Chapter 5: The Morning After
The sunlight in Colin’s kitchen was a blunt, merciless truth-teller. It streamed through the bay window, catching every mote of dust, every faint fingerprint on the stainless steel fridge, every crumb on the marble countertop from toast that hadn’t been eaten three days ago. It poured over them, seated at the broad kitchen island, and left nowhere to hide.
Penelope cupped her hands around a heavy ceramic mug of black coffee, the heat seeping into her palms. She’d pulled on one of Colin’s old university hoodies, the grey fabric swallowing her frame, the sleeves covering her hands. It smelled of him—laundry soap and that particular, indefinable scent of Colin that was like sunshine on old paper. Michael was shirtless, wearing only his dark jeans from last night, leaned back on his stool as if trying to absorb the morning’s warmth through his skin. Colin, between them, wore a soft white t-shirt and pajama bottoms, his hair a spectacular disaster, his eyes puffy but clear.
The silence wasn’t uncomfortable. It was observational. Like they were all studying a new ecosystem they’d stumbled into, waiting to see if the air was breathable.
Colin stared into his own coffee, then took a slow sip. He swallowed, set the mug down with a soft clink. His voice, when it came, was raspy from sleep and other things. “So.”
Penelope and Michael both looked at him.
“What do you want for dinner?” Colin asked, his gaze lifting to Penelope’s.
It was such a profoundly ordinary question. It hung in the sunlit air, glittering with layers of meaning. It wasn’t just about food. It was about tonight. About tomorrow. It was a test of the mundane, to see if it could bear the weight of what they now were.
Penelope felt a slow smile start in her chest. She wrapped it in a casual shrug. “I don’t know. Something that doesn’t come in a takeaway box. A celebration.”
“Celebration of what?” Michael asked, a corner of his mouth ticking up. “Survival?”
“Of figuring out the oven,” Colin deadpanned. “It’s been years since I’ve used it for anything more complex than frozen pizza.”
Michael snorted. “A travesty, given your profession. We’re cooking. Properly.”
“We?” Penelope raised an eyebrow.
“Yes, we. Collaborative effort. Democratic cuisine.” Michael stretched, the muscles in his back and shoulders rippling. “Builds character. And trust. Especially if I’m handling the knives.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Colin muttered, but he was fighting a smile.
“Okay,” Penelope said, setting her mug down with finality. “Let’s cook. But we need a plan. And rules.”
“Rules?” Colin echoed.
“Yes. To prevent anarchy. Rule one: no one is allowed to be a food critic during the process. No ‘the acidity is lacking’ or ‘the mouthfeel is off.’ Just eat it.”
“I make no promises,” Colin said, but his eyes were bright.
“Rule two,” Michael added, swivelling on his stool. “The person who suggests the dish has to source the most obscure ingredient for it.”
Colin groaned. “You’ve just doomed us to a dinner of toast.”
They bickered over possibilities, the conversation weaving around the unspoken. Italian was too safe. Thai too complex. French too fussy.
“Spanish,” Penelope said finally. “Rustic. Shared plates. Lots of paprika and garlic. Hard to fuck up.”
“Famous last words,” Michael said, but he was already pulling out his phone. “Alright. Paella. But the real kind. With socarrat. The crispy bit at the bottom. That’s the litmus test.”
The planning became a tactile, chaotic thing. Michael’s phone was placed in the center of the island, a recipe pulled up. Colin found a notepad and a pen that barely worked, scratching down a list. Penelope leaned over his shoulder to read, her chin nearly touching his arm. The scent of her shampoo—something with coconut—mixed with the lingering musk of sex on his skin from the hoodie she wore.
“Bomba rice,” Colin read aloud. “Where the hell does one find that on a Saturday?”
“Specialty shop in Marylebone,” Michael said without looking up. “I’ll go.”
“Chicken. Prawns. Mussels. Chorizo,” Penelope ticked off on her fingers. Her knee brushed against Colin’s under the island. Neither moved away.
“Saffron,” Colin said, writing it down. He blew out a breath. “That’s your obscure ingredient, Pen. That’s on you.”
“I accept the challenge.”
