Love, Lust, and Jealousy.
It's a story Cora knows all too well - not because it's her own, but that of her character in Illicit Affairs, the murderous romance that's about to take Broadway by storm. It's her crowning achievement, her pride and joy...
During previews, Cora hadn't been panicking much about opening night. There wasn't time to panic about opening night, not with rehearsals all day and a show every evening. All of her spare moments were spent eating, washing the grime of the day off of her body, or sleeping.
But then it was suddenly their day off, the day before they opened, and she panicked.
It finally dawned on her that all along, her fear had never been audiences. It was critics, whom they'd been shielded from thus far—the press wasn't allowed to come to the show prior to opening because it was expected that changes were still being made to it. But come opening night, everything was fair game, and the majority of the people in the room tomorrow would be there to pick her performance apart like vultures stripping her down to the bone. Like she was a butterfly under a microscope, pinned down by her wings for their amusement.
Cora felt so far in over her head that she was drowning. It took all her willpower not to dissolve into a total wreck all day, to not call her parents or Simon and start sobbing as soon as she tried to speak.
Rasmus wouldn't be like this, she thought bitterly as she choked down the lunch that her knotted stomach didn't want her to eat. He'd be enjoying his day off. Maybe he was out running again like a normal, functional person.
She'd thought that maybe, just maybe, she'd gotten him to crack open just a little bit for her that night after they drove home from Rothbury—when he admitted that he was nervous, too. But ever since then, he'd been as charismatic as always onstage and as closed off as a jail cell off of it, like he'd locked away any emotions he felt and then thrown away the key.
Cora didn't want them to be like this. She was so sick and tired of being so cold to each other that she'd be the first to wave a white flag if she had to be. But would it change anything at all? While she ached to feel like they were a part of something bigger together, he seemed as hellbent as always on keeping her at arm's length at best.
It wouldn't be so terrible if she knew that he was simply a vile person through and through, but she'd seen how that twisted heart of his was still capable of goodness. She'd seen the way he used to make Natasha smile, the way they'd laugh and lean their heads close together when they talked, like they were sharing old secrets. Cora knew it when she saw it because she had the same thing with Simon, but perhaps it was still true that Rasmus North only knew how to drive people away.
After all, she had also been around for the part where he broke Natasha's heart.
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Natasha could bring entire worlds to life with just a touch of her fingertips.
After school, Rasmus would often go next door to her house instead of his own. On one such day, when they were still fourteen and he was not yet quite so callous, they lay sprawled on her bedroom floor flipping through a beautifully illustrated edition of Romeo and Juliet that she'd gotten for Christmas a few weeks prior.
