six months.
She swallowed the prosciutto, the slightly too-big lump dragging painfully down her throat. “What are you doing here?” she asked, burning frustration quickly replacing shock.
Colin dropped a brown leather duffle bag at his feet along with two paper bags bulging with groceries. “Why is the oven on?” he shouted over Alanis singing about blow jobs in theatres.
Penelope rushed to switch off the boombox, the kitchen now filled with the sound of the oven fan whirring.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded again, placing her wine bottle down so she could cross her arms in an attempt to look intimidating.
“The oven door is still open,” he said, ignoring her question, his brow furrowed.
“I know,” she said. “It’s freezing.”
“So you’re using the oven to–”
“You’re not supposed to be here!” she exclaimed. “Why are you here?”
He ignored her, moving forward to shut the oven and switching it off. “It’s nice to see you too.”
She was half tempted to stalk over to the oven and switch it back on. But that felt like it bordered on immaturity. “How did you even get a key? Sophie said–”
“There’s a spare hidden in the front garden.”
She sighed. “Of course, there is. Of course you’re here. Of all the bloody…”
He glanced around as if searching for someone. “Is Alfal– Alfred here?”
“No!” she snapped. He just had to bring up her ex, because that was what this situation needed. More reminders of her past failures in love. “Just me.”
Fleeting relief flashed across his expression. “Right, well, I might just…”
“Leave?”
He looked scandalised. “Penelope, it’s after midnight!”
She glared at him. “I’m supposed to be wallowing!”
He glanced at the oven again. “Were you using the oven as a heater? Have you lost your mind?!”
“Sorry if I didn’t want to catch hypothermia.”
He frowned. “Can you catch hypothermia?”
She huffed. She did not have the time or energy to debate grammar. “Colin, you need to leave,” she said. “Aren’t you supposed to be in Mexico or Australia or somewhere, I dunno, on a beach?”
“Munich, actually, but I wanted to–”
“Well then go back to Munich. I’ve got My Cottage over Christmas. Ben and Sophie said so.” Apparently any attempts at appearing mature had fallen to the wayside. But she needed Colin to be gone. She couldn’t deal with seeing the man who never wanted her this soon after being dumped. It was cruel. How was she supposed to write a romance under these conditions?
Besides, she needed him gone before she got too lost in studying him again, in noticing that he seemed taller, broader, that his navy eyes were brighter. She wasn’t allowed to notice these things anymore—she’d moved on. She was no longer a desperate cataloguer of Colin Bridgerton. Her stomach filled with butterflies, anyway.
“I can’t just– Pen, it’s snowing. Surely you can let me stay one night?”
She glanced out the window to confirm it was in fact snowing, although it didn’t look that heavy, just a flurry.
“I could light the fire?”
She sighed. He’d found her Achilles heel. “Fine.”
He paused, glancing between her and the oven. “You do know why you shouldn’t use an oven as a heater?”
She glared at him and he raised his hands in supplication.
“Fire,” he said. “Let me get on that.”
She nodded, grabbing the wine bottle and taking one giant, heated gulp. She was going to need it.
—
It took Colin all of five minutes to light the fire. He probably would have been quicker, but he insisted on telling her what he was doing for future reference. As if she’d ever find herself outside of London again. Clearly, she was a city girl at heart. And now that Colin Bridgerton was here, she’d be leaving for London as soon as she woke up tomorrow morning.
She’d kick out the poor person who’d rented her room, if she had to.
She couldn’t even wallow in peace.
If she were honest, it wasn’t even that she was no longer alone that annoyed her so much. It was that it was him. Colin Bridgerton. A living and breathing reminder of everything she could never have. The one man she’d ever loved.
Utterly unrequited, of course.
There was nothing quite like being dumped for being unlovable only to be faced with the first man to ever announce that to the world. It was as if the universe really wanted to make a point.
At Christmas.
It seemed unnecessarily cruel.
She huffed. Colin’s presence made another issue painfully clear. Something she'd been trying her best to ignore.
She should be heartbroken over Alfie.
But she hadn’t shed a tear since the break up. Instead she’d bubbled with… irritation. She’d been hurt, obviously. She didn’t need to be told that he couldn’t ever love her. No one needed to heart that. Her pride had been pulverised, and she certainly was languishing in self-pity at the state of her love life. But she wasn’t devastated.
She should be devastated.
Shouldn’t she?
She had been when she’d overheard Colin last year. Even now the echoes of mocking laughter lanced at her heart.
She’d never told Colin that she’d heard him. Not that she’d really had a chance, he’d left on his next trip not long after.
And, really, what was there to say?
‘Hey, I heard you said you’d never ever, EVER, date me.’
Thank you?
Fuck you?
Neither were particularly helpful. It’s not like it had come as a total surprise. Whilst love might have made her blind to any of his faults, it certainly didn’t make her delusional. She knew he never fancied her back, although sometimes… sometimes he’d flirt with her, or his touch would linger, or he’d look at her as if he really, truly saw her.
Perhaps she had been a little delusional.
Anyway, she was thirty now. Fresh out of a dead-end relationship, well and truly over Colin Bridgerton. And ready to be alone, write her book, and perhaps develop a drinking problem like any true artist.
She didn’t need him here. He was just a reminder of her past humiliations. Colin Bridgerton was not conducive to writing romance. Even if her past romantic heroes had been slightly influenced by him.
