Forever Your Rogue

by Erin Langston

“This is a contract,” Cora pronounced, as though she had invented contracts.

Even through the years of Dane’s indifference, Cora had never been unloved. She knew love without limit, love in abundance. Even if that love had come from nothing, even if she’d had to grow it inside of herself.

And the wildness unfurling inside of her, at the astonishing sensation of being seen.

One important secret about growing up, Leo, is you have to learn who to listen to. Especially about your own character.

“Me and you, mate.” Cora’s heart sank. Nate and Leo had said it in unison.

Nate pivoted sharply, rerouting to the garden. “My little girl is afraid of dogs.”

Seeing her this way, Nate experienced tremendous confusion, his own chest cracking in empathetic dread. He was afraid for her; he was afraid with her. It was the bloody worst feeling he’d ever had in his life.

And Nate understood; Tess was frightened, but not of the dogs. She was frightened of her own fear, of the realization that she could be afraid, that she should be afraid.

These days, Cora would prefer to play half a song perfectly than to clumsily fumble with the entirety.

I thought it was a given that two people could grow together. That love, when yearned for, is always around the corner, waiting to be found.”

In that letter was the Earl of Fordham so beloved by the ton. All the generosity, all the warmth, finally directed at Nate.

For the rest of his life, in his lowest moments, Nate would recall Tess running to him. She had seen something in him, something worthy. And he didn’t think it was preposterous to suppose Cora might have seen it too.

When you were born, I felt the most exquisite pain of my life. A daughter. The ripest joy; the most rancid burden. A girl, to share the shape of my life; a girl, to learn my lessons. So here’s the real lesson, darling, the one I’m still trying to learn: You have to be brave. Both of us have to be brave.

“I’m thinking of my future self.” His voice was so deep she could hardly recognize it. “What?” “My future self.” He slowly untied her garter. “The lucky bastard who can return to this moment, whenever he likes.

And there, after all this time, Cora could see she had sustained her wings; she was still a creature made to fly. Take it.

Cora, I thought of something this morning— I’m not sure how to say this…— Here’s a letter I’ll never send— When I awoke, my first thought was you. And damn if you haven’t stayed there all day, pressed inside of me, filling my cracked places. As if you’d been there all along.

Didn’t she realize? She belonged here, splitting around him. Cora was made to take him, and he was made to give. Christ, what he would give her.

Nate had been looking for purpose, to fill the gaping lack in his life, and he hadn’t even realized it. But he could see it now, as surely as he could see the fear and wonder in her eyes. His purpose was Cora. It didn’t feel pitiful or weak to say so. It felt true. She pulled his ramshackle life into focus.

“I’ll let you do anything you want to me, Cora. But I won’t permit you to regret me.”

Tell me, he asked her sleeping form. Tell me what I missed. He was desperate to know it all—wobbly first steps and halting first words; Cora, round-bellied and barefoot, slicing a plum in the darkened kitchens. He didn’t know Leo’s first bad dream; he didn’t know Tess’s first laugh.

But when you smile at me, your eyes hooded and heavy in the first light of day, it’s gold in my pockets, gold in my hands, gold in my unformed heart. Gold, gold, gold, Cora. I’ll gather your smiles, and they’ll make us rich.

There was a deep, resonant clattering inside Nate’s chest, as if a rusted key had finally found purchase, a latch clumsily engaging, a heavy door slowly opening. Everything shifted; everything was upside down. Everything made no sense and all the sense in the world. You should have been mine.

Leo stared at Nate, and it felt as though it was the first time another person really, truly saw him. It was impossible, and yet Nate was certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, he was looking into the face of his son. Finally, Leo smiled shyly. “Maybe…I’ll be like you.”

What a duty, to be a man. What a duty, to raise one.

Every day, you slowly unmake me. From sunrise to sunset, I shift with the restless awareness that I can’t be half a man anymore.

Every day, she found more she wanted to show her children, more she needed to teach them. And every day, she sensed her time was running out.

Nate could now appreciate that no man is born knowing how to be a father; many never learned at all. Nate, most assuredly, would never have learned without his brother.

Cora loved her children, but they were so terribly inconvenient sometimes.

She closed her eyes at the way he said her name. She would take that sound to the grave; she would press it to the dirt surrounding her. She would never be without it.

It wasn’t about earning; it wasn’t about proving. Love wasn’t a singular achievement. It was a multitude of choices, day in, day out. Every day, he could choose to be enough for her. Every day, she could choose to let him. She already had.

“You maddening woman. Do you hear yourself? You are the love of my goddamned life, Cora. You are the reason for my goddamned life. I am insanely, irrevocably in love with you, I’m in love with your children, I’m in love with the family we created this summer. I’m going to be in love with all of you until the day I take my last breath, and then the dust of me will keep on loving you thereafter. You’ll never be free of me, Cora.”

“No…no tears.” His words sketched her cheekbone, the corner of her eyes. “The entire point of me is to ensure you don’t cry.”

“No. Don’t you see? We’re incandescent. I believe you and I will ignite the entire sky between us.” “Ah. So we’re just humble, then.”

He made her heart a garden, forever in bloom.

Under the wide expanse of Nate’s hands, firm against her spine, she could still feel her wings, and he loved those too. There was nothing to fear. Cora could unfurl; she could fly. And then she could come back home.

He had four children—two he made and two who had made him—and Nate loved them all fiercely, equally, differently.

Nate gazed at her lovely, grown-up face. There, just around her eyes, Tess was still two years old. Around her eyes and around his heart.

“Should…I have thanked you, Papa?” Tess wondered slowly, as if pondering the notion for the very first time. “For…all of it? For everything?” Nate smiled. “Tess, sweetheart. There’s nothing I’ve been more grateful for than the fact that you never once thought you needed to.”