Did you update with a third chapter or why does it say updated on FanFiction.Net ? Take care🥰
I did now, yes. A year later, but honestly, who's counting? At this point, who's even reading? My bet is no one, but if you are, then that's great because here is the preview and link to the update. Also, if you are, I suggest reading the first two installments because, well, it's really been a while.
See undercut.
[COBERT] Sailing Close to the Wind: Two - Into an Ocean of You
“I fall into an ocean of you
Pull me out in time
Don't let me drown
…I say it's all because of you
And here I go
Losing my control”
Sway, Bic Runga
The question floated about in the air like a low-hanging overripe fruit dangling from a tree. It was ready to fall in minutes, without warning or much prodding. Cora felt the world around her grow smaller and smaller until she was boxed in some sort of gilded cage. She looked at Robert’s eyes and felt something inside her drop, whether it was heart or her brain, she couldn’t very well tell.
She’d ask him to repeat his question, but she did hear him clearly the first time. Very clearly. Almost too clearly.
Robert cleared his throat and stared back at her, willing her to say something to him. But what was there to say?
“Say yes,” he said, as if he read her mind. It would have all been very romantic were it all true, but they were not, and this was almost, almost, cruel. He reached over to take her hand in his and it made her heart stutter. She swallowed and looked away. She could not be thrust in the middle of the spotlight like this and be expected to keep her composure or hold his searching gaze. “You know it’s true…it’s the only way.” He sighs. “I know my motivations are not wholly altruistic, but…” He snuck a glance at their hands, though he tried to be furtive about it.
“I promise to treat you well, Cora. Even if the marriage isn’t real, even we wouldn’t…” he pauses and clears his throat, “Even if we wouldn’t really love each other the way husbands and wives do, I would always try to do right by you.”
Her breath would hitch if it wasn’t already trapped in her lungs.
“You need this too.”
She knew that. She already knew that she wanted to stay. She also knew that she had much more to prove which is why she needed to stay, but somehow…somehow, she could not grasp and take in her hands what was already offered for her to hold.
Find Sailing Close to The Wind|| Chapter Two: Into an Ocean of You HERE.
This update is for my love, @mcgonneville love you sweets!
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Chapter Eleven
Five thirty on a Saturday morning finds Cora and Robert still tucked in bed, fast asleep. The wind is howling outside, and the raindrops pelt against the roof harshly, each pitter-patter driven by a strong force that hits against the surface. Outside, it is dark and gloomy, and the torrential downpour that greets them that weekend does not seem to have any intentions of letting up.
Cora rolls over to her side as her hands grip the blanket and she pulls it around herself tighter. It’s cold, cold enough to send shivers down her spine, and she moves, only just a bit, to snuggle closer to her boyfriend. She has stayed with Robert and Mary the night before because they are due at Robert’s parents’ estate that day for Rosamund’s party. And Mary had requested that Cora should be there to tuck her in, so Cora had found it very logical and reasonable to just stay with them. After all, they’re driving to the estate and they are leaving early. Although she knows she shouldn’t spoil Mary as much, and she does try to find the courage to say no to her little girl, she justifies to herself that Mary’s only a toddler, there will be time to learn how to say no later (she doubts it, but a bit of a valiant effort might work), besides it’s just tucking her in, Cora already loves doing that regardless, and it isn’t like Mary has asked for the moon (though Cora knows that if only it were possible and she can, she would). She’ll think about it, much, much later, she supposes, but for now, she’s content enough to know that Mary is only across the hall, fast asleep.
They all have to get up soon, and she’ll need to wake Mary, but one more hour isn’t going to hurt their schedule badly.
Cora feels Robert snake his arm around her waist and pull her closer. He is warm and cuddly, and Cora cannot resist from turning so she’s facing him. She’s not sure she can go back to sleep now that she’s awake, but she’s happy enough to snuggle here with Robert until her muscles protest and she absolutely has to get up. She buries her nose against his chest and lets the rhythmic breathing of his heart lull her to silence. The peace and tranquility of the moment is underscored by the silent love they share. In many ways, Cora feels blessed to be here, to be able to love Robert and be loved by him. It’s not ideal, and Lord knows it’s not easy, but when it’s love like this, how can it not be rewarding? How can it not be worthy?
Hello! I know it's been a long time but law school hasnt been kind.
This chapter has neither reason nor rhyme I know but I wanted to celebrate my birthday with an update. Happy reading everyone. This chapter has smut so proceed with caution!