He gave her a tentative smile as he settled beside her on the couch opposite the fireplace.
“I’m sorry I tried to make you leave,” she said, sounding a lot like when Augie was forced to apologise to his younger siblings.
Colin snorted. “I’m sorry I interrupted your wallowing.”
She sighed, snuggling further back into the couch. She’d left her wine in the kitchen, but she couldn’t be bothered to go and get it. Besides, she was tipsy enough. Her blood was warm and thick with it. She didn’t need to get plastered in front of Colin Bridgerton. Lord knows what would come out if she did.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
He hesitated. “Just felt like some alone time."
She stared at him. His lie was obvious. It might have been over a year since she’d last seen him, but she could still read him like a book. In the past, she might have prodded him a bit. Offered him a shoulder to lean on. But that was before he laughed at her with his friends. Before she’d spent six months in a relationship with a man who didn’t… no, couldn’t, love her. She was over being the temporary shoulder to lean on, the placeholder.
So, she turned her attention back to the fireplace and breathed deeply, the scent of smoke, the dancing flames, soothing her.
“Why are you here?” he asked softly. “What have you got to… wallow about?”
She kept her gaze on the fire, the edges of her vision darkening. “I’m working on my novel.”
“Clearly.”
She glared at him, but he was smirking back at her, his eyes bright and teasing.
“Alfred dumped me.”
His humour evaporated. “Woah, I’m– I’m sorry, Pen.”
She shrugged, trying to appear as though she were putting on a brave face. That she was solemnly and gracefully working through heartbreak. “I’ll leave tomorrow,” she said.
“No! I can leave!”
She gave him an unimpressed look. “Where would you even go? You’re literally homeless.”
“Ouch.”
Colin didn’t live in England, he was a forever nomad. A digital nomad, she’d once heard him say. Something she’d found unbelievably sexy at the time. Now she thought it was a bit of a wank.
Now she hated nomads.
And their stupid need to travel to fucking Antarctica.
“Sorry,” she muttered. “I’m feeling a bit… bitter.”
“So you don’t hate me?”
She frowned. “What?”
He held her gaze, shifting in his seat to face her, his arm stretching along the back of the couch behind her. “You haven't spent the last six months hating me for something?”
“Something?”
He raised his eyebrows. “You tell me, you’re the one who hates me.”
“I’m don’t hate you!”
And it was true.
She never hated him, couldn’t hate him. She wasn’t really even angry at him anymore, time had softened the sharp edges of that emotion. She was more just… irritated by him. Frustrated that her heart had skipped at the sight of him. That he could still make her feel something. When all she wanted to do was feel numb.
He didn’t look like he believed her. “You barely respond to my messages or emails, you never call me, you never even like my social media posts.”
She definitely shouldn’t be flattered by the fact that he’d noticed.
“So, maybe my life revolves around more than Colin Bridgerton’s instagram account,” she said, folding her arms, trying to tell herself he was being arrogant rather than insightful.
He paused a moment, as if assessing her. “Was it because of Alfred?”
“Not everything is about men!” she snapped. Even though, right now, all her issues did seem to stem from the men in her life. “I’m just trying to get my novel done before the end of the year so my career isn’t destroyed, but apparently I’m actually a really shitty writer who can’t pull a sentence together so excuse me for being distracted!”
Her eyes burned and she swiped at her face. She would not cry in front of Colin Bridgerton.
“So then stay,” he said gently. “Write your novel. I promise to stay out of your way during the day and at night we can hang out.”
“Hang out?”
He raised his eyebrows at her in challenge. “Since you’re not mad at me? And we’re supposedly friends?”
“Sure, we can do that,” she replied, her stomach swirling at the thought. “And you can spend your days alone. Since that’s all you’re here for. Absolutely nothing else. No other reason.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, and she was happy to have finally struck a chord with him. Maybe he would leave.
“I’ll write too,” he said.
“Alone.”
“Exactly.”
She huffed. He was clearly hiding something from her, but if he thought she was going to go digging so she could help him work through it, he had another thing coming. Even if she was dying of curiosity. Even if her heart did ache a little at the idea of him keeping a secret from her. She was not going to break.
This was her trip. Her time to wallow. It was supposed to be about her.
Not Colin Sodding Bridgerton.
“And what about the bed?” she asked, tilting her chin up as if to challenge him.
“The bed?”
“There’s only one bed here.”
She was pleased to see his cheeks flush a little, although she was also annoyed that he would find that so scandalizing.
“I can sleep on the sofa,” he said.
She raised her eyebrows; it was not a very long couch and Colin was very tall. But maybe he deserved a bit of back pain for showing up unannounced and ruining her wallow.
“Great!” she said, forcing enthusiasm into her tone. “Well, sleep well then.” She pushed herself to standing and started to make her way to the bedroom.
“But I just lit the fire! Don’t you want to hang out a little more?”
Her stupid stomach fluttered at the idea of him wanting to spend more time with her. A sure sign that she should definitely not spend any more time with him. “Good night, Colin.”
He sighed. “Night, Pen.”
And with that she left him for the ice-cold stairs that led to her bedroom. She raced up to her room and dove under her covers, teeth chattering. Maybe she should have offered to share the bed with him… for the warmth, of course. Nothing more.