“And when did you know what that was?” His bushy eyebrow rose.
I cleared my throat, unable to look him in the eye. “The night she ran away.”
“Yeah, I thought as much.”
“That was why you said not to come back, isn’t it?” I rubbed the back of my neck, unable to delete my tension. “You knew people wouldn’t be able to accept that we’d lied after we went so far to make it the truth.”
“I sent you away because you both needed to figure out who you were away from people who thought they knew for you.” He looked at the rain-threatening sky. “I fell for Pat when I was young. Fifteen, to be exact. I knew I wanted to marry her the second she smiled at me, but it took almost a decade to convince her father I wasn’t just trying to get her into bed.”
I laughed under my breath, smothering yet another cough. “Seems you won.”
“I did.” He smiled smugly. “I was married to my soulmate for forty-eight years. And I didn’t take a single year for granted.”
I kicked at a pebble, wanting so fucking much to have what he had. “I want to marry Della. And I’m going to somehow. But no one knows who we are. We don’t exist. We have no birth certificates or passports. How can we get married without that stuff?”
John flicked me a glance. “That will make it tricky.”
“But…not impossible?” I hated that my heart beat quicker, tasting hope.
“Nothing is impossible.” Giving me a watery smile, John patted my knee with his heavy paw. “I’m happy for you, Ren. I always knew you kids loved each other, and I’m not above admitting I was worried once or twice when I believed you were true relations. I’m glad you chose to fight for her and not go your separate ways.” Tears glistened again. “True love is a blessing and so damn hard to find.”
Placing my hand on his, I shared his grief. “Patricia loved you, too. You guys were a perfect example of a happy marriage when I didn’t have any role models. She helped me and Della so much.”
“That’s nice of you to say.” Letting me go, he stood with a weary sigh. “I suppose we better get to the wake, and then…you should probably tell my daughter that you and Della are no longer just siblings before she figures it out like I did.”
Standing, I coughed harder than I had in a while. My eyes watered as I cupped my mouth, waiting for it to pass.
“You okay?” John asked, worried.
I smiled, shoving the episode away. “Yeah, sorry. Damn cough just keeps lingering.”
“You were sick?”
“A while ago. Need some good ole’ home cooked meals to get my immune system back in working order.”
John’s face fell. “Well the cook of the family has gone, so you’ll be stuck with chargrilled things on the barbeque from me, I’m afraid.”
I winced. “God, I’m sorry—”
“Don’t. I know. Let’s just keep talking about other things.” He waved his hand as we slipped back into a walk. “So, when are you going to tell Cassie?”
“Della thinks we should wait.”
“Wait?” He shook his head. “No, waiting doesn’t work in this world, Ren. She’ll be shocked, I’ll admit, and maybe a little hurt, but she’s in a good place now. Her and Chip are giving their relationship another chance, and little Nina will be coming in a few days. You can meet her. She’s adorable. Patty loved that little tyke.”
Following him through the graveyard, I asked, “Nina?”
“Cassie’s daughter.” He raised another eyebrow. “Her and Chip share custody right now while they figure things out. She’s six, almost seven.”
I froze, my inability to do fast math once again my downfall.
How long had Della and I been gone?
When was the last time I’d been with Cassie?
John must’ve understood the sudden whiteness on my face as he held up his hands. “She’s not yours, Ren.”
To go from shock to relief so quickly made my knees liquid. “Oh.”
“I will confess, I did ask her. She got pregnant not long after you guys left. But she said you two hadn’t been together in a while. That you’d pulled away from that part of the friendship, and had always used, eh, protection.”
“Protection doesn’t always seem to stop such things,” I muttered, thinking of Della’s complications.
“That’s true but rest assured, Nina isn’t yours. Even if Cassie didn’t do a paternity test, you can see for yourself she’s Chip’s, purely thanks to the flaming red hair of her father.”
Clasping an arm around my shoulders, he guided me into the church as if he were the one consoling me and not the other way around.
I let him be the patriarch—the role he played so well, for a little longer, but once we got to the wake, I stayed close by, monitoring his drinking, doing my best to change the subjects when his face grew blotchy and tears streamed silently down his face as he hung in the shadows.
He might have his own children, but if he let me, I would be there for him as much as they were.
We hadn’t discussed if we should stay or go or what the Wilsons expected, but by the time nightfall smothered the farm and the wake was over with a fridge full of casseroles and leftovers, Della and I cut across the driveway, pushed our single beds together, undressed without speaking, and reached for each other.
We were too emotionally exhausted to talk.
Too physically drained to do anything more than hug.
We returned to an age of innocence, where skin on skin contact was purely for comfort and nothing else.
We fell asleep in our old room, entangled and entwined.
Just as before.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
DELLA
* * * * * *
2032
DEATH IS NEVER easy.
And it wasn’t any easier just because we hadn’t seen Patricia in a while or that we weren’t truly her children. Patricia had been a large part of our lives, and Cherry River didn’t feel the same without her.
