Cora had tears in her eyes and a giant bouquet of flowers in her arms as the curtain fell after their bows, leaving them to all return to their dressing rooms. Everyone was giving her and Rasmus hugs, patting them on the backs, congratulating them. She was so stunned that she felt separate from her body somehow, but she heard her voice saying, "thank you, thank you," over and over again and felt her arms hugging all of them back.

Her body was shaking from the adrenaline as she made her way back to her dressing room, and when she opened the door, she was shocked to see that Anais had already managed to herd Siena and her parents back here for her. They whooped and cheered and scrambled past each other to get to be the one to hug her first—Siena, light on her feet, was the one to actually achieve it. Sweet Anais extracted the flowers from her arms to put into a vase.

It wasn't until she had hugged all three of them that she noticed all the other vases of flowers—her vanity was covered in them. Her mouth formed a surprised o as she went over to read the cards attached to them. There were congratulations from friends back in Rothbury, extended family, acquaintances from college. So many more people had been thinking about her than she realized.

"Are you ready to get wasted?" Siena asked, looking gorgeous in the gown they'd gotten for her the other day.

Cora laughed. "Not wasted," she corrected. "I have seven more shows this week."

She absolutely deserved to—and probably would—at least let herself get a little bit tipsy, but she wasn't going to say that in front of her parents. They had always been on the conservative side where drinking was concerned, which was slightly amusing considering that they didn't appear to have too many qualms about her doing a show where she stripped down to what was nearly the equivalent of her underwear.

Her guests briefly stepped out of the room while Anais got her out of her costume and back into her emerald gown for the afterparty—a much more pleasant experience than making Rasmus do it—but the moment she called them back inside, they were back to excitedly chattering about how great she was in the show.

Cora swapped out the earrings for her own and put on a much more subdued face of makeup—stage makeup looked pretty ridiculous up close—but she only needed to make minor efforts to tidy up her hair. The waves had loosened up over the course of the performance and her hair no longer felt like a rock from all the hairspray that had been put in it. It turned out that she was much less of a wreck physically after the show when she didn't have a whole day of rehearsals and then the show, which was a relief considering that she was in a little bit of a rush to get ready for this party.

"So, this Rasmus boy," her mom said confusedly from across the room. "Isn't he the one you never liked?"

Cora couldn't help but laugh. "Yes," she replied. "That's the one."

Backstage was bursting with chatter as soon as the curtain had lowered for the final time of the night, people rushing to congratulate one another and finish up their tasks so that they could go be with all the guests who had come to see the results of their hard work. Rasmus tried his hardest not to rudely brush anyone off as he headed towards his dressing room, getting interrupted what felt like every few seconds, but there was only one person he was itching to see.

And yet when he opened the door, it almost felt like he was looking at a stranger. Ava was seated in his chair, looking alarmingly like an adult. She donned a blue, shimmery off-the-shoulder dress and all of her long hair was swept over one shoulder.

"When did you go grow up on me?" he asked, looking at her in awe. She was beautiful, but hadn't she just been an elementary schooler five minutes ago?

"On the bus ride down here, I guess," she joked, grinning as she hopped up from her seat to hug him.

He wrapped his arms tightly around her, enjoying that cozy feeling that only she provided him with. It was especially nice after he had been worrying about her the entire time she was traveling here on her own, even though she'd sent him the incremental status update with a selfie to prove that she was totally fine.

She was a go-getter, his Ava. If she was determined enough to do something, she'd figure out how to get it done. She didn't need all that much help from him—or anyone, for that matter—anymore.

If their parents refused to give her the money to go see her brother's show, she'd hoard her allowance to buy a train ticket and get there herself.

"Just to be clear," he told her. "You're not breathing a word to Mom and Dad about everything you just saw."

Ava smirked. "I, for one, hope you get some very intense production shots out of this, and I hope they make it to the newspapers. Can you imagine Mom's reaction if she showed up for her book club and all her friends had papers with a picture of you making out on the front? She'd be scandalized."

"Alright, fair enough," he chuckled. Now that she mentioned it, he did hope their parents caught word of the contents of the show and were mortified. "Just keep yourself out of it—that's all I care about."

"Deal."

"Are you sure you want to come to this party?" He rubbed the back of his neck. "I'm not gonna force you to socialize with people older than you for two hours. I really don't mind running you back to my place–"

"Are you kidding?" she interrupted him. "Who cares if the party sucks? No one back home has to know that it sucked. I'm gonna sound so cool for getting to be there—it's Broadway, Rasmus. If you didn't notice, you're, like, massively awesome now."

"And I wasn't before?" he teased and she lightly smacked his arm.

"You knew what I meant. Take the compliment, jerk."