The list complete, they fell into another quiet. The anticipation of the day stretched before them, a shared project to occupy the space where uncertainty thrived. Colin stood, taking the mugs to the sink. As he passed behind Penelope’s stool, his hand, seemingly of its own accord, came to rest on the back of her neck. His thumb stroked once, slowly, over the knot at the top of her spine. It was a possessive gesture, but softened by the early hour and the domestic setting. A simple claim: you are here.
Penelope leaned into the touch, closing her eyes for a second. When she opened them, she saw Michael watching them, his expression unreadable. Then he stood, too, stretching again with a predatory grace.
“Right,” Michael announced. “Shower. Then I’ll brave the herds of London for the rice. Colin, you handle the meat and fish. Penelope, saffron and… whatever vegetables look less pathetic than Colin’s soul.”
“Hey,” Colin protested, but he was grinning.
Michael walked around the island. He didn’t hesitate. He cupped Colin’s jaw, tilted his face up, and kissed him squarely on the mouth. It wasn’t a deep kiss. It was firm, casual, a punctuation mark. A good morning. Colin’s eyes fluttered shut for a second, his hand coming up to rest on Michael’s wrist. When Michael pulled back, he swatted Colin lightly on the backside. “Move. You’re blocking the sink.”
Colin moved, a faint flush on his cheeks that wasn’t from the sunlight.
The ease of it, the sheer normalcy of that kiss, sent a shockwave through Penelope’s system. This was the new equilibrium. And they were all trying it on, seeing how it fit.
An hour later, the apartment was a hub of slow, synchronized motion. Michael had emerged from the shower in a cloud of steam and Colin’s robe, his hair dark and damp. Colin was dressed in jeans and a Henley, tapping at his phone to find the best fishmonger. Penelope, still in the hoodie, had pulled her hair into a messy knot and claimed a spot on the sun-warmed window seat, researching saffron sources.
“I’m heading out,” Michael said, shrugging into a leather jacket. He grabbed the keys from the bowl by the door.
“Don’t get kidnapped by a rogue artisanal grain merchant,” Colin called from the kitchen.
“No promises.” Michael paused at the door. He looked back at them—Colin by the island, Penelope curled in the window, pools of gold light outlining them. A strange, soft expression flickered across his face, too quick to name. Then he was gone.
The quiet he left behind was different. It was just the two of them for the first time since the library, since the kiss that started it all. The memory of it pulsed in the air between them—the calculated rebellion of her lips on Michael’s, Colin’s shattered expression.
Colin walked over to the window seat. He didn’t sit. He leaned against the frame, looking down at her. “Alright?”
“Are you?” she countered.
He thought about it. “I feel… quiet inside. In a good way. The noise has stopped.” He glanced toward the bedroom door, then back at her. “Thank you. For yesterday. For being… the fixed point.”
“You don’t have to thank me.”
“I do.” He sank down to sit on the floor, his back against the cabinets, facing her. He picked at a thread on the rug. “I spent years being everyone’s friend. The easy one. The one who felt nothing too deeply because it was simpler. Safer. And you… you were always there. A constant. I think I thought you’d always be there, just like that. In the background of my life. Until you weren’t.”
Penelope’s heart clenched. “I got tired of the background, Colin.”
“I know.” He met her gaze. “And I’m sorry it took… all of this,” he gestured vaguely, encompassing the apartment, the bedroom, Michael, “to make me look. Really look. I was an idiot.”
“A prize idiot,” she agreed softly, a smile touching her lips.
He returned it, that easy, charming smile, but it was different now. It was earned. There was weight behind it. “So. You and Michael. The kiss in the library.”
“A stupid, desperate play.”
“It worked.”
“I know.” She tucked her feet under her. “It wasn’t fair to him. He knew it, too. He called me on it.”
Colin nodded slowly. “He would. He’s an arse, but he’s not a monster. He cares about you. In his own, fucked-up way.”
“And you?” The question slipped out, quieter than she intended.
Colin’s hazel eyes held hers. “I care about him in a way I don’t have words for yet. And you… Pen, you’re in my bones. I think you have been for a very long time. I just didn’t know what to call the feeling. Now I have a whole new dictionary to learn.”
He reached out, his hand settling on her ankle over the thick sock. His thumb rubbed a slow circle on her bone.
They stayed like that until Colin’s phone buzzed with a reminder. The outside world was reasserting itself in increments.
The shopping expeditions were separate, but the reunions were charged. Colin returned first, arms laden with paper-wrapped parcels that smelled of the sea and smoked paprika. He was unpacking them when Michael came back, holding a small, pretentious paper bag from the specialty shop.