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Chapter Nine
Robert feels as though the day might not actually end. He'd been ready to go home and rest since nine am that day, the long night he'd suffered with Mary being unwell and cranky had been enough to make him want to throw a temper tantrum himself. He hadn't even seen his girlfriend since the weekend, because he'd been preoccupied with Mary and her illness and her tendency to be clingy on days that she isn't feeling well. Cora had offered to help him look after Mary, concerned as she'd been, and had even shown up in his doorstep with soup for the child, but he'd been resolute in sending her home. He doesn't want her to catch the flu that Mary had because the exams were coming and Cora really couldn't afford to be sick at such a time.
She had acquiesced, but only after extracting a promise from him that she be allowed to come during the weekend. It's Friday that day, and the weekends are upon them, and Robert knows better than anyone that there is no stopping his girlfriend now. Cora had been beside herself with worry over his daughter, and he knows that Cora is itching to see for herself that Mary is getting better.
After all, she had been brought to the doctor's, prescribed some medicine that she mostly refuses to take unless tricked into them, and had been resting for a good three days. Mary is very much on her way to recovery, but Cora isn't so easily placated.
They had agreed to come home together. Robert is to pick Cora up in the coffee shop, or outside, and all he had to do was text her that he's waiting. He had received a text from her, though, that she is just in the library picking up some weekend reading, and that she'll let him know when she's there. It's almost six, and he worries a bit because they had agreed on quarter past five, and Cora is almost always never late. Fifteen minutes isn't much, and she'd already sent him a text informing him she's on her way, just running late, still he worries.
He's sipping the coffee he just ordered when she notices her walking towards the parking lot. She's not alone though, and he spots the same guy she went to the art gallery with tailing her. She looks very much annoyed, but he knows his girlfriend. He knows she's too nice to shoo him away. He wishes he could burst out of the car and make the walking carrot stick of a man go away, but he can't. He doesn't want to make a scene. And that, in no way, shape, or form, helps.
He doesn't know what's being said, but it seems as though Cora is arguing with him. He's helpless but he really wants to jump in defense of Cora.
Would you consider writing a drabble where Cora and Robert find each other again after being divorced for a few years and Mary discovers they are together again? ❤️😘
Ask and you shall receive. I’m so sorry, this sort of took a different turn that what you did request, but I hope you like it nonetheless. Thanks for reading and let me know what y’all think!!!! Also, prompt me, mates. Thanks, love y’all!
When the doors close and the lights dim | Cobert AU Drabble
It is probably in bad taste.
Of course, it isn’t like they planned for it to be this way. But it hadn’t been terribly difficult to fall into the same pattern, the same routines, when life had thrown them together after so many years apart.
It had been what? So many years, too many years since they’d last been together, and even longer when they had this – blissful, ignorant, careless happiness, teemed with lust that made their nerves tingle every moment their eyes even met. It’s so much like that now, when they moved across the ballroom and stole looks at each other, while pretending to still hate each other, and pretending to pretend getting along, because when the doors close and the lights dim, it’s an entirely different story. It’s not very different when they glance at each other during the rehearsals or the endless parties or the never ending reunions, wishing they could get out of there…together…and then get naked…together.
That had been so long ago. News from yesteryear, ancient history, done and over with….
…yet, somehow, it’s become current events.
As it is, stories hardly ever came to be without a beginning, and theirs had been a whirlwind one. They met at a party when she had been on a month long trip to London, and started going out casually. She had, idiotically now she recalls, fallen so deeply in love with him, that it hadn’t really mattered to her when she had fallen pregnant with their eldest daughter, barely a year after they started dating. It hadn’t even occurred to her then that at the precise moment she’d found out she’s pregnant, they’d barely said I love you to each other. She’d pretended not to know that he had been forced to marry her out of honour and out of duty, and when their first child had come screaming into the earth, he’d been distant and aloof, looking curious but confused. She hadn’t noticed because she had been overjoyed, over the moon to be sharing such special gift to the man she’d sworn, with her lovelorn 25 year old heart and love soaked brain, that she will be loving and staying with for the rest of her life. She’d been right about the former…the latter…well, not so much.
When he had finally told her he loves her, it was nearly a year after they married, and it was a glorious feeling…somewhat an explosion in her brain, and it is then that she’d realized how she’d missed out on that…on confessions of deep and amorous, irrevocable love, before her child had come along and she’d been too busy to notice the absence of it. She’d brushed it aside, happy enough to have known that he’s finally in love with her the way she is with him.
