One of Cora's hands fumbled with her key while the other gripped Rasmus' hand, pulling him inside once she finally got the door to open. As soon as it fell shut behind them with a small thud, his mouth was slanting across hers and a pleasured sigh left her lips.

Without Siena home, the apartment was eerily quiet and dark, with only a thin sliver of artificial light creeping between the gap in their living room curtains. Cora reached out to feel around for the light switch but stopped herself at the last second, tightening her fingers into his hair instead. If she turned the light on, she was going to start overthinking what she was doing.

And she'd spent all damn night overthinking.

As her heart began to throttle against her sternum, she silently broke off the kiss to wind her fingers between his and lead him to the place she'd sworn she wasn't going to bring a boy tonight: her bedroom.

She left the light off once again—her room was a mess—but just enough illumination could seep through the curtains in here for her to see what she was doing. Rasmus' eyes had gone a little wide, but he kept them locked on her as she lowered herself onto the edge of her mattress.

Cora drew him down onto her bed, not to rid him of his clothes or even to kiss him again but with the crazy thought that he might just lay with her and, she hoped, speak to her the most honestly here where they were hidden in the dark, far away from the lights and the scrutiny of the stage. He miraculously seemed to sense what she did—or more importantly, didn't—want. When she fell back against her pillows and pulled him down with her, his body braced around hers like a cage, he simply shifted aside.

He looked perplexed to have ended up in her sheets, his fingertips exploring the fabric as if something about it surprised him. Cora watched all of this, but when his eyes flickered back to hers, he closed them.

"Tell me to leave," he repeated, his expression stiff.

"Would that make you happy?"

A breath slid out tensely between his lips. "No."

Her insides hummed with warmth, but she studied him carefully. "When you showed up here, what did you want from me?" she asked.

Rasmus gave an embarrassed smile, more innocent-looking than she'd ever seen from him, which was ironic considering the present circumstances. "I don't really know, actually? I don't think I expected to end up in your bed," he clarified. "But I don't know what I was feeling...I just knew you were the only one who could make it go away."

It wouldn't be until morning that she would recognize how miraculous it was that he was actually telling the truth without hiding it behind a veneer of sarcasm. What she did in the moment was lean over and press her mouth against his again, but he was confusingly meek about it. After a long second, he finally reached up and tentatively touched the surface of her hair like he wasn't sure if it was the right thing to do or not.

She didn't understand why he was suddenly being so shy when he halfway undressed her in front of over a thousand people almost every day. A little peck of a kiss should have been nothing to him, but Cora pulled back, struck with the sudden sensation that she was mishandling something vulnerable.

"Something's wrong," she said.

"Nothing's wrong."

"Yes, it is."

Even in the dimness, she still caught the spot of pink that formed on each of his cheeks. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

A week ago, she wouldn't have believed anything they were doing right now, and yet here they were. "Try me."

Rasmus hesitated for a long moment, so she was jolted when he eventually spoke and did it so plainly. "Fine. You're the first girl I've kissed."

What was he going on about? Cora narrowed her eyes, looking at him blankly, uncomprehending.

"Your first kiss was Daphne Porter in dress rehearsals for our ninth-grade production of Beauty and the Beast," she said bluntly. "I was there, remember?"

"I mean–" he cleared his throat softly. "–you're the first girl I've ever kissed that wasn't for a role."

Cora sat upright, reeling. Rasmus, who had looked like freaking Adonis from the second he hit puberty, had never kissed a girl? That furious kiss on the rooftop could not have been his first real one—there was no way, right? Then again, if he'd gotten his fair share of practice over the years just by doing it onstage...it was possible. And the fact that he was still blushing when she looked over at him again told Cora that it was true.

"But...why?" she questioned, confounded. He could have had anyone he wanted.

Rasmus sat up gingerly, as if he thought she might get annoyed if his changing positions might cause the mattress to shift too much, and leaned back against the headboard. "I think you know why."

Cora's mouth went dry. He could have had almost anyone.

"Nat," she whispered. "Did you love her?"

"I thought so," he answered, his voice just as quiet as her own. As if he knew they were both flight risks; that they both might run away from this burst of honesty if they spoke it too loudly. "But it wouldn't be fair to her for me to say that, I don't think—not when everyone saw how we fought. Especially you. I don't suppose you can treat someone so badly and call it love."

Cora was stunned. Were these the thoughts that regularly went through his mind—was this the person that had been hiding inside of him this whole time? Fascinated with him, she adjusted her weight onto her hip and tentatively rested a hand against his chest, her fingers splayed. He glanced down but didn't move them, and beneath her hand, she could feel the beating of his heart.

"Do you still hate me?" she dared to ask, lifting her gaze up to his own.

"No."

"Do you ever get tired of pretending that you do?"

His eyes were sad, the edges of his mouth turning slightly. "Yeah, I do."

She very nearly asked, then why do we do it?, but she knew that there wasn't a great way to put it into words. Cora had never wanted to be a mean person, but how she treated Rasmus was a horrible, abhorrent habit that had lodged itself in her heart and wouldn't loosen its grip on her even though it was making her miserable.

She'd never thought anything was powerful enough to make it stop. But maybe—just maybe—things were finally changing for real.

With a small sigh, she gently placed her head on his shoulder and breathed in the sweet scent of him. She felt his arm move behind her and wrap around her waist, holding her there, silently telling her that what she was doing was okay.