“Success?” Colin asked.
Michael upended the bag. A single, small vial of burgundy-red threads tumbled onto the marble. “One gram. Cost more than my first car. Do not lose this, Featherington.”
Penelope took the vial, holding it up to the light. The threads glowed like captured embers. “It’s beautiful.”
“It’d better taste like angels weeping,” Michael grumbled, but he was already peering into Colin’s parcels. “Good. The prawns are still looking judgemental. That’s a good sign.”
Cooking was chaos. A beautiful, messy, symphony of controlled chaos. They moved around Colin’s kitchen, which was large but not designed for three determined adults all wielding utensils. Boundaries were tested, then dissolved.
Michael commandeered the largest, heaviest pan, heating oil until it shimmered. Colin diced chorizo with a surprising, focused efficiency. Penelope, tasked with peeling prawns, made a face at the slippery, veined backs.
“You’re a food writer,” she complained to Colin, holding up a half-peeled prawn. “How can you stand the guts of things?”
“It’s the reality of it,” he said, not looking up from his board. “The beautiful, messy reality. You can’t have the flavour without acknowledging the guts.”
Michael glanced over at him, a silent communication passing between them. You’re talking about more than prawns.
As the chorizo hit the pan, a sizzle and an immediate, profound fragrance filled the air—smoky, pungent, deeply savoury. They all paused for a second, inhaling. It was the scent of something beginning.
“Right,” Michael said, stirring. “Onions, Pen. Now.”
She brought her bowl of finely chopped onions. As she went to pour them, Michael’s hand covered hers on the bowl, guiding the pour. His front was pressed against her back, his chin near her shoulder. “Slowly,” he murmured, his breath warm on her ear. “You don’t want to cool the pan down.”
Colin watched, his knife still. His expression was complex—not jealousy, but a kind of ardent fascination. Watching Michael guide Penelope’s hands, watching her lean into the instruction.
The onions hit the oil with a hiss. Michael released her hand, but stayed close, his arm brushing hers as he took over stirring. Penelope stepped back, right into Colin. He steadied her with hands on her hips, his body solid behind her. For a moment, they were a chain: Colin behind Pen, Pen watching Michael at the stove. A circuit of touch and heat.
The cooking progressed in a series of such moments. Colin’s hand on the small of Michael’s back as he reached for the paprika. Michael feeding a slice of fried chorizo to Penelope off the tip of his knife, his thumb brushing her lower lip. Penelope wiping a smudge of tomato paste from Colin’s cheek with her thumb, then sucking it clean.
It was flirtation, but it was more than that. It was reconnaissance. It was the re-mapping of territories in broad daylight, over the simple, unifying goal of dinner.
When it was time to add the saffron, Penelope presented the vial with ceremony. She crushed a few threads between her fingers over the steaming pan. The world’s most expensive dust drifted down, and the scent that rose was immediate and magical—earthy, floral, like honey and hay and sunshine.
“Wow,” Colin breathed, leaning in.
“Told you,” Michael said, a hint of pride in his voice. “Angels weeping.”
The final stage was the rice, the stock, the arranged prawns and mussels. Michael decreed that no one was to touch the pan now. It had to simmer, to form the sacred socarrat. They cleaned up in a companionable silence, the anticipation of the meal building.
As Penelope was loading the dishwasher, Colin came up behind her, his arms sliding around her waist. He nuzzled into the side of her neck, inhaling deeply. “You smell like saffron and my laundry,” he mumbled.
“Is that good?”
“It’s perfect.” He turned her in his arms and kissed her, a deep, slow, tasting kiss. It was different from the kisses the night before. It was unhurried. It was a kiss of ownership and partnership, all at once.
When they parted, Michael was leaning against the counter, watching, a bottle of Rioja in his hand. “You two are going to steam up the windows. Wine?”
They drank wine from water glasses because Colin’s good crystal was buried somewhere. They sat on the floor around the coffee table, the massive paella pan between them on a trivet, steaming and glorious. The rice was a sunset yellow, studded with pink prawns, black mussels, ruby chorizo. And at the bottom, when Michael scraped the pan with a spoon, was the prize: a crisp, caramelized layer of socarrat.