Being back in that place…I wish I could warn myself.
Wish I could whisper what was about to happen.
It’s so obvious from where I sit in the future, but of course, with the complications between me and Ren, the residual childhood jealousy toward Cassie, and the overwhelming aura of grief on the farm, all of us were preoccupied with other things.
Things like accepting John’s invitation to stay and for Ren to resume his role running the fields.
We had no place else to be and no rush to leave and really, Ren had been searching for an answer to our future, and found a temporary one by brushing off his skills to work the land.
That first afternoon when he cleaned the rusty tractor from its cobweb jacket, greased ancient gears and cranks, and kicked her into a growling, diesel-coughing start, my heart fluttered with so many memories of him. So many memories of so many different Rens. Child Rens, teenage Rens, early twenties Rens, right to the thirty-year-old man I adored.
For a week, we spent our days alone, toiling in paddocks and debating what to do with grass long past its prime. Ren’s frustration grew thanks to the lack of care since we’d been gone, and his determination to take on the workload now that John could no longer handle it burned with need.
He announced war on nature, pulling up weeds that hadn’t been there before, liming entire meadows and harrowing others.
For seven days, we didn’t discuss what had happened when we’d first arrived at Cherry River, nor touched more than a sweet hug to go to sleep. There was always either someone too close or something more pressing to deal with.
Somehow, my request to keep our relationship hidden had backfired, and without thinking, walls were built and timelines crossed, so there was nothing to hide, after all.
No kisses to secret. No sex to avoid.
Cassie’s suspicions faded as more days passed, and Ren and I acted no different than we had when we were thirteen and twenty-three.
Plus…I was worried.
God, I was
so worried.
Ren’s coughing hadn’t stopped.
And I didn’t know what to do.
I did my best not to hover or freeze when a small cough sounded and was almost glad of something else to think about when Cassie shared her own pain, revealing how Patricia had died of a sudden stroke.
No warning.
No signs.
Just woke up one morning, made breakfast as usual, and by the afternoon, she was gone.
She also confided in me about Chip and her daughter, Nina.
To say it was a shock hearing she had a daughter was an understatement.
I was angry she hadn’t told me.
Hurt that after years of messaging, she’d kept her a secret.
But then again, I had no right to be jilted. I’d done the same to her.
I hadn’t told her about me and Ren. I’d kept us a secret, too.
I’d spent my childhood knowing she was in love with him, just like I was.
I’d spent countless nights in tears while she touched him, just like I wanted. And, although we were all adults now and I knew Ren was mine, that sort of fear was deep-seated and nonsensical even as age made me wiser.
So, you can see why I asked Ren to keep our relationship hidden. Yes, I didn’t want to hurt Cassie at her mother’s funeral, but I also needed time to figure out how to apologise for thinking the worst of her all those years apart.
To admit that I was weak enough to be threatened by her.
She was the only one who truly understood what it was like to love Ren and not have him, and we would always share that in common.
But keeping the truth quiet was never going to work.
And on the seventh night, we were caught.
In more ways than one.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
DELLA
* * * * * *
2020
I’D BEEN DRINKING.
Not a lot, but a couple of glasses of wine with Cassie had made my fears over Ren amplify until I sat on the pushed together single beds in our bedroom to wait for him.
Seething.
Stewing.
Spiralling into terror that the reason he hadn’t touched me in a week was that he remembered what he had with Cassie. He remembered me as a little girl. He remembered too much to be with me.
Time had strange properties here. It had taken the seven years when Ren and I had lived alone and folded it so the two ends touched, forming a bridge from past to now and blurring everything in between.
I’d grown up a lot in the two years since Ren had claimed me. I’d grown to like myself more and stand up for the things I believed in. I’d blossomed into someone worthy of him, and I hated, positively hated that confident Della now bowed to a less confident one.
That my fears over his coughing made me mad at him.
That my concerns over his blasé attitude made me rage.
I knew what was happening.
My anger was founded entirely in terror, but it didn’t make ignoring it any easier.
I’d started the week off blaming Cassie for my doubt, but sitting in the dark waiting for Ren, my heart showed the truth.
I loved Ren with every fibre of my being. There was no part of me that would survive if anything ever happened to him. My entire life he’d been everlasting and indestructible.
And to have that faith punctured every time he coughed…to have panic fill me, drop by drop, until I was close to overflowing…it made my hands ball and heart quake and an almost manic desperation to have him touch me, hold me, convince me that my mind was running away with me and everything was fine.
I’d tried voicing my fears before, but Ren didn’t tolerate my mother hen routine and he’d just kiss me, smile, and brush me off as if it were me with the problem.
However, this morning I’d woken with a new resilience and spent the day working beside him, holding oil cans and rags as he maintained the tractor’s decrepit engine, helping thread the twine through the baler when it snapped on the overly thick grass, and generally proving to him that I wasn’t a child he needed to be afraid of or a kid who couldn’t handle life.