"I'm lonely, Rasmus," she confessed in her faintest voice, halfway hoping he wouldn't hear.

But he tilted his head slightly, his lips brushing against her hair. "Yeah," he murmured. "Me, too."

When daylight came, cutting through the small gap in her curtains in an offensively bright beam that woke her up, Cora groaned. Such an odd dream she'd had last night.

Shrinking away from the light, she buried her face in the pillow next to her and pulled the duvet higher up over her shoulders. She took in a deep, sleepy breath, telling herself that she could just fall back asleep for another couple of hours.

But as the fabric of the pillowcase tickled against her nose, Cora's stomach dropped. The pillow smelled like Rasmus. And when she frantically reached out to feel the spot next to her on the mattress, she realized that it was still a little bit warm. Not a dream.

He'd really been here, and he'd been here all night.

She sat up, trying to shake herself out of her half-asleep stupor and remember what the hell had happened. There was a stale taste in her mouth like she hadn't brushed her teeth before bed and she was still in the jumpsuit she'd worn to dinner with Lucas. The last thing she could recall was sleepily mumbling to Rasmus and putting her head on his shoulder—had she really just fallen asleep like that?

"Shit," she muttered to herself, flopping back against her pillows and putting her hands over her face. "I am so screwed."

As she lay there mulling it over, she had the bizarre epiphany that she would have been less mad at herself if she'd dragged him in here just to sleep with him. At least then she would know that it was all purely physical—that she was scratching an itch, satiating a curiosity she'd acquired from being so intimate with him onstage. But the fact that they'd simply been talking and cuddling after a couple of kisses that were pretty chaste by her own standards proved that this was turning into an emotional affair.

She'd said it herself: she was lonely.

Well, fuck. There was no digging herself out of this one, no more denying that her feelings towards Rasmus had moved in any positive direction since they got cast in the show.

If any part of her still hated him, it was because he'd somehow gotten her to fall for him.

Cora slammed her face back into the pillow and shouted.

By the time Rasmus was headed to Dr. Pierce's office that afternoon, he wasn't any less baffled that he'd spent the night at Cora's than he'd been when he woke up in her bed that morning.

He'd known something was off from the moment he'd started to slowly regain consciousness. He could feel someone next to him, and for a fraction of a second, he'd thought that in the midst of his desperation he'd brought some random girl home with him. But this wasn't his bed; these weren't his blankets.

And when he'd wondered why he was feeling an inexplicable sense of déja vu, he realized that he'd already woken up next to this girl many times before.

Onstage.

Rasmus' eyes flew open and there she was, still in her makeup and pretty outfit like she'd just closed her eyes for a quick nap only a minute ago. But the light coming through the window told him that he'd slept soundly through the night and it was now morning.

He had to get out of there, but was any motion he made going to jolt her awake? It wasn't like he knew how deep of a sleeper she was. But he couldn't just stay there and wait for her to wake up, either. When she did, she was going to realize that she'd made a massive mistake, and he wasn't sure if he could look her in the eye and lie by saying that he felt the same way.

He slipped out from under the blankets as cautiously as he could, but the mattress springs gave a small squeak upon being relieved from his weight. Rasmus grimaced, but Cora just mumbled something unintelligible in her sleep and rolled over onto her opposite side, her back now towards him. He nearly let out a sigh of relief, but he was scared of even breathing too loudly.

Leaving her felt wrong somehow but staying wasn't going to do her any favors, either. Whenever she woke up, she was going to have a lot to think about.

He certainly had a lot to talk about with Dr. Pierce.

The second he was seated in the chair across from her, he started explaining. That he'd gotten irrationally angry when he saw that she was on a date with someone that wasn't him, that he sought her out without even really knowing what it was that he wanted from her. That being with her in that way felt unnatural and wrong, like they were rebelling against their innate natures, so how could it have also seemed peaceful and...right?

That was approximately when Dr. Pierce stopped him, clicking her tongue in nearly-inaudible disapproval. "Rasmus, do you really think we're built to hate?"

The edges of his mouth tugged down into a frown. "It would explain a lot."

"Maybe it would," she agreed. "And I'm not saying that hate is always unwarranted, but why should you force yourself to hate someone who you don't want to hate anymore? Why should you deny yourself happiness?"

His voice was very quiet, but he managed to say, "Things have been the same for so long that changing it feels impossible. And...I guess I'm scared that she didn't mean what she said. That she'll decide she really does still hate me and I'll get hurt if I let myself feel any differently."

Dr. Pierce lightly nodded, pondering this. "It's understandable why you feel that way," she acknowledged. "But if I'm looking at this correctly, it seems like this is a feud that grew out of childish immaturity. And even now, you're barely into adulthood—of course there's still time to change. You shouldn't be forced to live how a teenage version of yourself thought you should. I know it can be intimidating to let go of a vision of what you thought your life should be like, but it's worth it. That much I can promise."

"What do you think I should say to her, then?"

"If you've treated her poorly, I think you ought to start by apologizing for that."

Fair enough. "And then?"

Dr. Pierce gave her suggestion with a twinkle in her eye, like she enjoyed attempting to play matchmaker. "And then, if you really like this girl, which it sounds like you do, I think you should give it a shot. Go tell her how you really feel. I have a suspicion that might be what she's been waiting to hear."