They ate with their hands, mostly. Fingers pulling prawns apart, sopping up broth with crusty bread. It was messy, delicious, profoundly satisfying. The wine was bright and acidic, cutting through the richness.
“Well?” Michael asked, his green eyes on Colin. “Critique?”
Colin sat back, licking his thumb. He looked at the pan, at their messy hands, at Penelope with a smudge of paprika by her mouth, at Michael with wine staining his lips. His expression was one of pure, unadulterated contentment.
“Best meal I’ve ever had,” he said, and it was clear he wasn’t talking about the food.
Later, sated and wine-warm, they migrated to the large sofa. The pan sat empty on the table, a testament. They fit together easily now, the earlier hesitancy gone. Penelope was in the middle, her legs across Colin’s lap. Michael was on her other side, his arm stretched along the back of the sofa, his fingers playing idly with a strand of her red hair.
“The dinner,” Colin said quietly, his hand rubbing circles on Penelope’s shin. “Tomorrow. With my family.”
The real world, the complicated one, came rushing back in.
“We’ll go,” Penelope said.
“As what?”
Michael’s fingers stilled in her hair. “As us. Whatever that is. We’ll figure it out as we go. That seems to be the modus operandi.”
“They’ll have questions,” Colin pressed. “My mother. Anthony. They’ll see… something.”
“Let them see,” Penelope said, tipping her head back to look at him. “We’re not doing anything wrong.”
Colin’s smile was wry. “Try telling my brother that. He still thinks I need a permission slip to cross the street.”
Michael laughed, a low, rich sound. “I’ll handle Anthony. I’ll distract him with talk of foundation loads and cantilevers. He loves that shit. Thinks it makes him sound intelligent.”
The
The laugh faded, leaving the three of them in a bubble of soft, wine-dark quiet. The empty paella pan gleamed under the low light, a battlefield of their shared making. Colin’s thumb had stilled on Penelope’s shin. Michael’s fingers were motionless in her hair.
The spectre of tomorrow, of the Bridgerton family dinner with its pristine silver and forensic curiosity, yawned before them. It was a gauntlet. A test their fragile, newborn dynamic wasn’t remotely prepared for.
Michael shifted. He pulled his hand from Penelope’s hair, running it roughly over his own face. The casual arrogance he wore like armour was gone. In its place was a naked exhaustion, a vulnerability that seemed to reshape the very angles of his face.
“He’ll see more than something,” Michael said, his voice low and scraped raw. “He’ll see it. Anthony’s a prig, but he’s not blind. He’ll look at the three of us in a room and he’ll know. He’ll see the fucking… architecture of it.”
“Architecture?” Colin asked quietly.
“The lines.” Michael gestured between them, a frustrated slash in the air. “The load-bearing walls. The way we’re oriented around each other now. It’s not a secret you can hide behind a napkin. It’s in the foundations.”
Penelope felt Colin’s body tense behind her. She sat up slowly, drawing her legs from his lap, turning to face them both. The air in the room had changed. The warm, post-meal haze was gone, burned away by a sharper, more acidic fear.
“What are you saying, Michael?” Her voice was calm. It was her journalist’s voice, the one she used when asking a question she already knew the answer to.
Michael wouldn’t look at her. He stared at his own hands, clenched on his knees. His knuckles were white. “I’m saying I can’t do this halfway. I’m saying I’ve spent my entire life designing temporary structures. Beautiful, impressive, empty things. Pleasure pavilions. And I look at this…” He finally lifted his gaze, his green eyes moving from Colin’s confused face to Penelope’s steady one. “This thing we just built today. This meal. That… before. In the bedroom. It’s not temporary. It’s not a pavilion. It feels like a goddamn citadel. And it terrifies me.”
Colin leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “Why?”
“Because!” Michael’s explosion was quiet, more of a pressure release than a shout. “Because I want to live in it. I want to walk its halls every day. I want to wake up to the both of you arguing over the goddamn coffee maker. I want to plan more stupid meals and fight over the saffron budget and… and have a thousand more afternoons like that one in there.” He jerked his chin toward the bedroom. “All of it. The easy bits and the terrifying bits and the bits we haven’t even imagined yet.”
