Forever Your Rogue

by Erin Langston

Right then. Onward and upward. Or at the very least, sideways.

It was bloody unfair for her to be so distracting when he was already under duress.

You will say this is none of my business, but of course that’s the only sort of business I’m interested in.

It was the second time this week he had touched her.

“I wish I had half as much sense as you when I was four. Or even four weeks ago.”

He had no idea how to converse with children, but Cora spoke to them as if they were people, and that seemed sensible enough.

They were operating under a strict no-teaching-four-year-olds-to-gamble rule.

It had become an entirely new game between them; Cora spun herself into a tizzy, and Nate spun her right out of it. It was almost as if she needed him. It was almost as if he liked it.

And you smiled at me twice.

If you can’t win, don’t lose.

Nate preferred a challenge. He craved authenticity. And he knew all too well he would have both in spades if Cora had been at his side.

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

The disappointment that she herself would never experience the joy of falling in love had changed the entire orchestra of her life. It was quite the most awful sort of ache.

By dawn, he was fully aware that the moment he kissed her, his life had fractured into two parts. He couldn’t go back; he didn’t want to.

Nate was different. He could step up when needed; he could be needed in the first place.

But Nate had never minded breaking the rules. Even his own.

Please, Cora, put me out of my goddamned misery and let me ease your ache.”

“Cora…” Please, love. Want this with me.

“Come here,” he panted. “Come here, stay here.”

“Despite how abysmally low you’ve set your expectations,” he rasped, “I swear to all that’s holy, Cora, you’ll get the best of me.”

She didn’t want to be anywhere but inside the skin Nate touched.

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.

His purpose was Cora. It didn’t feel pitiful or weak to say so. It felt true. She pulled his ramshackle life into focus.

Tell her you want to stay, you lousy shit.

“I was caught in the rain, during my ride.” Was she ever.

The real stakes were here. And Nate Travers was about to go all in.

“Do you see her? I’m the luckiest bastard in Berkshire.”

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

“Then take me home,” she whispered. “And stay there.”

Nate had proclaimed he was the luckiest bastard in Berkshire. But that had been a feeble half truth; Nate was the luckiest bastard under the sky.

“I believe Cora’s been doing excerpts from Dante’s Inferno, Mrs. Carleton. They left off at the Vestibule of Hell. Funnily enough, your portrait was hanging over the door.”

Nate had nothing but his own instinct. But if there was one thing his instincts were good for, it was dubious activities.

“You’re a rogue. You’ve been careless—” “I’m your rogue.”

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 Nate would do anything for Tabitha. He’d do it badly, to be sure, but he would do it.

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.

“You’re enough, you’re more than enough. Cora, you’re everything.”

She kept handing him these broken pieces of herself. He kept holding them.

“I love you without condition.” He drew her against him, brushing an achingly soft kiss against her mouth. “That means I love you even if you don’t say it in return.”

In a hundred unwitting moments, Cora had tripped, she had stumbled, she had pitched halfway in love with Nate Travers. And on the most ordinary Thursday in July, she fell the rest of the way.

If Cora recalled how Nate had adamantly opposed playing pirates that day in Hyde Park, she graciously didn’t mention it. And a good thing too. He did a damn fine Blackbeard impression, and he didn’t need it spoiled with points being made.

“And then, the dread Pirate Blackbeard gave signal to his men—” Leo nudged Tess. “Go on—give a signal.” Tess stood on the stool and thrust her chubby fist forward; she had Nate’s cravat tied around her forehead. “Signal!” Leo looked at Nate, aggrieved. “Is that a sufficient signal?”

“You can be any kind of man you wish to be, Leo. Any kind at all. And you can keep becoming him for as long as it takes.”

Cora, you’re my morning. You’re my advent; you’re my dawn. You were created to be the beginning of me.

He didn’t merely want to receive her love; he wanted to deserve it. By any means necessary.

My God, there are two of them.

For Cora. It’s all for Cora.

If you can’t win, don’t lose. Nate considered Tess and Leo, and knew he had no choice but to win.

I do, indeed, know exactly what kind of man I want to be— Yours.

“I feel thunderstruck, every moment of the day, by how it happened. I don’t understand. But they’re mine. They’re my family. They were always meant to be.” He swallowed hard. “I belong to them.”