Gideon slipped into the room after having been out talking with one of the other dressers, so Ava scrunched her eyes shut while Rasmus swiftly changed out of his costume and into his real clothes—much less of an ordeal than what Cora was doing on the other end of the hall right now.

Cora. She'd been radiant tonight. A tongue of fire dancing across the stage, enrapturing everyone who witnessed her. The world was going to love her, he was sure.

For a fleeting moment or two, she had even captured him. But she never needed to know about that.

Cora's parents were stifling yawns by the time she and Siena bid them goodnight and they left to go to their hotel. For the two girls, however, the night was only just getting started. Cora was still sitting at the vanity, her friend leaning over her shoulder.

"Shall we go fetch the demon spawn or leave him behind?" Siena asked.

"I suppose we should see if he wants to walk over there with us."

The hotel that was hosting the party was only a few blocks away, but that didn't necessarily guarantee that they wouldn't run into any creepy men along the way. It was already late, and you never really knew what to expect in Manhattan.

So they grabbed their purses and headed down the hall to his dressing room. But as they got close, Cora realized that he must not be alone. Through the door, she could hear the muffled sound of a second voice—a girl's.

Siena's eyebrows shot up and she leaned in towards the door, like she'd realized at the same time as Cora that they had stumbled upon an interesting development. So he did have a girlfriend, or at least a girl he wanted to woo enough that he'd give her one of his tickets to opening night.

"Maybe we should just go..." she whispered. If he was in there canoodling with someone, Cora didn't really feel like having it rubbed in her face that she was single and he wasn't.

But Siena was already knocking on the door. She had a sort of fascination with Rasmus, like she was a curious child and he was a bug that she wanted to poke with a stick just to see what it would do.

"IF YOU'RE MAKING OUT," she hollered. "YOU BETTER STOP 'CAUSE WE'RE COMING IN–"

When she pushed the door open, Cora blanched. There was a girl, and Rasmus was shrugging a coat that must have been his onto her small shoulders, but she was exactly that—a girl, surely not old enough to be a grown woman. And the clear age gap wasn't even the most startling part.

She looked just like him. Her hair was a little lighter and her eyes were a little bluer, but Cora was clearly looking at a North sibling that she had never known existed.

And when she noticed how his hands were resting on her shoulders in a way that looked protective, a million little pieces suddenly clicked into place in Cora's head. She'd spent years and years trying to figure out Rasmus' behavior, futilely attempting to understand why in the world he would possibly behave the way he did sometimes, but the compass she had been using as her guide—her true North, if you will (no pun intended)—for the majority of their lives was the assumption that Natasha was the person he couldn't afford to lose. So when he'd gone and done just that, Cora had honestly been confused as hell.

But now, she realized that the person he was always going to hold onto at all costs must have been the one who was looking at her right now. And looking very confused, for that matter.

The repulsed expression on her face right now was just like the one Rasmus would often make at Cora. "Did you...did you just say I was making out with my brother?" she asked Siena.

"Well, uh..."

"I think these two thought they were walking into something else entirely," Rasmus noted wryly. "Ladies, this is my sister Ava."

Siena apologetically introduced herself first, followed by Cora, who was too flustered to sound the most coherent. "I'm, ah, I'm Cora. Cora Kline."

Ava appeared to be holding back a smirk, a look that warned Cora that she would be capable of being even more of a thorn in her side than her brother was if she had even the slightest desire to be.

"Oh, I know who you are," she grinned. "You were the one who was just making out with my brother."

Once she was done making the adults blush for the fun of it, Ava turned out to be a sweet girl.

The jacket that Rasmus had lent her was practically swallowing up her torso, but every time she tried to shrug it off, he shot back at her with something about how he wasn't going to let her catch a cold and miss even more school this week.

Cora knew she shouldn't be eavesdropping on their conversation, but she couldn't help it. She hadn't known this side of him even existed until five minutes ago. Their bickering was a lighthearted sort, much softer at the heart of it than the way he'd speak with Cora. She didn't know much about siblings—she didn't have any—but the way he was acting with Ava oddly reminded her of how her own father would sometimes be with her when she was younger. It was as though Rasmus was hovering somewhere between brotherly and fatherly, which inevitably brought up a lot of questions in her mind about the parents who were notably absent tonight.

She tried to shake them out of her head as they arrived at the hotel, she and Rasmus presenting their tickets to prove that they weren't two random people dressed up as themselves trying to sneak into the party. The ballroom had been transformed into an expensive pre-Prohibition style bar, with low lighting and old tunes wafting from a record player. The round tables were decorated to match the look of Illicit Affairs' playbill art. There was also plenty of space to stand and socialize or dance if you chose to do so, though the brick walls made the room feel smaller and more intimate than it was. Three little crystal chandeliers glistened over the bar.