As always, we’d fallen into a comfortable pattern working together, and by evening we were so tired it didn’t take much convincing for Cassie to get us to dinner.
The dining room looked the same as all the other times with one key thing missing.
Patricia’s place setting and presence.
It was a wound that still bled, and conversation stuck safely on subjects of the farm.
Adam had returned to his wife and two children, and Liam had stayed in town with his girlfriend. So it was just the four of us, and John kept looking at where Patricia would sit, and Cassie kept looking at her father.
Once our meal was finished, I stood with renewed purpose, ready to tackle my concerns with Ren, but John asked for Ren’s opinion on a new grass seed, and Cassie dragged me to her room where I learned yet more about her on and off again relationship with Chip the accountant.
From proposals to pregnancies to births and break-ups, I saw how much she cared for him and how glad she was they were giving it another chance.
The entire time she spoke, all I could think about was Ren. How he’d never once let me down, even when things weren’t perfect between us. How he’d always put me first, even when we’d had nothing to our names.
And how, here in a place that meant so much to both of us, everything that we’d created had been threatened, all because the past dared mingle with our present, making me wonder and worry.
And so, I’d had a third glass of wine before bolting from the farmhouse and cutting across the driveway—the same driveway I’d run across so many times before—and paced our bedroom, needing to end whatever distance was between us.
I missed him.
I missed him more than I could stand.
For twenty minutes, I’d paced before resorting to sitting on the beds.
I’d been waiting for an hour.
Waiting for a way to stop feeling so lost and alone and cast aside.
The door opened fifteen minutes later, swinging wide as Ren prowled in with a hand buried in his hair as if already stressed about sleeping in a room with me.
“You’re back.”
My voice wrenched his eyes up, squinting in the dark. I hadn’t bothered to turn on a light as dusk steadily became night. I knew I seemed creepy, sitting cross-legged, hands tightly linked in my lap, my heart terrified and temper fuming, but I couldn’t help it.
I’d reached my limit and we needed to talk.
“Della, what the hell are you doing?” Ren flicked on the overhead light, shutting the door behind him. “Why are you sitting in the dark?”
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Okay.” He frowned. “I’m here.”
“You are.” Unravelling my legs, I hopped off the bed and moved toward him. “A week ago, you refused to kiss me. Since then, you’ve barely touched me. I feel like you’re avoiding discussing—”
“I haven’t been avoiding anything.” He straightened. “And I have touched you. We fall asleep touching every night. Plus, you know why we haven’t talked—there just hasn’t been the right time.”
“Now is the right time.”
He sighed. “Look, you’re tired, I’m tired. Let’s wait until morning so we don’t say things we might regre—” A cough interrupted him.
My heart grew hot with dismay. “See? There you go again. Avoiding this. What are you so afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid of anything.” His nostrils flared. “I think you’ve wound yourself up and should calm down before—”
“Don’t tell me what to do. I’m not a child anymore, Ren. You can’t command me and expect me to obey.” Storming toward him, I stood on my tiptoes and slammed my lips to his.
I wanted to fight.
The frightened part of me needed it.
His mouth yielded to mine for just a second before he pulled back…just like before.<
br />
My heart cracked.
“Della. Stop.” He had the audacity to raise his hand and wipe his mouth as if what I’d done wasn’t permitted. As if the past two years of countless sex, endless kisses, and numerous I love you’s had never happened.
For a second, I wanted to run.
Another second, I wanted to hit him.
And then, in a final second, I nodded, accepted my hurt, and prepared to fight for what was mine.
“I won’t let you do this.” Stepping into him, I grasped his belt, tugging quickly at the leather. “I miss you, Ren. I want you. I’m worried about you and feel like you’re not—”
“Della…” He tripped backward as I worked on unbuckling him, crossing the small room until his back smashed against the door, and I trapped him. “Della—”
I didn’t stop until I unthreaded the leather and yanked the buckle free, discarding both ends the instant they were undone. “Don’t ‘Della’ me. You know what you’re doing, and it isn’t fair.” My fingers attacked his button then reached for his zipper in record time.
“What I’m doing?” His large, warm hand landed on mine, stopping my progress, gripping me hard. “How about what you’re doing?”
“I thought that was obvious.”
“You’re upset.” His fingers twitched around my wrist, his eyes shouting their love but his body rigid with refusal. “I get it. I know it’s my fault, but whatever you’re doing isn’t the way to fix—”
“Please.” I bit my lip, stemming sudden tears. “Please prove to me that nothing has changed when it’s all I can worry about. Please let me make love to the only man I’ve ever wanted. Please convince me that this fear inside—this fear that is slowly growing—is completely crazy and irrational. I need to know you’re okay. I need to know we’re okay. I need—” I stopped as a cry spilled from my lips, revealing just how knotted I was over this.
Over our distance.
Over childhood fear that he didn’t want me anymore.
Ren and Della: Boxed Set (Ribbon Duet Book 3) Page 69