He swallowed, his throat working. “I’m in love with you. Both of you. Not as some experiment. Not as a diversion. Properly. Stupidly. The whole catastrophic fucking symphony. And the thought of walking into that dinner tomorrow and having to pretend otherwise, to somehow segment myself… it makes me feel sick. But the thought of trying to have this, of asking for it, is worse. Because you can’t have this. People don’t get this. They especially don’t get it with their own cousin and the woman they’ve been too stupid to claim for a decade. It’s a joke. It’s a beautiful, impossible joke.”
The words hung there, massive and immutable. They reshaped the room. Penelope felt the truth of them in her marrow. It wasn’t a surprise. It was a confirmation of something she’d seen building in every glance, every casual touch, every moment of quiet understanding between the two men that she had somehow facilitated.
Colin was staring at Michael as if he’d never seen him before. His hazel eyes were wide, his face pale. The charming, affable mask was utterly shattered. Beneath it was raw, unprocessed emotion. “You’re in love with me.”
“Yes.”
“And with Pen.”
“Yes.”
“And you think you can’t have us.”
“I know how the world works, Colin.” Michael’s voice was bleak. “I know how families work. I’ll be the corrupting influence. The deviant. They’ll think I swooped in and… twisted you. Or that Penelope is some kind of modern-day sorceress. They’ll tear it apart to save you from yourselves. And they’ll start tomorrow.”
Silence descended again, thicker this time. It was choked with the pollen of this confession, making it hard to breathe.
Then Colin made a sound. It was half a laugh, half a sob. He dropped his head into his hands. “Oh, thank Christ.”
Michael blinked. “What?”
Colin looked up. His eyes were bright, glistening. “You think you’re the only one who’s terrified? You think I haven’t been sitting here, watching the two of you, feeling like I’ve been handed the keys to a kingdom I have no map for? That I want it so badly it feels like a physical ache? That I look at Pen and I see my entire future reframed, and I look at you and I see a part of myself I never knew was missing, and the idea of choosing between those two visions makes me want to vomit?”
He reached out, his hand finding Penelope’s. His grip was desperate. “That kiss in the library. It wasn’t just jealousy. It was a collision. It was my entire safe, compartmentalised world blowing apart. And you,” he looked at Michael, “you were the only person I could imagine navigating the wreckage with. Because you’re not safe. You never have been. And I don’t want safe anymore.”
Penelope looked between them. These two men, one she’d loved in silence for years, one she’d used as a provocation, now laid bare before her, their fears echoing her own. She was the catalyst. She was the fixed point. And she realized, with a sudden, crystalline clarity, that she was also the architect of this, not Michael. She had drawn the lines. She had placed the load-bearing walls.
“You don’t have to choose,” she said. Her voice cut through their shared panic, clean and certain.
They both stared at her.
“We don’t?” Colin’s word was a whisper.
“No.” She took a deep breath, assembling her thoughts like paragraphs. “This fear you both have… that this is impossible, that the world won’t allow it, that it’s a beautiful joke… I have it too. Of course I do. I’ve spent years feeling impossible around Colin. Feeling like a spectator in my own life. And Michael, you were right—I used you. I made you a pawn in my game. But the game is over. This isn’t a game.”
She stood up. She needed to move. She paced to the window, looking out at the deepening blue twilight over London’s rooftops. When she turned back, they were both watching her, waiting. She was in the centre of their attention, the fulcrum. It was where she’d always wanted to be with Colin, but this… this was different. This was power. Not over them, but with them.
“I don’t want a choice either,” she said. “I want the complicated, messy, terrifying truth of it. I want the throuple. I want the three of us. I want to figure out what that looks like tomorrow at dinner, and the next day, and the year after that. I want to build the citadel, Michael. And I want to live in it with both of you.”
Colin exhaled as if he’d been punched. A pure, relieved breath. Michael simply closed his eyes, his head leaning back against the sofa.
“They’ll come for us,” Michael said, his eyes still closed. “Your family. Society. Everyone.”
“Let them,” Colin said, and there was a new steel in his voice. A protective, possessive steel that had only emerged because of her, because of this. “Let them talk. Let Anthony bluster. This is mine. Ours. We’re not hurting anyone.”
“We’re rewriting the blueprint,” Michael murmured, opening his eyes. They fixed on Penelope. “You know that, right? You’re asking us to build without codes. Without precedent.”