Siena whistled under her breath, and Cora could see her bubbling with excitement—she was probably envisioning all of her favorite literary characters coming here. She was a big fan of Gatsby, whereas Cora liked it fine but could never get as excited about it as most people seemed to think you ought to.

They grabbed drinks from the open bar and she chatted with plenty of people who came over to congratulate her, but her gaze kept drifting back to Rasmus. She couldn't help but notice that he never let his focus stray from Ava. How he went back to the bar a couple of minutes after he'd gotten himself a drink to retrieve another one—not for himself, but to slip into her hands so that she didn't have to feel out of place in a room full of people who were older than her. Or maybe it was just so that he could snicker at the expression she made when she tried a sip of the wine.

Ava was no shy, fragile flower, however. People kept approaching her and Rasmus, shocked to see that he had a little sister after he'd kept his mouth so firmly shut about it, and she picked up conversation with them with impressive ease. She even distracted Siena, who had been trying to stay glued to Cora's side for the whole night, for a solid fifteen minutes discussing the books she'd been reading in and out of school. She'd probably be good at improv, Cora thought with amusement and made a mental note to ask Rasmus if she ever expressed interest in acting.

At one point later on in the night, once traffic at the bar was dwindling down because they all knew full well that they couldn't get very drunk, a significant number of the guests were dancing. Ava still hadn't finished her glass, so Rasmus whisked it out of her hands to set aside, leaned over to her, and pointed out, "You know, I did miss your homecoming dance."

She eyed him quizzically. "You thought I was gonna invite you to homecoming?"

Cora almost snorted out loud, but even she with her cold heart smiled a little bit when Ava, grinning, grabbed her brother's hand and swept him off to dance.

She didn't think she'd ever seen Rasmus lighten up as much as he did while he twirled his sister around on the floor.

At her side, Siena very quietly admitted, "I know we hate him, but this is making me feel things."

"Me, too," Cora sighed. "You wanna dance with me?"

So they danced, and it was surprisingly fun considering that her body was tired from running around onstage for two hours. And dancing meant that she could keep all of her focus on her movements and stop thinking about Rasmus for a few minutes.

It fell apart when Sie briefly stepped away to use the bathroom. Ava, apparently also in need of a quick break from being on her feet, swirled over and placed her brother's hand into the first available one she saw: Cora's.

So then it was Rasmus who she was with on the dance floor, Rasmus' hand on her back, and neither of them had a whole lot they could do about it; it would have looked pretty awkward if they instantly broke apart. Cora supposed she would have to make the best of it and dance with him for a polite five minutes before excusing herself.

She attempted to relax her stiff arms. At least this was an opportunity to interrogate him about Ava where few people would overhear them; the room was bustling with so much activity that you couldn't hear much going on further than a few feet away.

"How old is she?" she asked softly; or rather, as softly as she could in such a noisy room. Half of her hoped that his family wasn't too sensitive of a topic, while the other half told her that he shouldn't have brought his sister here if he didn't want to talk about her.

"Fifteen," he said. "Almost sixteen."

"Wow." That meant she was a full ten years younger than them. After a beat of reluctant silence, Cora added, "I'm sorry your folks couldn't make it...is there anything I can do?"

"I don't know if couldn't is the word I would have picked."

Cora froze. His hand tightened on her back to nudge her along, to stop her from making a scene out of this, and she reluctantly obliged. He'd said it somewhat flippantly, but she was wide-eyed as she studied his face. As always, he was so hard to read.

"They chose not to come?"

Rasmus glanced around to see if it looked like anyone was listening to them; it didn't. "They wanted me to go to Harvard and be a lawyer," he said flatly, as if that explained everything.

"And they're still not over it?"

"My parents don't really get over things." She must have looked more like a sad puppy than she realized because he took one look at her and added, "But please don't pity me or else I'll vomit on those pretty shoes of yours."

"Charming," she said sardonically.

"Don't be irritated with me tonight, Coraline," he told her, his lips barely moving as he looked at her with those troubled eyes of his. "I was just open with you, isn't that what you wanted?"

She supposed it was. And there was something nice about gently swaying here with him even though they'd be back to wanting to rip each other's throats out tomorrow. It gave them a place to hide in plain sight, a little bubble where no outsiders could come talk to them. They were the only two people on the planet who knew exactly how tired the other person was from pouring their heart out onstage. Because they'd been up there doing it together.

So Cora fell into the lie a little bit, just as she'd instructed him to make her do. Gingerly, she rested her head against his shoulder like she might with Simon and was met with the woodsy, sweet vanilla scent of his cologne. His fingers slipped and then steadied on her back a little like she'd caught him off guard, but she didn't notice his breath catch.

"Alright," she murmured, already knowing she might regret this tomorrow. "I won't be irritated with you tonight."

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A/N:

I hope you enjoyed this double update!