Their second daughter came along after that, and two years later, the third one came. They had lived a happy, blissful life together. Fifteen, long married years together, all burnt down to ashes. In retrospect, she should have expected it. Theirs had been a story of uncertainty from the very beginning, and she had been holding on too much for it to have become a reality.
Fifteen years after they married, her father died. She had been too grief stricken to function, had fallen deep into depression that neither her husband nor her children could save her from. She’d pined and pined for the man who had loved her long before her husband had, and she had deep regrets over the fact that her relationship with her father had drifted when she married her husband and she moved to London to start a life with him. She had regretted so much that at the last moments of his life, she had not been there.
Then the will came, and she’d found out that her father had left her an incredible amount of money and a good chunk of the company. She had thrown herself in that then, had given it her all because she wanted to keep her father’s legacy alive. She never forgot about her family, about her husband and her children, and she tried to make sure no one felt neglected, but she needed this, needed to keep her father’s memory alive, if only in the company he’s spent his whole life building. She had not realized how that would topple her marriage over. She hadn’t realized how badly that would make her husband feel that he’d felt the need to find comfort in someone else.
The pain that shot through her heart when she found out had been intense, all consuming, but she refused to let herself be defeated by depression again. She pushed herself and pushed herself and made a life for her own.
And here they are. Seven years later, and their daughter is getting married. It would have been the first time they’d see each other since their bitter divorce. She thought she’d be stronger. She thought she could fight off the charm and the bright blue eyes that made her melt.
She thought she was over him, because the woman he had left behind had been burned into ashes and rose from the flame. And she’s different. She is stronger, over him.
Except she’s not, and it hadn’t even taken her a few days before she’d fallen into bed again with him. It hadn’t taken much cajoling or charming on his end to get her naked and writhing for him. She hates herself for it, hates that she cannot resist him, hates that she’s 47 and still helplessly in love with the man who broke her heart and trampled on it like she meant nothing.
Maybe that’s true. Maybe she never meant anything. Maybe the love they shared for 15 odd years was nothing but a lie. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
But it doesn’t matter now, because she’s here, and she will continue to do this even as she hates herself. She’ll tell herself that it’s just an itch she needs to scratch, and he’s familiar and it’s easy with him, but it doesn’t mean anything. She’ll tell herself that when the party is over, the doors opened and the lights are on, it’ll be over. After they give away their first child for marriage, it’ll be over. They’ll go back to their old lives, apart, and they will go back to not speaking again.
She’ll console herself with the idea that is just for now, when nostalgia fills them up and the melancholy of their oldest marrying is real and poignant.
Then she’ll go back to her old life, and he to his…but not till then, not when the doors are closed and the lights are dim.
I’m going to pretend that me and my fics are still relevant. So I’m gonna post a sneak peek and pretend y’all still care.
Robert’s laugh is a welcome repose to her chaotic mind, and she smiles as he hands her the food he’s prepared. It’s not much. A simple spaghetti, but she loves it when Robert cooks, even if he’s so horrifically bad about it when it’s not one of the three meals he knows how to cook.
She remembers that one time Mary had asked her father to cook a dish she’d seen on TV, and it’s a fairly easy dish, but Robert had looks absolutely clueless and helpless, that Cora just had to laugh at how adorable he’d been. He’d look at her imploringly, dreading having to tell Mary that he cannot possibly make such a dish, so Cora had given in and swooped in, taking the girl by her hand and leading her to the kitchen. Cora had promised to make the dish for Mary and her helpless Father if Mary promises to help, and the reaction she had gotten from the sweet child had been enough to make her beam and her heart be moved. Mary’s eye lit up and she smiled so wide, Cora could see every single one of her baby teeth. Robert had been considerably pleased and moved by this, and a hell lot relieved that he didn’t have to make that out of scratch.
Mary had liked it so much, in the end, that she’d managed to extract a promise from Cora that they will cook together again in the near future, eliciting a big smile from her handsome father, mostly because it means he doesn’t have to wing his way through a half-hearted macaroni and cheese.
So excited for the next sneak peek of Collide! Take all the time you need Darling 😘😊
I’ll do you one better and give you the entire chapter! Head on to https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10930944/20/Collide and make sure to read my end note! Thanks!