“We have precedent,” Penelope said, walking back toward them. She stopped in front of them. “We have yesterday. We have today. The paella. The saffron. The way you,” she looked at Michael, “kissed him good morning like it was the most natural thing in the world. The way you,” she looked at Colin, “hold me like I’m your anchor. That’s our precedent. We write the codes as we go.”
She knelt on the rug between their knees, placing a hand on each of their legs. The gesture was one of connection, of bridging. “You thanked me earlier, Colin, for being the fixed point. But you both are my points. You triangulate my world. You give it dimension. Before this, I was a flat line. Now I have depth. You worship that? Fine. But understand this: I run this. Not with a whip, not with demands. I run it because I see you. I saw Colin’s loneliness buried under all that charm. I saw Michael’s honour buried under all that rakish bullshit. I pushed you together because it was the only way either of you would ever be brave enough to feel anything real.”
Her voice cracked slightly. “And you were. You were so brave. You still are. So don’t you dare back down now because you’re scared of Aunt Prudence’s table manners. We face it. Together. As a unit. As a… us.”
The silence that followed was total. It was the silence of a decision being made, solidifying in the space between their bodies.
Then Michael moved. He slid off the sofa onto his knees on the rug facing her. He took her face in his hands, his touch reverent. “You terrifying, brilliant woman.” He kissed her, deeply, pouring all his fear and hope and overwhelming love into it. When he broke away, he rested his forehead against hers. “You run it. You run me. Just tell me where to stand.”
Colin was there too, joining them on the floor, the three of them kneeling in a tight circle amidst the debris of their feast. He didn’t kiss her. He framed her face with his hands, his thumbs stroking her cheekbones, his eyes searching hers. “All those years,” he whispered, his voice thick. “All those years I was looking for something extraordinary in every corner of the globe. And it was right next to me on the fucking sofa, handing me a whisky. You gave me him. You gave me myself. How do I ever thank you for that?”
“You live in the citadel,” she whispered back. “You fill it with noise and mess and love. You fight with me about the laundry. You let Michael explain load-bearing walls at parties. You just… stay.”
He nodded, a single, decisive motion. Then he turned his head and kissed Michael.
It was different from the kitchen kiss. This was a pact. A slow, deliberate sealing of their shared fate. Penelope watched them, her heart a swollen, aching thing in her chest. She saw the way Michael’s hands came up to clutch at Colin’s shoulders, not in passion, but in a kind of desperate grounding. She saw the way Colin’s fingers tangled in Michael’s dark hair, anchoring him. It was a conversation without words, an acceptance, a merging of their twin devotions to her and to this impossible structure they were vowing to build.
When they parted, both men turned back to her. Their expressions were open, yielding. They were hers. Not in ownership, but in dedication. They had handed her the chaotic, beautiful threads of their hearts and asked her to weave them together.
She understood her role now. The facilitator. The catalyst. The centre. She would be the one to set the pace, to navigate the outside world, to referee their clashes and celebrate their harmonies. They would worship her not as an idol, but as the essential glue. The keystone in their arch.
“Okay,” she said, practical once more. She took their hands, linking them all together. “Dinner tomorrow. Here’s how we play it. We don’t announce anything. We don’t explain. We just are. We sit together. We talk to each other normally. If Colin’s mother asks, we are three friends who have been through a complex few days and are supporting each other. It’s not a lie. It’s just not the whole truth.”
“And the long term?” Michael asked, his green eyes serious.
“One day at a time. We start by surviving tomorrow. Then we figure out the next day. We’ll make mistakes. It will be messy. People will talk. But we will always come back to this.” She squeezed their hands. “To this circle. To the truth that we’re in love. All three of us. That’s the foundation. That’s the only code that matters.”
Colin brought their joined hands to his lips, kissing her knuckles, then Michael’s. “I can do that. One day at a time. With you two.”
Michael let out a long, shuddering breath. The fear was still there in his eyes, but it was now matched by a determined, blazing hope. “Alright. Then that’s what we do. We build the impossible. And we let the world spin around us.”
They stayed there on the floor for a long time, wrapped in each other’s arms, a tangle of limbs and promises. The empty paella pan watched from the table, a silent witness to the birth of something far more nourishing than a meal. The citadel had its foundation. The blueprints were scribbled in skin and whispered confessions. Tomorrow, the world would test its walls. But for tonight, within the hushed glow of Colin’s apartment, the only thing that existed was the three of them, finally, gloriously, united.